The Lady looking fine after her refurbishment and refit
The Lady looking fine after her refurbishment and refit

Clocks to BST today as we take The Lady for a day trip to St Neots and Eaton Socon on a  very windy day, enjoying a fine Sunday lunch and cruising back as the continual shootings of Blacks in South Africa stores up big trouble for the White minority government in my view

Awake to my morning tea on a misty morning and Diana suggested we take The Lady out today. An hour with The Sunday Times and then down to my Sunday treat of fried breakfast. After to wash and change promptly and out to feed the doves. The breeze was still chilly this early. Then the ducks and Debbie helped me to gather the 11 eggs. I began to ready the boat, putting on the new fenders, finding room for the baby’s travelling cot in the saloon and loading it up with the goods brought by Daniel. At last all set to cast off and the girls join us aboard after we had hoist up the Blue Peter sailing dinghy on our davits. We cast off and cruise straight into the Paper Mill lock, open from the downstream end. We realise how windy it has become as we struggle to enter in a straight line. I work the gates slowly and then out upstream to cruise along the stretch to St Neots. We pass the building sites of the new cluster of riverside houses in Savile Close and moor at St Neots Bridge Hotel and go in for lunch in the Beefeater restaurant. Tomato soups all round, a roll and butter for Debbie, fried plaice for the others and a rump steak for me. Ice creams all round afterwards and then back to The Lady, where Daniel and I lowered the dinghy and started to rig it for sailing.

Presently we decided the rig was too complex, the wind too strong and the time too short to complete the task. Back to The Lady, the dinghy stowed, and all upstream through St Neots bridge to the moorings just downstream of Eaton Socon lock. After a tussle in the wind, we moor up and walk to the Garden Centre. I like the look of the common beech and holly saplings, but buy nothing at the moment. Then to the riverside café for afternoon drinks before casting off for the cruise back, as the near gale-force winds continued to blow. Through the Paper Mill lock rather quickly, with the help of some local lads, moored and to put The Lady to bed. Then to feed the doves, who were hungry this evening and the ducks to put them away. In to a sit-round tea of left-over sausage rolls and chocolate cake from yesterday, then an evening’s television. I read a second chapter of Genesis to Debbie and then more old poems about daffodils and the wind. Videotext news of another black killed during the funeral of several blacks killed in a previously outlawed march – the Afrikaans are certainly sowing the seeds of a whirlwind that will engulf them all. News also of a five-hour meeting of senior government ministers at Chequers to consider rates reform and it seems a Poll Tax is on the cards. Ted Heath attacks the government yet again saying that monetarism was “dead and buried”. In the Gulf War, two missiles explode in Baghdad and Iraqi war planes attack 5 Iranian cities in retaliation.