The previous evening, as soon as Meg was safely put to bed, I turned my attention to making a start on my Christmas card list – or at least those items that I knew would have to be posted. Altogether there were about 40 cards to process and I thought I would divide this into four tranches of 10 – in the event, I pushed this up to 14 before I went to bed so that I knew I had done a third. Early yesterday morning, I woke up just after 5.00am and rather than going back to sleep, thought I would make some more progress on the remaining cards. By the time Meg was ready to be got up and breakfasted, I had done all but five of the cards because, as I was making good progress I felt the impetus to press on. Our domestic help called around today and we had already planned to make a major focus of this morning the erection and dressing of our Christmas tree. My son and I had ensured that we had taken everything from its storage place in the loft so after our domestic help had done some of the essential tasks oh her stay with us, we turned our attention to the Christmas tree. A certain amount of furniture rearrangement is called for so that we can locate our tree in its eminently suitable location in a corner of our hall and near a plug point. Our domestic help actually rather likes dressing of Christmas trees and she made a superb job of it. After the tree was put into position and clad with its lights, we then started to dress the tree with a fairly large supply of baubles in our possession. We seem to have a huge supply of baubles because we have inherited some from the family tree that we used to adorn in addition to which our domestic help added some of her own excess and finally a job lot which she bought in a charity shop when, in the past, Christmas was over and the store wanted to dispose of them. Dressing the tree and then some of its immediate environs seemed to take most of the morning but I am pleased to say that the result is as stunning as always. Meg and I did not venture out this morning but just before lunch I sat with Meg whilst I finished off the last of the Christmas cards that I needed to write. I had sent off an email late last night to one of Meg’s cousins to check the most recent address of another cousin and then I did a thorough check that I had an up-to-date definitive list of the Christmas card list with a tick against each item to delineate that I had actually sent a card this year. Incidentally, when I first started to computerise my Christmas card mailing list several years, I handed a copy of it to my son and daughter-in-law so that at the time of our actual demise, they know exactly with whom they need to communicate. This so-called ‘death list’ actually needs to be updated year by year as some people on it almost inevitably have succumbed to the grim reaper.

Almost inevitably at this time of year, a lot of the focus of attention of all of us is the forthcoming Christmas festive period. The carers in particular know that they have to cope with the demands of both work and family and they are busy planning how and what presents they are going to give to their children. In bygone days, when belief in the Santa Claus myth was almost total, we used to shout up the chimney to indicate what presents we hoped would be brought.The giving of presents at Christmas time is an interesting tradition. The term Boxing Day actually dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries. The giving of presents is linked to an older British tradition in which the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families since they would have had to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the wealthy would give gifts to servants and trades people in boxes as a thank you for their service. The gifts would often include money, goods, and Christmas leftovers. However, Meg and I rather like the traditions that are followed in Spain. Here whilst Christmas is important, some symbolic presents might be given on Christmas Day itself. But the major feast in these times is ‘Reyes Magos’ or what we term the ‘Three Kings’ who traditionally brought presents of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newly born Christ. In the small fishing communities around Spain, the young children are brought along to the dockside or landing area here they can actually observe the Three Kings, in all of their fine robes, descend from the fishing boats, evidently from overseas. In some of island communities, the Three Kings actually arrive by camel as well so no effort is spared to impress the very young. Traditionally, too, there is a procession throughout the town where small sweets are thrown into the crowd. So most Spanish children would expect their principal presents to arrive on January 6th (‘Reyes’ in Spain) and not on Christmas Day itself.

Of course the other thing about the days before Christmas is the Christmas music. Since we have bought our two ‘Alexa’ smart speakers, we have been playing some wonderful Christmas music to ourselves. In particular, I quite like Bach’s ‘A Christmas Oratorio’ whilst Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and Haydn’s ‘Creation’ are perennial favourites. There are still some communities in the UK where you can turn up, be identified as a tenor, baritone or bass and having had the score of ‘The Messiah’ thrust in one’s hand, carry on and sing your way through the whole oratorio. I think this used to happen outside Leeds Town Hall, for example. This morning whilst we were putting up the Christmas decorations I played Harry Belafonte’s ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ which my sister and I bought as an Extended Play (EP) record between us when I was about 14 years old. I also remember some Johnny Mathis songs from about this time period as well and, in particular, ‘Let it rain’ which I often sing around the house when it is pouring with rain outside.

The previous evening, Meg had a somewhat getting to bed time as the care workers were allocated to come at 6.30 but in the event turned up at 7.45. But they had had a very difficult call previously with a new client who really needed two handlers but social services/OT had only approved one. The one experienced carer called upon his mate and fellow care worker and they spent two hours with a new client dying of cancer who was incredibly difficult to move and to care for and hence their delay in getting to us. I completely understood and sympathised with the two lads who. by all accounts had done a superb and sterling job but it does underline the fact that if things go awry in one part of the system it has implications for other clients or service users in the jargon. But when Meg was safely in bed I started to think about the Christmas card task looming head of me. Several years ago I put my Christmas card list of about 50 in a file that enables me to print off labels of which I had run out.However, I determined the right size and ordered some more and Amazon told me ‘you last ordered these on December 15th last year’ so I am reassured I have the right product which should arrive some time today, which indeed they did. We had a bit of a rush round this morning as we had a delayed start to the day but managed to get down the hill in time to meet up with a couple of our friends, as is our wont every Tuesday. We were treated to a free cupcake, one of the benefits of being one of the oldest customers. Before we left, we availed ourselves of a new type of soft drink being sold in the store which seems to be a marriage between Perroni water and the local supply of oranges. These drinks might be an interesting new thing to try when our carers arrive for the little Christmas party in less than two weeks time. We got up the hill just before the carer arrived to do the Tuesday sit. Meg was having a slight anxiety episode so I gave Meg some pills and decided not to go out until I was assured that Meg was in a calm state of mind. We finished off entertaining the sitter with some of the music that we had at our wedding and I explained to her how we were fortunate enough to have discovered the original organist’s notes when we were digitizing our album of black and wedding photos taken in 1967. And so we came to play ‘Wachet Auf’ (‘Sleepers Awake’) which many in the population will know as the Lloyds Bank advert music and we followed this up with ‘Jesu Joy of man’s Desiring’ with a final rendition of one of our favourite tracks from Joan Baez. The carer is relatively new but a Bromsgrove local and is learning her trade fast so it is always good to take the opportunity for us to get to know the carer better (and vice versa) After Meg’s lunchtime call and translocation into her newly acquired specialist chair, the carer left and I pressed ahead with the day’s lunch where I had some smoked mackerel fillets on the menu. I had previously consulted the web as to the best way to cook smoked fish without it smelling the house out and, as I thought, poaching is undoubtedly the best method. Apparently the milk absorbs some of the chemicals which causes the fish to be odiferous but the poaching process only takes about five minutes so the lunch was quickly prepared and even more quickly eaten. In the late morning, we received two deliveries from Amazon both of which were welcome but the first in particular, being a supply of address labels for my Christmas card writing.

There is an important development in the rapidly evolving situation in Syria now that Assad has gone. It seems that there are thousands of captured IS fighters have been detained in northeastern Syria since the self-styled caliphate fell and, if they were freed, they could further destabilise an already turbulent situation. What is concerning the liberal democracies in the West is that such fighters might regroup and form a fighting force that will either seek revenge on their former captors (understandable as though this might be) or even form a regrouped revolutionary Islamic group determined to wreak vengeance on the West. For this reason, the UK is being incredibly cautious at the moment and together with France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium has stopped asylum applications from Syria. When Syrian dissidents escaped the clutches of Assad and many of them had been tortured by the regime, it was fairly evident why they should be seeking asylum in the past but, of course, now we are in new territory.

Nearer to home, it is reported that Birmingham City Council is near to reaching a historic deals with the unions over the underpayment of female staff over the years (if not decades) The dispute relates to council workers in female-dominated roles, such as cleaners and catering staff, historically being paid less than those in male-dominated roles, like waste collection. The authority started paying out the claims after a landmark Supreme Court case in 2012, but said last year that the bill had spiralled to about £760m. This was one of the key factors in the council, the largest in Europe, declaring itself effectively bankrupt in September 2023 with a Section 114 notice. The notice confirmed that all new spending, with the exception of protecting vulnerable people and statutory services, must stop immediately, while £300m of cuts and tax rises were later approved in order to secure exceptional financial support (EFS) loans from the previous government. The situation in Birmingham though is not completely unique to the city – Nottingham, for example, is in a fairly similar plight but not on the scale afflicting Birmingham. Many of these large local authorities were Labour administrations and the previous Tory administration found it in their interests to let these large local authorities go effectively bankrupt so that they could score a political point by delineating Labour party profligacy. But in practice, the concentration of problems particularly in adult social care but also in children’s services are immense and these problems remain despite the change in government. The funding of adult social care (or lack of it) has been a national scandal but successive governments ave identified the problem and shied away from the enormous cost, preferring to ‘kick the can down the road’ for succeeding governments to implement.

This morning as I was getting showered and dressed, there was a play on ClassicFM of ‘Away in a manger’ which is, of course, a very traditional Christmas carol. But it put me in mind of a radio comedy series broadcast in either the 1970’s or the 1980’s which had a way with Christmas panels. As cinema had developed since the late 1950’s a new wide format was introduced into cinemas to aid in the excitement and visual spectacle of films such as ‘Ben Hur’ (in which the chariot race was, I believe, 20 minutes long) Many cinemas, though, could not get this extra format and so resorted to cutting off a little of the left and the right side of the projected film but one supposes the audience barely noticed. The radio comedians, though, wondered how Christmas would be if they were constantly truncated to right and left in the revised system and so ‘Away in a manger’ became ‘Way in a mange’. Even worse, we got things like ‘Hark the herald Angels sing’ being truncated to ‘Ark the herald Angels sin’ and so on. So this has remained one of the more amusing aspects to Christmas as the years roll by.

Yesterday after we had breakfasted, my son and I got various Christmas things handed down from the loft where, fortunately, we had left them in a convenient pile for ease of access. Although the various decorations have been brought down, I am not going to attempt to erect or to dress the Christmas tree until this Friday when our domestic help says she is more than willing to help a hand. I had to do a certain amount of repair work on some of the stands upon which we locate the tree but fortunately I remembered where we had a good stock of Christmas paper left over from previous years so that eased my restoration labours. After this, and as time was a little pressing, I pushed Meg down the hill to pick up our copy of our daily newspaper and I also took the opportunity to buy a packet soup of a flavour which I cannot get in my local supermarket. On our way down the hill, we noticed that one of our church friends was busy spearing large leaves with a long handled fork in her front garden and this was a great opportunity to thank her for a little kindness she had bestowed on us recently. Our friend used to be responsible for all of the flower arranging in our local church before she retired from this position having done it for many years. But she still made Christmas wreaths and generally these had to be ordered well in advance as the other parishioners were always very keen to obtain one. Our friend had enough material left over for one spare wreath and she actually not only made it but came and fastened it into position in our front porch and this must have a period when we were out of the house so we offered her our profuse thanks.

The news coming out of Syria after the fall of the Assad routine is as terrible as you might expect when a dictator has been deposed. The precedents for establishing orderly government after the downfall of a dictator are not good (we have the precedents of Iraq and the Yemen after all) But having said, the rebel leader has been making suitable conciliatory noises since the fall of Damascus so it is possible that the whole of Syria does not descend into anarchy. So far, the rebel leader has not been indicating to the Russians that their naval and airbase are not to be threatened by any emergent regime but the whole world is rather holding its breath at the moment. As soon as Damascus had fallen, the rebels wanted to release the hundreds, if not thousands, of Syrian citizens locked and tortured by the Assad regime and although locating the prison was easy, releasing its inhabitants had not been. In order to avoid recriminations, no doubt, the gaolers seem to have fled evidently not leaving any keys behind. So the rebels had scoured the country to find anybody with the expertise of how to blow open the iron doors which guarded a network of subterranean tunnels in which not only men abut also women and children had been imprisoned.Those held captive could scarcely believe what was happening to them at the point of liberation and I heard an interview with a Syrian refugee living in Manchester explaining that there was scarcely a family in the land who did not have a family relative or friend imprisoned by the former regime. Sky news is reporting that tens of thousands of detainees have so far been freed from Syria’s prisons, according to Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syria’s prisons were notorious during the Assad rule, highlighted in 2013 by a defector known as Caesar who smuggled out photos showing evidence of torture, disease and starvation. At Sednaya, Amnesty and other groups claim dozens of people were secretly executed every week, estimating up to 13,000 Syrians were killed between 2011 and 2016.

I am getting increasingly irritated by the government’s plan to build new houses, a feeling accentuated by the plans of the Labour Government to increase the stock of housing by allowing developers to have much more leeway – an almost automatic green light – so long as their plans conform with the local development plan. Here in Bromsgrove and particularly near here I live, there are two massive developments of about 400-500 houses being erected at breakneck speed. Many local residents are fearful about such developments for the simple reason that firstly they have all of the local disruption necessitated by the new development (for example the installation of a new gas main in the distributor road serving my own street) and then there is the consequent pressure on local services, particularly health services which are not expanded at the same time. In my view, the government ought to be talking about the establishment of new communities rather than houses and these communities ought to have a minimum level of provision (I would suggest a doctor’s surgery, a pharmacy, a small local convenience store and a facility for communal use and available for a cheap hire price to make provision, for example, for mother and toddler group) and the houses then be built around them rather than an afterthought, years later (and often, never).

As I was going through my early morning routines, I turned to Sky News and discovered that only a few minutes before, Damascus, the capital of Syria, had fallen to the Syrian rebels. The various opposition groups in Syria were united in their hatred of the Bashar Assad routine which had been in power for about two decades. Damascus had fallen with ‘barely a whimper’ and as sometimes happens when this happens, the government troops realised the game was up and tore off their uniforms and ran away or abandoned their military bases. So far, the disparate elements of the new Syrian regime heavily dependent upon Islamic elements seem to have made all of the right noises, indicating that former government offices were not to be overrun, that the armed forces of the previous regime should be allowed to flee without any recriminations or settling of scores. One of the first acts of the victorious forces was to open up the prisons so that all of those imprisoned by the previous regime could be released. Assad’s former Ally, Russia. now has some real problems because it will be eager to protect the two ports that it has and the Russians may make overtures of peace to the new regime. The states bordering Syria are Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Turkey, and Jordan. Syria has a coastline measuring 120 miles in length and borders the Mediterranean Sea on its western side. So the implications of the fall of the Assad regime throughout the whole of the Middle Easy are immense. The Americans have so far been largely silent with an expression that whatever happens in Syria is nothing to do with the USA but the USA does have strategic concerns in the area and so policy might emerge from the Trump regime when it takes power. The geopolitics of a key ally of Russia being swept away and the fact that Syria borders Lebanon makes the situation one of almost complete unpredictability. One argument which is just about surfacing tis that the Americans may, if they so choose, have an opportunity to dislodge Russia from the region and thereby gain an advantage over them. But of course, the most thing that must happen is for a relatively stable Syrian government to be formed, unlike what happened in Iraq when the whole society descended into hostile and opposing groups after the fall of Sadam ussein. There are video images, which we might expect, of some of the population looting the former presidential palace and helping themselves without hindrance to some ill-gotten gains. News emerged late in the afternoon that Assad sought refuge in Moscow where, presumably, he will stay for the rest of his natural days and one has to wonder if he can only be an embarrassment to the Russians from this point of time onwards. Some very rapid footwork is now called for in the liberal Western democracies. At least one military analyst has opined that the rebels in Syria bore more of the hallmarks of a liberationist force rather than a terrorist organisation which is still the official designation of the Syrian rebel forces. It may take some time for the UK government to recognise the new regime but, in many ways, the sooner the better. Incidentally, what are American forces doing in Syria giving some indirect support to the former Assad regime?

We watched some of the political programmes this morning, as we generally do. But I had consulted the TV schedules and discovered that the James Martin cookery and magazine programme into which we tuned the day before on ITV was repeated a day later on ITV4. I was quite keen to see his tips on how to take the stress of preparing the vegetables on Christmas day to make a stress free Christmas day and so managed to watch the whole of this item. Insofar as I can summarise it, it seems that one boils the vegetables (or parboils) them vigorously and then plunge them into ice-cold water (melting ice and water) to keep the colour and texture the following day. Then it is quite easy to bring them to the boil and serve them straight away. According to James Martin, this is a chef’s trick deployed up and down the country to have plenty of vegetables to serve for Sunday dinners for example so I might give this a go this way – or even try a little experiment first. After our TV viewing, we telephoned our University of Birmingham friend and then made our way down the hill for our customary Sunday morning chat. Whilst we were in the store, we had a look at the range of soft drinks, thinking about the party we will have been throwing in about a fortnight’s time. I notice that Gordons, the gin manufacturers, were selling something in their own shape and colour of bottle which was non-alcoholic and was probably best described as non-alcoholic gin. So I bought a bottle of this ‘on spec’ and will have a little taste later on to see if this lives up to its promise. Waitrose also had a range of some quite exotic non-alcoholic drinks so I may purchase some of these bit by bit to build up our stocks before the big day. One of the lunchtime carers asked of she could bring her 9-year old daughter to the party to which I readily assented as I thought that the little girl and Meg might be able to read children’s stories to each other from our supply of books. Thinking about the party, I had earlier in the day repurposed and decorated a spare little blank hardback notepad which I already had so that visitors to the party can sign in their names and leave a little Christmas message which I can then read and re-read to Meg as the occasion demands.

The weather was tolerable on the way down but turned into a rather nasty icy blast on the way back home. As is by now customary when we have both got a little chilled, we regaled our selves with a cup full of soup upon our return and then started to think about Sunday lunch. This was easy to prepare today because we had retrieved the other half of a pre-cooked beef joint so we just had to make some onion gravy and then ate the beef with some fine beans and a baked potato.In the mid-afternoon, we were very pleasantly surprised to received an unexpected gift of flowers from one of my nieces with a delightful message inside so I must acknowledge their safe receipt as soon as I can. The afternoon concluded by watching a further episode of the Hardy ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ where developments come a-plenty as the novel draws to its conclusion.

Yesterday, the named storm Darragh hit the west of the country and a very rare red warning (‘Danger to Life’) was issued. All of the football and rugby matches in South Wales were called off and the principal bridges between England and Wales were closed. Evidently the airports were closed and many suburban trains were cancelled but some of the mainline services were maintained. The weather forecasters are pointing out two principal dangers as the storm sweeps across the UK mainland. The most immediate effect are the very high wind speeds which brings down branches and trees, not to mention power lines and afterwards, of course, comes the rain on areas which are already quite sodden after the past few storms. It looks as though new storm alert procedures are in place as messages are now being sent direct to mobile phones warning of the dangers of unnecessary travel. Wales is evidently worst effected but so are sporting fixtures such as the Liverpool-Everton derby (the last one due to be played at Goodison park before Everton move to a new stadium) This morning, Meg and I were got off to a very early start as the care workers were scheduled to call around at 7.25 and even arrived and got to work 10 minutes early which is a trifle disconcerting and a massive change to what happened the day before when Meg had to stay in bed until 9.45. After we had breakfasted, it was a touch-and-go call whether we ventured down into Bromsgrove or not as the wind was still quite strong but it did not seem to be bearing so much rain. So we got ourselves kitted forth which is in Meg’s case is a scarf, outside coat, two quite large blankets and some gloves and takes some putting on. We got as far as the main Kidderminster Road but then the wind was so strong and icy and I lost my hat on a couple of occasions so we both judged it better to go no further but to return. This was very much a case of ‘discretion being the better part of valour’ but I was somewhat fearful that we might get ourselves thoroughly wet and then had the return journey home. So we turned around and immediately came home and I think this was probably a wise decision. We regaled ourselves with some chicken soup and settled down to watch some Saturday morning TV. The programme I enjoyed most was a James Martin cookery and magazine programme and I wished I had seen the while of it rather than entering it half way through. One of his presentations was to make a quick and tasty Christmas dinner and, in particular, I thought that his recipe for glazed parsnips enhanced by some sherry in the cooking sounded like something that I would definitely like to experiment with. He also had a recipe for boef a la bourguignon in which he kept the cooking steak in fairly large chunks which, he argued, made it retain its moisture and remain quite succulent so this, too, is a tip I must remember the next time I cook this meal.

This afternoon we have been snug in our lounge whilst the storm has continued to rage outside. I rather thought that the storm would pass over the Midlands at midday and, after that, we would have a period of relative calm but the reverse seems to have happened and, if anything, the weather has gone even wilder and windier. The two young carers who called around at teatime showed me a photo they had taken on their phones of a tree completely blocking a road that were taking on their way to a call during the day. After consulting the TV schedules, Meg and I enjoyed watching ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ which was very well played in a classic British film. Immediately following this on BBC2 was a film of Shakespeare’s Henry V which had an excellent cast. We watched most of the film before the carers came along to interrupt proceedings but the only trouble is that watching fighting on (presumably) cold and muddy battlegrounds when it is cold and windy outside does not induce much of a feeling of warmth and comfort.

The little party which we are going to organise for the carers staff is already generating some enthusiasm if not downright excitement. Compared with other clients, Meg and I are in the position where we have plenty of space and room in which to hold some festivities and we know at least one of the managers is certainly going to come. Two of the very helpful and likeable younger carers have even volunteered to come a little early to help me put out the food and generally get things organised for the party and this was incredibly good of them. I have accepted their offer saying that if they came on time at 1.00pm they can help in any last minute preparations. I have to think quite carefully about what soft drinks to provide as too much alcohol is not a good thing unless the carers are passengers and are therefore freer to indulge. On a slightly more sombre note, my feeling is that we ought to do this whilst we can because goodness knows what other facilities will be like in a year’s time.

In the early evening, there is going to be the official opening of the restored Notre Dame in Paris. Given the emotional pull that this has upon the heart strings of the French, I am sure they not resent a single centime of the millions of euros which they must have spent on it. There is a lot of speculation about the diplomatic ‘deals’ that might be done whilst various world leaders are assembling because there is quite a lot of leeway for unofficial talks on occasions such as this. I expect that later in the day there may be some stunning visuals once the restored parts of the interior are shown in all of their glory. The opening few minutes of the ceremony have shown the tolling of the one great bell that survived the fire followed by a procession of the clergy to the doors of the cathedral. At this point, the archbishop of Paris hammers symbolically on the doors of the cathedral which are then opened to grant him admittance to the tunes and words of an appropriate Psalm. What I have seen of the service is quite emotionally compelling and I know that architectural experts from the whole of Europe lent whatever assistance they could to get this iconic cathedral opened again within five years. As a final Gallic touch, an outside view of the front of the cathedral had a lasered projection of ‘Merci’ written above the portico.

Yesterday morning I woke up a little earlier than usual whilst the two care workers were scheduled for three quarters of an hour later than normal. So I composed a little Christmas ‘party’ (or should I say ‘festive event’) email inviting all of the care staff to drop in and meet us informally two weeks next Monday on December 23rd. The care managers will probably circulate this news to all of the care staff who look after Meg on their own internal system but it is already something to which we can look forward. Because of shift working and other commitments, I would be surprised if any more than five care workers could turn up at any one time and the invite was clear that if they only popped in for a few minutes, we would still be glad to see them. By way of preparation, I have already ordered some disposable wine glasses for any liquid beverages, not that I intend to ply them with too much booze. But I did ask Alexa to play some ‘classical Christmas music’ and was served up with a selection of Christmassy type offerings often served up by operatic stores like Andrea Bocelli so I think this would fit the bill perfectly for some festive Christmas music which avoided the more naff contributions at this time of year. Preparing for these mini-celebrations puts me in mind of the last time I organised celebrations to commemorate our 50th wedding anniversary in La Coruna and Santiago (Northern Spain).I had arranged a pre-anniversary lunch time dates for friends and relatives in a good hotel Meg and I know well. The restaurant has a little ante-room and I had commandeered this to set up a display of wedding photographs and music and for a pre-dinner aperitif and welcome. I informed the staff that it was part of my 50th wedding anniversary celebrations and we were drinking Cava (Spanish champagne) and I informed the staff that whenever a bottle was empty just go and get one or two more. The staff really joined in the spirit of the celebrations and when a waitress appeared with a new bottle of Cava, she got a hug and a kiss (quite common in Spain) This led one of my oldest friends to remark ‘Mike, the whole of this anniversary is just set up as an excuse for to kiss as many Spanish women as possible!’ and there was certainly a lot of kissing going on that day.

Now returning to the severely mundane. The workers were scheduled to arrive three quarters of an hour later than usual but in the event were an hour on top of this so we did not get Meg out of bed until 9.45. She was getting a bit agitated and not in the best of moods as a result of all of this but my domestic help helped to calm her a little and I gave her some sustenance and tea before the workers actually arrived as Meg had not breakfasted and was not feeling of her best. When the workers did arrive, I got the excuse that they had a new client who needed two carers but only one was scheduled so a half visit took an hour. But I still could have got an explanatory text from the agency and was not a happy bunny as a result. Immediately after breakfast, our Eucharistic minister arrived by appointment and she brought along some of the Order of Service leaflets for our previous parish priest who had just died of colon cancer. I was somewhat amazed to learn from the particulars of his life that he was actually two years younger than I am when he died. After a rather messed up morning, I pushed Meg down the hill to pick up our newspaper and got ready for the (much delayed) two carers who were due to arrive to give Meg her lunch time call. We lunched on some pea soup kindly provided for us by our domestic help and supplemented this with some ham and cheese toasties.

After lunch, we entertained ourselves with ‘Question Time’ first broadcast the previous evening. One of the panelists was Nigel Farage whose politics I detest but whose communication skills I respect. As the audience was in Lincoln and therefore more susceptible to his stance of immigration he managed to disparage both of the efforts of the Tory and Labour administration and to claim (quite falsely) that all of the ills of modern society could be laid at the door of immigration, both legal and illegal. Even a challenge on Brexit was brushed away as ‘yesterday’s story – move on’ (which saves him answering embarrassing questions such as why our GNP is 5% lower than it should have been as a direct result of Brexit) This was followed up by a further instalment of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ which Meg and I are viewing in bits. Hardy seems to have the facility to have quite dramatic twist of the plot in the last quarter or so of the entire work and this is no exception. We will probably conclude our viewing of this tomorrow as no doubt a denouement will ensue.

As the Christmas festive season looms, I am reminding myself what needs to be done to assist in the celebrations. On Monday morning, I have arranged with my son that between us, we shall reach into the loft to bring down the Christmas decorations. We have a little system going that has served us well over the years which is to keep all of the Christmas decorations and artefacts together in a large pile easily accessible from the loft door. This way avoids excessive hunting around in the loft but it does tend to be a two man job i.e. one of us to locate the actual package who then hands it down to the other. All being well, we hope to have everything in place so that our domestic help can assist with the Christmas tree and other decorations when she calls around next Friday. I have in the past taken the view that any decorations around the house should take no more than 2 minutes and 40 seconds working on the principle that the less you put up, the less you have to put away on or before Twelfth Night. But I feel that the carers are rather anticipating a nice Christmas tree in the hall for when the party happens in just over two weeks time so here is a certain degree of moral pressure at work here.

Yesterday was my shopping day and things bode well when one of the carers detailed to get Meg up in the morning was also scheduled to stay after her stint to be Meg’s sit whilst I did the shopping. This carer is a young Psychology graduate with an incredibly sunny disposition who always seems cheerful whatever adversities in life comes her way. So I was relieved that Meg would probably be safe in her hands and so it proved as I left them both watching archive film of Joan Baez (the Mexican-American folk singer who sprang to prominence in the 1960’s and still alive and performing today) The other carer was a sister of one of the other carers and has only worked for the company for about three weeks so it was disappointing to learn that she had decided to leave. Having said that, she intimated that she really enjoyed coming to our house and caring for Meg (which sentiment I have heard expressed, incidentally, by some of the other carers) so it was a great shame to have to say goodbye to her. The shopping went relatively painlessly apart from the fact that Morrisons had run out of ‘The Times‘ so I needed to call in at Waitrose to pick up my copy of it. But when I got back, it was time for me to wheel Meg in her wheelchair into the kitchen so that we can chat whilst I unpack the shopping and put everything away, a procedure that seems to take as long as the shopping itself.By way of entertainment, I got Alexa to play Berlioz: ‘A Shepherd’s lament’ which is actually one of my favourite pieces of Christmas music. After that and when I was starting to think about cooking the lunch, we got Alexa to play J.S.Bach’s ‘A Christmas Oratorio’ which always starts off in such a joyous way. Within the oratorio are several cantatas which I am pretty sure that Bach lifted wholesale from his ‘Matthew Passion’ although it is possible that an odd grace note has been tweaked here and there. During the course of the morning, an idea grew in my mind which I discussed with the young care workers who attended to Meg both at the end of the sit and at Meg’s lunchtime call. Christmas Day this year actually falls upon a Wednesday and it occurred to me that probably the Monday of that week would be a good opportunity to put on a little festive fare for all of the care workers. What I had in mind was to extend an invitation for any care worker who could spare the time or was in between shifts could drop in to see us at any time between 1.00am and 5.00pm in the afternoon. It would be easy enough to purchase some mince pies and Christmas ‘eats’ from our local Waitrose store and entertaining should be quite a breeze as I cannot ply any potential callers with too much alcohol as they are all drivers. So I discussed with the two carers, the ways in which I might get the invitation promulgated throughout the care company and we decided that I should write this in an email which the company managers can then extract and circulate on their own internal message system.

This afternoon, we were wondering what TV entertainment we could view and I trawled through the various offerings of Prime when we discovered ‘Shakespeare in Love’ This we have seen on at least two previous occasions but it is always worth another viewing and is stuffed full of memorable faces from the British theatre – in fact, I wonder if they queued up in order to participate in it. The film as well as following the rivalry between Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, the other great Elizabethan playwright, follows the story of the first production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ The film is carefully constructed so that the plot lines of Romeo and Juliet are mirrored but not exactly duplicated in real life and the culmination of the play is that Romeo is played by Shakespeare himself and Juliet by a young actress with whom he becomes enamoured but is married off to a local nobleman. But on her wedding day, she evades the attention of her new husband whom she does not love to attend the theatre and finishes off playing the part of Juliet herself. Unbeknown to anyone, Queen Elizabeth is in attendance for this first performance and there are some interesting dramatic twists before the end of the film. The thing about the play is that it really is full of some of the most superb poetry in the English language and much of this finds expression in the play. I am delighted to say that Meg and I were absolutely absorbed by the whole of it.

Thursday is the long designated day when Keir Starmer is due to initiate what many commentators are calling a ‘reset’ for the government. Sir Keir Starmer has outlined six targets for his government to meet by the next general election in his ‘plan for change’ – including 1.5 million new homes and slashing NHS waiting lists to levels not seen for a decade. The new government has got off to the most faltering of starts and the combination of slashing winter fuel payments to pensioners, raising Employers NI contributions and alienating the farming community smacks of political ineptness. It is almost unprecedented how quickly a government can go from a massive majority (which will see it safe for the next five years) to a big negative dip in the opinion polls. The problem about setting very specific targets like this, even for the NHS, is that other things get neglected. One of the things crying out for attention is to manage to get a doctors appointment quickly when necessary but post COVID, one often has a tortuous process of a telephone conversation in a few days time rather than the appointment on the same day which many have rather grown to expect over the years. Governments of the centre and left generally promise better public services but they attempt to do this without the prospect of increasing taxation which is an almost impossible ask. The public if asked say they would prefer to pay more taxes to get guaranteed better public services but although the level of increased tax might be certain, whether there will be an improvement in public services is difficult to measure. There is a feeling that to campaign on a slogan of higher taxes, whatever has been said in opinion polls, will probably bring defeat at the polls.

Meg and I had rather a hectic start to our day yesterday morning. The manager of the care agency who regularly puts himself ‘on shift’ turned up with two shadowing workers. One of them was his own son who he was introducing to the business with selected clients. The other care worker was new to the agency but not to the care world and had previously worked as a psychiatrist nurse and evidently knew what he was about – for example, he immediately identified the weighted blanket for what it was. The prospect of three males getting Meg ready in the morning was potentially, and sometimes on occasion, overwhelming but Meg coped with it all fairly well. I intimated to the second shadow worker that I thought he had done a very good job and he evidently had the right skill set, eg by talking to Meg whenever he was going to perform a particular procedure and explaining what was taking place. Then, as you might imagine, illness had struck the agency and they were short staffed again so I was asked if I could be the second double-up worker for the lunchtime and the tea-time calls today to which I agreed, as these are somewhat lighter than the getting up/putting to bed calls at the beginning and end of the day. As we were eating breakfast this morning, our senses were assailed by the events unfolding in South Korea.South Korea’s president faces impeachment after his shock declaration of martial law unleashed a political crisis Protesters are rallying in Seoul calling for President Yoon to step down The president had said martial law was needed to guard against ‘pro-North Korea forces’ – but analysts say move was in response to political pressure He backtracked last night after clashes between protesters and soldiers and a rushed vote by MPs to block the order. So we witnessed the extraordinary sight of a quasi-coup that lasted only a few hours. Once the South Korean President had imposed martial law, then troops arrived to occupy the parliament building. But one way or another they were resisted both by Opposition MPs and by members of the public who effectively caused the military units to depart. So we witnessed the way in which ‘people power’ can work in practice and with the odd sight of the military first occupying the parliament building and then leaving to go home. It looks as though the South Korean president, who is enormously unpopular, may be impeached within the day and possibly he will be gaoled and/or forced to flee.

After we had breakfasted, Meg and I got muffled up and we made our way onto the High Street, picking up our newspaper en route. Although I am rather sceptic about buying vitamins if you have a good healthy diet and get outdoors, nonetheless I felt some Vitamin might be handy. The official Government advice is that everyone should consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement during the autumn and winter whereas one can rely upon sunlight in the Spring and Summer seasons. So we popped into two outlets that sell health related products and cosmetics to see what they had to offer in the Vitamin D line. This is where the story becomes really confusing. The advice I have gleaned from the web is that elderly adults should be taking 20 micrograms of Vitamin D per day but I finished off buying two plastic containers of pills. The first contained Vitamin D of the strength of 75 micrograms which is three and three quarter times the recommended dose – 100 micrograms being the level at which excessive use of Vitamin D is contra-indicated. The other container, though, had Vitamin D combined with calcium and each tablet here contains 2.5 micrograms which is one eight of the recommended dose. Even more disturbing to the uninitiated is that the fact that one container of Vitamin D tablets was offering pills that were formulated as being 30 times the strength of the other. I am not surprised that doctors are very often skeptical about the value of vitamin supplements and I how well informed are members of the public who buy these products? I did a modicum of research and found the following which I reproduce below. ‘To summarise, current evidence suggests that nutritional supplements do not improve health. Despite there being clear regulation preventing a manufacturer from making false claims, people are still being grossly mislead and duped in to spending absurd amounts of money on nutritional supplements. This is achieved through a combination of clever marketing, unethical advertising, and the wide spread of online misinformation. There appears to be a general lack of desire or interest in regulating online misinformation, and so the responsibility is now on exercise professionals to ensure that their clients receive accurate and reliable information. We must question whether a supplement really is effective before buying it, and better educate ourselves and our clients on how to spot misinformation online. Finally, we must call out companies who are breaching industry regulation standards and deliberately misleading people for simple profit.’ So I have learnt something today, after all. Whilst out on the road, I also bought two fine (i.e. not chunky) long sleeved jumpers of the kind that I particularly like. One of these is to be worn as a normal jumper but the other as night wear to help to supplement my normal pyjamas, particularly when the nights are cold. These have been put into a 30 degree wash and I shall see if my experimental jumper works as intended when I get to bed later in the evening.

I have read that levels of influenza are rising rapidly across the UK and particularly amongst school children. Why this is of interest to us is that this will directly impact the families of the carers who, when they report ion as sick, are more than likely reporting upon the illnesses of their own children. Meg and I have are vaccinated up to the hilt and will always continue to be so but I suspect that I detect in the culture a certain weariness and almost cynicism about the necessity to be vaccinated and there is the concept of ‘herd immunity’ which in the case of measles is about 95% but as a general rule-of-thumb should be above 70%. The medical epidemiologists have to make an educated guess as to which variant of the flu virus one should be vaccinated against and there are indications from the other side of the world (Australia) that the efficacy of this year’s vaccination might have declined from the 50% of last year to the 35% of this year. But even if one is infected with the virus, the symptoms should probably be a lot less severe and the risk of complications so much the less.

Today we stared off fairly bright and early as the two care workers were scheduled to arrive 15 minutes earlier this morning and they arrived on time. After Meg and I had breakfasted, we received a most welcome telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend, discussing our availability for coffee. Tuesday is our regular coffee day anyway so the group of us met discussing things relating to Christmas. I was reminded of a story that I was told some time ago that often the younger male members of couples would go out and buy either black or red underwear for the objects of their affections and to be given as Christmas presents. However, a goodly number of these presents were always taken back to the store and exchanged for either a more virginal white or certainly a more utilitarian version of the underwear in question. To add a degree of veracity to this story, one of our number announced that exactly that had happened in their own family over the festive season. Our University of Birmingham friend had, in the past, expressed a wish to read my PhD thesis so this morning I pulled off my bookshelves both a collected version of a dozen papers underpinning the PhD and also a rather battered final draft of the work which I used to brandish in front of students, principally to show them how to reference correctly, what to do about extended quotations particularly if quoted by one author citing the work of another and the sorts of problems that can create dilemmas for students when writing their final year projects. I have asked my friend to pull no punches in his evaluation of what I wrote nearLy thirty years ago now but also intimated that he had no fear of suffering from insomnia as a reading of the thesis might prove to be so boring that he would be asleep within minutes. We had to rather dash up the hill after our extended coffee session to ensure that we met with the care worker due to undertake her Tuesday morning sit and, having got Meg settled from a period of agitation, showed her some of our 50th wedding anniversary pictures if only to show a picture of Jo, my very old and dear friend who passed away in her mid 90’s before I had the chance to say a proper goodbye to her. However, I seem to remember that I did play her a little piece on my keyboard on the very last occasion that we spoke.

Today I poached some haddock in milk as our midday meal. served with a baked potato and some green beans. As my cooking coincided with the visits of the carers, I think I left the fish cooking for too long and my desire not to smell the kitchen and the rest of the house out with a fishy smell did not succeed. Nonetheless, the meal was delicious and delivers a lot more worthwhile protein than would be the case of fish fingers or even a bought fish pie, so I need to refine my cooking methods for next week. This afternoon, we started to watch the concluding part of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ which was a little slow moving compared with other Hardy novels but we left our viewing at a point of suitable dramatic tension ready for us to conclude tomorrow no doubt. I have in one on or two locations throughout the house and principally by the side of laptops any my main computer some cheap computer specs bought from the aisles of Poundland and elsewhere. But one of my favourite pairs had unaccountably gone missing so I went on the internet and purchased a box of four which seemed well designed and of the relevant quality. But what turned up, courtesy of Amazon, actually amazed me. Complete in a little presentation cardboard box were four pairs of spectacles, each in their own little plastic case and with a pair of cleaning cloths and an instruction leaflet to boot. The manufacturers of these spectacles make the claim that they have 20 million satisfied customers and offer a guarantee of quality with their product. They also claim that the spectacles have an ‘anti-blue light’ treatment which features heavily in their marketing and which may well be a bit of scientific over-stretch as a brief visit to the internet indicate that anti-blue light claims are rarely justified. But I must say that my first impressions are very favourable and as I was rather expecting four pairs of Chinese made units to turn up in a little plastic bag, it could well be that I have stumbled upon a real find. I must say, though, that to have four pairs to hand (although in reality I only needed one) is a facility which is going to prove very useful to me.

Something rather strange politically is happening before our very eyes which is the resurgence of Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Since Reform’s leader made a surprise return to frontline politics, he has leant even harder into anti-establishment rhetoric. The political elite do not want Nigel Farage to succeed, is his mantra. The problem Reform UK faces is that it now has five MPs, giving it a presence on the green benches alongside the very establishment it rails against. Its next job is to try to professionalise the party beyond the cult of Nigel and widen its supporter base. While most of its supporters are still older white men, according to YouGov’s post-election analysis, Reform was the third most popular party with men aged 50-64 – just one point shy of the Tories. But there are signs of growing support among younger age groups, including young men aged 18-24, where Reform was the third most popular choice, alongside the Green Party. Surprisingly, Mr Farage’s party was as popular as Labour among young men in that age group, according to a poll by JL Partners in the week of the general election.

More scandals left behind by the last government are just starting to be revealed. The latest is that the last government spent £50m on Rwanda deportation flights that never took off, new figures reveal. This included the cost of securing the flights, escorts to force migrants onto the planes and preparing and securing the airfields, Home Office documents show. Spending on the asylum scheme overall reached £715m before it was scrapped by Labour after the general election in July. Other costs outlined include £290m paid to Rwanda’s government, £95m on detention and reception centres and £280m on IT, staffing and legal fees.

Meg and I had a couple of really cheery care workers this morning, which certainly helps to start the week. I have asked Alexa the weather forecast for the next seven days ahead so it appears that we may be in for a spell of fairly settled weather to which we can surely look forward. After we had breakfasted, although I felt fairly tired this morning, we thought we would pop down the hill and possible along the High Street if the spirit moved us. On our way down the hill we bumped into our Italian friend and exchanged some current news. She had just been to visit a friend around the corner whose husband has just been diagnosed with dementia and I told our friend what was happening to my sister. We carried down as far as Waitrose and picked up our newspaper, bumping into one of our Tuesday friends whilst we inside the store but if we had been tempted to have a coffee, the cafeteria was closed for urgent repairs to its hot water system (not for the first time) I wanted to take the opportunity to buy some Christmas cards from one of the numerous charity shop outlets and they all seem to have Christmas cards in stock. I like to buy cards with a religious theme for the committed Christians on our Christmas card list, cards with a kind of internationalist and/or peace motif for those of our friends and relatives who would appreciate them and a choice of other cards for those who could not care one way or the other. In the end, I did buy some cards both from Cancer Relief which always has a huge selection and supplemented these with some from the British Heart foundation who had some of the cards in stock that matched my criteria. On our journey down the hill, I play an app that I have on my iPhone which has quite a huge selection of Mozart on it. One of the tracks to which we were listening is one that Mozart composed perhaps as an extended joke but more likely as a ‘show off’ piece. This starts with the very simple nursery rhyme that we know in England as ‘Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star’ but which is actually a French carol, ‘Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman’ which translates as ‘Oh! Shall I tell you, Mama’ Once the simple tune has been laid out for the listeners, Mozart then goes on to compose sets of variations which become increasingly complex with variations upon the variations up to about a dozen in total. I imagine it takes a pianist of quite considerable skill to play all of these variations straight off although Meg and I did hear a performance of these variations performed by a local musician as part of the Bromsgrove Festival of music. When we returned home, I made Meg some chicken soup and then a couple of carers made their late morning call and got Meg hoisted into her specialist chair. Then, as time was getting on, I heated up the special pasta meal that had been given to us by one of our (Asian) male carers who enjoys cooking. This pasta meal was absolutely delicious and so Meg and I enjoyed it tremendously – I may do a trade with some of our left over risotto as an exchange.

Channel 4 can always be relied upon to give us some alternative presentations at Christmastime and now we are into the month of December and ClassicFM has started to broadcast some Christmas carols, I suppose you can see the festive season is upon us. Broadcast yesterday was a contribution which I particularly wanted to see which was an animated carton of ‘Mog’s Christmas’, Mog being a favourite character in a book read by generations of schoolchildren and also as it happens, my family nickname. But I was feeling very flue-laden when the programme was originally broadcast but unfortunately slept all the way through it. However, we looked at ‘catch up’ TV for Channel 4 and viewed the animated film made of Judith Kerr’s famous children’s book ‘The Tiger who came to tea’ This I enjoyed tremendously and looked forward to its sequel which also happened to a replay of ‘Mog’s Christmas’ but was asleep during some of this as well. To round off this afternoon’s series of animations, we did watch (again) the Raymond Brigg’s story of ‘The Snowman’ so what with one thing or another, we have had an afternoon full of entertainment originally designed for children but I suspect enjoyed by some adults as well.

In the Unites States, it is quite traditional for the outgoing president to issue Presidential pardons, particularly if there is a deep suspicion that a miscarriage of justice has taken place. But Joe Biden has chosen to pardon his own son, Hunter, who undoubtedly has had a troubled past but was convicted of illegal possession of a gun. This has caused some misquiet even on the Democratic side of the political divide and the Republicans are seizing every opportunity to show that there is really a dual justice system at work in the United States. But the anger expressed by the Republicans may be somewhat synthetic because Trump, in particular, may be secretly delighted that Joe Biden has chosen to extend Presidential pardons in this way. It opens the door wide open for Trump, the minute that he takes office, to immediately pardon all of those who were rightfully convicted of storming the United States Capitol building nearly four years ago and who Trump maintains were the victims of a miscarriage of justice and a Democratic witch hunt. But there is no real equivalence between the pardoning of one errant son (which Hunter Biden undoubtedly is) and the scores of MAGA and Trump supporters who, with firearms, forced their way into the Capitol building in order to try prevent the formal declaration of the results of the presidential election which Joe Biden won fairly and squarely. It also looks as though Trump through his appointment of an ultra loyalist Kash Patel to FBI director will visit retribution across the US’s top law enforcement agency and the Department of Justice, who have sought to investigate the president-elect on a litany of criminal charges, now dropped or on hold due to the impermissibility of prosecuting a sitting president. ‘Government gangsters’ is how the 40-year-old Patel has termed them, the name of a book he has written on what he perceives to be Deep State corruption at the heart of the agency he will be tasked with running and beyond.