Grace's Mum and Step-dad Coe and combined family after  Albert Antrobus died much earlier
Grace's Mum and Step-dad Coe and combined family after Albert Antrobus died much earlier

Wet and windy but restful day, checking on my Mum Grace to see that she has improved and asking about my maternal grand-father Albert Antrobus, who died in his 30’s as the news is full of economic problems

Up early and time to read The Financial Times and eat breakfast before washing, shaving and dressing and making my way to the office. I received my income from disposing of the T&C shares today, and also a couple of computer publications in which my efforts were mentioned. Some time on my Prestel terminal keeping track of the stock exchange slide and the decline in the pound – it was down another cent today and at a record low against other currencies. A sandwich lunch with Di and then an afternoon and early evening preparing a five page report on my BMMG activities for September and October. I finished typing this by 8.00pm. a call today from Angus Grey of the DTI and we agree to meet tomorrow afternoon; but Nigel Smith is unable to join us. I also contact Mum and Dad to see if Mum is any better (which she is) and also ask more about her father Albert Antrobus. It seems that he was born Albert Edward Antrobus of a Leicester family about 1887, married Alice Maud Crabtree about 1895/8 and took over a singer sewing machine service centre in Edmonton to die in his thirties there about 1921. Evidently Alice was in service with his family and her brother was sent to work as a coal miner.

I will use the opportunity tomorrow of finding out a little more in my genealogy researches. A quiet evening watching TV. News of the economic problems and a complacent Chancellor myopically refusing to be concerned; determined also not to directly tackle unemployment in a continuation of the dogma that has marked this government’s style. In S Africa Bishop Tutu returns and is welcomed as a hero. There has been some too and fro between Peter Walker, the Energy Secretary, and Neil Kinnock, the Labour Leader, on the coal dispute as the government seems to be starting to intervene. A British economist, Sir Richard Stone of Cambridge and a Keynesian, is awarded The Nobel Prize. The weather today was windy and wet, the barometer having been falling sharply this last day.