Some pre-occupation today with maintain progress towards getting byelaws on the agenda to control dog fouling on Little Paxton playing fields between efforts to mow the games lawn and cycle round the village looking at road and footpath problems. Together with Michael Pope, writing our stories later for our next FOCUS leaflet highlighting these problems and what we are doing to solve them. Another IRA bomb in Belfast city centre but good warnings avoided injury and now the forces black and white number plates are being withdrawn in West Germany
A bit late to bed last night and a bit tense with all of the upset over the dog fouling bylaws, but I slept well nevertheless. Decided to wash my hair this morning, which made me the last to the breakfast table. Poor Di had cooked me a perfect egg and then dropped it and I had to eat pieces of it whilst avoiding the shell! Decided to stay at home today and let Di and the girls go to Cambridge. Daniel was also at home with other priorities on his mind. I made some phone calls and arranged to see the people in Little Paxton Lane about the swimming pool cover again. I also dropped in to see Helen Young to get some action from Little Paxton Playgroup on the subject of the dog fouling. I called on and phoned others today and the word is spreading about the need to create pressure before the meeting on September 1st. I tried to phone our Blackpool hotel to extend our stay next week, but found the rooms full at the end of our scheduled stay. Home to get my lunch of salad, with pork and ham pie, and then I chose to mow the games lawn, which had been too wet to do at the weekend. Even after the recent rain, it has all now dried out and the lawns are roasting again in the sunshine’s heat, when it comes through. Mr Baxendale of Grasmere came round today to give me the brick-kiln rock that he had found in Riversdale’s garden, which proved the bricks were made on site once. I put it in the rockery with other interesting historical rocks. Went for a bike ride around Paxton then, to check up on the repairs needed to roads and footpaths! At 3.00pm, Mike Pope came round and we worked on our FOCUS newsletter until tea, keying in quite a lot of text into the word processor.
This evening, after tea, I worked on some papers for the Parish Council meeting, to get Playing Field By-Laws onto the agenda for September 1st. Then I delivered them to the Parish Clerk, Chairman and Vice Chairman, to ensure safe delivery. Up a little late to catch up on this journal, which is getting a bit of a chore. The news tonight is of yet another bomb going off in the city centre of Belfast, but at least a bomb warning was given and people evacuated and thus uninjured. This followed yesterday’s attack on a navy recruiting officer, resulting in his death from a car bomb. The government has decided to scrap the British forces distinctive number plates in West Germany. But now, the ordinary British tourist could also be at risk. Di went through three week’s local newspapers tonight and removed the Little Paxton press cuttings, for which I was grateful.