Monday, 14th February, 2022

[Day 700]

Today was always going to be quite a busy day and so it proved. We knew that we had our electrician calling aroundat 8.30am in order to fix the light that we have inset into the sloping wall over our shower. We had previously decided that we were going to ditch the previous unit which is at least 17-18 years old so we decided to replace it with a modern LED type unit. When the electrician came along I did my little bit by focusing a temporary battery-operated lamp that I had been using to illuminate the shower upon his work area. Good fortune was with us as the new unit exactly fitted the ‘hole’ in the tiled area occupied by the unit that had died. The new unit is LED driven and we could have a choice of warm light, daylight or a brighter white so we chose a warm light to be consistent with the rest of the bathroom. The new unit has a guaranteed life of either 50,000 hours or 15 years of life so should never need replacing whilst we are around – should the unit fail, we will be covered by the warranty in any case. So this was a good job around the house that was good to get fixed. Then we decided to make a little trip out to Droitwich, our neighbouring town. First we treated ourselves to a cappuchino and huge toasted teacake in our favourite cafe in Droitwich. After that we had a quick whizz around some of the local shops and finished off in Waitrose where I bought some things that I know I can only get in Waitrose. Then it was a case of getting home and finishing off the delicious veal casserole I have made the previous day. Our principal appointment of the day was to pop around and have afternoon tea with our next door neighbours with whom we get on tremendously well. We had a variety of finger sandwiches and some delightful cakes before we settled down to go down memory lane. My next door neighbour has a hobby of collecting and caring for classic juke boxes and he was proud to show us his latest acquisition – which I must admit has the wonderful warm sound as opposed to its digital counterpart. We then got onto the subject of popular music from the mid-1950s until about the mid 1980’s. I told our neighbours about my association with a band who played in Tiffany’s in Manchester who went by the wonderfully quaint name of ‘Ross Mitchell and Les Nocturnes‘ The two girl singers (Eve Graham and Lyn Paul) when on to have an illustrious career as the girl singers in the band ‘The New Seekers‘. This band came second in the Eurovision song contest and is most famous for the Coca Cola advert ‘I want to teach the world to sing’. The two female singers went on to have independent careers and are still alive and sometimes performing. They have never quite got over the fact that they never quite got the recognition or the money that they should have earned from these very popular tracks.

The situation regarding COVID remains unclear in my mind. There seems to be a notion abroad that as the Micron variant of COVID was milder in its effects than the Omicron and Delta variants, then any future variants might be milder still yet i.e. nothing that much to get too worried about. But virologists are arguing that there is no treason why other variants might not prove to be deadlier and it could be that any variants might prove to be even more infective (more transmissible) and have more adverse long-term consequences than even the variants we know about at the moment. I think it is now acknowledged that the move to rid of the country of all restrictions are more led by politics rather than by science. Boris Johnson may only have a few more weeks left to play with and this may well explain why restrictions are being lifted so early.

In the wake of the Cressida Dick resignation as the first female commissioer of the Met, much attention has been focused on the role played by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Whilst in constitutional terms not to mention ‘realpolitic’ it is perhaps not surprising that Sadiq Khan has chosen to weild the knife at this point of time. But it is an interesting question why he chose to act now and not to stay his hand for about 2-3 weeks which may be the time when possible fines are to be levied by the Met on Downing street staff, including the PM. With the benefit of some hindsight, Sadiq Khan could well have left Cressida Dichk ‘dangling’ for a little and I am puzzled by the fact that he only gave her a day or so to come out with her proposals how the culture of the Met was to be turned around before adminstering the ‘coup de grace’