Yesterday after Meg was soundly asleep, I set myself the task of a tidy up in our Music Lounge with the primary aim of finding my mislaid TV remote. In this respect, I was successful after about ten minutes of my tidying up operations which pleased me no end and I lost no doubt on making a note of its mode number so that I can quickly replace it were it to go missing again. In my tidying up which still needs a degree of refinement, I not only threw away a lot of out-of-fate junk but carefully preserved four piles of material which is anything related to Meg’s condition, general articles on fitness and health which are quite commonly produced by the quality newspapers at this time of year, articles run off from the internet which helps to make my computing efforts more efficient and finally articles and magazines that I traditionally keep such as the Peter Brookes cartoons of the year produced for ‘The Times’, Now that I got to this stage, I can further refine each collection of material in the days ahead, probably at the rate of one per day.
Also yesterday, I heard a new theory announced about the imposition of trade sanctions on both Canada and Mexico. An American spokesman explained that the position of sanctions was deliberately designed to get the countries to which they were applied to shift their position, a strategy that also worked well with Colombia. But Mexico has now agreed to utilise an extra 10,000 guards alongside its border first and foremost to crack down the supply of fentanyl (artificial opiate, some 50-100 times stronger than heroin) and secondly to stem if not stop the flow of international migrants. Donald Trump give the 25% tariff increase some days to come into effect and this helped to clarify the mind of the Mexicans who have buckled. Almost the same deal was offered to the Canadians who, likewise, have agreed to increase border security by about 10,000 guards. Now all of this is quite interesting because it looks as though America has used its brute force to enjoin its will.But a slightly more nuanced picture s that all of the parties can gain some credit from these instruments of foreign policy. The Canadians and Mexicans can claim that by taking the requested actions on the flow of drugs, disastrous tariffs have been averted. Trump, of course, can claim that his strategies have indeed worked and he is in a position to apply other sanctions as and when he feels the need. The fact that fentanyl is so easy to manufacture and so potent that over 80,000 USA citizens die of it each year is a powerful argument in its own right, though. But the traditional use of sanctions against China might be a harder nut to crack because the Chinese have naturally engaged in a tit-got-tat sanctions regime designed to hurt American exports in certain areas. Again, these sanctions have even delayed for several days which gives some time for some hard fast and furious negotiating. However, the outcome of the tussle between the two world economic super powers is hard to predict at this stage and the world’s trading exchanges are experiencing real jitters as we may be on the brink of a huge trade war.
Although it was a little late in the day, Meg and I breakfasted on porridge and then made our way down the hill to make our usual assignation with our wheel-chair bound friend Wetherspoons. On the way down, we bumped into our Italian friend but did not tarry as we were running a little on the late side. In Wetherspoons, I had more normal egg and bacon crumpet which was freshly cooked and tasted especially nice to me this morning. But Meg was sound asleep nearly all of the time so I did not rouse her to take on food and drink she did not want. Then it was back up the hill because we needed to het back before the next scheduled visit of a carer at 12.00pm which we did with five minutes to spare. Although the weather was said to be fairly temperate this morning, it did not feel that way as there was a fairly strong biting wind to add in a wind chill factor so I was very pleased to get hone (as well as being extra tired out by my exertions this morning). Then we seemed to have a plethora of carers – one arrived to do the Tuesday morning sit and we talked over family matters and funerals. Then two more carers arrived for Meg’s lunch time call, one of them lives locally and I have seen quite often recently and the other I have not seen since before Christmas. To this band was added a ‘shadowing’ worker who is in the first stages of training and learns, hopefully, by a close observation of whatever does with each client and why. After they had departed and our ‘sit’ carer had come to the end of her stint, it was time for me to prepare some lunch which I did fairly rapidly. I had some cheese and onion bakes which I heated up together with those micro-waveable vegetables in a pack so that I could prepare lunch to save some time. Meg was so soundly asleep that I did not attempt to wake her up but left her dinner on one side so that I can try to get some food into her later.
Straight after lunch, the engineer called by appointment to check over that the bed was functioning correctly, as it has to be every twelve months. After the little mishap of yesterday, the engineer showed me how to fix this simple problem should it reoccur and, more importantly, instructed me in the use of the Reset function. He also put a very helpful sticker on the bedpost so that is malfunctions were to reoccur, I would know immediately who to phone. All of this was very useful and relevant information and good to know. We regaled ourselves with some black humour about the fact that it was quite possible (and had happened) that animals could be crushed to their deaths if a sleeping pet were to be present underneath the ‘floor’ type of bed when it was being lowered to the floor.