The Bush/Gorbachev meeting on the Gulf seemed to have gone well
The Bush/Gorbachev meeting on the Gulf seemed to have gone well

The weather became noticeably cooler again after the glorious summer came to an end at last, with the days warm and the nights chilly. It started dry and ended with the odd wet and windy day.

Kimbolton School featured this month, socially and with us and our children happily participating. Daniel was leaving, had secured his place in University and passed his driving test and so enjoying the freedom of his car and Debbie had happily started Main School by taking the school bus and now had her pony Sundance in better circumstances at Great Staughton with safe hacks on nearby farmer’s fields.

Mum’s visited from Stanton for a meeting with the monumental mason to agree Dad’s gravestone and we collected Dad’s trophy from Harlequin in Norwich for her to present to the first awardee of the Historic Ambulance Society. Di and I had a few trips out to a barn dance and a GOBA dinner and evening and our cleaner Joan had her last morning working for us after some nine years of service. I planned to host a dinner date later in the month but was also a grateful guest of Nigel and Lynne Smith for a dinner date too.

At home, I was struggling with the swimming pool, but I had employed a new gardener, Mr Tee, as our housekeeper Joan advises us of her plans to leave. The electrician fitted the downlights in my office, British Gas finally commissioned my heating and I contracted a decorator to decorate the outside of The Hayling View for £2,200. My journal, investment account planning and council business was relentless. I negotiated my investment with Ian and Margaret James, of On-Site Training.

My District Council work continued in the main forum and in committee and I was also an active participant in constituency and local LibDem political meetings. During two trips to Heronshaw in Horning, the second one with Diana accompanying me, I was renovating the old thatched garage using mental extension plates, made for me by Jack Edwards, connecting in new wooden timbers to both raise and replace the  walls.

A meeting with architects conformed that the main building of Heronshaw was beyond repair and needed replacement. Whilst with me, Di and I enjoyed a few nice meals locally and took a trip along the Horning waterfront looking at the local building designs.

As the Gulf War situation deteriorate, Thatcher sends another 20 tornado attack aircraft, 6,000 troops and 120 tanks to the Gulf in what I take as her opening gambit for the forthcoming election campaign to divert attention from domestic inflation,  which is 10.6%, the highest figure since the early 1980s, and we now have a record balance of payments deficit, high inflation, and rising unemployment as well as a shrinking economy in real terms!

Another UK army recruitment sergeant is shot and seriously wounded outside his office in the Prime Minister’s Finchley constituency and the Liberal Democrats have opened their conference with a radical package of measures to improve the environment and reform the political system.

On the world stage, the fate of the hostages held by Iraq is uppermost as the first plane carrying Western hostages flew  back from Iraqi with the US Sen Jesse Jackson. The Bush/Gorbachev meeting on the Gulf seemed to have gone well, after Gorbachev first met Jordan’s King Hussein. A convoy of women and children has arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait heading for Jordan but they worry about their fate and leaving their husbands and fathers behind.

The US and Britain stance ‘reserved the right’ to invade Kuwait without the further endorsement of the United Nations even though the blockade appeared to be working. Food and medicines are now being allowed in for humanitarian reasons. as Britain and other European Community countries expelled not the Iraqi military attaches based in Europe.

Iraq then invaded the French and Dutch missions in Kuwait. After a U.S. warship boards an Iraqi-flagged tanker bound for the port of Basrah. Saddam Hussein stated his willingness to strike first and confirmed his intention to damage oil fields in the region if attacked, claiming that the US will repeat Vietnam experience as the UN Security Council voted 14-1 to impose air embargo against Iraq.

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The weather was becoming noticeably cooler again after the glorious summer seemed to have come to an end at last; with the days and nights starting warm and ended up quite chilly with temperatures of 8 to 10°C overnight. There continued the odd sunny and barmy day which made it very pleasant just to wander around the gardens in the evening with such days ending with a clear, starry night. There was often a heavy dew in the morning before the days became quite sunny and warm again as autumn seemed to be upon us.  The month started dry and I had to set the sprinklers to water my garden lawns for some days until it rains first arrived after dusk. Showers then followed with the odd wet and windy day.It was like I was always in the shadow of Kimbolton School this month. It opened with us recovering from the Kimbolton Summer Ball, as I attended the Castle the following day to help clear up before returning our outfits to the ‘Frock Exchange’ and ‘Moss Bros’. I was back to Kimbolton Castle to join a St Neots Local History Society historical tour of the place conducted by our children’s English master and local historian, Mr Stratford, and then again for a meeting of the Kimbolton School Society Committee. It was good to see how happily Debbie left for Kimbolton’s main school on the school bus after starting there but had quite a bit of work to do. Later in the month, I took the family to the Kimbolton Statute Fayre on a cool and windy evening when Della enjoyed herself and I managed to win a couple of prizes for her to take home. Daniel was also writing to a Kimbolton girl that he met at the Kimbolton School narrow-boating holiday, the daughter of the school’s Deputy Head no less! The school also had an ‘own clothes day’ in support of charities. We had bought Daniel an alarm for his car as a prize for securing his place at the University of East Anglia and had passed his driving test and was soon leaving. He was working part time and doing some gardening work and agreed to tend the swimming pool for us to earn money. He was now often out late and tired for school. Although he seemed more preoccupied with his car, he liked his boat also and did join me for a trip to the much-expanded Southampton boat show. We were often dropping Debbie off at Staughton to ride Sundance and she had a special morning’s horse-riding hack on a friendly farmer’s fields and organised for Sundance to be put out with the other ponies kept there for a ‘rest week’. One afternoon Lisa Drake and her father came round to discuss Sundance as it was thought that she had ridden him too much when the ground was hard during the dry weather.

During their holiday, the girls cooked some cakes but once Di had got Della off to school, we could take the rest of the family to see her parents in Cambridge. With Daniel looking after the girls, we could take a trip to Norfolk and we came home to find Daniel had looked after his sisters well. Once Debbie was home from her Saturday morning school session, we could take the family out for lunch. Di joined me in tending Dad’s grave ahead of Mum’s visit before she was brought from Stanton by Clive and Kate for a meeting with the monumental mason to agree Dad’s gravestone form and inscriptions. Between times, Di and I were sorting out some of the rooms and we resumed work on a backlog of domestic chores after the building and decorating so that they could be used. We collected Dad’s trophy from Harlequin in Norwich and drove on to Stanton, planning to cut Mum’s hedge but, unfortunately, she had trouble with her car battery and it took several hours to purchase and fit a replacement. Despite Diana struggling with a menstrual period and finding the return home and organising the children quite a strain, we still managed to get out for a few events. Diana and I went to the village hall for a barn dance featuring the Paragon Quadrille band of ancient and traditional instruments to celebrate our friend Eric Young’s 40th birthday and we attended a late evening’s autumn supper and dance of the Great Ouse Boating Association in Ely. After some gardening chores, we set off to attend the seventh national rally of the British Ambulance Preservation Society, collecting Mum from Stanton and Freda from Redgrave, so that Mum could present the Fred Broad Memorial Trophy to its first awardee, an owner from Northern Ireland. At this Kilverstone Wildlife Park venue the girls were particularly taken with the miniature Falabella horses bred from South American stock. We came back home via Redgrave where we saw the latest renovation work after which I relaxed for the evening, tired from my exertions. Diana also had Chrisula to visit with her three girls but her trip to her dentist, Mr Osborne, had her being lectured about her poor dental care. The children had an 'own clothes day' at Kimbolton School. Our cleaner Joan had her last morning working for us after some nine years of service which was a sad occasion

I planned to host a dinner date later in the month but was also a grateful guest of Nigel and Lynne Smith for a dinner date too. There was always work to do in my garden and home as I tried to do a little and tend to the swimming pool whenever I could find the time but the pool was sadly still too full of chlorine residue to be safe for the girls to swim. In quieter times, I was enjoying a bath, hair wash after morning tea in bed with the sun slanting in across the bedroom.  Then there was the routine of tending the conservatory plants and fish before watering the garden plants and games lawn. I interviewed two gardeners and chose Mr Tee for which I bought  a new petrol 2-stroke strimmer from Great Paxton which worked well later on my slipway and riverside frontage. This as our housekeeper Joan advises us of her plans to leave the following week. The electrician commissions my office downlights I contracted a decorator to decorate the outside of The Hayling View for £2,200. I finally had a visit from the regional service manager of British Gas (Eastern) visits to promise rectification of my heating after poor service. I was also occupied printing out my electronic diary and administration, pasting cuttings of Little Paxton news in my scrapbook, undertaking the receiving telephone calls on Council business and administrating my financial affairs and book sales. This often involved going to St. Neots to do building society transactions, payments and transfers, posting my letters and getting stamps and the few items of office equipment that I was needing.  I had a meeting at Grove House with Ian and Margaret James, of On-Site Training, negotiating my investment with them.

I kept my political work going this month despite being very busy: I attended District Council meetings and a LibDem political meeting in Cambridge. This latter meeting had been called for organisers to discuss the Liberal Democrat strategy for the forthcoming General Election for which it was agreed to target Cambridgeshire North-East for victory but I struggled to get them to unite against the Tories and cooperate with Labour. I was also a participant in my party SLD Discussion Group and leading the next effort to publish a region-wide FOCUS Liberal Democrat newsletter.  I then went straight out to a meeting of the Little Paxton Parish Council, where I fielded some criticism of my recent FOCUS newsletter. I was hosting visits of colleagues Percy Meyer Michael and Sally Guinea to start on their FOCUS copy all afternoon. One evening, I had to chair a meeting of the Little Paxton Village Hall committee and was disappointed to learn that many of their activists were leaving. Helen Young, the village hall secretary, came round the following morning and I helped with some correspondence. During this time, I was also busy as a District Councillor attending the Contract Services Committee and Southern Area Councillors meetings and sitting in on the Housing Committee. I attended fellow Independent Tory Councillor Ross McKay's housewarming party as I tried to get him on our side.

I visited Heronshaw in Horning early as the road was to be renovated the following week and I wanted to work on the garage. After getting up early to do my Horning chores, I completed a long task loading the Range Rover with tools and domestic belongings before leaving for Norfolk and arriving at Heronshaw around 11am to face an equally long task unloading everything after buying materials for renovating the old garage. After meeting Jack Edwards at the Black Swan, who had drilled my extension plates, I worked until late cutting away rotted uprights from the old garage and bolting on new pieces of timber until late reading and writing before settling down at 11pm in my sleeping bag. After a refreshing bath and a slow start to the day, feeling quite stiff after my practical work at Heronshaw, I managed a couple of hours work on the shed supports.

 For a subsequent and later trip, Diana accompanied me for this time to Norfolk but delayed me with refreshment and shopping stops so that we encountered more traffic than usual and I was late to see our architects in Coltishall about the future of Heronshaw. We accepted their advice that Heronshaw needed to be demolished and rebuilt. This time, we arrived at Ropes Hill Dyke during road maintenance work but managed to get parked up after which I worked on repairing the garage as Di shampooed the carpets.  We enjoyed a fantastic seafood meal in the Wroxham Bridge Restaurant that evening, which left us full even after an evening walk. With everyone’s children having to go back to school, it is startling to witness just how quickly the ‘Capital of the Broads’ quietens down. We next day, we first went across the dyke in The Jolly for a fine English breakfast in The Swan and then a look around the shops before cruising along the Horning waterfront and looking at the riverside thatched bungalow designs. The next day was spent working on my old thatched garage walls and replacing the rotten woodwork, just stopping for a sandwich lunch looking over the dyke to see an old boy fishing opposite and the cock coots fighting over a hen.

Nationally, another 20 tornado attack aircraft are flown out from Britain as Thatcher scathingly attacks Iraqi leader Hussein as being callous and unfeeling, Opposition Leader Kinnock trying to keep Thatcher working with the United Nations rather than the USA.  The Gulf situation deteriorates with Thatcher planning to send British armour to the area in what I take as her opening gambit for the forthcoming election campaign More of the British women and children from occupied Kuwait came home in convoy but were very sad and had only reluctantly left their husbands and fathers behind. The British government then sent 6,000 troops and 120 tanks to the Gulf by diverting an armoured brigade from West Germany to Saudi Arabia. All this, I believe, was to divert attention from the latest increase in domestic inflation which is 10.6%, the highest figure since the early 1980s, and we now have a record balance of payments deficit, high inflation, and rising unemployment as well as a shrinking economy in real terms! In other news, the TUC passes a series of resolutions in support of the new Labour Party policies for trade union law,  another UK army recruitment sergeant is shot and seriously wounded outside his office in the Prime Minister’s Finchley constituency and the Liberal Democrats have opened their conference with a radical package of measures to improve the environment and reform the political system.  The film "Goodfellas", directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De NiroJoe Pesci, and Ray Liotta, was released and was another very successful ‘mob’ film. In the European Games, Britain succeeded getting our best ever tally of gold medals, coming second only to the East Germans. 

The world news is of the imminent release of some hostages from Iraq and Gorbachev will first meet Jordan’s King Hussein before Bush this coming week Arrangements are in place for a convoy of foreigners to leave Kuwait for Baghdad and on to Jordan A convoy of women and children has arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait heading for Jordan but they worry about their fate and leaving their husbands and fathers behind; More women and children allowed out of Iraqi/Iran, but they tell of being interrogated to reveal the whereabouts of their husbands and fathers. The Gulf Summit had gone well with accord on all points of current policy but others were resisting the US and Britain stance ‘reserving the right’ to invade Kuwait without the further endorsement of the United Nations and the number of refugees leaving Jordan now exceeds the flood coming in from Iraqi and Kuwait More escalation of the Western military presence in the Gulf was announced today but there were also more indications that the blockade was working. Food and medicines are now being allowed in for humanitarian reasons. as Britain and other European Community countries expelled not only the Iraqi military attaches based in Europe and their staffs but also student activists The United Nations Security Council have agreed that an air blockade of Iraqi is necessary and Western women and children have been evacuated from Kuwait via Iraq. Elsewhere,  Iraq invaded the French and Dutch missions in Kuwait, which French President Mitterrand called  a violation of international law, and a U.S. warship boards an Iraqi-flagged tanker bound for the port of Basrah. Saddam Hussein stated his willingness to strike first and confirmed his intention to damage oil fields in the region if attacked. He claimed that US will repeat Vietnam experience as the UN Security Council voted 14-1 to impose air embargo against Iraq. The deposed emir of Kuwait had addressed the UN General Assembly and then visited the White House. In other news,  President Samual Doe of Liberia was captured, injured and killed by torture after his visit to the West African Peacekeeping HQ was overwhelmed by rebels,  Irishman Keenan, a former Lebanese hostage, has spoken of seeing British hostage, Terry Waite. The US sacked their five star general Michael Dougan, a decorated war hero, for intemperate remarks  Winnie Mandela was arrested on charges of kidnap and assault over the treatment of ‘Stompie’ who had his throat cut by her bodyguards. The International Olympic Committee have selected Atlanta Georgia, USA for the 1996 Olympics, even though it would be the centenary for Athens and the games were held in the USA eight years ago; it seems that money rules everything these days