Tending to Della’s poor health & the children’s homework and making preparations for our forthcoming Californian holiday as more equity selling occurs in London and New York with Hong Kong down 33%. The Options market is supported with a support package of £1 ½ billion which was still was not enough to calm nerves and hundreds of US companies are buying their own shares! I was left complaining to Marshall’s for poor service administration, updating my investment schedules and reviewing my very muddy riverside gardens
Slept well and was on time to breakfast, so as to eat with the children before they went off to school. Poor Daniella is not too good today, having a chesty cough and temperature and the fact starts to worry us, with the holiday starting in California the day after tomorrow. Today I had to put my history interview work to one side and spent the time making our preparations for the trip. Only a small chance to read the newspaper headlines. Had also today to keep a weather eye on the stock exchanges, with Hong Kong & Tokyo triggering more selling in London and, later, New York. A long task paying bills and balancing my bank and building society accounts.
Trouble with Marshalls of Cambridge, who managed to make such a mess of my Daimler service account administration, that it made me quite angry and prompted a call of complaint to their General Manager. Then to my investments, updating my schedules and summaries and completing outstanding forms for settling outstanding transactions. It seems that we only have to leave these matters a few days and a mad work level builds up. People do not realise that looking after our finance and investments is a big job, reading up on economic and financial events, planning the balance of the allocation of funds and then actually making and recording the investments. Di came back to make lunch. Although the clocks were put back an hour yesterday, I kept my watch at the old British Summer Time to give me extra time during the day. This afternoon, I went out to tend the birds. The riverside gardens are still soaking wet and sticky and seem to be drying out very slowly, if at all. It is holding up any worthwhile preparations for our new games lawn, but Pete still works out there, clearing up piles of straw and rubbish brought down by the flood. This evening, I checked Daniel’s schoolwork and made sure he did a reasonable amount of prep. Debbie practised her recorder at length tonight, as she is to play with her colleagues to tomorrow’s school assembly. Poor Della became worse as the day went on and Di made an appointment for her to see Dr Wright tomorrow. Late to bed after clearing up my office of paperwork. The news today is of continued falls on the UK and US stock exchanges, that followed a loss of 33% on the Hong Kong stock exchange. There, it seems that the future options trading market has many players in financial trouble, but even a large sum for their rescue in the form of a support package of £1 ½ Bn was not enough to calm nerves. The loss on Wall Street and London was 9% each. The underwriters, led by Rothschild, for the BP issue are crying ‘foul’ and pleading with the government to ‘pull’ the issue and let them off the hook. In the US, hundreds of companies are buying their own shares to try to keep them up, which bodes badly for their liquidity when they need it most. At a Merrill Lynch stockbrokers office, a man who lost all his money, pulled a gun and started shooting the employees there. Here, some investors have to sell houses, or at least mortgage their properties, to settle at the end of next week’s account. Chancellor Lawson was in trouble with the opposition in parliament today for addressing a city dinner and not coming to a House of Commons debate and making a statement on the stock market crash and BP privatisation. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Havers, has resigned ‘for health reasons’ and had a heart transplant operation three years ago. He had only been promoted to the job after the June General Election.