Hello world!

This is my introduction to the world of blogging!
I display two photos, the first being a favourite ‘work’ photo of myself taken at the University of Winchester and the second of my wife (Meg) and I taken in the summer of 2016

Professor Mike Hart, University of Winchester, about 2007
Meg and Mike Hart, Hereford Cathedral, Summer 2016

Here for your amusement/entertainment or a series of more-or-less true anecdotes often of an autobiographical nature.

http://bit.ly/mch-vca

 

Continue Reading

Monday, 4th October, 2024 [Day 1694]

Yesterday certainly did not get off to the best of starts as the care workers were unaccountably delayed for about 25 minutes and one of the care workers was my least favourite. In addition, Meg was going through an agitated period so getting Meg both washed and dressed was somewhat problematic. However, once we had actually Meg sitting in her wheelchair she was in a calmer frame of mind and some porridge helped to restore her equilibrium. Immediately after breakfast and the Lorna Kuenssberg Politics programme, I had a bit of a brainwave and managed to locate very quickly a little external, portable Bluetooth speaker. This was a bit of kit developed by a small British technology firm but it is brilliantly simple. It worked first time when I tried it out on my iPhone4 but then I went on the web to find and print off a manual to make sure I was utilising it to the full. The most important fact I managed to discern is that a single charge through a USB style port may last as long as ten hours which is probably more than the phone. The manual told me to turn on my device first and the kit called a ‘Droid’ second and then the ‘intelligent’ Bluetooth connects automatically. This means that I can my iPhone complete with at least 300 classical tracks of music and play it wherever I want. It goes by the name of a ‘Droid’ and looks somewhat like a miniaturised Dalek in appearance, the name evidently derived from ‘Android’ An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids existed only in the domain of science fiction and were frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot technology have allowed the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots. Then, pushing my luck a little, I realised that I could utilise this little system with me on the wheelchair when Meg and I make our daily excursion. So I kitted myself out with the iPhone4 in the little compartmentalised bag which always accompanies us whilst the ‘Droid’ itself I put into a spare bottle bag that I found and hung on the other handlebar about a foot away from Meg’s ear. This worked for half the journey down the hill and then suddenly stopped. What I think happened is that after the charge on the iPhone4 dipped below 20%, the system automatically enters a low power mode and playing music tracks is jettisoned. But after I got home, I recharged the phone and everything is now working the way that it should. On our way down the hill, we bumped into our Italian friend and were very, very sad to learn to know that she is probably going to sell up and relocate herself much nearer to her daughter in the Cotswolds, which I am sure is a very sensible decisions for her as she gets older but a little disappointing for us.

Yesterday afternoon, we had the treat of watching ‘Paddington 2’ which I always enjoy, even though I have seen it several times before. Towards the end of it, though, I did my usual trick f falling asleep with a cup of tea in my hand. However, all was not as bad as might be feared as I had only a small cup with not much left in it and then most of it on my trousers (which then went straight into the wash), some on the newspapers spread out on the floor before me and only a smidgeon on the carpet which was quite quickly cleared up. After the film was over, there was a news bulletin on with some extraordinary scenes. One of the news items was reporting on a visit of the (Spanish) King and Queen of Spain to the stricken area of Valencia after the recent floods in which a year’s annual rainfall fell within 12 hours. In particular, they visited a small town near to Valencia where no official aid seemed to be forthcoming for five whole days. There are gruesome reports that have started to circulate that although the death toll now exceeds 200, the authorities are approaching the task of pumping the water out from some underground car parks in which they may be dozens of cars with goodness knows what number of dead bodies trapped within them. The population are experiencing a simmering anger because they feel utterly abandoned by the authorities, both national, regional and local. In particular, the army has been deployed very late and then only with very limited numbers. The media has shown a lot of reports of volunteers rushing to help with the clear up operations with, almost literally, mountains of mud to remove. But the anger of the population boiled over when the King and Queen of Spain paid a visit and attempted a walk about to give comfort to the local population and they were pelted with ‘snowballs’ of mud of which there was a lot around. The Queen was shown wiping mud from her face and the King my well have been a successful target as well. Eventually, a huddle had to be formed around the royal couple so that they could be shepherded to safety. Such scenes are absolutely unprecedented, of course, and I intend to email our Spanish friends to offer condolences and to get some more inside accounts.

Yesterday was the second last full day of campaigning in the US presidential election. Trump’s advisers are desperately trying to keep him ‘on message’ whereas Trump himself is already crying ‘Foul! Election Fraud!’ in Pennsylvania before a single vote has been counted. Even at the last moment, there has been a surprise poll in Iowa, normally firmly in the Republican camp which puts Harris 1% ahead according to a small but respected pollster. Meanwhile in North Carolina, the Trump camp is getting worried that the state might be on a knife edge although, like Iowa, it should be one that Trump would be expected to take. Sky News is promoting its election news broadcasts starting at 10.00pm on Tuesday but I suspect that the really important results will not actually come through until Wednesday so I am not going to stay up beyond an hour or so to see which way the wind is blowing. Some commentators are trying to warn us that it could be several days before the result emerges in an election as finely balanced as this well and then, of course, literally armies (or at least several thousands) of lawyers are going to swing into place to claim irregularities.

Continue Reading

Sunday, 3rd November, 2024 [Day 1693]

Yesterday, I had spent more time than was good for me in the middle of the night getting some of my Bluetooth interfaces to work with current and backup version of my mobile phones. This process was a little fiddly and at times frustrating but I managed to succeed with some but not all of my various interfaces. Meg and I were not very happy that our day was due to start 40 minutes early as the scheduled getting up call was 7.20 rather than 8.00am. I do not think that either carers or their charges like this very early slot in the morning but we have to make the best of it. Meg was not too sleepy this morning so we managed to get her into her wheelchair without much ado. This has now been adapted recently since the wheelchair specialists made some running adjustments to it for us the other day. We now have some professional ankle straps fitted and we also have a curved backrest inserted into the chair which helps to keep Meg stable. Also, the wheelchair specialists supplied a special little triangular wedge which they call a ‘lateral support’ and this helps to keep Meg in a fairly upright position in the chair. After we had breakfasted, it was time for us to make our Saturday morning trip to Waitrose and there we took coffee with the lady that we know well but she drives a special scooter and then manages to get from this into the store with the help of a couple of elbow crutches. Our friend is fiercely independent which does impress me greatly but she knows that her condition is only going to deteriorate with age but we have to do what we can to put off the evil day. We spent some time discussing the forthcoming US elections as well as some domestic issues until the time came for us to leave. In some ways this was a sad little occasion because I let my friend get to her feet unaided but today her legs just would not work as she wanted them to. I offered her one of arms by way of support and my friend did accept it in the spirit in which it was offered but I noticed that some tears of frustration had crept into her eyes. Both she and I do realise that however well meant, the more she accepts these little offers of support so her independence has just diminished a tad. I think both she and I are of the view with various bodily movements and motions then one has to either ‘use it or lose it’ and our friends is fighting as hard as she can to do whatever she can for herself. We will meet again next Tuesday all being well, by which time the actual voting in the American elections will be taking place. We walked back up the hill but when we got to the house, coinciding with the two carers, Meg was having a little agitated spell. I must say that one of the carers was excellent in helping to keep Meg on an even keel and I did my little bit in preparing some chicken soup which also helped to calm Meg down as well as some anti-histamine which one doctor prescribed months ago to help in circumstances such as this. We dined on the second half of a quiche with carrot and swede mash and some fine green beans. After all of this, we settled down to watch the biography of Vera Brittain in ‘Testament of Youth’ which we first saw some years ago but the film is always worth an extra viewing. The film is as powerful a depiction of the horrors of WWI that has been portrayed and is exceptionally poignant in places where Vera Brittain loses first a fiancee and then actually nurses her own badly wounded brother. Vera Brittain was the mother of Shirley Williams who was a Labour MP for years before with three other colleagues they split off to form the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ (the SDP) in the 1980’s. When the war has ended, Vera resumes her studies in Oxford where she meets with another undergraduate by the name of Winifred Holtby. It is at this point that I have some personal connection, albeit slight, with the film. Winifred Holtby was the author of ‘South Riding’ and was probably resident in Hull or thereabouts. My mother who had lived in Hull used to speak of Winifred Holtby and I wondered if they moved in similar circles or even knew each other, as my mother had done some acting with the Hull Repertory company (or it could have been just an amateur dramatic society and my memory is very hazy on this point). I imagine the BBC is putting on the film at this point because we are getting into the run up to Remembrance Sunday in one week’s time. We viewed most of the film but Meg started to experience a period of agitation towards the end of it and in any case the carers were coming for their tea time call so we had to end our viewing somewhat prematurely. I gave Meg a special anti-histamine type pill one of the doctors had prescribed some ago and a combination of this, a cup of tea, some chocolate and the warm glow of the electric fire helped her to calm her down a little. Then we looked at some of the ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ series that YouTube offers up to us at this time the afternoon.

As widely predicted, Kemi Badenoch was elected as Leader of the Conservative party today. In total, about 132,000 members of the Conservative Party were eligible to vote in the leadership election – a noticeable fall from the 172,000 in the contest in 2022 which Liz Truss won. The turnout was also down – 72.8% in 2024 vs 82.2% in 2022 – with about 40,000 members not voting. But this is rather a historic moment as Kemi Badenoch s the first female black leader of a major political party. Being already on the right wing of the Tory party, it will be quite a job to unify the party which has always been in a fractious mood with the debates on Europe and Brexit tearing the party apart. But the Labour Party is not governing in a very sure footed way and amazing though it might appear, the Tory party is actually one point ahead at this point. But being the leader of the Opposition and with no prospect of returning to power for at least five years and probably for ten years, the task of the leader of the Opposition is not going to be easy. She has stated that each contender for the leadership would be offered a place in the Shadow Cabinet but several ‘heavy hitters’ such as James Cleverley and Jeremy Hunt are returning to the back benches so there may be a return of Priti Patel to the Shadow Cabinet. If it were not for the American election results unwinding next Wednesday, then the next PMQ might have been worth a viewing.

Continue Reading

Saturday, 2nd November, 2024 [Day 1692]

Last night before I got to bed I had some extraordinary good luck. In my very ancient (c. 2010) iPhone4, I had inserted a SIM that cost me practically nothing and then put £5 worth of credit to use as a PAYG phone. On the phone I had a classical music app which I do not think I had ever fully used before. To cut a long story short, I downloaded 202 tracks of classical music representing some 55 composers and 48 of them being Mozart (who happens to be one of my favourite composers) When I say the tracks are downloaded, I am pretty sure that they are being stored within the app itself rather than being added to the ‘Music’ file which Apple maintains in its iPhones. I had a quick word with the more tech savvy of the care workers who thought that Spotify worked like this as they could download tracks which could then play even when not internet connected so it looks as though my hunch was correct. But there is a huge bonus as I can interface the iPhone4 through a Bluetooth connection which means that the tracks can play through a loudspeaker system. In our Music Lounge I have a CD player with speakers that are adequate enough and so much bigger than the speakers found on a phone and, similarly, I can interlace the iPhone through the Panasonic micro HiFi system that I have installed in the kitchen. So all of this means that I can enjoy music that I really enjoy in at least two locations within the house. All of this was discovered in the middle of the night, as it were, as it took some time to download the tracks and then to test them out so my sleep pattern was a little interrupted, but I went to bed very happy at long last. In the morning, we knew that we were going to be quite busy as Friday is the day when our domestic help calls around. After our normal exchange of news, we awaited the arrival of the Eucharistic minister from our local church who we have not seen for a couple of weeks now. We had both learnt of the news of the death in the last day or so of the parish priest who was the immediate predecessor of our current parish priest. We knew that he had been ill with bowel cancer (about one year later than myself) and after his enforced retirement through ill health actually went to visit him on one occasion because the retirement home where he was lodged was quite near to the village in which Meg used to live in Staffordshire. Our son also called around who it was delightful to see after he had spent a few days away visiting in laws as it was half term and now that half term is over, we will see more of him next week. We spent some time discussing the Budget and the way it had been received in the country as a whole. The reactions of the market to the budget is interesting as, once again, the government in its borrowing plans is at the mercy of ‘the kindness of strangers’ which is one expression used when the government is financing its borrowing through the issue of gilts which may, or may not, be attractive to the investing community as a whole and hence ‘the kindness of strangers’. We got an invitation to meet for coffee in Waitrose with our University of Birmingham friend but as our visitor from church had been delayed by about 20 minutes we had to proceed down the hill in a tremendous rush and only had about a quarter of an hour to spend with our friend. Then it was a case of a massive dash up the hill to be home in time for the carers but we made it with about a minute to spare. The carers were two young people who we know pretty well and so the three of us put into action a plan to help Meg sit in her chair in such a way that her knees are not as bent as they would have been when sitting in the wheelchair. I had found a way to raise the front of Meg’s chair by a few inches which meant that when Meg was sitting in it securely she was not at all likely to tip out of it. This little experiment seemed to work quite well but we needed to support Meg with a cushion or so to keep her secure. This was particularly important today as the vagaries of the care agency rota meant that Meg was having to spend five hours in her armchair which we knew really was too long a stretch but there was nothing else we could do under the circumstances. However, the young carers and myself have put our heads together and have devised a little system whereby Meg’s knees are not bent to anything like the same extent and, judging by the fact that when she was put to bed she could straighten out her legs more than before, our little system seems to be having a degree of success.

After we had lunched on a haddock fish pie, Meg set ourselves for a good afternoon of TV viewing. Firstly, we watched Question Time broadcast the evening before and when this was completed started to treat ourselves to the first episode of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy. This was a classic BBC production with superb cinematography filmed in Thomas Hardy country (Dorset) and with an extremely good cast. There are four episodes with each one lasting an hour so naturally each of the critical scenes in the novel receives the attention that it deserves. This afternoon, I eventually managed to speak with someone at EE so that they could link my debit card with my newly installed SIM to facilitate top-ups. The official advice is ‘download our App’ but the trouble is that the operating system is so old on the iPhone 4 that it cannot be updated and therefore the EE App will not install. But now I have successfully linked the debit card, topping up becomes incredibly easy because you put in a couple of code letters, then the last four digits of your pre-validated debit card and then the amount you want to top up in whole £s. So the whole transaction can be performed by sending a simple text message of just 9 digits including spaces and you get a confirmatory text within a few seconds once the transaction has gone through.

Continue Reading

Friday, 1st November, 2024 [Day 1691]

Yesterday was a day out of the ordinary, as it turned out. The day had actually started in the middle of the night when I woke up and realised that as it was practically the end of the month, I had scheduled myself to put a little bit of credit on the old iPhones into which I have inserted PAYG SIMS and which gives me a ‘de facto’ backup iPhone for if and when the occasion demands. All of this worked more or less as I wanted it to but in the course of looking some of my records, I saw that on Meg’s phone there was a message indicating that she needed to update her NHS app or lose it altogether. I had previously made some efforts to get Meg’s NHS app fully functional but had been thwarted as I had forgotten the email address that we had used to set up the system and had a horrible feeling it was an out of date email to which we no longer had access. But the fact that the NHS had used Meg’s email address to contact her as a reminder was like manna sent from heaven and although I had forgotten the password, this was fairly quickly regenerated and good notes made as to what they both are. But there seems to be quite a complex procedure which is probably an enhancement to security in the latest version of the NHS app because the system is now demanding a photographic ID which had to be located on my main computer system and then transmitted to Meg’s iPhone. At least we now have an almost working NHS app on Meg’s iPhone but there is a crucial last step when the system is probably going to take a photo of Meg’s face and use AI software to reconcile the image just taken with the image on the passport. I suppose this is a good security procedure and once it is in place, I am sure it might be very useful not least in getting appointments and ordering new medicines but we are not quite there yet. This morning was the day allocated to do my shopping and I was delighted that the young ‘A’-level student, studying Psychology had been allocated to be Meg’s ‘sit’ for the morning. I scoured my bookcase to see if there were any psychology books that might be more useful to her rather than sitting on my bookshelves. I managed to find three Psychology type books, as well as a simple statistics for psychologists primer, a good study guide and a little book on report writing. I am delighted that these books are going to go to a good home and I hope they help her achieve good grades and help her in a subsequent career. Altogether, this young carer spent three sessions with us today (a getting Meg up call, a ‘sit’ session and then doubling up to provide the lunchtime call). We had a lunch of curry which is really just bits and pieces thrown together and served with rice but we had barely finished this when the wheelchair specialists called around. We knew that they were scheduled to come some time between 1.00 and 5.00 but in the event turned up when we were just on the point of finishing our meal. The wheelchair specialist fitted some special ankle straps so that Meg’s legs can be correctly aligned with the wheelchair frame but at the same time they provided a specialist ‘lateral support’ which is a triangular piece of kit that fits into the wheelchair in such a way that Meg does not slope sideways (as, without any upper body strength, she is prone to do)

After the wheelchair specialists had made their adjustments and then departed, we received a telephone call from a physiotherapist who was telephoning to make an appointment to see Meg. Some OTs/physiotherapists had previously called me and I had briefed them about Meg’s legs which I was concerned about getting ‘locked’ into a particular position after she had been sitting in the same position for most of the day. They had said that we were ‘in the system’ and we should expect a visit in a few weeks time – however, there might have been ‘wheels working with wheels’ because I was delighted that they could come and pay us a visit next Monday. They mentioned a ramp as a household adaptation which was something I had requested months ago in order to get Meg out of the French windows at the back of the house but is probably something we no longer need as the summer is effectively over and the days are gone when we can enjoy summer sunshine in the back garden. To my considerable surprise, though, the physio mentioned a more specialist chair, specifically a ‘Riser-Recliner’ type of chair which I thought had been ordered by another OT weeks and weeks ago. I had been waiting patiently only to be informed a few days ago that the OTs were progressing items ordered last April and it is now practically November but we entered this system last June so had been told to wait for at least another couple of months. This piece of equipment is moving from the ‘nice to have’ to he ‘completely essential’ in my view, for the following reason. As a result of not standing or walking, Meg is losing all body strength and in particular ‘core’ strength. This means that even when sitting in a chair she is apt to slip sideways and even gradually slip off the chair altogether unless special precautions are taken. In the chair in which she is seated after the carers’ teatime call, we have the chair at an angle, then make sure that she has a special triangular pillow behind her augmented by a little cushion designed to stop sideways movement and finally a small platform covered by a blanket so that her feet are just at the right height and hopefully she will not slip too far, or at all. The young carers are particularly good at getting Meg into just the right orientation but we are getting to the stage where a lot of these little aids and supports will not work as Meg loses more and more core strength.

This afternoon, we started to view a film first broadcast or repeated) on BBC4 the previous evening on the life of Thomas Hardy through his own poetry. Meg and I were looking forward to this but the whole programme a little wistful and did not quite live up to its promise. But also broadcast last night was he whole of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ in a series of four parts. So we should be able to watch this at the rate of one episode a day for the next four afternoons which should be quite a treat for us. I try to note what the good evening programmes are as they are broadcast day by day and then get them on catchup the following day.

Continue Reading

Thursday, 31st October, 2024 [Day 1690]

Wednesday started off with a pattern which is all too common these days as I received a text from the care agency one hour before the two carers were due to call asking if I could assist the one carer who was calling as people had phoned in sick. This is the second time in three days this has occurred first thing in the morning, so I am logging these occasions so that I can remonstrate if necessary with the agency. Having showered this morning, when I got down Meg was attempting to get out of bed but had she done so she would fallen which would mean her lying on the floor for several hours until the falls team and/or the ambulance service were called for. I need to avoid calling the ambulance service because their protocols are that fallen patients have to be taken to hospital for a checkup and once we get into this scenario, things can only go from bad to worse. So I have to make every effort to ensure Meg does not try to get out of bed and generally put a wheelchair, with its wheels locked, in a critical position to avoid this eventuality. The media having been dominated by news of the forthcoming budget have had their attention diverted by enormous flash floods in the eastern part of Spain around the area of Valencia. Some reports are saying that a combination of dried hard earth and a year’s rainfall falling in eight hours can make these floods catastrophic. We know that this area of Spain was liable to very heavy rainfall because when Meg and I visited Valencia, we paid a visit to the ‘City of Arts and Sciences’ which is a world-renowned complex that combines avant-garde architecture, entertainment, and education in one place. Apparently there had been really catastrophic floods in, I think the 1950’s in the area just to the west of Valencia. The Spanish regional authorities diverted one or two of the local rivers, created a huge flood plain and then wondering what to do with the vast area that they had cleared built the ‘City of Arts and Sciences’ The reports are that at least 90 people have died and it is expected that these numbers will rise substantially. One report is saying that this latest flood is one of the greatest floods in Spanish history but I think there may be a degree of hyperbole involved in this.

After breakfast, I felt pretty tired and did not really feel up to an extended walk into town which I might have done if both Meg and myself felt a bit better. I had intended to walk all the way into town and visit our favourite cafe on the High Street but I was a bit anxious as to whether Meg could cope with an extended walk. But on our return, I regaled us both with some potato and leek soup of which I had just bought a packet and then the two care workers turned up but not the two I was expecting according to the rota. Apart from periodic sickness factors, it is half term week which always plays havoc with the domestic child care arrangements of the carers so some disruption is only to be expected. After they had left, Meg and I saw the major elements of the Budget speech live on TV but have not caught up either with the expert analysis that will be undertaken or indeed the political reaction to it. But it does look as £40 billion of taxes are to be levied but none directly on the working population. One tax I was particularly glad to see imposed was via the abolition of the non-dom status by which so many of the rich (including the ex Prime Minister’s own wife) have benefitted. What we got from Rachel Reeves today was, in economic terms, a major departure from economic policy as we’ve known it in this country for the past decade and a half.We got the single biggest increase in taxes in any fiscal event since 1993. The tax burden itself is now heading up to the highest level in history. So all of this is quite a gamble but not the kind of gamble for which Liz Truss is notorious. The overall impact of the budget is a little hard to gauge because those who have benefitted (e.g. from the rise eon the Minimum Wage) are not very vocal whereas some small (but not the smallest) businesses are complaining about the increases in their costs that the National Insurance changes will bring. But it could be that this particular budget will be seen as ground breaking but whether it will lead to increased growth is a very unknowable question, Even the OBR has moderated downwards some of its forecasts for medium term growth once the impact of some of the tax changes work their way through the system. But budgets are judged upon political as well as economic criteria and it is possible that the budget is welcomed, if not entirely warmly, by the Labour back benchers whereas economists may themselves be divided upon the future impact.

This afternoon after lunch, Meg and I were intrigued to view on BBC iPlayer one in the series presented by David Olusoga called ‘A House Through Time’ The concept of the program is to find a house which is at least a century old and then trace through the life histories of everyone who has ever lived in it. The programme we viewed had taken a house in Headingley, Leeds which I have probably walked past and looked at the occupancy of a middle class Victorian house (built in a terrace of about three or four) and built with both basements and attics. The attics would have provided some quarters for servants in a middle class household and we found this living history programme to be fascinating. When I lived in an adjoining suburb in Leeds, I used to visit Headingley quite regularly as did my mother and as a 17 year old I used to look at the stone clad fine looking houses and wondered if I could ever live in one of them one day. So I found the programme to be particularly intriguing and the lives of those who had occupied the house through the decades was equally interesting. David Olusoga and his researchers. used Census and other records to build up a picture of the lives of the occupants and this is an excellent way to present this type of economic and social history.

Continue Reading

Wednesday, 30th October, 2024 [Day 1689]

Today after breakfast it was time for our Tuesday walk down into town and meet our friends for our bi-weekly chat in Waitrose. Getting Meg ready for our trip down the hill is a bit of a palaver but it works like this. I try to ensure that the carers have clothed Meg in a thick cardigan and then I put on a windproof and waterproof outer jacket. Then I clothe Meg in our University scarf and put the big, heavy Russian blanket across her knees and fortunately it tucks in securely down the frame of the wheelchair. Then I put a light little woollen blanket across Meg’s knees. Finally, I finish off with a pair of smaller men’s slippers that I had bought in Aldi the other day and just happen to slip over the thick woolly ankle socks that we put on Meg each day. Finally, we put Meg’s Dr. Zhivago style hat of (the sort worn by Tonya and played by Geraldine Chaplin if you remember the film) Once we finally got down to Waitrose, we were delighted to see our three friends there particularly as we had only been expecting one of them. So we had our normal jolly time, enhanced by the telling of a Dave Allen joke which we happened to have heard on YouTube the evening before. Then it was the journey up the hill which is not as arduous as you might suppose. There are some downhill sections as well as longer, and steeper, uphill sections but the amount of steep gradient is quite small. If the gradient uphill is slight then the weight of one’s body pushing the wheelchair is sufficient to give the required momentum. However, I do need to stop half up to don a pair of green rubberised gardening gloves that helps to alleviate the strain on the hands and fingers that can become somewhat numbed by the pushing. Once we arrive home, there is a certain degree of ritual as well. Outside in the porch, I use a brush to clean off the worst of the dirt and grit that have accumulated on the wheels. Then once inside, the wheels are cleaned again with a sponge to try to remove the finer pieces of grit and pavement dirt. Were I not to do this, then our carpets would be in a terrible state by wheeling dirt from the outside all over the house. But all in all, my little systems do their job. Having said all of that, when I start to push Meg home, I do feel in quite an enervated mood and can only conclude that some endorphins cut in, stimulated by the pleasantt chats I have just had. Similarly, when the young carers come in the late afternoon and even if Meg is having a depressed time, they do seem able to lighten her mood and even to elicit a few witticisms from Meg as they attend to their caring duties. It is pleasant all round that these young people like to come to do this particular visit and, we in our turn, are always pleased to see them. In fact today as the young male carer had some time doing his sit whilst I bought to a local AgeUk charity shop and bought Meg a new top, he was entertained by a viewing of Meg’s speech, and my own, in our 50th wedding anniversary video that we have available on a website and can be viewed on our big TV in the Music Lounge.

The conflict in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbouring states has taken a decidedly ugly turn in the last day or so. UNRWA (or to give it its full and official title ‘The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East’) was established as a subsidiary organ of the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1949 and became operational on 1 May 1950. It is one of the largest United Nations programmes. But the Israeli parliament (Knesset) has just voted through laws barring UNRWA from Israel, limiting it in Gaza and West Bank. This is seen as massive victory for the right wing in Israeli politics, which itself has one of the most right wing governments in Israeli history. Th fact that in the past UNRWA had within its ranks some HAMAS supporters has always been a massive irritant to the Israeli authorities but even though these elements have been identified and sacked, there is still considerable distrust of the agency. UNRWA provides practically all of the education for young Palestinians and the amount of humanitarian help that is supplied is immense. The fact that it is being emasculated and the principal individuals affected will be women and children from whom aid in its many manifestations is now being denied is being seen as a possible war crime in itself. Western governments are wringing their hands in despair but it seems that the West in repeating the refrain that Israel has the absolute right to defend itself is allowing Israel to exact punishments on the Palestinian people that many objective observers would describe as disproportionate.

Tomorrow, at long last, we will have the long anticipated budget and the media are going to fill the airwaves with all from 10.00am onwards tomorrow. Yet another important piece of budget news has been released in that we now know that the Minimum Wage is going to be increased to £12.21 although it falls short of the £12.60 an hour sum recommended by the Living Wage Foundation. Nonetheless at 6.7% it is quite a significant increase and will no doubt be welcomed by many who are struggling to get by on the Minimum Wage. But no doubt the power centres of our society including employers and the generally right wing newspapers, will no doubt condemn this as undeserved and inflationary. I will be watching the Budget debates tomorrow, though, and I wonder if the Speaker will take the opportunity to roundly condemn the selective release of parts of the Budget that ought to be announced first to Parliament. As always, there is a certain amount of shouting before one actually gets kicked, as it were, and it is always a little difficult to ascertain if tax rises can be quite readily absorbed or are the proverbial ‘last straw that breaks the camel’s back’ Budget Day is always a rather special occasion and the leader of the opposition, still Rishi Sunak, has to rise and make an instant speech on the iniquities, as he sees it, of the Budget proposals. The interesting thing this time around, compared with the Liz Truss fiasco, is that Rachel Reeves seems to have carefully sought the reaction of the IMF and the City who would not be averse to tax rises ‘per se’ provided that they can see that the Budget as a whole is industry-friendly.

Continue Reading

Tuesday, 28th October, 2024 [Day 1688]

Yesterday did not start off particularly well. I received a text from the care company informing me that owing to staff illness, notified to them at short notice, could I act as an assistant to the sole carer to get Meg up and dressed in the morning. Meg was rather agitated and confused first thing this morning and she did not recognise me when I asked her several times who she thought that I was. But once up and breakfasted and with some good porridge inside her, she seemed to be in a rather calmer and more reflective mood and I think that by now she recognised me. We thought that we would only make a quick trip to pick up our newspaper because it really is a judgement call that I have to make whether Meg is sufficient ‘compus mentis’ for me to push her out in the wheelchair. However, two quite experienced care workers are due to call late morning which I think is quite a relief. As it turned out, we only had time for a quick flying visit up and down the hill but I was relieved that Meg seemed somewhat better after her breakfast and some fresh air. After we had both eaten our lunch together (ham, baked potato and broccoli) Meg watched our fill of the day’s news and then as we were eating our lunch decided to treat ourselves to some music. We accessed YouTube and the great joy of this, from our point of view, is that the algorithm deployed now ‘knows’ what we like and serves up suitable offerings. We decided to listen to a performance of Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 which is one of my favourites. The performance was given by quite an elderly pianist who entered the auditorium at the Gulbenkian foundation in Lisbon to thunderous applause and had to rely upon a stick in his right hand and the helping hand of a young female assistant (who turned out to be his page turner) on the other. The performance was pretty good but not outstanding as the pianist was evidently quite stretched by some of the Mozart runs and trills particularly in the vivacious third and final movement. I had quickly taken a note of the pianist’s name and it turned out to be Menahem Pressler who was a German Jew who fled to the US in 1940 although most of his family were lost in the Holocaust. But at the time of performing in Lisbon, he was actually 95 years of age and died four years later at the age of 99. So this must have been one of the last if not his last complete performance and I was absolutely amazed at the quality of the rendition given his advanced years. This, no doubt, explained the thunderous applause when he entered the concert hall and then when he completed the work.

After the teatime call of the carers, Meg and I repair to our main lounge where YouTube on a Fire stick device offers us a different set of options. There were several programmes detailing the life of Mozart and in one of these, there was an attempt to ascertain Mozart’s physical appearance and characteristics. Working this out is rather like trying to put together pieces of a jigsaw as there were several portraits of Mozart but none of them appear to be similar to any of the others. One of the two portraits which is often shown was said by Constanza, his wife, to be a good likeness of him but the other clues to Mozart’s physical appearance has to put together notes from a series of sources. We now know that Mozart was quite a small man being about five feet in height, and was thin, pale and with wispy hair. He had an ordinary face, which was marked by the scars of the smallpox he suffered in his childhood, and in which a large nose stood out. His eyes were large and clear (apparently a deep blue colour) and he sported a thick headful of hair, with fine, wheat-colored strands pulled back in a ponytail. His hands were medium-sized, with long, slender fingers, and his mouth was small. But Mozart’s sister Nannerl once wrote that her brother’s ‘hands were very small.’ Mozart’s left ear was missing the usual circumvolution or concha (this rare congenital malformation is now known in medical literature under the name ‘Mozart’s ear’) To those who are enchanted by Mozart’s music, it does come as a bit of a shock that the accounts that we are of his appearance do not seem match up at all with the celebrated heights that his music attains. Another fact that jars somewhat is that Mozart displayed scatological humour (obsession with vulgarity) in his letters and multiple recreational compositions. This material has long been a puzzle for Mozart scholarship. Some scholars try to understand it in terms of its role in Mozart’s family, his society and his times; others attempt to understand it as a result of an ‘impressive list’ of psychiatric conditions from which Mozart is claimed to have suffered. But we do know that Mozart wore a wig and had a love of fine and fashionable clothes that might have disguised a not very prepossessing countenance.

I am not surprised that the Speaker of the House of Commons is expressing considerable annoyance that important parts of the Budget are being leaked to the press in advance of the Budget speech on Wednesday. There is an important convention that important policy announcements should be made first to the MPs in Parliament and not briefed beforehand. This briefing may well be a breach of the Ministerial Code in any case. When Keir Starmer was in Opposition, he rightly condemned the Tory party for briefing important policy announcements to the press and it now appears that he and his government are doing exactly the same thing. The rules are clear and I cannot see what advantage it is to the government to make these announcements early and, of course, it just reinforces in the public mind that ‘they are all the same’ The Labour party spokesmen have got themselves into a terrible tangle by constantly saying that their policy of not raising the three principal taxes of income tax, NI and VAT should not adversely affect ‘working people’ but the very small employer who might be subject to increases in NI contributions is ‘de facto’ classified as not a working person and so the arguments have persisted for days and days.

Continue Reading

Monday, 28th October, 2024 [Day 1687]

Yesterday was the day when the clocks went back and we were all supposed to get an extra hour in bed. In my case, though, some of that bonus time was spent in correcting various clocks and appliances so I did not appreciate the full benefit of it. Fortunately, I could remember important things like the central heating setting and even the fiddlier things like the microwave were not too troublesome. It proved to be a quiet Sunday because we saw neither our Eucharistic minister from our church or, indeed, our University of Birmingham friend. So Meg and just made a quick trip down the hill to pick up our newspaper and back again. I had promised one of the carers that if she had sufficient time left over from Meg’s lunchtime call, she could view Meg’s 50th wedding anniversary video which we can access through our TV and so she enjoyed listening to this and also viewing some of the other wedding photos that we have on the same website.

Reflecting upon the little scraps that I have gleaned about the American presidential election, I would like to propound a new theory (or, at least, a speculation) There are literally scores of opinion polls both national and local but they all face one large problem, which is how to evaluate the views of those who do not wish their communicate their views to anyone and particularly not a polling organisation – hence the ‘silent’ ones. Now we know that there is a group of Republicans of the traditional variety who actually despair of what is happening to their country if led by Donald Trump and hence they form a silent group of Republican voters who are prepared to vote on this one occasion for Harris. But I also suspect that there is a parallel and probably larger group of Kamala Harris haters who, despite the very evident shortcomings of Donald Trump are secretly preparing to vote for him. Where does this hatred of Kamala Harris come from? Well, there are several streams that flow into this particular well. Very important are those who are appalled by the illegal immigration questions and some of these immigrants are camped (literally) on the outskirts of even Democrat strongholds such as Chicago. Secondly, there are polices such as defunding the police which sound to be barking mad. Thirdly, there are those who doubt her abilities to handle a modern economy. But perhaps of most importance are those who have heard the labelling of Kamala Harris as ‘far left’ which epithet is constantly thrown around by Donald Trump but it is a sad fact of life that if you throw enough handfuls of mud at a wall, some of it will stick. So with this label of ‘radical far left’ around her neck, Harris is already losing the support of some Latino and Black male workers. It is undoubtedly the case that she has an extremely strong case on abortion rights for women which the Trump regime has tried quite successfully to dismantle and this issue alone will persuade some younger Republican inclined young women to vote for Harris. But I contend that there are several other demographic factors at work and all of these tend to suggest that Harris is not meeting their concerns. So just as in the UK, we have the secret Tory voters who never divulge their opinions to pollsters, I suspect that there is a well of silent haters for both of the candidates but, crucially, the pool of Harris haters are probably larger than the pool of Trump haters (the intensity of whose hate may be immense but, in the last analysis, they are not that large in number in the crucial swing states) So I am ‘calling’ this election for Donald Trump and I think there are quite a lot of little straws in the wind that indicate that this may be the case – I would very much like to be proved wrong but we shall see as the results of the election gradually dribble out over the days.

I had cooked a ham joint in our slow cooker but decided to do a little bit of experimental cooking for the veg to accompany it. I had previously bought a big bag of carrots so I down loaded a BBC recipe how to do honey glazed carrots by roasting them in the oven first. So having doused them in olive oil pepper and salt I then cooked them for half an hour before spreading a mixture of lemon juice and honey over them and finishing off with a sprinkling of thyme (from a jar I already had in stock) The results were quite pleasing but not outstanding. In the past, I am pretty sure I have achieved equally good results by transferring some carrots cut into batons, then boiled and finished off in some oil to which some honey is added at the last moment. What I did this morning was quite a deal of work without the commensurate increase in pleasure in eating the final product.

The big political event this week will be Rachel Reeve’s budget which has been trailed for weeks now. There was a time when it was absolutely out of order for budget secrets to be revealed before they were announced to Parliament but a bad habit seems to have crept in whereby some of the budget items are revealed in the days beforehand. We now know as a cast iron certainty that National Insurance on Employers contributions is set to rise. Also, it looks as though another what is termed a ‘stealth’ tax will be in place by not allowing allowances before tax to rise in line with inflation. So we have a process known as fiscal drag in which people actually pay more tax and also get dragged into higher tax brackets even though the rates of tax have not risen. The public as a whole may have thought that no more money was going to be extracted from them via income tax but for many people will find that they are actually paying more tax owing to the non-indexation of allowances even though the rate of tax itself has not been altered. At the time of the Budget, a large booklet of financial data is released at the time the budget is delivered and often there are some technical changes in this booklet which may impact upon some tax payers but it does not necessarily figure in the Budget speech itself or even the many discussions that take place after it. So the airwaves will be filled with Budget news next Wednesday and probably for several days after that as well.

Continue Reading

Sunday, 27th October, 2024 [Day 1686]

Yesterday morning two of Meg’s regular carers turned up on time and got Meg washed, dressed and sitting in her wheelchair. When their care tasks are completed, the care staff assiduously fill in the two sets of reports that they have to make (a Task List and Care Plan notes) and they used an app called ‘Birdie’ which the care agency staff have enable me to download so that I can check on what has been said (which, in fact I do not need to) eventually, I hope a little functionality will be added so that I can check up on the time of the next scheduled visit (which is important to me, as I need to time my little trips out to ensure that I am back here on time) When they chat with each other at the end of a care session, the workers are always talking about the logistics of meeting with the next set of clients because despite the schedules that are done on a weekly basis, this can change by the day and even by the hour. After we had breakfasted, we made our way on a really beautiful morning to meet up with our friends in Waitrose and, as usual, had a jolly chat with two of our friends. I took the opportunity to buy some heavily discounted Little Gem lettuce that I needed for our lunch and also bought some Cavolo Nero which is that wonderfully nutty and non-bitter form of dark kale which has been especially bred and has made kale taste delicious. When the care workers called around, one of them intimated that her next task along was to cook a salmon fillet for the person for whom she was a care worker. As it happened, we were due to have some sea bass for lunch and so we discussed the best way for the fish to be cooked. Our domestic help showed us a wonderful method for cooking fresh sea bass (which I had bought from the supermarket when I last went shopping) and we have followed this ever since. Basically the fish is washed and dried in kitchen paper, and then has a quick smearing of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice and just a soupcon of salt. Then we fry it in a special grill pan that we have that is manufactured with ridges which keeps the fish from sticking too much to the bottom of the pan and cook it for three minutes on one side and then two minutes on the other. It is served quickly on a bed of lettuce and then eaten quickly before it cools. Prepared this way, the fish is absolutely delicious and its delicate flavour is enhanced and so we really enjoyed our lunch time meal which, believe it or not, feels one quite filled and satisfied. This afternoon, as we often do, we settled down to watch a programme which had been broadcast the night before. The programme for this afternoon was on Channel 5 and was ‘1984: The most shocking moments’ This programme is evidently compiled with a lot of BBC archive film and two things really stood out for me. The first of these was the scathing and delightful ‘Spitting Image’ which parodied politicians and particularly Margaret Thatcher ruthlessly. Margaret Thatcher’s image was voiced by a male actor who managed to get her intonations with a great deal of accuracy – one of her cabinet, Edwina Currie, revealed that she was certain that Margaret Thatcher watched the programme and afterwards actually became more like her Spitting Image persona with a deeper voice and portrayed as wearing male clothes. The makers of Spitting Image contemplated making John major look slightly less grey and boring by inventing an affair with a contemporary female politician. They considered Edwina Currie but eventually chose Virginia Bottomley but the shocking truth that was revealed a few years later in Edwina’s Currie autobiography that she did have an affair with John Major and they actually engaged in sex on the desk that he had in his room in the House of Commons. When the cartoonists learnt of this, they portrayed John Major as an up-to-date Superman but wearing his underpants outside his trousers. The whole extra marital affair helped make John Major’s reputation to recover from a bold and unadventurous politician to somebody much more dynamic – incidentally, the same thing happened to Paddy Ashdown the Liberal Party leader who the cartoonists promptly labelled as ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ Naturally, the program on 1984 included the horrific events of the miner’s dispute and their eventual confrontation with the massed ranks of police, some of them mounted, at the now infamous Orgreave coal coking plant. There were many other memorable shocking moments of 1984. One of them was the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and the whole of her cabinet in the IRA bombing of their conference hotel in Brighton, not to mention the death on stage of the comedian Tommy Cooper (shown live on ITV) Tommy Cooper just appeared to crumple and the audience cheered thinking it was part of his act but he had in fact died. Finally, we have the appearance of Madonna who in a show sang her iconic ‘Just like a Virgin’ but dressed like a bride which outfit she discarded in stages and with a series of gyrations that completely belied the title of the song.

The quote ‘Tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth’ is often attributed to various historical figures, including Lenin, Hitler, and Goebbels. But this is now receiving a new twist with respect to the forthcoming USA presidential election where it appears that most voters now believe the Trump lie that the last election was fraudulently won by the Democrats. Only 57% of Trump supporters said they believe this November’s elections will be run and administered somewhat or very well, according to polling of registered voters that the Pew Research Center released on Thursday — compared to 90% of Harris supporters. Forty-two percent of Trump supporters believed the elections would be run ‘not too well’ or ‘not at all well.’ Both groups had high confidence in election administrators in 2018, Pew’s historical data shows, but a dramatic split between the Democratic and Republican candidate supporters developed in 2020 and has only grown wider since. There was a similar split in confidence that mail-in and absentee ballots will be counted as voters intended, with 85% of Harris supporters confident the counts will be accurate compared to 38% of Trump supporters. Voters were also split, though less dramatically, on how confident they were that in-person votes will be counted accurately, that state election officials and local poll workers will do a good job and that U.S. election systems are secure against cyberattacks

Continue Reading

Saturday, 26th October, 2024 [Day 1685]

Yesterday, I was stuck on the end of my iPhone with one of those things which is increasingly both common, and irritating, these days. I recently upgraded my EE account for my iPhone and was informed that my bills would be about the same as BT (with whom I had an account) and which had taken over EE. As part of migrating to my new account, I was asked whether I wanted to accept a TV package but declined this, only to be told ‘Well, it is free and part of the package’ Now a coupe of weeks later, I discovered that I have been sent an Apple TV package that I neither actually want or need and, to boot, I am being charged £18.00 a month for this. As soon as I received notification of my latest bill, I got onto the phone to EE only to be informed that there is a wait of 30 minutes during which time I have to listen to some inane pop song but feel that I dared not hang up as the issue has got to be resolved eventually. I am going to have to ask them to listen back to their own recordings when I am convinced that they told me that this service was ‘free’ but I suspect this is a traditional sleight of hand in which companies say a service is ‘free’ by which they mean they are going to charge you for it eventually. The frustrating part of this episode, with which we are all familiar, is that if one wishes to buy a product por service one gets connected within seconds whereas if you want to query a bill or request a refund, it is made as difficult as possible. Our domestic calls around on Fridays these days and her husband was experiencing an episode similar to mine where he was trying to disentangle his BT and Sky accounts and this, too, was taking hours and hours on the phone to attempt to resolve. After having been on the phone for nearly one hour and a half, I am pleased to say that the problem was resolved more or less to my satisfaction but it took an EE worker with a Scottish accent (in Scotland?), working remotely from home who had to consult with the recordings of the original transaction, at least three consultations with a manager, a ‘threat’ that if I had changed my mind I would be responsible for a cancellation fee of £300 and goodness what else besides before the matter was resolved to my satisfaction. What had complicated the situation was that in the course of the conversation with the original EE salesperson, I was offered a package, then a special ‘rebate’ and goodness knows what else besides until I was forced to mention the Small Claims Court and we talked our way, at length, to a resolution of the problem. In the meanwhile, most of our morning was wasted in this venture so in the very late morning, I wheeled Meg down the hill, picked up a copy of our newspaper and then wheeled her back before pressing on with a quick lunch of a curry I had thrown together. Just to compound these irritations, I have received a text from the care agency saying they are short staffed and so I could I manage with one carer for Meg’s lunch time and tea time calls today – this is happening more and more frequently these days and although I certainly do not mind helping out as and when I can to help resolve problems, this occurrence is getting all too frequent these days. After lunch, Meg and I treated ourselves to watching a catch up of last night’s ‘Question Time’ but after the traumas of the morning, I seem to have slept through most of it. This afternoon, Meg and I felt in the mood for something a little different and it was anyway a very wet and dreary afternoon. We wondered if there was a good Thomas Hardy film on YouTube but the film quality of one or two of our choices was a bit ‘iffy’ so we settled on one with Spanish subtitles. This we quite enjoyed until the whole of YouTube froze (which it does tend to do) so we had a cup of tea and chose to watch Verdi’s Rigoletto instead.

Sky News is reporting tonight on one of the worst cases of ‘catfishing’ This term refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity, with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship. An online predator who led an American girl and her father to take their own lives has been jailed for at least 20 years after the UK’s largest ‘catfishing’ case. Alexander McCartney previously admitted 185 charges, including the manslaughter of a girl who took her own life. Police called him a ‘dangerous, relentless, cruel paedophile’ who ‘may as well have pulled the trigger himself’ and said there were about 3,500 victims. Devices seized from his bedroom contained hundreds of thousands of indecent photographs and videos of underage girls. Belfast Crown Court heard victims were aged between 10 and 16 and based in the UK, USA, continental Europe, Australia and New Zealand. McCartney, from South Armagh in Northern Ireland, used Snapchat and other sites to pose as someone else online, known as catfishing. He pretended to be a young girl to persuade his victims to send images. He then blackmailed them into sending more explicit material. Sky News is reporting tonight that these offences took place when the internet could be compared with the ‘Wild West’ and deception on this scale would not be possible today. However, it is a very powerful reminder of why we need an ‘Online Safety Act’ but one always wonders whether the law lags quite a long way behind the actual practices on the internet and it must be continue to be an incredibly dangerous terrain for the unwary. Having said that and from admittedly male perspective, I am rather at a loss to understand why anyone, and particularly a teenage girl, would willing take and then send explicit sexual images of themselves. This particular miscreant has been jailed for life, whatever that actually means in this case, but the scale of the offences is mind boggling. Apparently the abuse started the minute the explicit photo was received and an already pre-prepared type of ransom demand was immediately cut and pasted to the victim’s phone or laptop.

Continue Reading
1 2 3 170