A cool and windy month with national and international tragedies not preventing our family enjoyment of our first boat trip and new outdoor heated swimming pool as part of a near-completed Hayling View riverside mansion and gardens. This as Margaret Thatcher suffers defeat at local and by-election, relegating the Tories to 3rd in the opinion polls but her harsh economic regime continues to decimate industry and jobs and her intransigence over South Africa becomes an acute embarrassment. Above all this, the true implications of the Chernobyl reactor explosion reveals thousands of human casualties and mass contamination of foodstuffs and property but the US equally resists Soviet talks and nuclear arms limitation plans
And so ends the month of May. Whilst better than that of April, the weather has still been cool and windy, with plenty of showers and we have not had a single hot spell yet. This has not deterred us from using our newly commissioned pool, however, which is now heated to over 81degF and steaming every night. The house is just about finished; although, I have no doubt that the builders will need to keep popping back for rectifications. I have moved my workshop on to higher and more accessible ground and have just about finished fitting it out, applying roof felt and new panes of glass and electrics. I have acquired Bob’s river plot, the last needed to make one integral stretch and to form our Hayling View gardens, and now there is even more work to do outside and this, with The Lady, the house bits and pieces and paperwork is mounting to become quite a dilemma as to what to do first. Our first boat trip also went very well, with all of the family enjoying it and Daniel saying that it was the best holiday that we have ever had! We had spent some time preparing and then using The Lady for a good family boat trip, overcoming raging floods and then gales in the process.. Also with all this leisure now available; boat, gardens, pool and the fishing and World Cup starting, it is difficult to get down to any but tending to the property’s daily needs.
A mounting number of folding chairs also need restoring. I must make a list and choose some priorities! Unfortunately, after a month or two of better health, I seem to have hurt my back again, either by moving large sacks of salt, or swimming excessively. Debbie’s allergies to pollen etc. seem to be bad this spring, but it does not seem to worry her and Daniel’s ‘sinus’ trouble continues. I have had to limit his playing now and, after a poor school report, get him to do more schoolwork and revising ahead of exams in three weeks’ time. Debbie can trot and walk ponies on her own and is enjoying our weekly trip to the riding school and enjoys her 7th birthday party. She was often a good companion; joining me in bed to have her nails cut, opening her Abbey National share account for £10 with a Mickey Mouse passbook cover as the start to her saving and financial awareness. Daniel began hosting his friends for a boat trip and picnic early in the month and then it was the completed swimming pool providing the distraction later on. Della learns more words every day and is growing up fast, if frantic. Diana seems to be more ill than not these days, which is a shame. My mother, Grace, is resigned to making the best of her disablement, now that nothing further can be done for her hip and the rest of the family soldier on. My friend Nigel’s health worries me as his heart ‘skips beats’ and makes him delirious and there is a ‘growing’ consensus that agricultural sprays are one local hazard. The jobless total rises inexorably and the Tories have now lost all popularity, with Labour rising in the polls to mount a large lead. Thatcher will hold on until Spring 1988 and cling to power to the last minute. The SDP/Liberal Alliance gain ground steadily, but surely. Britain’s decline continues with the industrial recession and the lack of an Industrial and Economic plan, added to by an agricultural crisis, as food overproduction fills the warehouses with edible commodities. Closure is announced of Smith’s Dock in Teeside after building over 900 vessels from 1910 onwards as part of the demise of the UK shipbuilding industry with loss of 3,500 jobs. Unrest continues a 80,000 power workers start an overtime ban, there are strikes of prison officers, and teachers negotiate a wage increase and NHS medics get a 6% pay rise after a big fight. The Liberals trounce Thatcher’s Tories in the local elections and national by-elections and Elizabeth Shields wins Ryedale and then Thatcher skulks at Chequers . Print union pickets complain of a police horse charge at Wapping after more rioting and demonstrations take place prompting attacks on them by police with 150 demonstrators and 175 police injured, This as thousands of job losses are planned for BREL in readiness for a sell-off, 3,200 further police are being recruited to quell civil unrest. British holidaymakers and our sports teams abroad are heavily protected from Libyan terrorists. Then more Libyan diplomatic expulsions are made but we cut our conventional defence budget and increase spending on Trident whilst the US announces grandiose space plans. Thatcher ignores opposition to her unemployment mortgage aid cuts and Francis Pym announces his retirement from it all. My old buddy Kenneth Baker fights for more spending on health and education but Thatcher at first firmly resists investment but then moves to replace her Education Secretary and other left wing ministers are appointed because the Tories sink to third place in the opinion polls as three Liverpool militants are expelled by the Labour Party. She takes a strange objection to Hippies as they are first ejected from Stonehenge, then expelled from a farm in Yeovil and then dispersed with riot police who stop the Hippy colony near Dorchester! South Africa strikes at three neighbouring countries, claiming it was against ANC camps, with Thatcher a lone supporter and then she vetoes a UN move (with the USA) for South African sanctions and falls foul of Commonwealth colleagues who are unhappy with our tolerance of South African apartheid. South African police savagely attack a university protest march with whips and tear gas but the Boers are opposing apartheid relaxation in South Africa and the spotlight is now firmly on Africa with Ethiopia starving and Bob Geldorf and others lobbying the UN for African help. Thatcher visits Israel and has naively not given up hope of an Israeli/Palestinian compromise. The world is ever more suspicious of nuclear dangers following Chernobyl, the fallout of which is now polluting the UK, prompting bans on drinking rain water from Scotland, Northern England and Wales. Then milk from Holland and vegetables from Austria are banned as residents of Kiev flee to escape the Russian reactor fall-out until a cordon sanitaire of 600 miles is established under EU food regulations and Chernobyl at last gets international supervision once the EEC has banned food imports from Eastern Europe. Russia then recriminates against officials culpable for Chernobyl and admits 8 are dead, 35 in serious condition with radiation burns and 209 are injured but then Chernobyl radio-activity casualties grow to over 1,000! Also nuclear power station leaks hit the headlines with a big anti-nuclear demo in Germany ends in violence. There is another radiation leak at Sellafield and also men contaminated at a French reprocessing plant. Despite all this, the Americans seem to be set against any East/West reconciliation on the reduction of nuclear arms and are currently arguing with their NATO allies on the abandonment of the previous treaty SALT 2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks). Chances of a Gorbachev/Reagan agreement and summit this year are receding. The Russians seem to have a new attitude to outside contact, with their new leader, and are winning more friends with their openness and frankness. I think that Europe will develop the present anti-American feelings after the Libya attack, to result in a new alignment as an independent third force for Europe alone with both sides courting this balancing power block. Europe are encouraging the US to continue arms limitation as the Russians are claiming deterioration in US relations. At the Tokyo Summit, three rockets reign down on the State Guest House but Thatcher and Reagan still meet there for an hour of private talks but there is nothing on Japanese protectionism and its trade surplice despite its billing as an ‘Economic Summit’ A terrorist bomb kills 21 in Sri Lanka, many of which were Britons. In Ireland, a depraved Republican fanatical group attacks a couple in their bedroom and kills a Catholic man’s Protestant wife, Margaret Caulfield; an Ulster IRA bomb blast kills three police. Elsewhere, conflicts with Syria and the Lebanon dominate the news. Two jets collide at the Mildenhall air show, Formula 1 racing driver, Elio de Angelis, has died and Mario Andretti has a near escape after crashes in a practice session but better news as Britain’s Nigel Mansell wins the Belgian Grand Prix. Argentina’s war-mongering Generals are given long prison sentences for now but will inevitably be released soon in some deal or other. Meanwhile, we are sheltered from all this at the Hayling View and life (our new life) goes on as normal, with only a few aches and strains and a long list of competing activities to worry about.