Inspecting the Hayling View gardens, buying materials and painting the outer garage doors whilst also visiting the St Ives auction viewing on a pleasantly warm day before an evening with Diana to the pictures to watch ‘The Colour People’ epic film as the east/West arms and security talks drag on
A better night and up in time to shower and shave for breakfast. Read the paper as the children were attended to. I now weigh 13st 12lb, a loss of 3 lbs since my maximum and feel much better for it. To the doves but, although the sun was up, it was still cool and misty and so they did not want to feed yet. Let the ducks out early and they fed hungrily, but only laid 5 eggs. The riverside gardens are looking more open now, but there are still a number of trunks to remove and the ground is very uneven. Locked up the home and then, after scanning today’s mail, set off in the Escort Estate for St Ives.
We stopped off in St Neots and bought several lengths of weatherboarding for the bottom of the doors and dropped it off at home before proceeding. A good journey and arrived in St Ives before the rendezvous café was open and so had a drink in Tooks. Di went after to order a piece of foam in the shape of the template made for the window seat and then did her normal rounds and bought a grey pinafore dress for Debbie’s school wear. I went to the general market and antique viewing. Nothing much at the former, though there were bundles of ‘oak’ lathes that looked rather like softwood to me. A folding upholstered chair in the antique viewing, described as ‘Edwardian’ and I might just go over and bid for it. Off after on a round of the hardware shops, buying some oval nails and a longer hook and eye for the garage door. We left St Ives by meeting at the car at 12.00noon and then picked up Daniel in St Neots and drove on to Tempsford for a meal at the Happy Eater. Daniel reckons he is working hard at school at the moment and is getting quite tired at the end of each day. Straight home then and the afternoon working on the outer garage. Brushed off all the paintwork with a broom head of bristle, then cut a weatherboard for the door and used the Dulux preservative undercoat on all the bare wood. Put on most of the white undercoat before the call for tea went up. An unusual meal of ‘kippered mackerel’, which tasted like kippers when vinegar and pepper were added, but had no small bones typical of the latter. Back out again for an hour finishing the white undercoat and putting small patches of pink primer on the up-and-over door where the old paintwork had peeled off. Then a scramble to clear up, feed and put away the ducks and lock up the house ready to take Di to the pictures in Bedford. We took the Jaguar for comfort and arrived in time to see the film, ‘The Colour Purple’, which was a 2 ½ hour tragedy about two sisters separated by the racial bigotry of the 1920s and 30s in Southern USA. A little long, but successfully emotional effort, which Di thoroughly enjoyed, even though it made her tearful and too quiet for conversational company on the way home. Dan was still up when we got back, watching a helicopter police film and the girls were fine, in spite of the odd reported incident. To bed at 11.00pm, which was not too bad. The death toll was actually one in the train crash, though over 50 were injured and many seriously. The US/USSR talks are still the main story, with considerable hot and cold puffing over Daniloff and the prospects of a summit this year. The Stockholm Security Conference is struggling to reach a conclusion on mutual inspection of troop movements, but the Diplomats have used the time-honoured technique of ‘stopping the clock’ in the main conference hall to beat the deadline. The weather today has been pleasantly warm and, although the barometer has been slipping back slowly, another fine day is in prospect for tomorrow.