Re-directing gardener Pete to wash our car as the lawns were only just reappearing from the flood water, working on my Little Paxton scrap-book and meeting a Paxton Park Hospital help and then researching conservatories and choosing Frosts of Tempsford. Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King, resists measures for fairer Ulster justice, space engineer Alan Bond is frustrated at lack of UK funding for space and his HOTOL engine and is supported by ex IT Minister Sir Geoffrey Pattie in Sri Lanka, fighting escalates in the streets and from house to house
A reasonable night and was still quite tired when I woke up this morning. I sat in bed a while and missed my chance to get washed and dressed in time for breakfast. I pressed on regardless, as I needed to get out to brief Pete on what to do in the garden today. I caught him and got him to wash the Range Rover, as the lawns are far too wet to walk over. The water levels are down to just cover sections of our lawns, but it will be tomorrow before it is anything like normal. I came into the house again for breakfast, after the others had finished and thus ate alone. This morning I read the newspapers until mid-morning coffee and then finished the job of sticking recent press cuttings and photographs into my Little Paxton scrap book.
By 12.30pm, Di was home with Della, after a morning’s shopping and made us lunch of salad. This afternoon, I re-read my files on conservatories and the replies I had received from the manufacturers. I opted for Frost & Co, of Tempsford, as the favourite and phoned to make an appointment for Wednesday. Then sat and wrote out a summary of the questions on the conservatory design that I have for Frost’s when we meet. The children home from school at 4.30 and a little chat before tea. No homework for Debbie tonight, but Daniel had plenty, including his French oral to learn. I went to Duck Lane, Eynesbury and met a former worker at Paxton Park Hospital and learnt some good information and borrowed some photographs for copying. I spoke to Daniel tonight and agreed he could stay to the end of Paul’s party on Saturday. As chance had it, there was a TV programme on juvenile alcoholism tonight and I got him to watch it. News tonight is of a new measure by Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King, to bar people from election candidacy who support violence in the Province, all to become law in time for the 1989 council elections. Still he will not agree to changes in the ‘Diplock’ trial methods of a single judge, although the Republic want the number of judges increased to 3 in a trial by non-jury, as an exchange for introducing extradition from the Republic. The waste ship, Vulcanus, pursued by Greenpeace and currently anchored in Antwerp harbour, is to be prosecuted for entering the harbour with toxic waste without permission. Still the burning of the waste in the North Sea is planned to go ahead. The Sri Lanka, fighting escalates in the streets and from house to house. After the British Government’s decision not to invest extra cash in the European Space Programme, Britain’s top space scientist, Alan Bond, says that he is prepared to leave and take with him plans for the HOTOL to sell elsewhere and claims his decision will be the start of a devastating new brain drain. Former Tory IT Minister, Geoffrey Pattie, also denounces the government’s decision as meaning Britain is ‘ceasing to have an effective involvement in space’. The search for the Loch Ness Monster is extended, as a large trace is discovered on radar, just when the scientists were preparing to leave.