Completed my use of the mini-digger as it was collected in mid-morning and then resumed work with the rotavator but the presence of stones and clay limited my progress as both Daniel and Debbie had friends round to go swimming. The UK and European golfers held on after yesterday’s efforts to beat the USA and won the Ryder’s Cup for the first time at a US course, Neil Kinnock gets the support he needs from the Labour Party Conference for his reform plans and Fiji suffers a bomb attack after its second military coup.
A lay in after yesterday’s exertions and wearily up after my tea to get shaved and dressed. A nice fried breakfast for a working man and then read yesterday’s Financial Times, before going out on the lawn bed to start work. I used the mini-digger for a while, until the lorry came in mid-morning to collect it. After all making me feel a bit guilty about using it, still wrote a cheque for the day & half hire at just over £100, which was money well spent. In for a morning drink, then out again to start using the rotavator to try flattening the bed down again. The digger had left the bed much more level (in that the earth was in the right places on the bed) but much more uneven, with localised dips, hollows and track marks. This job took quite a lot of time and effort. The rotavator was good, but often patches of clay & sub-soil had to be loosened with a fork first, then bricks and stones had to be continually removed and the soil raked to flatness. I probably had half an effective day on it and did about 1/8th of the total area, which is a bit slow.
Meals of lunch (of roast beef) and afternoon tea (chicken sandwiches) in between and finished at dusk again. I was interrupted by another Longsands Geography project student (!) who was grateful for some advice. I think that the work that he is doing (tracing the development of different types of housing & facilities in Little Paxton) will be of use in my Postwar Development section. Daniel had Paul and Jason round to go swimming etc, and Debbie had Amy for some of the time. They enjoy playing on The Lady and I am quite happy to see its presence acknowledged. Di wore some of her new clothes today and was quite smart, but she was her normal bad-tempered self for a Sunday, as she hates cooking and having her morning coffee at home. Daniel cleaned the pool out this morning and made a half reasonable job of it. The weather has been bright and dry, but, with an anticyclone bringing a northerly airstream in its wake, quite cooler and autumnal. Even so, I was sweating with my heavy work & the weather is just about ideal for that. News tonight is of the UK & European golfers winning the Ryder Cup for the first time ever in 15 years of competition in the United States. Their overnight lead was whittled down, but they made it in the end. The Labour Party Conference starts tomorrow and Neil Kinnock seems set to get the support he wants for reform of the party and its policies. Even then the fringe meetings propose every other type of policy as well. After the second cynical military coup in Fiji, there is a bomb explosion in the capital, killing one man and injuring two others, amongst rising tensions between the communities. Fiji may be declared a republic, which would be a sad demise of the island and ex-British colony’s democracy.