Rainy and windy day working inside on my papers but a delightful time later swimming in the pool with Daniel and his friends as the temperature rises back up to 78degC as Kenneth baker becomes Education Secretary and other left wing ministers are appointed as the Tories are in 3rd place in the opinion polls. Another radiation leak at Sellafield and there are also men contaminated at a French reprocessing plant as £30m-worth of paintings are stolen from Sir Alfred Beit’s Russborough House in Ireland
Awake a little late to my morning tea and then I got up, unlocked the house and tested the pool temperature – a warm 74degF! Daniel, Debbie and I took the plunge and enjoyed ourselves for fifteen minutes before breakfast. A bit of a rush getting Daniel off to school, but I did not regret it. The wind rose to a high strength and it poured with rain for most of the day. The wind made it feel colder than it was and the combination persuaded me to spend the day inside, working on my papers. I did not venture out to the birds until the weather cleared and the sun came out in mid-afternoon and the doves fed hungrily. I cleaned up the pool (now at 78degF) and swam with Dan & Deb again before a tea of stewed beef a’la Diana. After, I checked Daniel’s schoolwork and then let him have an evening’s swimming with Gary, Steve and Paul playing ‘piggy in the middle’ until the evening got quite cold.
We were all shattered tonight, but did our ever increasing burden of chores and duties. The news today is of the appointment of my old contact, Ken Baker, as the new Education Secretary, which is very good news. Thatcher seems to have taken advice, as he is not a right winger. Nicholas Ridley takes Environment and John Moore as Transport Secretary and so Thatcher gets two more right-wingers promoted. Sir Keith meanwhile takes his retirement a year and a half early, after the ‘miseries’ of the last year or so and one of her key lieutenants and confidantes hits the dust. Today an Education Inspectors report criticises the state schools on standards and discipline and a poll puts the Tories in a poor third place. Another radiation leak at the Sellafield reprocessing plant (the fourth this year) and two men were contaminated with Plutonium Oxide. At a nuclear reprocessing plant in France, another 5 men were contaminated. Security lapses at one of the world’s greatest private art collections, Sir Alfred Beit’s Russborough House, had led to a burglary of a haul of paintings worth £30m. Labour’s enquiry into Militant was hit by the defendants’ ploys of procedural arguments.