Trip to Old Warden on a fine and cool and not unpleasant morning for Di's Jackson and Fulton family New Year's Day traditional lunch and home via Shefford to see our old home. John Major's New Year's message all full of discredited claims of the economy now getting better and 30-year release of government papers shows MacMillan was facing much the same problems
The night was not long enough again as Diana was quite ruthless in getting us all up. To breakfast in my dressing gown after collecting the morning paper. There was no Financial Times on this New Year's Day but our faithful Eastern Daily Press put in its appearance. A little time to continue putting my journal in order for the end of the month and year and then we all got ready for the trip to Old Warden. In previous years some of Diana's older relatives had hired the National Trust Warden Abbey property there to welcome visiting relatives and friends on separate days but this year it was the village hall for a day to combine the two. We arrived a little later than most and then found some friendly faces there, although there were many that I did not know.
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Della was playing up after an argument with Debbie in the car and was not very sociable which was a pity. Some discourse with a retired banker who was now an active school governor and then to talk to such other people who I knew or were willing before we had a buffet lunch and came away. The problem with Di's family is that the later generations have been so short of offspring that these gatherings are unfortunate geriatric affairs which is a pity, the Jackson and Fulton families having no heirs. A pleasant drive around Bedfordshire on the way home, passing through the hamlet of our first-owned home, Shefford, which has changed much but retained its spirit. We were very pleased to see our first Christmas Tree doing well where I planted it 20 years ago, on the roadside verge outside 24 Northbridge Street. It is a fine pine now as high as a house as are its cousins on the nearby plantation of Stanford from whence it was dug up one dark night by me and my old friend and neighbour "Sam" Weller.
Home and inside to a pot of tea and meal to follow before a mixed evening of TV sport and films and final work on my 1991 journal. Quite fine and cool and not unpleasant but the wind is getting up with severe weather to the north endangering the oil rigs. John Major's New Year's message all full of discredited claims of the economy now getting better which anyone having a brain can see is not true. All else continues in the world and the release of government papers after 30-years shows that all that time ago MacMillan was facing much the same problems: Tory agonies over Europe, Sunday Trading reform rows, Iraqi threats to Kuwait. They were worried about the economy then but their concerns pale into insignificance with now! Diana's father in in bed with bronchitis at the moment, but seems to be recovering. Heard also from Mum today who is back in Stanton again.