Recovery day, taking a towpath walk with Debbie, playing computer games with Daniel and catching up with bills and payments as we get some rain to break the drought

A quiet and insubstantial day and I found trouble in turning to anything being so weary after an exhausting week. Still, a sound night’s sleep and then the first up at 7.00am to prepare tea, coffee and blackcurrant juice to bring the whole family in bed. Then a splendid fried breakfast, with the children also having fried bread and, for Deborah, her first taste of brown sauce which she liked. A long morning’s lay in reading The Sunday Times from cover to cover. I am not as content with it as I was – the coverage of the Miner’s Strike as very biased against them. The week’s news of the escalation in the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq with neutral oil tankers the target of occasional air raids. This situation threatens both the commercial trade in oil, its price and the international economies on the one hand and political stability on the other with the danger that America will intervene. Up, dressed and out with Debbie who takes a pleasant walk with me down the towpath and back along Gordon Road.

We get my staff from the boat and meet a Manchester couple in a hire boat moored by the lock. The lady is looking for a shop but I explain that the walk is ten minutes away and St Neots is just through the lock. They have previously hired a riverside caravan and have taken a boat for the first time. Back past the Parish Council notice board to see all the regular councillors have been re-elected. Back home and Daniel has loaded a number of splendid computer games onto Gary’s Commodore 64 and keeps us all busy until lunch. A chicken lunch as normal with white wine and then my tiredness really sets in. I struggle to sit upstairs and answer my correspondence and make out my cheques to pay outstanding bills. Tea of scones and strawberries and the rest of the day lounging and collecting my thoughts for the morning for I fear another wearing week ahead. Today the rain has drizzled down which is a godsend for the fields and crops. The river has been at such a low level that I am sure the fish will be glad of the water freshening.