A month starting frosty and ending up hot which was ideal for planting our gardens to look a treat and for our first use of the new swimming pool, and renovating our boat, ‘The Lady’. During the poor weather, success with my paperwork, indoor DIY and deals as I successfully sold £1/4m-worth of Kode shares and completed the purchase of my fine Harraden paintings and my extensive 600-odd-acre Scottish Highland Estate. The family overcoming problems and continuing well with the children progressing well at school but the month dominated by one atrocity after another against the black people of South Africa with Reagan and Thatcher standing by and resisting measures against this and for East/West nuclear disarmament. This despite the true outcome of Chernobyl becoming apparent with other radioactivity and chemical leaks here. The Irish pact is forced through and Stormont evacuated by riot police, in just the same way as the Hippies and other dissenters are dealt with in the South. Ex-Nazi Kurt Waldheim is elected Austrian President, and the tragic carnage of The Battle of The Somme is commemorated 70 years on as a sober reminder of extreme right-wing politics which should be learnt!
So June had started with cold easterly winds and frosts well into the month and ended in a heat wave as ‘flaming June’. I must say the weather is becoming a bit of a trial to work in. I had told myself to work outside on the boat when it was dry and inside on the paperwork when wet, but this was too one-sided now. Ideal weather later for us to appreciate our pool and we swim daily, sometimes with our neighbours, to be friendly. The winter cover was delivered and the rear gates are installed, though the wrong size and fixings. The garden is a picture, with shrubs, roses and bedding plants in flower and hanging baskets a riot of colour with doves hatching chicks and the doves laying. Quite a task to keep the plants fresh in all this heat and so the sprinklers are in regular use. The Lady is coming on, but, as ever, is a huge job to get right and at least my aching back improved so that I can also spend a lot of time on carpentry, adjusting and fitting doors etc. I have fished for the first time in many years and am also busy with my antiques, investment/ tax arrangements and other activities so as to divest myself of £1/4m-worth of Kode shares. For a break, we had a Fountain Forestry lunch and presentation on investment and then tea at The Hyde Park Serpentine Café in London.
Daniel has finished his end-of-year exams – come first (of the bottom set) in mathematics, with 81% and is doing better all round at school. I am due to see his Headmaster though, as there are a number of things that I am unhappy with at the moment. For him, we drove to St Albans to meet The Tomlin Family and collect David for the weekend; the boys enjoying the dinghy on the river and then everyone in the swimming pool afterwards as a pattern for the month to follow. Debbie is also getting on well and a school parents’ day revealed that she was doing well at her studies and, as with her brother, uses the pool to swim well, both above and below water! Progress with her riding is slow at Offord, but sure, as she gains in confidence and she is now a regular church-goer to the St Neots Evangelical Church with or without her friend Amy. Both Debbie and Daniel had to have trips to the doctors after one poor night and they suffered badly from the hay-making opposite generally, as did Gary when visiting. Della talks a lot now, is quite a character, and has started her potty training, which is a big cause for concern in the family. The family are well and we enjoyed the visit of my Mum, Grace with my Dad, Fred, on her birthday now that they are getting about and Di’s parents were well and visiting with Auntie Bobby who was looking haggard, but much better after her liver trouble. Charles has set me on my way by introducing me to Cambridge Library and I am fast becoming an expert on Harraden after spending the day visiting Bedford for the antiques auction and securing the two historically-important 1790 Harraden drawings of St Neots used in the Rev Gorham’s History. At the same time, I also secured the Duke of Grafton’s fine old 19th century folding carriage table and other antique maps. No reply from Freda or Stacy to my letter and, with my parents writing in a similar vein of disapproval, they must be feeling a bit isolated. The month’s news has been mostly of South Africa, as it slips inexorably into more conflict and they ban all meetings on the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto riots. Archbishop Tutu will not obey the South African ban on demonstrations and more international pressure grows against the regime as censorship is total and 2,000 people are detained. Britain is increasingly isolated within the Commonwealth and we risk sanctions ourselves, due to Thatcher’s intransigence as the 10th anniversary of the Soweto disturbances resulted in reports leaking out of eight more black deaths today, despite the news blackout. Past exponents of racial terror, West Germany join Thatcher in disgracefully blocking sanctions at an EEC Foreign Ministers meeting and again steadfastly refusing South African sanctions in the House of Commons debate despite support for them within her own party, all opposition ones and the church. It reached such a pitch that Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe calls for a black army to fight the whites as graphic details of South African repression leaking out despite censorship and of an entire church congregation being tear-gassed and detained with hundreds more clergy missing. Even the US House of Congress adopts a policy resolution of dis-investment and complete economic sanction but that does not stop Reagan and Thatcher shamefully disregarding their colleagues and acting to veto a UN Security Council Resolution approving limited sanctions. Then the unwarranted imprisonment of public and church leaders in South African and the gathering of 60,000 displaced refugees in the ‘Crossroads’ camp attracts international condemnation. Thatcher remains adamant and Reagan has his bowel cancer to preoccupy him but she now risks nations resigning from The Commonwealth as The Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy Terry Waite names a Bishop who has been detained without justification and returns with harrowing stories of repression in South Africa and at last they may start talks with the ANC. Back home, The Hippies have had an unjustifiably hard time, being pursued from pillar to post and 200 were arrested as they make their way to Stonehenge and then finally to The New Forest. The other main story surrounds the implications of Chernobyl that live on and deepen as Caesium radioactive contamination halts the movement and slaughter of sheep in North Wales and Cumbria for 21 days as the latest casualties of the accident and the power industry will never be the same again. Then concern at home when a huge cloud of sulphuric acid mist engulfs St Helens in Merseyside so heaven only knows what health problems all this will store up for the future. Other misfortunes with a grave train crash at Darlington and as a coaster crashes into Southend Pier, dividing it into two and a neighbour had written off two cars outside here in Willow Close by bizarrely hitting the wrong pedal on an automatic!! The courts are dead set against the Miners again and Thatcher declines to help save the last main struggling Cornish tin mine but the postal strike is settled at last. Thatcher is still set on tax cuts to solve all ills, is also secretly planning the sale of British Leyland as NHS surgeons warn about long waiting times. The print unions twice reject Murdoch’s latest offer and journalists join them in boycotting Murdoch’s Wapping Tam Dalyall publicises Thatcher’s involvement in the Westland affair which dents her reputation further. This, as Patrick McGee is convicted of the Brighton bombing, Bob Geldorf eventually gets the recognition he deserves and the ‘Eminent Persons Group’ aim to force Thatcher’s hand over South Africa. Minister’s daughter, Olivia Gwendolen Channon, dies from a drugs overdose at an Oxford exams party. Labour expel Derek Hatton from their party and Danish Power Boat racer, Jorgen Askgaard, dies in a spectacular crash and explosion in the London Docks during a world championship race. The US approve an extradition treaty to expel IRA terrorists to the UK and an Anglo/Irish pact meeting took place in Stormont against more Protestant demonstrations. Six elderly nuns die in a Dublin fire, hopefully unconnected and Ireland vote against divorce again. Riot police charge 300 protesters at Stormont Castle and Ulster Unionist MPs are ‘up in arms’ (literally) for being ejected from Stormont. The Thatcher government suffer two defeats in The House of Lords and the economy sinks lower in employment terms, violence and theft rise and I see little hope of a change. Britain starts talks with Oliver Tambo of the ANC and at last Britain seemed to be acting against South African apartheid atrocities but then Thatcher still holds out against South African sanctions in an EEC meeting despite five more blacks being killed that day and with 11 townships under curfew and the whole state under repressive censorship. South African Dutch Reformist Church Cleric, Allan Boesak, justly accuses Britain of, ‘hypocrisy, selfishness and indifference’ as a poor British-led fudge ends EEC talks on South Africa and both there, and in The New Forest vulnerable Blacks and Hippies alike are savagely deprived of shelter as their homes are wrecked. Ex-Nazi Kurt Waldheim is elected Austrian President, and the tragic carnage of The Battle of The Somme is commemorated 70 years on as a sober reminder of extreme right-wing politics which should be learnt by Austria when choosing their President! UK party differences show over the Polaris nuclear deterrent the East/West nuclear armaments disputes continue until as a new USSR arms limitation proposal is tabled at Geneva and the Chileans being fingered for killing Olof Palme last year. The Hague finds against the US-supported Contra’s intervention in Nicaragua and elsewhere, a Basque bomb damages Les Garzas Hotel in Benidorm and the US agree a huge deal with Saudi Arabia. Inflation drops to 2.8% and Benny Goodman dies. Thatcher had nominated the hated Ian McGregor coal and steel industry butcher for his knighthood in The Queen’s Birthday Honours list, along with many other of her cronies. The soccer World Cup has come and gone, with England giving a fair account of themselves in the end, despite us having to watch the disgraceful Maradonna get away with a blatant ‘hand-ball’ to beat England in the World Cup in the famous ‘Hand of God’ incident. The cricket and tennis players fell down badly, poor Barry McGuigan lost his title boxing unfairly in the hot Santa Cruz conditions leaving Richard Branson as the only victory of the sporting month with his successful ‘Atlantic Challenger II’ speed record. Soon my trip to Scotland to see Thormaid at Broubster and the school holidays with much boating and swimming in store. Life at the Hayling View is delightfully rich at the moment in contrast to the mayhem and atrocities elsewhere