A good family month for health and welfare which featured good use of our new swimming pool, major improvements to the moorings and pleasurable outings which included the first boat trip on The Lady after its recent renovations. Thatcher consolidates her party’s position with local election success and then immediately calls a General Election for June and the rest of the month is dominated by the campaigning but the East/West arms talks still progress, albeit slowly, and in the face of the Irangate enquiry. Workers protest over unemployment as certain of the rich are arrested for fraud and tax evasion and Townsend Thorensen is under increasingly bitter attack at the Zeebrugge enquiry over its sacrifice of safety to profit motives. The Russians have tested a space rocket, capable of launching space craft similar to the US space shuttle as the bizarre story today unfolded of the chase of a West German aviator, Mathias Rust (19), flying to Moscow, buzzing the Kremlin in a light plane and then landing in Red Square. Protests, strikes and violence occur after South Africa still persists with All-White elections and an eccentric coup is foiled for now in Fiji
And so May is out and we can all ‘cast a clout’. If the old folk saying referred to the blossom of the May or Hawthorn tree, then that is out too and the weather has turned quite warm. There were cold and blustery days and others where hail was covering the ground like snow more stormy and wild weather was experienced later to prove the point. All is well in the Broad family. I am recovering from my foot injury and, apart from some splinters and cuts on my hands (as always), I am well. The children have hay fever as usual, but we are OK really. Di’s family are well, if a bit erratic in their plans and decisions as I do not think they are now moving. Unfortunately, Charles turns more and more reluctant to go out and see people by the day. His fixations with the housework, paper and crossword puzzles etc. proves quite frustrating for Norma, who is quite the outgoing type. Di and I have had our own problems with an emotional argument with Diana on a rainy day. My Mum & Dad managed to visit us for the first time in a long while and us them too. Mum was weak and tired at the exertion, but enjoyed the trip. They are now getting a new pent and tiled roof for their ‘mobile’ home, and I have agreed to pay for it. We have been pre-occupied with being outside this month now that the days are now long and work outside plenty. resulting in two boat trips on The Lady and the riverside work on our moorings nearing completion and our plans for a month’s boat trip to the Norfolk Broads with The Little Lady in July and August are well advanced.
Debbie got her Kimbolton uniform, celebrated her 8th Birthday and I took her to the saddlers for some riding boots and a crop. This coming month will see Daniel’s ‘O’ level mathematics exams. A pity that I have also so much to do in my office, as investment plans and paperwork calls. We have yet to contract for our conservatory and still await two key proposals before continuing. We have also used our pool quite regularly and enjoyed this amenity. We also enjoyed lots of other trips to out to such places as the Chelsea Flower Show, St Ives Auction viewings, Jordon’s Mill at Biggleswade and the Sandy RSPB headquarters for bird song records after which we were soon spotting cuckoos and identifying many other bird songs. Our main trip in ‘The Lady’ started with packing all of our essential needs before leaving for an evening cruise in cold, windy and damp weather to moor at Waits Quay, St Ives, before dark on the first night; awake after a cold night to the sound of high wind and torrential rain the following day but but we venture around St Ives from our central moorings to do some shopping and enjoy a fine ‘Welcome Café’ lunch before cruising over to LH Jones for some fuel and water. Then through St Ives lock, Brownshill to our next ‘Twenty-Pence Inn’ berth before the slow cruise along the ‘Old West’ River Ouse and then a faster one from The Fish and Duck to Ely ill and Hermitage Lock, admiring the 1800 Brownshill Staunch in particular as being of old design due for renewal. At Ely Marina I saw Mr Lovey about work to and transport of The Lady to Norfolk. The cruise back past Upware to see the wooden boats gathered and The Lady’s sister ship, ‘Patience’ the 35ft prototype needing attention. The girls loving the menagerie at Hermitage before we cruise along the ‘Old West River’ to moor at ‘Twenty-Pence Inn and then back to St Ives Waite’s Quay before staying the following night at the Huntingdon riverside park moorings. My name-sake and distant cousin Chris Broad was out for 99 in a Pakistan in a one-day match but England beat Pakistan in the last over with the last pair at the wicket! We also attended St James’s Church for the family service Outside this domestic bliss, the country is beset with election campaigning, as television and use of the media to promote personalities and policies has now eclipsed the traditional campaigning rallies – mores the pity, many of us think. I fear that. Thatcher will probably get her third term, supported by the Tory domination of the press. Labour are gaining, but the Alliance campaign seems to have stalled, with little time left. My half million of cash deposits will soon have to go back into equities, but I will wait for the bottom of the market before doing so. The unpopular search for nuclear waste disposal sites has been called off for south-east England with an election looking imminent, Ken Baker is publishing plans to extend the capacity of popular schools. The Tories hold their own in Local Elections and Thatcher comes back from Chequers, visits HM The Queen and calls a General Election for the 11th June, but she is accused of encouraging the EEC to sabotage the current nuclear disarmament talks and the UK unemployed were protesting from London to Liverpool even though Thatcher’s unemployment figures are down due to her 20th change of statistical criteria, The UK teachers’ unions will not stop this summer’s exams but customs officers widen industrial action over pay and conditions. Labour closing on the Tories who are defensive on education, law-and-order and Thatcher abandoning the Country’s youth and rows continue with Thatcher accused of trying to sabotage East/West arms talks as Gorbachev calls for conventional disarmament as well and the Tories pledging to sell off more council houses. Ernest Saunders of Guinness is stepping down from Guinness, and both he and top jockey Lester Piggott are arrested in separate fraud enquiries. The Rolls Royce giveaway privatisation is nine times oversubscribed and a 12-year deal has been reached for Channel Tunnel rail fees but Westland Helicopters make 1,000 people redundant last as a last minute £450m loan to BAE is agreed for their European Airbus partnership and the new defence budget tries to accommodate Trident. More violence in Ulster as a huge bomb attack and gun fight on an Armagh Police Station leaves 7/8 IRA men killed but the news is of the demise of the eight IRA men who were ambushed and killed despite surrendering when their digger bomb explodes and of the mass demonstrations in West Belfast and the funerals of the dead IRA men after these SAS killings. The IRA is still succeeding in intimidating builders and stopping police station repairs and he Irish referendum comes out in favour of stronger links with the EEC. As the papers feature the MI5 allegations, Former Prime Minister, and Father of the House, Sir James Callaghan’s plea for an MI5 enquiry is controversially rejected by Thatcher. There is news of the assault and abduction of British Diplomat Edward Chaplin, apparently following arrest of an Iranian diplomat for shop-lifting two weeks prior, National Front hooligans have infiltrated a group of Chelsea fans and are causing violence and of the life imprisonment of the step-father killer Nigel Hall, in the tragic case of the death of Kimberley Carlile for whom no part of her body had escaped punishment, with cuts, bruises and cigarette burns, inflicted over several months. Also of a better outcome for a record entry of some 20,000 runners in the London Marathon and Nigel Mansell wins a Grand Prix and go top of the drivers table but lost others to Senna and with mechanical failure. The Herald ferry disaster enquiry hears how the Bosun fell asleep and there was no deck officer on duty to check as the enquiry reveals more mal-practice. Townsend Thorensen is under increasingly bitter attack at the Zeebrugge enquiry over its sacrifice of safety to profit motives. The newly refitted Queen Elizabeth IInd passenger liner has finished its first voyage since the alterations but had to compensate passengers for the disruption. A Polish airliner crash near Warsaw airport, kills all 183 people on board Klaus Barbie at first walks out of his French ‘show’ trial but is called back and identified as a prison camp Nazi in court. The ever-widening East/West arms negotiations progress painfully slowly, but NATO leaders of Europe met and endorsed the medium & short range nuclear arms deal. The Russians have tested a space rocket, capable of launching space craft similar to the US space shuttle as the bizarre story today unfolded of the chase of a West German aviator, Mathias Rust (19), who flew to Moscow, buzzed the Kremlin in a light plane and then landed in Red Square after which Russia’s Chief of Air Defence and Defence Minister were both summarily sacked by Gorbachev! A US warship was hit by Iraqi Exocet missiles in the Gulf, with 28 crew dead and after over 100 oil tankers had suffered a similar fate since 1980. The US ‘Irangate’ hearings begun with its first witness Major General Richard Secord and reveal more duplicity and illegal tax evasion and Chase Manhattan follows Citi Corp is writing down Third Wold loans and starting a banking crisis with Reagan also fighting his corner. We need such a scandal over this side of the Atlantic to unseat Mrs Thatcher and time is running out. In South Africa, a defiant P W Botha delivers his last speech prior to the all-white election as police break up demonstrations but there were black protest strikes, expulsions, and stoning attacks, which have involved an estimated ½ million blacks. Millions of South African blacks then boycotted work as white supremist conservative parties triumph to grim warnings from black leaders which were soon realised as three policemen were killed in car bomb blasts. The South African government then expelled British ITN and BBC television news journalists for screening and reporting civil unrest, even though it was in accordance with the rulings of the South African High Court. There is a strange military coup in Fiji, after which a number of leading judges ruled the military coup and regime illegal causing the rebel government to surrender under pressure of the authority of the Queen’s Governor General, who refused to swear them in. Disputes in Fiji then followed over the Indians being excluded for the new elections. Also this month, 29 people were killed in a Texas hurricane, here are racial clashes in Sri Lanka and India, people and the Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Rashid Karami, has resigned,