A full day drafting the structure and content of my new History of Little Paxton Little-Paxton and putting off other appointments accordingly as Thatcher is at the centre of a House of Commons row for resisting the Speaker’s ruling on the MI5 questions row and Reagan cannot defend his Iranian arms decision satisfactorily and may lose his Secretary of State Shultz as a result. Ken Baker does intervene in the teachers’ dispute and the stock exchange falls over the Boesky affair have made this government even more unpopular
Forced out of bed after morning tea and hastily dressed and showered, I was down to breakfast rather late. Read the morning paper afterwards, sitting in the playroom, and then moved into my office when the post came. Most of the day sitting at my desk and word processor, typing in and editing the text for my History of Little Paxton. I have already gathered such a quantity of information that I am adopting the technique of creating different sections and working my way through the file, inputting all items that are relevant. Today I worked on the introductory section, explaining the topology of Little Paxton, a section about rebuilding the village after a disastrous fire and also one about the enclosure act and the effects on Little Paxton afterwards.
I was so engrossed in the work that the morning passed quite quickly and it was soon time for a salad lunch. I did some other work after lunch, telephoning Nicholas de Zoete to put tomorrow’s London visit off for a week, also confirming an appointment for tomorrow afternoon with Tom Chaplin to discuss the river frontage. Lastly, tried again to organise an appointment with Edgar Monks of Elm Leisure, to discuss the pool boiler safety aspects, but have yet to secure one. This afternoon at my desk again, but went out to feed the ducks and doves before dark and had a chat to Stella from the garden next door. The weather had become a lot calmer after the gales of yesterday and, although the air temperature was much the same, it felt much milder. Worked on before and after tea and perhaps I ate rather too much, considering I am drinking lots of tea and not doing much physically at the moment. Stopped at 9.40pm and went to bed with Diana, rather than working on, but am finding difficulty of late sleeping with a head full of facts to order and record. Heard of a row in the House of Commons yesterday, in which the Prime Minister was startled to be caught out believing that discussion of the MI5 court case in Australia was sub judice. The speaker thought otherwise and she seemed to dissent, before accepting his ruling ‘for the purposes of this House’. Reagan has been at this first press conference for three months trying to quell speculation that his Foreign Secretary, George Shultz, had considered resigning over the sale of arms to Iran. He was visibly uncomfortable and seemed at a loss to find logic to justify his policy. Kenneth Baker has intervened in the aftermath of the teacher’s negotiations by meeting the Chairman of ACAS, Pat Lowry, and the Chairman of the ACAS panel on teachers’ pay, Sir John Wood. England beat the Australians by 7 wickets in Brisbane, with Emburey taking 5 wickets for 80 runs. The reverberations of the Boesky affair unsettled the New York and London stock exchanges for another day and a new opinion poll has put the Labour Party 3 ½ points ahead of the Tories in the latest change of public opinion, which is quite volatile