September 1994 - A stormy month of weather with East Anglian deluges as torrential rain drowned Ropes Hill Dyke road but a mild one nevertheless. The biggest storm of the month was my Marital Crisis emanating from Diana as she read my journal jottings and found out about my affair with Wiggly.
This had followed another heavenly month of illicit lovemaking as I showered Wiggly with gifts, but things calmed down for a while as Diana realised that she and the girls would be pretty lost without me. I was helping Wiggly move into her new house and I was being cautious but succumbed to the temptation and ignored the dangers which would return to haunt me later.
This new affair survives the critical doubts of her sister Joanne. I was still attending key dog training and trials with Sam and getting on well and surprisingly managed a full agenda of family outings and events with Diana and the girls, contributing to the hobbies and hobbies of the latter.
With Sam, I had access to shoot at Molesworth and at John Osborne's geese in the field opposite and then CFSA Ouse Washes for wildfowling. I used such time as I had to concentrate on long seen and memory retrieves, steadying him to shot and trying to run him without boring forward to much and he produced his best-ever points as a result.
He was mentioned in club magazine despatches for his Pointing Grading and was then eighth out of thirty-five Novices at the Laverstoke Park working test. He had been fit and healthy all summer but then went down with Gastro-enteritis, getting me up in the middle of the night to clear up his run. A diet of chicken and rice again after day's fast cleared him up on vets advice.
At Horning, I was planning the rebuilding of Heronshaw and I was still advising the St Neots & District Liberal Democrats and the tedium of paperwork and accounts was brightened up by the visit of former plot-owner Bill Clarke and his daughter. It was even more of a traumatic and eventful month for my best friend Nigel as he settled his insurance court case and separated from Lynn with a £250,000 cash and property settlement.
His personal life then takes a sexually-active turn as he frenetically searches for a love-match to replace her and Kate and then he has his full slate of business problems with MiPet etc. The months news is dominated by the IRA cease-fire and The Irish Times leads the way for Dublin to greet this as sufficiently permanent.
Back home, The chancellor edges up interest rates up 0.4% and gains few friends for doing so. Two grisly accidents with double-decker buses kill several as one overturns and another crashes into a low bridge. There is another ferry tragedy, this time in The Baltic with up to 1000 dead after the loading ramp doors fail, making the craft capsize within ten minutes.
A US 747 passenger plane also crashes, killing all 131 people on board. What appears to be a suicide pilot dies on the lawn of the US White House with no other casualties. There is a huge Mumps inoculation campaign underway for schoolchildren here after fear of an epidemic whilst authorities struggle to contain Pneumonic Plague in India.
Amongst the other news, my old sparring partner Cllr Derek Holley has a quadruple heart-valve by-pass operation at Papworth which brings back memories. In sport, Daimon Hill catches up Michael Schumacher in the Formula 1 Grand Prix table due to the latter's suspension.
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This was a stormy month for me in more senses than one. Real weather-wide, it had started with a huge storm in Suffolk with Beccles under six inches of water. Though there was some drizzle in Paxton later, it was sunny and fine the day after in quite a dry month for Cambridgeshire. Not so in Norfolk, where another thunderstorm deluge and torrential rain drowns Ropes Hill Dyke road. At least the month was generally mild, becoming just a little chilly for our Kimbolton Statute Fair night out.
The biggest storm of the month was emanating from Diana as she read some jottings for my journal notes and deduced that I had an affair with Wiggly. I told her that it was more of an encounter than an affair and that it was soon all over after she had admitted having VD in order to reassure her, and she soon accepts this story, and things returned to normal again.
She still gives me a hard time, kicking me out for a few days until she regained something of her composure and, I think, realises that she and the girls would be pretty lost without me. It had been another heavenly month of illicitly seeing Wiggly that started again with me joining her for a clinic visit and obtaining ointment for me whilst she gets a lot better.
I treated her to dinner at The Three Horseshoes at Maddingly and I had no cause to be sad she was having her period because she treated me to oral sex instead! In fact, I preferred the rest as I had got back at 4.00am after night shooting with Jim and then countryside walking with Sam!
I gave her a lady's shaver for her house-warming and a long demonstration to go with it, after which I satisfied myself with her body but not yet her. Her first visitors liked her new house and she was very pleased with it but I had to be the handyman and help her to fit new lock, knocker and house number.
More fun after this as my reward. She ends up sad at things we can not do together and becomes quite melancholy when her car was stolen in mid-month and, for good measure, she loses out on a part for the pantomime as well! We have a short visit and then a weekend in Norfolk; with purchases of lingerie for her, some football to watch for me and then an arousing dinner for us both that leads to some regrettable risky sex as I lose control after all these years away from young stockinged thighs!
It was well worth it though. On our next weekend at Harnser, after collecting her from work at Unilever and skirting St Neots on the way to avoid being seen, I buy her a stunningly sexy purple top and skirt for her to wear over a bodice and stockings as we watched Lenny Henry at The Theatre Royal so we looked very good together.
A Floating Restaurant dinner of mussels and then lovely seafood thermidor afterwards before I gave her a great night of sex and stimulated her to a climax for the first time that I had managed to do it for her. We fit in a visit to the seaside at Winterton and then returned home with a table salvaged from Heronshaw that was just the job for her kitchen.
I buy another set of clothes to keep for convenience at Montague Street but we both have an abortive Norwich hunt for shoes, as we share the same problem of our feet being too big! Arrangements for a joint date for Nigel to meet Ann Rennie and then we experience a nerve-wracking joint date with Nigel at Brown's of Cambridge as we take her Wiggly's sister Joanne into our confidence.
Then another wrenching separation whilst she was in Brighton which was just before the big upset with Diana. Life had to go on and things were soon back to normal as I took her to the clinic and then bought a cheap make-do car. I then stayed the night with her when I had been chucked out whilst she made her house-warming party preparations for which I gave her a rather unromantic present of a brush and dustpan.
This was evidently a good party but a very late night for her but I was not able to be there as I travelled off for a dog event. At least I managed to visit her for a few hours on the way back before Di let me come home and was soon waking me with cups of tea. Her business trip to Holland depresses her again as it not only takes her away but also led to some problems with a colleague but she joins me for the Range Rover launch in Cambridge after Diana declined.
The temporary car was not the success we hoped it would be and soon fails to start and needs attention. Though Wiggly is often sad and can be a bit depressing and full of problems, she ends the month at her best for another Norwich trip where we stay at The Hotel Nelson for some splendid lovemaking. She wore a miniskirt and stockings and turned me on fully over a meal at The Floating Restaurant.
Despite the huge upset over Wiggly, it had not been a bad month for Diana and the family with Saturday lunches out generally and a Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch in particular, Harvest Bakery coffees and Brackenbury refreshments before and after the trauma. We saw the films "Wolf" and "Clear and Present Danger" and had a nice evening out with Michelle, Amy and the girls at The Kimbolton "Statty" Fair.
I was soon back at home after being in the dog house and went out with Di to order a new bed and bedding from Brittains. Diana took the girls for a Wickstead Park/Kettering Leisure Centre outing and then they all went back to school all right. She had their cousins and Chrisula over for tea but was struggling with Debbie off and on all month.
She was being a typically awkward teenager but at least she starts school Aerobics and Di her Keep Fit and Yoga sessions. Daniel went off to Tenerife for two weeks and got Di to collect him from the airport. He returns pink and sunburnt and enjoyed his trip but had a setback upon his return when his beloved car's sunroof was shattered on the way back from airport!
I had to lend him £160 to get it fixed and, in return, he helps lift the girls home after extra-school activities. Della has her first after school cookery class at Kimbolton and brings home nice rock cakes and is then chosen for three small walk-on parts in school play in her drama session. I helped Della complete her news-casting project by typing it into the computer and, when she and Michelle performed it the following day, it was voted the best of all of them!
I had an eventful month, getting permission to shoot at Molesworth and at John Osborne's geese in the field opposite but unfortunately they did not appear. I archived six month's journal, bought lamping equipment and got eighteen rabbits in four hours with first trip with Jim in Norfolk. We had less luck with walked up guns and dogs another time.
I went on the CFSA Ouse Washes walk and can shoot fowl there now by permit. My Molesworth rabbiting was interrupted by the revelations but eventually got underway as I shot pigeon and rabbit there for the first time. An inquest with Diana about what had gone wrong with my tailored shirts from Garstang and a long conversation with them before re-ordering.
At Harnser, I had a meeting with Mr Page, and found him to be a good road-mending alternative to our other quote from May-Gurney and also did some strimming there to justify the trip. Back at The Hayling View, there had been a few developments. John Osborne had planted the meadow opposite with oilseed rape and there was a shed and boat fire on a neighbouring river plot as the fire brigade entertain Willow Close by putting it out whilst I was away.
Some time advising Sheila Shorten on expelling Ross McKay from the Town Council Group and then back to earth with some mundane garden chores whilst Bill was on holiday. Cleaning out car the after the Norfolk trip and helping Diana to lay up the swimming pool for the winter.
Always the tedium of cheques and paperwork to deal with between visits but this was broken up by a nice visit from Bill Clarke and his daughter as a trip down memory lane. Bill & Pete eventually came back from holiday and continued the riverside path wall and we had an abortive search for topsoil for top-dressing the games lawn as the farm opposite is excavated and the soil looked inviting but was not available and then the building site soil was also too full of weeds.
It was even more of a traumatic and eventful month for Nigel as he settled his insurance court case and separated from Lynn with a £250,000 cash and property settlement. His personal life then takes a sexually-active turn as he frenetically searches for a love-match to replace her and Kate and then he has his full slate of business problems with MiPet etc. I almost get him to start thinking about shooting again but it comes to nothing.
Not a month for Sam to get a lot of attention but he still continues to develop. I used such time as I had to concentrate on long seen and memory retrieves, steadying him to shot and trying to run him without boring forward to much and he produced his best-ever points as a result. He had a good session at Harlow and impresses everyone there but still carried on grumbling at other male dogs and pegged a wood pigeon squab.
He was mentioned in club magazine despatches for his Pointing Grading and was then eighth out of thirty-five Novices at the Laverstoke Park working test with Tim Wignall's dog fourth as a creditable achievement. He also needed to spend time re-adjusting to Mill Lane traffic after his quiet country summer and got back to his bus stop routine with the girls.
He had been fit and healthy all summer but then went down with Gastro-enteritis, getting me up in the middle of the night to clear up his run. A diet of chicken and rice again after day's fast cleared him up on vets advice. Back to shot-drop training and directional hand signals for blind retrieves and then to hunting where he again went too far ahead but pointed a pair of pheasants.
The Reedham wild fowling expedition not very successful but at least Sam did a good water retrieve. His Paxton runs are made a little complicated by the Little Meadow Boy Scout barriers going up again with barbed wire on the field fence now which starts another battle of access for the local dog walkers.
The months news is dominated by the IRA cease-fire and The Irish Times leads the way for Dublin to greet this as sufficiently permanent. The Republicans keep their truce even as Loyalists kill a Catholic.
Dublin and then the US Vice President put pressure on John Major to agree by meeting Gerry Adams but the Rev Ian Paisley is given short-shrift by John Major for his extremist complaints about the process. Loyalists were also under pressure to declare their cease-fire as well.
The propaganda war for peace starts in the US with Gerry Adams and Michael Mates slogging it out. Nearer to home, IRA prisoners break out from a Cambridgeshire jail using firearms that were smuggled in and then Semtex explosive is also found in there but the Home Secretary refuses to resign!
The chancellor edges up interest rates up 0.4% and gains few friends for doing so. Paris Match relents and pulls out of circulating magazines in the UK containing clandestine nude pictures of The Prince of Wales.
Two grisly accidents with double-decker buses kill several as one overturns and another crashes into a low bridge. There is another ferry tragedy, this time in The Baltic with up to 1000 dead after the loading ramp doors fail, making the craft capsize within ten minutes. A US 747 passenger plane also crashes, killing all 131 people on board.
What appears to be a suicide pilot dies on the lawn of the US White House with no other casualties. The US first threaten and then call off an invasion of Haiti at very last minute after Jimmy Carter's negotiated settlement removes the military dictator. France's President Francois Mitterend admits that he has prostate cancer and looks not to be able to last much longer but will try to see out his term.
A building society manageress is murdered in suspicious circumstances. The LibDem conference agrees controversial plans for drugs and contraception and the English women's team compete in The World Cup athletics championships regardless of drugs revelations.
There is a huge Mumps inoculation campaign underway for schoolchildren here after fear of an epidemic whilst authorities struggle to contain Pneumonic Plague in India. Amongst the other news, my old sparring partner Cllr Derek Holley has a quadruple heart-valve by-pass operation at Papworth which brings back memories. In sport, Daimon Hill catches up Michael Schumacher in the Formula 1 Grand Prix table due to the latter's suspension