Arrival in Bude to video our holiday visit to Freda and family as Live Aid is a resounding success
A poor night with the room very warm and Della waking at midnight to unsettle us all. Awake at 6.30am but room service only accepted an order at 7.00 for morning drinks. A fair job getting everybody ready, but eventually down to breakfast and, once we settled Della, a pleasant breakfast for us all. Then to load up and get the porter’s help with the suitcases, to check out and manage to get all of our luggage into the Jaguar once more. Away by 10.00am and the journey continued via the M5 and then along the Tourist Route to Bude, where we arrived at the Granville Hotel by 1.00pm and were pleased to find the room ready and awaiting us. We let the children go down to swim as Diana unpacked and I took some arrival shots on the video. I was alarmed to find that I had left my spare battery and charger at the Bristol Holiday Inn and so phoned them three times in the end until they assured me they would be posted 1st class on Monday.
We also arranged for a TV for the room, which was also another worry out of the way. We then walked off at 2.30pm into Bude town centre and ended up eating Cornish Pasties and Cornish ice cream from the outside café that we enjoyed last year. A warm day, but without much sunshine, but comfortable enough to go swimming in the outside pool, which I did again with Daniel and Deborah when we returned to the hotel. I watched the test match on the TV as the children had high tea downstairs and then read the paper and updated my journal as they came up, washed, and settled down to the TV. The news is full of the fact that US President Reagan had gone into hospital for surgery to remove a “benign cyst” from his intestine, but that it had turned into major surgery. He has now passed over responsibility to Vice President, George Bush, and we can only guess at the outcome and at how much we can be told. At Wembley Stadium, the US JFK Stadium, and in Australia, a three-way, 18 hour Liveaid pop show is taking place to raise millions of pounds for the famine in Africa. It has been described as the biggest pop show ever held and both Russia and China are taking the programme. In the City, the Bank of England lowered the base rate three times – each by ¼ % - but the clearing banks refused to play ball and lower the bank base rates this week. There is increasing disenchantment with the government’s economic policies and the Treasury are becoming increasingly isolated and unpopular. After a fine dinner of smoked mackerel and crab in the hotel restaurant, I walked around Bude for an hour or so. I walked across the recreation ground, up the cliffs (where the drop was quite frightening) and then back and along the Bude canal and to see the fishing boats beached on the low tide. There is more to Bude than first appears and we shall have fun.