A morning recovering from yesterday and tidying up after the work but I had to leave an Diana ill in bed when I went to pick up Daniel from his school bus in St Neots so that he could come home and enjoy some boating with his friends as I then wired up the lighting in my new workshop. A terrorist bomb kills 21 in Sri Lanka, many of which were Britons and the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl now hangs over the British islands where we have more rioting and demonstrations at Wapping and attacks on them by police
Rather groggily awake this morning and Di and I treat one another with kid gloves as we try to get going. I cannot find time to dress before breakfast at the usual time. We enjoy the luxury of our new carpets and see Daniel off to school, before getting on with our chores. Di makes an early trip into St Neots to do some shopping and finds the town packed with shoppers, stocking up for the bank holiday weekend. I wandered around the house tidying away the carpet remnants, returning things to more suitable rooms and generally clearing up. Then out to the workshop, when I turned the door round and made wooden turnbuckles to secure all my shed doors open.
A welcome coffee, which we took outside on the patio, overlooking the river. By lunchtime it was evident that poor Della, heavy with cold, had to stay sleeping in bed and so I went into St Neots to collect Daniel on my own and, instead of a lunch at the Happy Eater, I bought plaice and chips from the fish and chip shop and took them home for us to eat. I also dropped into Hunts Electrical and bought a whole range of accessories, so as to start wiring up the workshop in the afternoon. By the end of the day, I had managed to put in the lights to the workshop section, and installed two fluorescent strip lights and a main fuse box and contact breaker. The result was the best lit workshop that I have ever had and I look forward to doing some carpentry and furniture restoration within it. I will have to have a blind or curtains, though, because it is too close to the path for good security. Daniel had his friend over for a whale of a time on the boats and river and the girls roamed the gardens, even though it got cooler later. The TV song contest, the news and then to my journal. News tonight is of a terrorist bomb in Sri Lanka, killing 21, of which many are Britons. A gaping hole was blown in the central fuselage and the Tristar fell in half on the tarmac. It was lucky the plane was not in the air. The Russian cloud is now spread across the whole of Britain, but of such low level that the authorities say there is no danger to health. The Russians are gradually releasing more details, as Thatcher explains their discomfiture by criticising Communist secrecy. More trouble tonight at Wapping print works, as demonstrators rioted and attacked by police riot forces. Prince Charles and Diana opened Expo 86 in Canada and Belgium won the European Song Contest.