Today was a strange kind of day weather-wise in that it was quite blowy but also mild at the same time (often you associate wind with quite cold weather but not today) Having collected our newspapers and made our way to the park, we did get rained on and Meg had to shelter under a neighbouring willow tree for a minute or so. I stuck it out as the shower seemed to be quite fast-moving and in a few minutes time, we were treated to a burst of glorious sunshine. The weather being somewhat inclement, we saw none of our usual friends with whom to have a chat but it was the type of day when only the foolhardy or the intrepid would set out for a walk (we are both of those). Our son and daughter-in-law had returned home from a few days away and had had a very relaxing few days in a hotel they know quite well – and where the chef cooked some special dishes for them as regulars.

After lunch, I engaged in a little job I had been putting off for days but turned out to be quite easy in the event. Via the web, I have discovered a farm which grows their own rapeseed and then presses, processes and filters their own rapeseed oil which they then sell in 5-litre containers. This I then dispense into 10 half-litre ex-cordial bottles (which are slim but with quite a nice long neck and therefore ideal receptacles for the cooking oil – a smidgeon of which I use to oil the blades of the shredder I have in the garage for the sole purpose of shredding cardboard for composting) And then, half-way through the afternoon, my son looked out of the window and said ‘There’s Miggles’ (our missing cat!)

Miggles (whose proper name is ‘Buddy’) had turned up after an absence of 11 days! He limped down our garden and I immediately gave him a bowl of food before he wandered off. This is the full story…His true owners found him about 10 days ago with an injury to his left leg – possible he had been trapped somewhere and struggled to get free. Anyway, they took him to the vet and (presumably) he had an antibiotic to counteract any infection and then his owners kept him inside for 7 days. Today, they let him out as he was feeling a bit stressed, being constantly confined to the house. Miggles (I will continue to call ‘him’) was evidently still feeling a little sore and sorry for himself as he ate his food, allowed a quick stroke and then wandered off to reconnect with his old haunts. We went round to make contact with the owners for the first time. The owners were quite pleased that we had made contact with them-  we told them that the cat often visited us and so, inevitably, we had got a little attached to it but we decided to come round as we didn’t know whether he had just turned up for the first time in 11 days. The crucial thing is whether ‘he’ turns up for breakfast in the morning – we will just have to wait and see! I think his ability to leap up and over fences is impaired until his leg is fully healed so whether we will see him regularly or not, who can tell. Having thought that cat was dead or stolen, it is hard to describe the range of emotions that I felt, as you can imagine.

Tomorrow, we will be going to St. Mary’s at Harvington Hall, which is now part of our new-found Saturday morning routine. In the meantime, we are still watching the ‘ferrets fighting in a sack’ syndrome as the Head of OfQual and the Education Secretary argue with each other as to who was responsible for the ‘A’-level debacle. In this process, pure lies are being told. For example, the Education Secretary, Gavin Wliiiamsom is trying to give the impression that he alone foresaw and tried to solve the problem The education secretary said repeatedly during the week “As we looked in greater detail over Saturday and Sunday, it became evident that further action needed to be taken.” But we know that is not true. As HuffNews tells us

But this is not totally true – last month the Education Select Committee was warning that the proposed method of using an algorithm to calculate student grades could cause “significant problems” and “might hurt the disadvantaged”.

And on Thursday, The Times revealed a former director-general at the Department for Education, Sir Jon Coles, actually wrote to Williams and told him the algorithm would only be 75% accurate and hundred of thousands of students would get the wrong grades.

This morning was a beautiful fine morning with a blue sky and a few fluffy white clouds – it made walking an absolute pleasure compared with yesterday which was so rain-sodden. We realised that we needed to buy a few toiletries so we made one of the very rare trips onto the High Street to access one of the cut-price toiletries shops of which there are several. Whilst we were at it, I popped into Poundland in order to buy a supply of cleaning wipes and sprays so that when we go on our little few days break in Chester next week, we can have a supply of cleaning agents to hand to make our immediate environs in the hotel as safe as we can be (without getting excessively neurotic about it all) By the time we had our elevenses, we suddenly realised that we were actually running it a bit short of time as our hairdresser was due to arrive at 1 pm. So we had to walk home at a fairly brisk pace but still made it with about three minutes to spare. We both have our hair cut by our visiting hairdresser who has been coming to us for years so we decided (as we did yesterday, with our chiropodist)  to set up an online payment system so that we are not constantly scrabbling around for money when she comes but we can make the payment online (which, of course, is more and more common these days).

Last night, after I had finished blogging and playing about with my webspace files, I wondered what the available free FTP clients were like for the MAC these days. I downloaded CyberDuck which seems both a have a good reputation but it integrates into the Mac operating system. It was easy to install and I was delighted to find that it had recognised that I also have Filezilla (very popular FTP client installed) so it had incorporated all of the various web-site credentials (usernames, passwords etc.) so there was no setting up to be done. I used a free and incredibly popular FTP client for years called WS-FTP for decades and knew it like the back of my hand but they have never developed a version for the Mac and showed no inclination to either. WS-FTP was first written decades ago and set the standard for how these FTP programs work as you have a split screen with all of your local folders and files on the left hand side and all of your remote folders/files on the right hand side. So it was a bit disconcerting to see that CyberDuck only displays the remote window for you and assumes that on a MAC you are going to use ‘Finder’ to display your own local folders. However, I have now worked out how you get the exact configuration of  folder you need on the remote side which you save into a ‘Bookmark’ (slightly confusing as all browsers have their own ‘Bookmarks’ as well) and I have also worked out how to quickly bookmark and display the local folders from which you intend to upload. From then on, it is just a case of selecting your file(s) and pressing ‘Upload’ although you can drag directly from the local to the remote sides of the screen. A rather nice feature of CyberDuck is the ability to edit small changes to files on the remote side using either the built-in editor or with your own choice of editor. This is incredibly useful as all website designers will know as you can make small changes and/or correct errors ‘on the fly’ as they say. All part of the learning curve but it got quickly sorted out and is now ready for my next serious file transfers.

Meanwhile, in the ‘A’-levels debacle, the latest obfuscation I heard on the radio this morning came from Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister. His words of wisdom were ‘Well, the model was fine but it was just the way it was applied that was wrong‘ What kind of nonsense is that? (‘There is nothing wrong with the car but we have just driven it over the cliff‘) According to inside sources, Nick Gibb has known about the problem for weeks but refused to countenance any changes – the phrase often used was that he had a ‘tin ear’ and was absolutely desperate, at almost any cost so it transpires, not to allow any grade inflation into the system.

Today it has rained and rained and rained all day long with hardly any respite – I suppose I should add it was drizzle rather than genuine rain but enough to make one uncomfortable. Nonetheless, we ventured out as per usual but enjoyed our elevenses whilst standing in the very middle of a completely open-sided bandstand (the only place where it was absolutely dry!) observing the only other hardy souls (one dog walker, one couple complete with children) all hundreds of yards away. Anyway, it was good to get back inside the house and enjoy a nice cup of tea! 

As it was such a wet day, I indulged myself by doing a little HTML to display some photos on the web. I did a very quick Google search and obtained some code which enabled me to show two columns of photos side by side – I am not absolutely sure I could have worked this out for myself but it came in useful. I then decided that I would like to try a version in which the photos were displayed side by side and row by row. I reckoned I could work this out for myself, as indeed I did. So now if I want to have a ‘quick and dirty’ method of getting some photos online, I can do it very quickly. I have a little bit of webspace which I rent from a Canadian company (incredibly cheaply) for these little bits of experimental and ‘playing about’ types of activities.

Our son and daughter-in-law are away having a few days break at the moment so Meg and I have the house to ourselves, which seems rather unusual after so many months ( well 156 days actually) when we are all been in the house together although working away in our respective rooms. Meg and I are starting to gradually think about our own little trip to Chester next week to which we are looking forward. When I updated the Waitrose order earlier on today, I ensured that I had plenty of anti-bacterial sprays and wipes for use whilst we are away. We have a plan to dump all of our suitcases in our allocated room and immediately give all of the immediate surfaces a quick wipedown before we go off to lunch in the country club down the road. Them we will do the same again when we get back from lunch and then we should be comparatively safe.

Well, we are wondering what tomorrow is going to bring with the publication of the GCSE results. So far, Gavin Williamson. the Education Secretary is both simultaneously claiming that he ‘spotted’ that the algorithm was going to produce bizarre results over last weekend – but at the same time, it is all the fault of the regulator OfQual who had assured him that the model was robust and would deliver the objectives he had set for it (no grade inflation) and they should, therefore, be blamed. Meanwhile. Boris Johnson on holiday in Scotland has proclaimed that he has ‘every confidence’ in both the head of Ofqual and also his Education Secretary. Without wishing to sound too naive, does anybody take ANY responsibility when things go so horribly wrong? One is reminded of Estelle Morris who resigned as education secretary because she felt that she was not doing a good enough job, Peter Carrington (the Foreign Secretary at the time of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands) who resigned for not having spotted that the invasion was imminent. Nowadays, nobody seems to resign even after committing the most horrendous dereliction of duty. The ultimate prize for any Tory has to go to Chris Grayling (who even follow Tories called ‘failing Grayling’ who wasted 2.7bn of taxpayer’s money on one mad scheme after another e.g. when transport secretary awarding a cross Channel ferry contract to a company that owned no ships!) He even failed to secure a job (leading the Parliamentary Intelligence and security committee) when he was the only ‘ official’ i.e. Prime Minister approved candidate!

Today, as we walked down into town, Meg and I were reminiscing about how life used to be like some 25 years ago when we were part of the admissions rota, manning the phones in order to recruit the requisite number of students to make our course (and out livelihoods) viable. I think in those days we aimed for a cohort of about 45-50 students but my memory may be playing tricks upon me. However, life in contemporary universities must be an absolute hell at the moment. After the ‘A’-level results were announced last week, you imagine that your course might be up to quota but suddenly, as a result of the government ‘volte-face,’ you are besieged by would-be students who thought that they had not achieved the required grades and had then been advised to go off and appeal. Now the applicants are enquiring whether they still have a place which would mean expanding the course capacity considerably – but do you have the staff to teach them? Have you the requisite accommodation (because of social distancing, all universities will be having to sort out how students distribute themselves in the available space, even though much tuition will be done on-line) Will you try and persuade some students to take a year off and come back to you in one year’s time, or do you persuade them to accept their second offer or do you try and hang onto them having morally (and legally?) offered them a place? No doubt, all of these critical decisions are having to be taken without having all of the normal planning parameters to hand and with students increasingly anxious (not to mention parents who occasionally slip through the net, although admissions staff should not really be delaying with them as they are technically a ‘third party’) I suppose, one must say ‘It’s a nightmare!’

We had a lunch today which was quite typical of a Tuesday (fishcakes) I have learnt how to make a wicked sauce with this, which will enliven any fish dish, including fishcakes, It really is ridiculously simple and involves mixing (in a small receptacle) a desert full of mayonnaise, a desertful spoon of 1,000 island dressing, a good glug of tomato sauce, a shake of Worcester sauce – and then whisk all together with a fork and do one minute in the microwave. What name you would call this, I do now know so I will call a ‘Mog special’. After we had dined royally, we hit the road in the car to get some things into be drycleaned and to replenish our supplies of actual cash (which we use less and less these days as more and more retailers prefer to have things paid for by debit card rather than old fashioned cash). When we returned home, we sent a few emails, tidied up some odds-and-ends and then FaceTimed some of our old Waitrose friends who we have not actually seen for a week or so (unusually). Tomorrow we must ready ourselves for a visit by our chiropodist who ensures that we have thousands of miles left in our feet.)

The news tonight is dominated by the fact that Public Health England (PHE) is being folded into a new organisation and effectively merged in the newly developing test-and-trace regime (which has not had conspicuous success so far) It is to be headed up by Tory peer Baroness Dido Harding, currently in charge of Whitehall’s contact-tracing operation who, as TalkTalk chief executive, refused to apologise for financial losses caused to her customers following a cyber attack which saw 157,000 customer’s details stolen by online criminals.It really does look as though the politicians (Matt Hancock in this case) know that a public inquiry is coming and they are boiund to be heavily criticised by it. So they are trying the shift the blame sideways onto an agency (have we heard this before? As Sarah Wollaston, MP and ex-GP has written 

‘a reminder that PHE is the only bit of the health service directly under govt control as an executive agency. Seeking to scapegoat them is extraordinary after cutting public health funding for years & excluding local directors of public health from decision making on COVID.’

Today was one of those days when you wonder what the day is going to bring if anything, as a certain amount of political pressure has been building upon the Education Secretary throughout the course of the weekend and there are mutterings on the Conservative backbenches. We collected our newspapers and ate our elevenses in an almost deserted park this morning and apart from being inspected by the occasional dog (quite common on a park bench as they are often anticipating a nibble of food!). The rain came down quite softly and had it intensified we could have made for the shelter of a nearby weeping willow, but instead, we braved it out and the shower soon past. We can often judge the intensity of the rain by the pattern the droplets make on the water in the pond but after living in Lancashire for some of our life, the rain down here always seems mild in the extreme.

Meg and I read an intriguing story in today’s Times which has really set us thinking and wondering. More and more families are deciding in these lockdown conditions that now might be an ideal time to acquire and train a puppy as they now have time on their hands and the opportunity to train a puppy which was difficult for them whilst at work. Consequently, sales of, and prices of, puppy dogs have soared and many dogs are in fact being stolen, with reports of dog theft up 65% since the start of the lockdown. According to the charity Doglost,  some buyers are paying as much as four times the normal price and the price is often in the £1.000’s.  According to research by the insurance company, Direct Line, as many as 360.000 adults believe that a cat was stolen from their care in the past 12 months and some other research indicates that up to a quarter of the cats that go missing are actually stolen – but this is notoriously difficult to prove in the absence of chipping (which is voluntary) and/or a collar. Now we come to the case of Miggles, the cat who had adopted us and has now gone missing. As a previous blog indicated, her true owners were aware that she had gone missing unexpectedly and were repeatedly calling for her. As she was such an exceptionally good looking cat, the thought has crossed our mind whether she has actually been stolen rather than met an accidental death. After all, some new ‘owners’ could acquire a cat at no cost to themselves and the crime would be untraceable (and the police really do not want to know) So the thought in our minds that it is difficult to dispel is that Miggles has actually been abducted rather than meeting an untimely end. Of course, we shall never know!

This afternoon, we were holding ourselves in readiness for the 4.0 pm news bulletin because it was becoming increasingly evident that the government would have to execute the most tremendous ‘U-turn’ over the A-level marking debacle. As first the Welsh and then the Northern Irish devolved administration followed the Scots in allowing teachers’ assessments to constitute the final mark (even at the price of some grade inflation) then surely the English would have to follow suit – which, of course, they did. I correctly predicted that Gavin Williamson would be very slow in making a public apology and, sure enough, the first apology had to come from the Head of OfQual whilst the second came from a junior education minister that nobody has ever heard of (It did remind me of the public schoolboy trick where everybody blames ‘Jones Minor’ who is the little squirt in the system least able to defend themselves in the case of malfeasance – the Tories seem well versed in this particular piece of skulduggery. Compare Nicola Sturgeon, for example, who fronted up and apologised whilst  Boris is off playing ‘Monarch of the Glen’ somewhere in Scotland). In terms of public administration, then the creation of executive and regulatory agencies (of which the education regulator OfQual is one) blurs the lines of accountability such that if there are problems, the head of the agency can be blamed (and not the politicians) whereas if there are successes, the politicians can claim the credit. And, interestingly enough, as I wrote I read in tomorrow’s Guardian that the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, according to the lead headline is seeking to blame Ofqual for exams debacle…Well, it is quite evident that he will be got rid off at the earliest opportunity and BBC NewsNight had on it a policy analyst who had advised Michael Gove whilst he was Education Secretary and was amazed that Williamson was still in a job (as are we all)

Today was always going to be one of those days in which it could not decide whether to rain or not to rain. As it happened, Meg and I walked down to the park in practically cloudy conditions and the park rewarded us by being practically deserted. The rain in the night had well and truly wet all of the park benches which was designed to discourage any casually sitting down. But being well prepared like a Boy Scout (the motto of the scouting movement was ‘Be Prepared!‘), I had with me one of these absorbent sponge clothes which did a great job of removing the excess water before we could take advantage of the park bench. On our way home, we met some of our friends who we had not met for a few days and exchanged some news about their grandson who had been expecting the results of his ‘A’-levels. It turned out that he had been caught up in this ‘A’-level debacle in which in the absence of exams the teacher assessments which are always assumed to be overly optimistic were moderated downwards by an algorithm which meant that 40% students received a lower grade than their teacher assessments and this had severe implication for the universities that they wished to attend. In the case of our friend’s grandson, he was intending to appeal and his first choice university did not reject him but said he would have to wait for the results of his appeal (which might be too late) So he got onto his second choice university who spent a lot of time with him on the phone and armed with all the information that they had about him and effectively a 2-hour telephone interview, he was accepted by them. He was delighted with this offer as his second choice university is of the same general standing in the rankings so things seem to have turned out for the best.

I heard all of this well explained by, I think, a sixth form principal who was interviewed in the media to help to explain what had gone wrong. The explanation seemed plausible and simple. Basically, so she explained, the small colleges (typically found in the public schools) and those new colleges without a track record were excluded from the algorithm – and hence the teacher assessments were accepted.  If this were to be universally the case (as in Scotland) then the distribution of ‘A’-level grades would be deemed ‘too high’ and therefore the credibility might be put at risk. So the other colleges in the system (particularly larger sixth form colleges, some FE colleges offering ‘A’-levels and those with a poorer track record for whatever reason) had to bear the brunt of the statistical re-calculation, losing out badly in the process. {Apparently, the Royal Statistical Society had offered the assistance of some prestige members to give expert advice, but this was rejected as the experts in question refused to sign ‘non-disclosure’ agreements that would have meant that they had to keep silent for some five years!) What I suspect the government has failed to appreciate on a purely political level is that not only are the young people themselves affected but also their friends, parents, grandparents, other relatives – all of which is a sizeable part of the electorate. Will a screeching ‘U’-turn be forthcoming? I think not.

Our plans to visit Meg’s cousin who is now resident since her bereavement in Bolton have been put in a certain amount of doubt. We got an email this morning from her daughter who explained that as Bolton is part of the Greater Manchester lockdown area then no such visit will be possible (apart from people already within the bubble). To see what the current ‘lockdown’ rules are in Manchester I did a quick Google search and was horrified to see some video clip of Wilmslow Road, Rusholme in Manchester (which is where we lived in our final year at University) only to see enormous crowds of people (celebrating, I think, Pakistan’s National Day’) but the police had been putting out urgent messages to the younger sections of the population, flagrantly breaching the social distancing regulations and putting the health of themselves, their families and the wider community at risk. No wonder that the infection rate seems to be increasing in certain clusters.

Today was the day when we were booked into St. Mary’s, Harvington Hall at 10.00. Last week there were only a dozen of us but this week there somewhat more of us (about 17) but just enough to make the atmosphere quite an intimate one. We were greeted warmly by the parish secretary with whom we need a booking week by week so it was nice to put a face to a name. After the service, we drove back home, dropped off a few things and went to collect our Saturday complement of newspapers before having our elevenses in the park

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of Miggles, our adopted cat who we do not own but who adopted us, much preferring our garden to her own. The exploits of Miggles will be well known to regular readers for she insisted on accompanying me to supervise whatever job I happened to be doing in the garden. Today, though, I am sad to say that Miggles is no more. We first were aware that something may be wrong when her rightful owners (we know who they are) could be heard regularly calling for her all day long a few days ago – so they evidently were aware that the cat was missing. She has not turned up for breakfast for five days now and although last time we saw her she was happy, well-fed, playful and basking in the sunshine, now she is only a memory. I have to say that Meg and I feel her loss quite keenly! She was an incredibly good-looking as well as intelligent cat so I shall leave her a tribute of the lines from Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat‘ which I regularly used to repeat to her:

‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are!
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

As she walked into our life we think about two years ago, now she has walked out of it so we shall have to get used to not seeing her bound across the grass to greet us as she typically did. I have a collection of nice photos on my iPhone on the occasions when I would wish to be reminded of her.

Idly seeing what was on the TV we saw that a rugby match was being played for the first time in months (Exeter Chiefs v. Leicester Tigers) but as the Tigers were being soundly outplayed and beaten, it was not the source of pleasure one might expect. We also got cheated out of our 1-hour ration of ‘Today at the Test’ as the (cricket) The Test match had to be abandoned for the day with a combination of rain and bad light. And finally, whilst on a sporting theme, whilst I was getting ready this morning I heard a sports report that indicated that Barcelona (one of Spain’s and Europe’s premier teams) had been defeated 8-2 which was their biggest defeat since 1940 (which is a very long time ago!)

It will be interesting to see which particular scrape the Government has got itself into will hit the Sunday newspapers tomorrow. It will be a tossup between bright A-level students who, because of the algorithm which reduced their teacher-assessed final grades, will miss out on their choice of university course. However, one brave Oxford college (Worcester College) has guaranteed a place to all students holding an offer irrespective of what the diminution of the grades might happen to be. They argued that they had enough information in the round without having to have recourse to a hypothetical final examination grade which was then moderated down!) And the second big story is the holidaymakers desperately getting home from France to discover that they need to undertake a strict 14-day quarantine (they cannot even take the dog for a walk)

We thought today was going to be an intermediate kind of day but although it started off fairly cloudy, eventually it turned out to be a pleasant summer’s day with a light breeze and the sun eventually breaking through the clouds. We got the letter posted off to Meg’s cousin which was quite an important one as we hope she will be in a position when we make our trip to Chester in about 12 days time. As we have not seen Meg’s cousin for a couple of decades, we suspect there is a lot to catch up on, but after a gap of that period, one never knows how such encounters are going to turn out. Meg had seen a lot of her cousin when she was singing in small opera houses in Austria but we have lived at quite a distance from each other ever since and therefore the opportunities to see each other have been limited.  Then we had a further chat in the park with a lady who uses a wheelchair and was looking out for my hat and, not seeing it, assumed we were not there. She found us eventually and we chatted for a while about family history matters. Eventually, we made our way home but we seemed to be running a bit late on everything this morning. We exchanged a few words with our Italian friend down the road but she was busy preparing for visitors. I have to say we had a fairly lazy afternoon – I am sure there were various things in the garden and within the house to which I should have attended but the humidity does make one feel a little disinclined to exert oneself. I had yesterday emailed a friend who was an old colleague to get news of his wife who we knew was going to have an operation. It seems as though as all has turned out well so far as we can tell at this stage, so I was relieved to get this piece of positive news.

Occasionally, after I have answered my emails I look at Sky News to see if there are breaking stories (I must add that although I loathe the Rubert Murdoch stranglehold on the media, I am forced to admit that Sky News always seems to get to critical stories way before the BBC which I suspect has been utterly tamed, not to say cowed, by the past few governments) Apparently. Donald Trump was asked a question whether he regretted the fact that he had consistently lied to the American people during his presidency. One would have expected a complete denunciation of the reporter who had had the temerity to ask the question but instead, Donald Trump swerved the question, turned his gaze to another journalist and gave them to chance to ask another question instead, without offering up either an answer or a defence. Extraordinary – shall we see a video clip of this in the next few days? (Not on the BBC I venture to suggest, in view of what I have just been saying above).

I read a fascinating letter in ‘The Times‘ a day or so back, commenting upon the difficulties that the government is facing over ‘A’-levels in which teacher’s assessments are moderated by an algorithm which looks at the past record of the schools, thus ‘baking in’ inequalities. For example, a pupil with high predicted grades but in a school which performed ‘poorly’ the previous year could expect to be downgraded by applying the algorithm. The letter writer in ‘The Times‘ reminded readers that Michael Gove scrapped the system in which A-levels were essentially modular (each year being divided into two semesters) and with AS levels at the end of Year 1 of the sixth form. So, an A-level mark would be the amalgamation of the marks of four semesters of work  – but if this system had not been jettisoned, then by the time of the lockdown students would have marks attained for three out of their four semesters. Under these circumstances, it might have been considered quite fair to base the final A-level mark on these three semesters of work rather than four. However, Michael Gove thought that the pattern that we had in the 1950s ought to be the model for the future (i.e. one exam at the end of two years of study) and reflects the way in which some Government minister think that we should ‘look backwards into the future’. So a lot of the current mess could have been avoided if the existing system had not been tinkered with for essentially political reasons.

We did not have a tremendous storm last night but we did have a certain amount of rumbling thunder, some sheet lightning and quite a steady patter of rain which persisted until the small hours. So we were not surprised when we awoke to a day with a much fresher feel to it and the threat of a further shower always there. The morning’s post brought us some unwelcome news. It was from Meg’s cousin who is now living in Bolton and whose husband had had a stroke the bet part of a year ago. The letter informed us that her husband in a weakened condition had contracted a mild version of the COVID-19 virus but had died (and been cremated) some two months ago. We were shocked, but not absolutely surprised, and later on today we wrote a letter of condolence which we will post tomorrow. I consulted with my neighbour over a range of issues because after the lockdown we have to be very careful about what equipment we need to bring to our resumed Pilates classes. So far, we are thinking about Pilates mat, a bath sheet to spread on it,  small handtowel to act as a neck roll, some stretch Pilates exercise bands, a Pilates ball – I think that’s about it. Anyway, we have enough time to assemble things before the class resumes on 1st September. Before we entered the park, we called by the opticians ao that we could arrange for an eye test for Meg as she feels that her eyesight is deteriorating somewhat and this was a bit more difficult than you imagine involving a call to the manageress (who knows us quite well). However, we got there in end and got an appointment with the optician who knows Meg’s eyes well having treated her over the years. We also took the opportunity to call by our favourite High Street cobbler to get new ferrules put on our National Trust portable stool (what exciting lives we do lead!)

This afternoon, we texted one of the relatives of Meg’s uncle who lives in North Wales to check out whether a quick visit is feasible. As it happens, the coast seems to be clear so upon the strength of that, we went ahead and made a booking in a Holiday Inn that we know well and is very convenient for us (but we got the 3rd last room according to their website) Having got this all booked, we then made a further booking at a country club down the road at which we eat on the day we arrive and then made yet another telephone call to Meg’s uncle to check out it would be OK for us to call upon him and so he could note things in his diary. This leaves us one free day which we would normally spend on our own in Chester but on this occasion, we intend to make a trip from outside Chester to Bolton to see if we can see Meg’s recently bereaved cousin – as it is a trip almost entirely by motorway it seems to us to be an excellent idea to fit in this visit as we are in the vicinity. So now we have ‘all of our ducks in a row’ having made all of the arrangements that we want without any real difficulty.

As it happens, the predicted row over ‘A’-levels is underway. The government is evidently desperately worried not to let ‘inflated’ teacher’s grades become the finished product but as a result of applying some degree of standardisation the public schools and high performers seem to have come out of it best whilst the pupils whose marks have been moderated (downwards) the most just happen to come from the poorest areas, thus apparently ‘baking in’ the inequalities that already exist within the system.  (Thus was it ever so!) It is hard to say at this point whether the political pressure will eventually force a rethink but in purely political terms, a situation in which 39% of marks were reduced by one or more grades does not seem to a particularly healthy one for any government, even one with a large majority. We shall see!

Our mini-heatwave continues although there are indications that we may have a storm tonight and almost certainly tomorrow. Last night, as we were going to bed, there was evidently a storm not too far off with sheet lightning every few seconds or so but the winds and especially the rain passed us by. Again tonight, we have had a small intimation of an impending storm but the house is very hot and humid and we are all praying for a tremendous downpour to cool us all down. On the way to the park, we were delighted to bump into the friends who had invited us round for sandwiches in their garden at lunchtime. By way of (a small) recompense I have donated one of my specially prepared horseshoes, all the way from Yorkshire but duly de-rusted, cleaned up and polished up and with a little explanatory ‘runoff’ from Google which explains the story of the Irish saint, St. Dunstan and why horseshoes can be considered lucky. Now all our friends have to do is to find a fortunate spot in their garden or house to hang it, which no doubt they will. We spent some time completing our Waitrose order this morning which is due for delivery tomorrow afternoon. Also, our email has indicated that we are ‘booked in’ to the church service in St. Mary’s, adjacent to Harvingtom Hall as we were last Saturday so we are off to repeat the experience (and it is just possible that some other friends might join us as well).

In the afternoon, I texted my sister in Yorkshire suggesting that it might be that the time is right for us to make a quick visit to Yorkshire when I could see her and the rest of the Yorkshire extended family, particularly as it is going to be my sister’s birthday at the end of the month. My sister telephoned and we discussed a range of possibilities but it seems there still a range of practical difficulties. Other members of the family are either away/working/having house extensions done so the time is not apposite for a visit. My sister and brother-in-law have no desire to dine out in a village pub as we often do on the occasions of our visits so it appears that we had better wait until the times are a little more propitious before we visit. Similarly, we are conscious that we need to pay a visit to Meg’s aged uncle in North Wales who we were going to see at the very start of the lockdown (and had actually booked our hotel room) but which we decided, fortunately as it turned out, to cancel. We are going to text another member of his extended family to see how the land lies and whether it would be sensible/not sensible for us to make a flying visit for a few days to North Wales but again we feel as though we need to ‘play this one by ear’ on this occasion as well.

Tomorrow is the announcement of ‘A’-levels and the current arrangement is that in the absence of exams, an algorithm will be applied that takes account of teachers’ assessments. the results of mocks if taken and the past track record of the schools. But there was a debacle in Scotland where the Scottish government was forced to abandon all of the ‘awarded’ grades and then rely solely upon teacher assessment in order to avoid a situation in which approx. 40% of students finish up with less than their predicted grades. The UK government are suggesting at the very last moment a hybrid scheme where the student can choose between the provisionally awarded grade, substitute the results of ‘mocks’ if they are higher (which they rarely are) or volunteer to take an examine the autumn. Whatever happens, looks both messy and is going to cause a huge political row. My own view is that even though the teacher assessed grades might be inflated and lack a degree of credibility, then this could be viewed as a one-off compensation in view of the absence of proper tuition in the extraordinary arrangement that students have had to undertake under the shadow of the COVID-19 crisis.  But we shall have to wait until tomorrow and see what happens…