A lazy start to the day before a fine fried breakfast, a roast lunch and family tea in the lounge welcoming Daniel and Debbie’s friends as the domestic news is full of Thatcher’s Poll Tax and cuts to our NHS but Gorbachev is en route to the US via the UK to sign a nuclear arms limitation agreement
A lay in this morning, as I was only brought my awakening drink at 8.00am. Still lay a while listening to the radio. I normally listen to the Sunday religious programmes as I get shaved and dressed, but they became fixated with AIDS and its effects, insisting on a degree of explicit frankness that I could do without so early on a Sunday morning. Only just in time for my breakfast, after washing my hair. Diana had cooked me a nice fried breakfast and I ate it with enthusiasm. Most of the morning reading yesterday’s and today’s papers, though I did go out at 11.00am to feed my birds and retrieve a lone duck egg. The river is well down now and at last the ground is drying out so that you can walk around without much clinging to your feet. Sat in the lounge to continue my reading, after roast beef for lunch – it is nice there with the light and decorated Christmas tree and the layout is now much more acceptable.
Watched a live televised football broadcast between Liverpool and Chelsea, where the might of the former, eventually and sadly, broke down the determination of the latter at the end of an even and exciting match. More reading and soon it was time for a sit-round tea in the lounge. At lunchtime, Daniel’s friend Steven Hicks had joined us and now it was the turn of Debbie’s bus friend, Claire Pepper, from Bydand Lane. Though Claire is 2 years older than Debbie, they play together very well. I continued a lazy day by only writing my journal, addressing a few cards, and watching more TV this evening. To be honest, I am quite bored with this incessant call from my history researches and concerned about the political and economic fortunes of our times, so that I must both listen and read more of them. I wonder whether the latest attacks by the government on the BBC and also the plain inequality of the planned Poll Tax (not to mention the deterioration of the Health Service) will finally be too much for the electorate. Probably not, as the propaganda of the right-wing press has prepared most of the population for it. I’m sure a time will come one day. The news is of speculation and anticipation about the forthcoming summit in Washington. But in Moscow and Washington, Jewish demonstrators made their play to try to turn the spotlight towards Human Rights – which in their case means unlimited Jewish emigration from Russia to Israel, instead of being ‘Prisoners of Zion’. This will not distract the leaders, who need arms agreements for their own domestic political consumption. Gorbachev is soon stopping off here for two hours and Thatcher is claiming to be trying to mediate with a Star Wars compromise and is also keen to put the dampener on further reductions in short range weapons without conventional arms reduction as well. Gorbachev arrives in the US on Tuesday, signs the intermediate treaty, then starts to talk about longer range missiles. Top doctors in Britain have combined to launch an unprecedented attack on the government about the critical state of the Health Service, due to limitations on spending. In the Gulf, Iraqi forces hit Saudi Arabian targets (by accident of navigation error, missing Iranian targets) then Iranian gunboats rocketed more neutral tankers, killing a crewman in one incident and sinking the ship in another. By the way that warning of the crisis in the NHS reaching breaking point has come from the Presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and that of the Obstetricians – Sir Ian Todd, Sir Raymond Hoffenberg and Mr George Pinker saying that, ‘Beds are shut, operation rooms unavailable, emergency wards closed and essential services shut down, in order to make financial savings’.