A fair night’s sleep to start a long milder day avoiding the trip to Cambridge and getting on with my Little Paxton history editing instead, transcribing the Jack Ramply interview tapes and also working on the Paxton Park chapter. The emergency debate today in the House of Commons where Thatcher denies involvement in the BBC raids and the Vicarage rapists are sentenced as Reagan tries to press on with Star Wars anti-rocket programme with the nuclear de-escalation talks being threatened.
A fair night’s sleep and then up and dressed in some old clothes for a day’s work in the office. I had decided not to go to Cambridge with Di this morning for a change – my back does not seem to be too bad – I hurt it yesterday trying to lift Della and keep her away from my computer at the same time and dropped her as a consequence. A little look at the paper and then straight to my office. At first I copied all of the topic files onto a master and then created a diskette for each one of them, for old and new files and ease of subsequent editing. Chased the photocopier twice again today and it seems that a wrong address may have disoriented the carrier. I am promised delivery of it by Thursday, or a replacement instead. Once I had sorted my diskette files, I then loaded the Jack Ramply interview tapes and sat playing them and typing a transcription onto the word processor.
This took me until early afternoon. Di returned and got me a cup of tea and some beef sandwiches for a late lunch. Back to it and, once finishing this task and going out to feed the ducks and doves, it was time to do the first series of edits on Paxton Park. This was a long slog and I had only managed to do the sub-sections on Paxton Park buildings and grounds and then that for the Standly family, before I ran out of time at 1.00am in the morning. At this rate, it will be several days to get to the next revision for the entire work. A milder day today and widespread fog expected tonight, as moist air flows across the country from the west. A tussle over the news priorities today. The continued row over the Special Branch seizure of documents at the BBC is given major billing by the channel and, of course, today saw the emergency debate on the subject, with vitriolic rows between Neil Kinnock, the opposition leader, and Margaret Thatcher. The government maintain that, apart from their law officers, there was no central involvement in the police raids, but all others claim a continual erosion of civil liberties. In the other story of the sentences being passed for the men convicted of the vicarage rapes (two male residents were knocked unconscious with a cricket bat and a young woman was raped by two young men, high on drugs and alcohol,) there is much protest and indignation about the sentences being too mild. After an 18 month moratorium on Russian nuclear tests was due to be ended by the first western nuclear test in the new year, the Americans have duly held one and so the opportunity for nuclear de-escalation seems to have been lost. Furthermore, President Reagan is pushing for an early deployment of the Star Wars programme, but will face resistance from Congress on both counts.