A rather cold and wet month and not the best for starting our boating holiday in The Norfolk Broads with The Lady and Little Lady but the holiday goes well and our family health is good and Debbie and Della are progressing through their education whilst Daniel is enjoying his new boat. The US and USSR are struggling to complete nuclear arms negotiations but are making progress whilst The Middle and Far East is alight with disputes and ethnic wars. At home Thatcher is planning repressive laws with her anti-union policies and The Poll Tax the latest of them whilst she continues to support South Africa, whose leader are besieged with anti-apartheid action and US President Ronald Reagan despite him being found out as approving the Iranian Arms for Contra aid deal as he now finds his warships and oil tankers trapped in the Straits of Hormuz. Flood and heat deaths affect southern Europe and I remain glad that we can avoid all these problems and I do not have to run a business for a living and am thus relieved to continue our pleasant and sustained leisure lifestyle
We thus end the month of July at Oulton Broad in our boats, having prepared them well with repairs and enhancements and brought them to the Norfolk Broads for a month. Our health is reasonably fine, although we have followed Daniella’s example in contracting colds and sore throats, but she was fit enough to enjoy her 3rd birthday and also managed to attend Playschool unaccompanied for the first time. Debbie has completed her last term at Little Paxton School by having some very satisfactory reports at our last parents’ evening and now starts at Kimbolton this autumn. She also took her ballet test and got a ‘commendation’ for her bronze medal and is enjoying her horse-riding. My parents are OK, and we enjoyed their visit to us, but I have yet to find out what the results of my father’s hospital tests for suspected stones, At least they are pleased with the new roof I have bought them for their mobile home.
Di’s parents and family seem in fine health and situation and are not presently in need of any help or concern. We had a visit from Chas and Chris and trip on The Lady before swimming and a barbeque and then to watch some old Jackson family films. Our house is all locked up and we hope it is safe with its completed river frontage providing much more amenity and good looks than before after I had completed a difficult job encasing the old storm rain. Daniel and I had made our visit to Thormaid before we went. A poor month for weather, generally, and plagued by cold northerly winds and rain. Fortunately the boats are well appointed and we have plenty to do to limit the effect of the weather We had The Lady lifted on to a trailer at Buckden and then taken to Brooms of Brundall where it was launched. Our first cruise was to the Norwich Yacht station from which we toured the Castle and viewed the City. We are enjoying this different experience of a month’s boating on the Norfolk Broads, though the boating habits and practice are very busier than on our own river where it is more peaceful. Still, we have succeeded in coping with the hire boats and crew, many of which seem to navigate from pub to pub and be drunk for a week in the process. We liked the peace at Brammerton Wood End, enjoy our stays at Rockland Broad and Staithe but then had to fight the tides to go to Reedham and on up the Waveney to Beccles, stopping to visit the St Olaves Fritton Lake and Country Park. We finished the month by cruising The Lady to the Waveney River Centre and where we went swimming and had hot showers, then on to Oulton Broad to moor where Daniel and I head for the chandlers for more and bigger fenders! Elsewhere, trouble and turmoil seems to rule the world, with conflict ready to break out and be almost fed by super-power support. It is to be hoped that these Geneva discussions can be productive, but there is so much posturing and demands on both sides, that agreement is by no means certain, or even probable. Russia is being very vindictive towards the Chernobyl managers and remains at odds with the US over their Pershing missiles and Star Wars programme before mutual arms reduction can be agreed. Certain of Thatcher’s policies on Rates Reform and Education/Health etc are at last proving unpopular and her Privatisation policy troublesome and her Poll Tax proposals will one day bring her down, but her majority is so large and the election gone to mean no effective opposition yet again. For now, she approves Murdoch’s takeover of the Today newspaper, which is an outrage and immigration falls after the curbing of the 1952 Commonwealth Citizen Agreement. The Stock Exchange situation is worthy of note and close concern. Prices are at all time and inflated highs, but the forecast collapse (or ‘readjustment’) is proving slow to come. The economy is active after the pre-election mini-boom and may thus be getting itself going at long last and we hope that unemployment will have a sustained fall. The NUM are fighting the imposition of a 6-day week at the same time Vauxhall receive a huge vehicle order from Thorn-EMI, the miners and teachers are holding out for better conditions and a new miner’s strike is spreading from Yorkshire though they are threatened with dismissal. British Rail axes 9,000 jobs and UK air traffic controllers complain of insufficient resource to cope with unsafe congestion in the airways. The stock market is jammed with small transactions after the BAA share offer. A ruling of the European Court in Strasbourg has led to Britain being found guilty of human rights abuse by not allowing parents to challenge Local Authority care orders for their children as the Cleveland spoof child abuse row continues. the UK sabotages the European IT programme and the Sizewell AGC reactor will go ahead. Peter Wright’s MI5 revelations are published in the Sunday Times and The Guardian and Observer sought a lifting of the MI5 book injunctions in the High Court and the injunctions are lifted against three newspapers only for the Law Lords to rule on appeal against the newspapers publishing Spy-catcher extracts and they damn nearly over rule parliamentary privilege to talk about the matter as well! Geoffrey Archer wins his court case despite damning testimony, the Herald of Free Enterprise management and officers are roundly criticised in the enquiry. Liverpool fans involved in the Heysel Stadium riot are extradited The Hindus protest about Hertsmere Borough Council closing their temple, Prince Charles is appalled by the run down slums in Tower Hamlets and the MOD admits using human guinea pigs for nerve gas tests and a Christmas Island nuclear test witness wins an appeal for compensation for contracting blood cancer. Richard Branson of Virgin crosses the Atlantic by balloon, but crashes in the sea off Ulster and is lucky to survive with his co-pilot. He seems to manage it, but I remain glad that I do not have to run a business for a living and am relieved to continue our pleasant and sustained leisure lifestyle. The family do not fully realise how lucky they are, but I count on my good fortune. There are more revelations about illegal support for the Contras and US President Reagan is revealed as having approved an ‘arms for hostages’ deal with Iran The US public seems to adore Lt. Co. North in the Irangate hearings as a cult figure and seem to forget his efforts to compromise the democratic process. Thatcher is still supporting the beleaguered US President Reagan even as Casper Weinberger testifies at the Irangate hearings and was against the whole Iran/Contra aid scheme. Iran rejects the UN resolution and all eyes are on the fete of the US-flagged oil tankers threatened by Iran in the Straits of Hormuz. The US are sending minesweepers to the Gulf to protect their US-flagged Kuwaiti oil tankers after one was hit by a mine Britain decides not to send minesweepers to the Gulf, despite requests from the Americans to avoid escalation. Sikhs massacre more Hindus in the Punjab, 72 people die as a result of a Karachi shopping centre bombing and the Tamil guerrillas are being challenged by India and Sri Lankan cooperation but Ghandi’s grip on government is still slipping. Half a million metalworkers strike in South Africa and then a huge bomb hits Johannesburg with the regime under threat from civil unrest and armed insurgence. Scores of campers are killed by floods in the Haute-Savoie French camp site and then the latest problem is in Italy where 17 are dead as a result of a hotel being swept away in floods, whilst hundreds of people are dying in Greece from a heatwave.