Up at 6am for a busy and productive day, making my preparations for being away for two weeks, whilst still training canvassers, being interviewed on Radio Cambridgeshire, and making a good impact at the HDC Finance & GP meeting over the Poll tax changes before meeting up at Derek's house. Also to withdraw £4,000 in cash and then exchange half of it for dollars before to bed at midnight.
I had a very busy, but productive, day and quite a tense one, wondering whether I could do all that I needed to and still remember to do all of the things necessary for spending two weeks' away. I was awake at 6.00am which has been my custom recently and then sat in bed for half an hour trying to wake up with my morning tea. Time to check my office after shaving, showering and dressing and I made out an urgent action list for the day as I had a lot to do. One of my first tasks was to telephone Chris Colbert and Derek Giles about my movements this evening - I had remembered an HDC Finance & GP meeting and could therefore only help the Eaton Socon canvassing for an early half hour to train the new candidates.
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I had more calls to make - to Jack Edwards of Horning to tell him that we would be away for a couple of weeks and the same to the auto-pilot installers who I discovered were completing the installation today. They would have to do this without me there. Then a long time with the gardener, giving him his instructions for the time we were to be away, paying him for last week and this and giving him keys etc. I had a couple of phone calls from the media about a Tory press release which accused the Liberal Democrats of agreeing a secret pact with the Labour Party and I made my responses, and we heard my voice on Radio Cambridgeshire as we had our lunch. Percy Meyer came round whilst I was out for an hour, finishing off my deliveries to the Southoe outlying houses. He was still there when I returned and I managed to give him all of the artwork, photographs and other things that he will need for the campaign whilst I was gone. This afternoon, I tidied my office up and then went to St Neots to get £4,000 in cash from two building societies and then exchanged half of it for dollars at Barclays Bank. Tea quickly and then, having prepared for this evening's meeting, I drove on to Eaton Socon to start some canvassing for 6.00pm. Alan Argyle was my first pupil and then candidate Chris Colbert, who came later. I only had about 40mins before driving off to my meeting, but I used the time well and still had a good meeting. We gave the Tories a fairly hard time over the Poll tax changes and especially over them being at the last minute, so as to cause the local authorities so much extra cost and inconvenience and delays in billing. We all met up at Derek's house afterwards and agreed that we had got a good reception from the electorate. I was up a little late preparing for the morning and went to bed around midnight.