Thatcher back in Downing Street after winning the June election
Thatcher back in Downing Street after winning the June election

An appallingly wet month that does not stop me completing the river works at The Hayling View moorings and our family enjoying our new swimming pool and restored summer house, hosting events here and having lost of outings. The children do well as my mother recovers but Di suffers and Thatcher wins her election with a large majority and starts implementing her plans on a deeply divided nation which includes the Poll Tax. There few measures to tackle the NHS waiting list crisis, the Cleveland Child Care scandal breaks, our diplomatic tussle with Iran escalates as Middle East disputes deepen , the South African unrest continues and US President Reagan is largely ineffective, weighed down with the Irangate scandal as Gorbachev gets frustrated with him

And thus ends June, a month of appallingly wet and then muggy weather, which is better behind us. A July heatwave has already started to help Wimbledon catch up the 90 or so matches they are behind because of the weather. Too late, though, for the first two test matches, which were washed out, leaving England and Pakistan to play a virtual three-match series and at times the rain was heavy with the river rising ominously within a foot of the quay-heading  as we had at least 3 times normal rainfall for June in East Anglia. My foot has healed up after the nasty injury after visiting the doctor and all our family are well, except for the hay fever, which affects the children, with Debbie worst of all. We have all had colds during the wet, windy and cold month, but they are behind us now. My Mum improves and managed to pay us a visit on her crutches, but I am not sure about Freda and Alf, who may well be deteriorating with her leg problems and his cancer in the back from a life’s overexposure to the sun. Daniel was ready for his Maths ‘O’ level and Physics exams and seems to have made a reasonable effort, and is now enjoying his boat and the swimming pool. Debbie has plenty of activities and friends to keep her busy and has good writing and drawing skills. Soon she will leave her Little Paxton school for the last time, which is sad, but good for her. I had been taking her to the riding stables and special events like her Ely Cathedral Service.  Della comes on apace with speech better, but not her behaviour, which is quite a trial at the moment. Poor Di cannot handle her too well, as she gets so exasperated.

Diana remains a concern, with the occasional nightmare and her piles that need lozenges but Charles and Norma visited one day and joined us for lunch She has started going for trips to Wickstead etc, rather than Bedford on Fridays and will try to get Della swimming properly this summer as Deborah now swims strongly.  I spent time maintaining the swimming pool and prepared it for a party, Diana also hosted a playgroup BBQ at the Hayling View and we both attended Little Paxton School Fete when we were joined by Mum and Dad Fred and Grace Broad. At other times, we took the children to the St Neots riverside Park, to Croxton for a family lunch and on to Hemingford Abbots and once also to the Huntingdon and Godmanchester Fair and Carnival where the girls played on a bouncy castle. Also a trip one afternoon to Holywell to see the ‘well-dressing’. I spent time with Nigel putting the world to rights and then took part in the splendid christening ceremony at Hail Weston Church and following party where I became godfather to his daughters, Kate and Ashley Smith.  I found time to go fishing and caught some nice roach. I have been working on my riverside land for weeks, landscaping the river frontage, installing better water supplies. and now concreting the storm drain. There were mornings of dredging and digger choreography on the moorings with the contractor, Mr Larkin, struggling in the rain but, by hand and with the digger, we back-filled the quay-heading moving dredged earth and clay, cutting back the upper bank to make space for a paving stone walkway.  This created the extra spoil needed and we dealt with the spring and soil water that passed through but only after resolving a dispute over my drainage outlet with Mr Reed of Hunts DC about the storm drain outfall but a satisfactory conclusion had them supplying 15inch pipes for our work to be done. Then more earth shifting one evening as Daniel and Jason went off in their boats until late, worrying their mothers. I hoped to finish this work and rotovate/rake the games lawn in the next month or so, so that we can go off for a month to Norfolk with no worries. Some cool and mostly dry days of tiring hard work, dragging the moorings for weed growth after arranging booms and sinking moorings posts for The Lady. Daniel was good at painting the sheet steel piling after which he could return his boat, The Little Lady, into the new boat harbour we had formed.  I re-roofed and the re-positioned summer house, replaced its broken window, wiring it up for electricity and then family all enjoyed an inaugural sandwich tea using it with Daniel and his friends Gary and Jason joining us. I arranged a BBQ for Di and the children there on another day and, after they had left, I sat in the summer house writing and filing as the embers died down. On the investment front, I bought 40,000 shares in Rolls Royce, and also found time to keep my paperwork roughly up to date, meeting my accountants and working on my financial summaries and tax return information. No progress on the conservatory yet, but I wanted to get one project over before starting another. I tried to encourage the house martins to move house with my artificial nest boxes but that was a failure and they deserted us. My old Comart building still displays that name despite the news that the company is being merged under the Kode Computers name. Elsewhere, a disastrous General Election for those with my political views, with Mrs Thatcher returned with a 100+ majority despite Labour gaining 20 seats; but The Alliance get very little success for their 23% share of the vote. The Liberal vice-leader, Alan Beith, calls for a merger of the Liberal with the SDP Parties and Labour, who dominate the seats in Scotland, call on the Tory government to scrap the Poll Tax as they have no mandate there. Thatcher had given scant priority to the Western Leaders summit in Italy, despite the rocket attacks on embassies, and rushed back for election campaigning where health was the main issue. Her government tried to defend National Health waiting list delays but there were widespread civil servant strikes and the Treasury talks with them had broken down. She claims that her priorities are for Inner Cities, Education & Housing but, already, the policies grow steadily more extreme and right wing and I fear for the stability of the future. Thatcher shuffles her cabinet to demote and expel her more moderate colleagues and the Queen’s Birthday Honours list includes its bevy of senior awards for Tory industrialists and supporters of the Thatcher cause, who are helping the privatisation programme. Unemployment falls to under three million, the pound suffers and the UK stock exchange falls which might be a buying opportunity after the mini-boom engineered by the Tories to win the General Election, but now the brakes go back on again as Thatcher’s controversial Poll Tax is in the Queen’s Speech for the opening of parliament and is accompanied by a worrying rumour about schools charging for extra-curricular lessons. There is such a North/South and Have/Have Not divide, that there is chance of political rebellion in Scotland and other signs of an unhealthy divisiveness instead of us all feeling that we are in One Nation. At least the government loses the High Court case to gag the Independent over MI5 book secrets but the ‘News on Sunday’, goes into receivership, and her supporting publisher, Murdoch, takes over the only Alliance supporting paper. Labour are quiet, but the Alliance was tearing itself apart with Dr David Owen the main culprit. The members will vote for merger between the SDP & Liberals and he will fade away, but for now the SDP/Liberal discussions generate more friction and stall due to SDP reservations but the members will settle the issues in a ballot. Civil Service unions are divided over taking industrial action. There is acute concern over child abuse with expectations aroused by phone-in programmes etc., but society quite unable to deal with this more common than realised behavioural problem. Breaking up families is not the answer as the worst of two evils. There was justifiable anger over the Cleveland District Council’s (Teeside) decision that 200 children need putting into care because of ‘child abuse’ by their parents. Cleveland Social Services are under siege due to their child-abuse doctor referrals with 20 court cases pending the courts, the Commons review these child abuse custody cases and High Court proceedings end up with the release of 20 children but there were 113 taken away from their families in all which need consideration. There is civil unrest in Liverpool and Leeds, with youths attacking and injuring police and then an actual police death in Belfast and a UDR members is killed by car bomb in Ulster as murders occur there daily.  Hippies gather and celebrate at Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice followed by the Druids. Four men appeared in court charged with possessing stolen M72 antitank rockets for the IRA, another with handling £9m-worth of cocaine and four more men jailed for a gold vat fraud. George McRobbie, my forester for Thormaid, was in the news defending our plantings in the Highlands. Thatcher prevents EEC progress on budgets and trade measures and there is an ultimate escalation of the Iran/British diplomatic expulsions. There was of the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister, Rashid Karami, when a bomb was detonated aboard his helicopter, the Foreign office is flying home British nationals from Iran after further tit-for-tat expulsions took place between British and Iranian diplomatic missions and a US newsman is kidnapped in Tehran. There are more ‘Irangate’ revelations in the US and the ‘World Economic Summit’ of Western nations ends today with Reagan looking increasingly old, tired and confused, and then he was visiting The Berlin Wall as anti-US demonstrations took place and Gorbechev criticises the US over arms control and there are two large drugs raids seizing hashish.  Pope John Paul IInd visits the grave of the murdered priest Father Popieluszko in Poland, and prays at the Gdansk shipyard, the birth place of Solidarity. Three US soldiers are killed in an explosion in Bavaria. Police in South Korea begin the month suppressing a student riot with baton raids and tear gas but there were then more violent clashes but now we hear of political talks and potential reforms introducing democracy to South Korea, potentially ending these riots. Gandhi loses a Haryana state election. The Fiji crisis continues as does the plight of Tamils on the Jaffna peninsula. Eight die in gold-mine clashes in South Africa but the 17,000 rail workers sacked for striking are re-instated but then more strikes are planned and the South African State of Emergency is extended. Ford plan to pull out of South Africa now. An ETA bomb killed 15 people as they target Spanish holiday resorts. Derek Bell wins the Le Man race and a US jet beats the word circumnavigation record in just less than two days with four re-fuelling stops and Fred Astaire dies, aged 88, The month closes with me hoping for a calmer, sunnier and more agreeable July.