Today was an ‘ordinary’ sort of day in which it looked as the weather was more-or-less set fair but with the threat of a shower. Meg and I decided to risk going down for a walk without the benefit of rainwear as it so potentially humid that outerwear can make you feel quite uncomfortable. We were a little delayed going down to the park as we needed to update our Waitrose order and I also needed to spend some time getting my accounts up-to-date. I left Meg on the park bench, complete with a copy of yesterday’s Guardian and this works out very well as Meg can immerse herself in the newspaper for the 20 minutes in which I am away. Also, if she looks up from the newspaper, she can probably see me enter the park by the main (lower) entrance and observe my progress up the hill to our traditional bench. On the way home, I called in at the house of our South African friend who had texted me the other day desperately searching for a handyman who can do a few jobs for her. I ws delighted to be able to recommend someone who does little (and not so little) jobs for us when the need arises. This afternoon, I gave my rusted spade a final attack and that is all I now intend to do with it – practically all of the blade is now in a sufficiently good condition for me to want to keep it that way. 

There have been several reports in the last few days of people who are critically ill, and some at the point of death, who have been active COVID deniers but have now seen the error of their ways and are pleading with medical staff to give them a vaccine now in the hope that it save them (which of course it won’t) This, for me, raises the interesting question of why many people believe, almost implicitly, in social media rather than the views of the ‘experts’ who often appear on the Main Street Media channels.  For me, the problem is not who some people believe in the social media – after all, there have always been pockets of society of groups who are prepared to believe conspiracy theories. Perhaps some of the explanation here is that in a world where individuals perceive themselves to be always at the ‘receiving’ end of the system, then a belief in what might seem to be outlandish is a way of exerting some degree of power or even control against the over-arching belief systems within a society. The problem for me is not why some people over-rely upon the social media but why a substantial minority (and, according to some reports, a majority) of people have such implicit faith in social media. Without descending into huge academic debates about the presence of culture wars, the following explanation I believe had a lot of traction. The point about social media is that views are promulgated not just by a few powerful sources (the Main Street Media) but stories are shared between friends, colleagues and family members. This can then boost the credibility of the contents of social media  with readers. This may be  due to the fact that people may simply “think differently” when using social media from how they might think when watching the evening news. Why wouldn’t we want to believe a story our friends shared?

Meg and I feel we have had a pretty ‘good’ day today and it is an interesting question of what makes for a ‘good’ versus a ‘not-so-good’ day. I think the answer is that is a good thing to set yourself some limited objectives of what you want to achieve in a day (which might be as mundane as completing a set of household chores) or doing some tidying up (or de-cluttering might be a more accurate term). Then if you complete your limited objectives you are left with a slightly virtuous feeling – conversely, if you had set yourself fairly ambitious objectives, then you might only manage to achieve some of them and are left with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction that one has not achieved more. So the secret of contentment might be to set yourself certain goals (e.g. a walk of a certain length – but not too far to leave you feeling exhausted for the rest of the day) and take satisfaction from achieving them.

Tonight as I was reading my emails, I received a letter from my consultant giving me the results of the investigations I had about a fortnight ago. The letter was generally reassuring but he does have a tendency to write things like (but ‘nothing for you to worry about‘ which does indicate some anomalies of which one is ignorant) One test result has still be returned but so far, so good. I must say I am impressed by the level of monitoring that the NHS provides – one does wonder, though, about the fate of those with lingering or undiagnosed symptoms that could have been targeted much earlier were it not for the pandemic.

Today was the day when our son and daughter-in-law were due to return from their holiday in Jersey. We knew that they would be returning today but assumed that the flight would be later on in the day and we would expect to see them in the evening. However, we got a text early on telling us that their flight from Jersey was at 9.00am this morning and therefore we should expect them home from Birmingham Airport at about 11.00am. This stimulated me into an activity I would rather have done without. I suspected that there ws a slight odour of something going ‘off’ whenever I opened the fridge door. The only thing to do was to strip bare the whole of the fridge, see if there were any offending articles (and I did find something in a bowl that I think was the source of the problem) Then, of course, you have to take out all the shelves, give them a good wash down, replace them in the right order if you can remember what that is and then replace all of the food items. This I now have done but the whole process took an hour and a half and I finished it a few seconds before 11.00am which is when my son and daughter-in-law were scheduled to return. I was glad, in a sort of way, that this had happened as you do need to do it periodically, particularly in the summer time. I am also determined to keep the fridge somewhat understocked in future so that errant items are less likely to be forgotten and I also decided to introduce a more logical order for things such that they can be located more easily.  We have another little domestic drama which is causing  some annoyance. One of the taps in the utility room adjoining our kitchen sprung a leak from somewhere around its base. Eventually the seepage became a drip and then a more-or-less continuously running tap and I had to report to all kinds of binding cloths to attempt to stem the flow and stop what what was rapidly becoming a type of Chinese water torture. Evidently, I had left messages for the plumber last Thursday and Friday but in the nature of the beast, a dripping tap is the very last of a plumber’s priorities when there are boilers to service. The refrain from Woodie Allen kept running through my head ‘not only is God dead but you try finding a plumber on a Sunday!‘ My son took charge of the situation and gave the tap unit as a whole a tweak which I dare not do for fear of making a bad situation worse. We have finally got a time for the plumber to call round but we will have to wait until Thursday afternoon. As we were running a bit short of time, we raced down in the car to pick up our newspapers, had the briefest of elevenses breaks in the park, raced back home again in the car and then I do a quick change before heading off for my Pilates class (routine every Tuesday) Perhaps because of all of the running around this morning, I was not feeling in top form and subsequently the Pilates session proved a bit more difficult for me than is usual. Then it was home and a lightning quick lunch which we just about finished by 3.30pm

By arrangement, I then Skyped one of my ex-colleagues from the University of Winchester. We tend to have an extended chart every fortnight or so but this time round it had been a longer gap than this and we had a lot to say to each other (and not the kinds of things to go into a blog anyway) All in all, by the time we had exchanged accounts of what had happening to us in our day-to-day lives we spent the best part of a couple of hours together which absolutely flew by. We will probably chat again in a fortnight’s time but we reminded each other go jokes, stories and reminiscences which permeates our chats with each other.  

There are two news stories dominating the media this evening, one foreign (sort of) an the other domestic. The ‘foreign’ story concerns Prince Andrew where a woman claims she was sexually assaulted by him when she was 17 twice at locations in the United States and once at Maxwell’s home in Belgravia, London. Sky news incidentally have an amazing graphic dawn upon the flight logs of various aircraft in which the young woman question had been flown all over locations in the US as well as London, Paris and southern Spain as part of the Epstein sex-trafficking operations. The interesting question is actually the writ can actually be served upon Prince Andrew given his policy of non-cooperation and non-availability. Also, once entered into the legal system, the rich and powerful have tremendous options to delay and hinder a full court hearing so one imagines the this particular scenario will go on for months or even years.

The second domestic story today is that it is ‘A’level results day and the headline figure is that practically 45% of pupils entered for the examinations have achieved a grade of ‘A’or ‘A*’ Those responsible for teaching the pupils argue that the results indicate a lot of incredibly hard work from pupils whose educational progression has been far from smooth in the last couple of years given lockdowns, distance leaning and the innovations having to be shown to deliver education in the most trying of circumstances. On the other hand, are these results fair when measured across the generations (people might not have got into course/ universities of their choice last year when they would have done this year)?

Well, the start of another week and at least some of our friends should be returning from their holidays. After we collected our newspapers, we made a quick call into Waitrose because we had run out of one or two things that I forgotten to specify in the last order. As always, the staff in the store were delighted to see us (and us them) and we managed to tell a joke to brighten up their lives a little.  When we got outside, we encountered one of the Waitrose regulars we used to see regularly once or twice a week but we have hardly seen her at all in the last year (with the COVID-19 restrictions in place).  We now know that she often goes along to the cafe on a Saturday morning so we can visit and coincide a bit more frequently from now on. Once we got to the park, we bumped into  one of the park regulars and we exchanged news and pleasantries. The weather forecast today indicated that we might have heavy showers in the morning but they would moderate in the afternoon. Asa it turned out,  the morning was a quite fine although a trifle humid – as Meg and I had put on anoraks in case we had a violent shower, we were feeling a little over-dressed considering the weather.

In the afternoon, I decided to take the car and go for a mini-shopping trip to Asda. I started off with a little list of about nine items and they are all things that I can only get in Asda and nowhere else. The first few items on the list I managed to get very easily but the last item  took as long to hunt for as all of the rest. In the past, I had bought an excellent LED torch from Asda which I use constantly (I use it if I need to get up in the middle of the night but I don’t to wake Meg, or myself, up too much with a bright light). Needless to say, it wasn’t stocked any more and Asda had reorganised the section from which I last bought it so I drew a blank. On the other hand, I did find one or two very useful things including a miniature (and cheap) sort of wastepaper basket which I am going to use in Mog’s Den to store things that will clean up my tools such as an old washing up brush, some volatile oil (think WD-40) which I can use to clean off the tools before they get stored. Evidently, this needs a lid to prevent the Ingress of rain but I have liberated a plantpot ‘saucer’  which complete with a handy brick will serve the purpose of a lid. I also bought some extra bits and pieces from Asda I did not realise I needed until I happened to see them so, all in all, it was quite a worthwhile little trip.

One thing I am trying to do for a variety of reasons is to try and increase the amount of fibre in my diet whilst also incorporating some protein. One of the best sources of fibre plus protein are beans and I seem to remember, years ago, I used to particularly enjoy little tins of Heinz curried baked beans. As I remember them  they were a combination of beans, some sultanas and a subtle, i.e. not overpowering, curry sauce. When I hunted around in Asda, these did not seem to be in stock (or even manufactured any more) soI am going to try and recreate the same. Whilst in Asda I bought a tin of mixed beans as well as a jar of Chinese curried sauce and I already have some sultanas in stock. So tomorrow breakfast time will be an experiment. Incidentally, buying half-size tins of food is always what I call ‘sad’ food. This is is because when I was commuting between Leicester and Winchester, staying in lodgings in Winchester during the week and coming home for the weekends, I needed to go shopping to buy ‘meals for one’ which is generally a half-size tin. You could tell the males who were in a similar plight because at about 5.30 on a Monday morning, you would see a succession of cars with shirts hanging up in the back of the car and evidently a lot of people on the road at that time were on a similar commuting experience to myself (Annie Nightingale on Radio 2 produced the most empathetic radio broadcasts as well just for this group although I am not a regular Radio 2 listener). In the late afternoon, I finally completed the renovation of my spade involving a radical de-rusting. Now that I have got it into good condition and protected by a volatile oil, I am tempted not to store it outside again where it acquire new patinas of rust.So now I have got my Mog’s Den garden too;s on gapped condition, I really do intend to keep them that way.

So it was my Sunday morning routine this morning where I go down early in the morning to collect my Sunday newspapers and I treated myself to a Mozart concert on my old iPhone en route. On the way back, I had espied two escaped plants that I thought I would ‘liberate’ and for this purpose I took with me a gardener’s knife which is basically like a penknife but has an incredibly strong blade once it has been successfully locked into position. The first one of these was a piece of errant mint that had escaped one of the gardens so I cut off a little section of root and put it into a plastic bag I have brought with me.  I then progressed onto the second of my ventures. In a nearby garden, there is a very old and mature sycamore tree (I think() which has evidently cast its key-like seeds all over the place. A cluster have evidently landed in the loose gravel of a neighbouring garden where the seedlings have taken root (simulating what happens when a gardener is trying to develop cuttings – the young seed/plant reaches through the gravel in search of water and nutriments and tends to develop good root systems. Anyway I liberated about three of these and into another plastic bag they went, waiting to be popped into a spare bit of pot or earth as soon as I have the opportunity.  After breakfast, Meg and I walked down to the park and we were delighted to see with our University of Birmingham friend as we often do at the weekend as well as out 86 yr old avid walker who fits in a circuit of at least 9km a day. Today was the last day of the Olympics and we watched a Welsh girl win a boxing gold, Jason Kenny win yet another gold to add to his collection and Laura Kenny  endure a terrible crash in the ‘Omnium’ bike race. Several riders were involved in the crash which looked horrendous : Laura Kenny herself had her bike fly in the air and then on top of her, two other riders ran over her (from what I could tell) and she slid down the track until her (helmeted) head hit the side of the track. The amazing thing is that after this she was expected to get on her bike and complete another series of races including a sprint which she may have won. Under the circumstances to come 7th was an absolute miracle – I think shortly afterwards as well she was expected to be the Team GB flag-bearer at the closing ceremony. And so we bid a restrained and dignified farewell to Tokyo – I was rather expecting to see hordes of young athletes invading the arena to party but I suppose the numbers (and celebrations) had to be severely curtailed because ofCOVID. On to Paris in only three years time and then the Paralympics starts in a couple of weeks of time.

This afternoon after lunch, I had just one little project to do which I thought would take 5 minutes but turned out to be a hard half hour. I have a spade which I keep outdoors for easy accessibility  in Mogs Den. This had got rusted so I treated it first with raw vinegar and then a specialist rust remover which is really Phosphoric Acid (almost completely) Although the spade had been brushed with the rust remover several times I though the residues would be easy to move but this proved not to be the case. I attacked it with a combination of wire brushes, Brillo pads, Chemico (which is just being re-manfactured again after being common in the 1950’s) and half an hour’s elbow grease. It is still not absolutely right so I will give the stubborn patches another ‘working over’ and that will be that – I will condition it with oil and put it back where it lives tomorrow.

Some interesting COVI+D news has emerged today. It seems that researchers have found a clear link between the Scottish participation in the Euro finals and the rise (and fall) of COVID infections. The rate of infections dropped quite dramatically once Scotland had failed to progress any further – it will be interesting to see if there is  an ‘English’ effect once the data is analysed.  The overall rate of infections seems to be fairly stable at the moment but the scientist have calculated that the ‘R’ rate may well have topped below 1.0 which if it sustained, means the pandemic is somewhat on the retreat (for now!) The Health Secretary is concerned (like the rest of the us) at the huge disparity in prices for a full PCR test (required if one is going abroad on holiday) – another example of the private sector ‘making hay whilst the sun shines’ whilst the government’s showing no interest at all in any degree harmonisation or regulation.

We suspected that it would be fine this morning and might rain a little later in the day and so it turned out. On our way to collect the newspapers, we ran into our University of Birmingham friend whom we have not seen for almost a week (as most days of the week he is off playing tennis) Meg was feeling a little tired so I handed Meg her to our friend to accompany her to the park whilst I went to collect the newspapers. In the park, we met up with one of our park regulars  and carried on conversations regarding the Olympics. One thing I have noticed, which has received a little but not an enormous amount of publicity, is the impact of technology on both running shoes and the track itself. The modern running shoes are incorporating some carbon fibre and the effect of this is to add a little bit of ‘spring’ to the athlete as well as lowering impact resistance. Various kinds of technological improvements have also been built into the track. Immediately ‘below the surface’ is a type of honeycomb or lattice arrangement (filled with what?) which has the effect of making the track operate like a series of miniaturised trampolines. The effect of these two technological improvements (running shoes, track) is that world records are being broken quite regularly. In one of the men’s races over hurdles ( I cannot remember which) then the world record was broken in the heats and again in the final. The person who came in second (i.e. silver) would have broken the previous world record whilst not winning the race. Whilst not arguing against the march of technological advance,  I am left with a slight feeling of unease that world records are being broken with the aid of thee technological advances as well as the individual efforts of the athletes themselves.

As we made it home for lunch, a little earlier than usual, the smattering rain looked as though it was going to intensify during the afternoon so I made sure that I applied one of my ‘rust-removal’ routines to a spade which I store in Mog’s Den. This is basically a wire brush, followed by a brillo pad treatment and then a sponge off and clean and dry with kitchen paper.When all of this settled down, I will give it (and my other gardening tools) a good spray with WD-40 (or a near equivalent) which helps to build up a degree of rust protection if I apply every time the tools get used and ‘put to bed’. Halfway through the afternoon, an order arrived from Amazon which was a complete collection of  hand tools for £17.00  Evidently, at this price it is Chinese made but you get about three   different kinds of hand rakes, five different trowels in a variety of shapes and sizes, some secateurs, a miniature garden spray, some gloves, a series of coloured labels, some wire twists complete with cutter and finally. a fabric gardening basket to hold all the tools. All of this lot is destined for the toolbox in Mog’s Den so now there is no excuse for not keeping everything well trimmed and cultivated.

This afternoon, we were generally watching the culmination of the Olympic Games. Team GB seem to be winning medals until the end with a boxing gold for a local Birmingham lad and a gold in the modern pentathlon. This was invented by Pierre de Coubertin (father of the Modern Olympics) and was a variation on the military aspect of the Ancient pentathlon. It focused on the skills required by a late-19th-century soldier, with competitions in shooting, swimming, fencing, equestrianism, and cross country running. I also watched some of the obscure events such as artistic swimming and artistic gymnastics and have to say I was incredibly impressed by the athleticism and gymnastic skills displayed. In the late afternoon, we went to church as we always do early in the evening on Saturday. There we made contact again with a lively Liverpudlian lady who can talk for England but also, at a fairly advanced age makes regular round trips in her car visiting members of her family in Sheffield and Liverpool. We had not seen her for the best part of a year (although she says she has seen us whilst we are walking up and down the road towards the park each day).  I promised her a bottle of our damson gin to which, I gather, she might be somewhat partial. Tomorrow evening will no doubt be closing ceremony of the Olympics and I may well watch this as I am sure that the Japanese will stage it particularly well. In addition, I do like to see the faces of the genuinely happy athletes as the pressures of competition are behind them and they can party for the first time in years. I wonder how many cross-cultural liaisons are made during events like these?

Today is the day when our domestic help calls round and we always seem to have a lot to talk about, even though it is only a week since we last met. She is bringing round a big root of mint for me to help to populate my mint bed in Mog’s Den. In addition she has donated a couple of planters to me and I now just have to think of something really colourful to put in them – perhaps some fuchsias or geraniums. We decided to go down into town by car as there were one or two gardening things that I wanted to buy from Poundland. It was one of those frustrating days when the layout of the store had been changed around and the various things that I wanted seemed to be quite elusive or the design had changed and it was not quite what I wanted. Whilst we were having coffee in Waitrose, one of old friends that we often met there so we had quite a long chat. I did have an ulterior motive in wanting to see her again because she and I have both had a similar type of medical investigation and I wanted to know what ‘post-operative’ advice she had been given. So it was fairly late when we got home but we rustled together a quick curry type meal. After lunch, I was dismayed to find that one of the cheap storage containers I had bought from Poundland  had a flaw in it (a hole in the incredibly cheap plastic it was made of) and I couldn’t find the receipt. I decided to make the best of a bad job and effect an emergency repair with electrician’s tape so the container will serve for the purpose intended (quite light peat for the garden) Then I planted the mint, got my peat and topsoil containers filled and had a general sort- out within my mini greenhouse. Tomorrow I have scheduled for myself a cleanup of some of my gardening tools, some of which need a de-rusting as I store them outside. I have a technique to do this which involves a dousing in white vinegar followed by either a wire brushing and/or a treatment with a Brillo pad. I try to get into the habit of regularly treating my garden tools with WD-40 or the Asda alternative (much cheaper!) so that in general rust is not a problem for me.

It is said that most people dream but we don’t tend to remember any of them. But just as an exception, I had rather a vivid dream the other night which must have resembled the ‘Theatre of the Absurd‘.  In the dream, I was playing the part of the producer of a play called ‘The Vigil’ (which is actually very easy to stage as it essentially a ‘court room drama’).The play revolved around the evidence for the ‘Resurrection’ and therefore is basically on a religious theme. I cannot recall now how I came to be involved but basically I got drafted into the play which was being put on by an amateur dramatic group in Wetherby in Yorkshire. On the strength of this, Meg and I put on the same play when we were university students as a ‘one night stand’. Because it is dark when one is on stage and gazes out into the void, you do not know if you have an audience of 8 , 80 or 800 but I suspect that the entire audience was nearer 8 than anything else. But now to return to my dream. I was trying to persuade one of my colleagues at De Montfort University in Leicester to accept a role in the play. My colleague was affectionately known as ‘Auntie Pat’ by the students and had a buxom figure and a sweet, typical ‘English’ style face. I was trying to persuade ‘Auntie Pat’ to accept the role of Mr. Pinchas who was a Jewish store keeper (who sold the material for Christ’s shroud).  I was saying to Pat that if you don’t want to accept that role, I have another part that needs to be filled, namely a kitchen door. I was trying to persuade her to accept either role by saying I would have to accept the role she did not choose. Just then, my son wandered in, grumpily, complaining that he could not get a good  signal  on the radio he had clamped to his ear (think large 1930’s radio with a mahogany surround) He complained that he could only pick up Hilversum or the Light Program and then only if he located himself just outside Paris. (I know know that Hilversum is a Dutch complex of radio and TV stations and was always well represented on the old-fashioned radio dials). At that point, I woke up and realised why I would never be successful were I to ‘tread the boards’ and try to produce ‘naff’ plays more regularly.

We always knew that we were going to have a bit of a different routine today as we had to planned to go to Droitwich later in the morning. The day was always smattering with rain and so it proved all day long with the weather alternating between a slight drizzle and longer bouts of more prolonged downpour. We had got a little itinerary mapped out for us when we got to Droitwich but we beset with roadworks, temporary traffic lights and all kind of traffic hold-ups. This was not a massive surprise as the Waitrose crew who were due to deliver between 9.00 and 10.00 this morning were a good 20 minutes late because they, too, had been diverted all over the place until they could actually reach us. So by the time I had put all of the shopping away, we had a slightly delayed start but still collected our newspapers in the car. Then we made it (in fits and starts) to Droitwich where the first point of call was our favourite coffee shop. There are several coffee shops in Droitwich but this one has a slightly Wetherspoonish feel to it (books round the walls etc) which we quite like.  We ordered a couple of cappuccinos and one toasted teacake as well as muffin – when the teacake was delivered to us it was enormously which I mean about 5″-6″ in width. Nonetheless, we tucked into with masses of butter (and jam for Meg) and the taste of the cinnamon really came through which I always think of as the mark of a good teacake. Then we progressed to make our pilgrimage to our local ‘Wilko‘ hardware store and whilst Meg was buying some cosmetic items, I busied myself in the gardening and stationary sections.  We were a bit short of time but I finished off buying a big box of gardening lime (which you do not see that often these days) and I bought several packets of seeds (half price) of the kind that you can sow either indoors or outdoors in early August i.e. some rocket, mixed lettuce and coriander. I will get these going in the next day or so all being well as I have the appropriate seed trays and some plastic covers. I also bought a small plastic storage box (but one which, at a distance, you might confuse with a basket weave) because I have a particular purpose in mind for it.I intend to keep this filled with topsoil so that I always have just enough on hand top fill a medium size flower pot. The storage box was some 12″ x 7″ x 5″ which translates through to about 6 litres worth of content.  When I got home, I rather wished that I purchased another of them (although I think I have seen something similar in Bromsgrove) and in this I intended to keep some garden compost, the idea being that I always have a bit if both topsoil and compost on hand (i.e. stored in my mini-greenhouse in Mog’s Den) whenever I feel the urge to do a quick bit of potting. As necessity is the mother of invention, I looked around in our garage for a small cardboard box of about the same dimensions but it needed a bit of reconfiguring so that it opened the way I wanted. I got the various ‘leaves’ of the box stuck together with sellotape but reinforced it all with some strong Gorilla-type tape. I also reinforced the bottom with some spare cardboard and found a bit of adhesive vinyl floor/decorating tile which I used as a sound base. (Incidentally, Poundland sells quite a decent supply of black and white squares of these tiles and they came for about 4-5 in a £1 bundle so I try to always have some in stock)

Now it was on to our ‘lunch’ date, in the Olde Worlde cafe I mentioned yesterday.When the beef dinner arrived it was enormous – about as big as the most laden Christmas meal you could imagine.  We had about 5-6 slices of what I think was silverside to which was added 3-4 some large roasted potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower complete with an onion gravy. Needless to say, we couldn’t quite finish a meal as large as this but the very kind proprietor gave us a ‘doggy bag’ so we could take the bits of beef home to eat later. All of this for about £8.50! I popped into Waitrose to buy some ‘All-Bran’ and was amazed to see that the original Kellogs price was £3.00 a packet but Waitrose sold their alternative for £1.80. When we got home, we just collapsed in front of the TV in order too passively follow the Olympics (although skateboarding is not really our ‘cup of tea’) I did ensure that our large seed planting tray that we bring into use when we are sowing seeds into seed trays on our outside table was cleaned up and pressed into service as a rainwater collector ( to go into our new 6-litre watering can which Wilko were selling for £2.00 and which I could not resist!)

Today was one of those beautiful days – almost spring-like with some bright, sunny weather but not too hot and with no prospect of rain until a lot later in the day. We walked straight to the newspaper shop to pick up our newspapers but ‘The Guardian‘ was missing so we needed to pop into Waitrose to pick up a copy. At the same time, we picked up a carton of ice-cream which we seem to be constantly running out of these days. And so we made our way to the park having a chat with one of our park regulars en route. Then it was coffee and biscuits as normal but we didn’t meet with any of our other regulars as they are either on holiday (or preparing for them). Whilst on the subject of holidays, Meg and I hope to be able to get to Rome on a pre-booked holiday in late September. I still think the chances are only about 50:50 but if the Rome holiday falls down, we thought to we would develop a plan B. Of all of the picturesque locations through England and Wales, we have never actually been to the Brecon Beacons in mid-to-south Wales. So I did a quick internet search and was pretty impressed by the publicity put out by the Brecon Beacons National Park. If the Rome trip does fall over, we thought we would try the Brecon Beacons for about 5 nights or so. We would probably make Brecon or Abergavenny our base and then sight-see from there. In addition, it is only just over 70 odd miles from Bromsgrove and quite accessible via the M5 and M50 so relatively reachable. If the weather is poor rather than good, we may even improve our chances of getting a last booking in one of the local hotels.

This afternoon, being a fine afternoon and as I was well supplied with petrol for the lawnmower, I had allocated this afternoon as a lawn mowing day. This worked out fine and as the sky was getting slightly overcast, paradoxically this helps with my mowing as it becomes easier to discern the last ‘track’ of the wheels and therefore one starts in the correct position for the next row of the cutting. After I finished the mowing, the sky clouded over a little and we got a few minute spots of rain so I started straight away on the second little job of the day. This was to take the three 40kg bags of blue slate chipping and get them over into their ultimate position. I utilised an enormously useful little garden trug on wheels which belongs to my daughter-in-law but really comes into its own when you are transporting large (ie heavy) objects around the garden. So I got the three bags of slate humped down the steep steps which affords access to Mog’s Den and laid one of them in some of the bare areas that needed to be covered. This is much easier than it sounds because you just get the bag into position, cut it open, spill out the contents and then use a boot or a gloved hand to get the slate clippings the way you want them. After our tea, the rain started a long, constant drip and I was delighted as that is what the garden (or rather the plants) needs right now. Then, with a sickening ‘thud’, I realised that I had to wheel our two large grey wheelie bins into a position at the end of our road so that they can be collected early tomorrow morning. (As we live a road which is ‘private’ to us and we are responsible for its maintenance an so on, the refuse vehicles will not come down – and they might not be able to negotiate the 90º bend in any case) By the time I had taken one full and very heavy wheelie bin to the end of the road, I calculated that it was a distance of 120 yards – so by the time I made the journey there and back two times, I reckon I had covered 480 yards which is more than ¼ mile in the rain. Tomorrow we are going to treat ourselves to a little trip to Droitwich (incidentally, that is the town in which my mother was born but that is a long and complicated tale going back to 1911 which I will not go into now) We have two treats in store. The first of these is a trip to our favourite hardware store (‘Wilko‘) where we can stock up on cosmetics, kitcheny type things, stationary, gardening things, etc. Then we are going to have lunch in a kind of ‘Olde Worlde‘ type cafe in which they specialise in putting on a roast dinner with all of the trimmings once a week on a Thursday. So we have booked our slot for a beef dinner – the food is just simple, home prepared food with nothing fancy but served at an incredibly cheap price. The locals are always friendly and everyone chats with each other as well, which is a bonus!

Today was the day when our son and daughter-in-law were flying off to Jersey on holiday. Yesterday was evidently spent in packing up and they left by taxi at 7.30 this morning. It is always reassuring when we receive a text from them to say that they have landed safely and got to the hotel which is their favourite holiday haunt. They did communicate the news, though, that the airports seemed particularly quiet so presumably ‘stress points’ such as getting through security is so much easier when there are fewer people around. We eventually got ourselves organised and set off for our daily walk but we knew that timings were always going to be a little tight as Tuesday is my ‘Pilates’ day. On our way down the morning, we ran across some of our oldest friends who are off on holiday to Ireland for a fortnight so we must get used to not seeing them for quite a while. As time was tight, we went up to our normal park bench but decided to pick up our newspapers later on in the day so that we could save a little bit of time. On our way back, we saw a lady who is the neighbour of our friends and we have often had brief snatches of conversation with her but never any conversations in depth. She has quite recently lost her husband who had been ill for quite some time and we often wondered if the opportunity arose, then we would invite her round for a cup of tea (or something stronger) in our garden if the weather is fine for next week. As she is a French lady who was a teacher of French in one of the local schools and Meg had lived some of her early adolescent years just outside Paris, then I am sure we will have quite a lot to chat about once we get to seize the opportunity to get to know each other a bit better. I remember telling her the story of the (female) French Minister for Culture ( think) who had somehow acquired a cat. This cat seemed a rather truculent character who was constantly mewling wanting to be put you. Once put outside, though, the cat seemed to adopt a truculent and obstreperous attitude and seemed to want to get back inside again. The big problem was what the cat should be called (it appeared nameless when given to the French minister) Anyway, the most appropriate name for the cat was quickly chosen given its behaviour and characters – namely ‘Brexit‘!)

After we got home, I had a quick 5-minute turnaround before I walked down to into town for my weekly ‘Pilates’ session. There were only three of us regulars today but I felt I had a fairly good workout considering that I have been nursing a sore back for the past few days. This was acquired in the most unfortunate of little incidents – I had been undertaking my little 5-minute routine of stretches that I normally perform first thing in the morning when I sneezed hard in the middle of a stretch and gave myself a right ‘jerk’ at just the wrong moment. Fortunately, it is settling down now after a day or so and I discovered (as my Pilates teacher confirmed) that a regime of walking is pretty good for helping a sore back to repair itself (and a prolonged period of sitting is actually quite bad for it).

After lunch, I made a little trip out by car as there were some errands that needed it. The first was a trip to the garage in order to pick up a gallon of prime petrol which I need for the lawnmower. It only takes two gallons a year and so is incredibly economical but I do now know that in order to guarantee yourself some ethylene free (and trouble free) lawn mowing, it is a good idea to get the most expensive petrol on offer and to overcome the ethylene problem by adding a special petrol stabiliser to it. Anyway, that will see me all right until the end of the season. The next job along was to call in at Asda to collect another three bags of blue slate chippings to provide some finishing touches to Mog’s Den. Normally, I ask for some lusty young men to help me get these into the car but in view of the absence of the same, I made do by a high loading trolley and then a quick heave into the back of the car (without, I think, doing further damage to the old back). Then it was on to the newsagent to pick our our newspapers (much later in the day than normal) The minute I got back we FaceTimed some of our ex-Waitrose friends as we normally do each Tuesday evening and we made some tentative plans for a face-to-face meeting for tea and cakes in the forthcoming week if the weather is still set fair.

It proved to be quite a bright and breezy day today with just a hint that showers might come along later in the day to disrupt things. After a somewhat delayed start whilst we did some household jobs, Meg and I started off walking late down to the park. On our way down, we met some of our church friends and we were very pleased to see them because we had not coincided for a couple of weeks. They were just off on holiday for a week so we quickly told them all of our news and they sped off to spend a week in a forest retreat somewhere. Meg and I progressed as far as the park where we bumped into one of our daily park friends and we chatted for a few minutes before I went off to collect our newspapers for the day. We tend to ask ourselves unanswerable questions such as ‘If you are flying in an aircraft from west to east faster than the rotation of the earth, do you actually get younger? Which army in the Second World War actually exhibited the most discipline when confronted with civilian populations? Did the Americans know that Japanese codes had been deciphered and therefore they had forewarning of the attack on Pearl Harbour’ and so on and so forth.Then it was a leisurely walk homeland a lightish lunch before we settled down to watch the Olympics. In particular, we watched the British team secure a gold in the Eventing (Equestrian) category – the first time we have secured a gold medal in this event since 1972 – fifty years ago. I think it was an Olympics game some time ago in which we were enjoying success in cycling, rowing and equestrian events when an Australian commentator remarked, with a degree of feeling,’What is about you Brits? You only win things in the Olympics when you are sitting down!‘ This was a wry observation but quite amusing when you think about it.

This afternoon, I had two little jobs I had set myself, neither of them particularly onerous. Firstly, I had ordered through Amazon a mini-dustbin in which I am going to store a large bag of grit which I had previously ordered and had in stock. This involved making a little brick platform so that the little dustbin (and my storage chest) sit a little proud of the rest of the surface to keep themselves clear of water, slugs and the like. I then had a couple of bags of blue slate clippings which I put down and these spread fairly thinly, so I think I need to pop down to Asda where I can pick up an extra three bags of slate for £9.00 and thicken up the layers of slate that I spread this afternoon. Then inside for a cup of tea and a pleasant little job. I buy rapeseed oil in 5 litre containers for a specialist little farm in Staffordshire where the whole family business is growing the rapeseed and then producing and clarifying the oil itself. I have a series of empty glass cordial bottles and my 5-litre supply fills ten of these but I find it useful just to be able to grab another bottle of oil when I run out. I share the oil with my domestic help as well.

The COVID news stories are developing as well. The principal story this evening is that under pressure from many Tory MPs amongst others, the Test-and-Trace app has been ‘tweaked’ so that, basically, it will ‘ping’ fewer people than previously which save them (and the economy) from further self-isolation. This move has been on the cards for several days now but I have to smile at the  ‘chutzpah’ of the government. Basically, if you have a measuring instrument (‘Test-and-Trace‘) that gives you results that you don’t like or are inconvenient then just adjust the measuring instrument. Mind you, the Tories have form in doing things like this. At a time when the rising unemployment rates were a matter of deep political significance, the government kept on changing the definitions of how the unemployed were counted. The first two changes to the rules actually increased the claimant count but the Social Security Advisory Committee found the unemployment definition had been changed 20 times between 1979 and 1988, and that almost every change reduced the number of people defined as unemployed.

The second major change that has come into effect basically allows people to enter the UK without a quarantine if you have a double vaccination and come from a major European country  or the USA. No doubt, the government is hoping that other European countries will reciprocrate but this is a huge question. In theory, Meg and I are due to go on holiday to Rome in late September but unless the Italians change their quarantine policy in a reciprocal fashion, then our holiday looks in jeopardy.