Today was quite a sharp contrast, weather-wise, with the past few days. There was a clear blue sky and plenty of sunshine but the temperature had dropped dramatically to about 7° so we were experiencing our first cold ‘snap’ of the winter. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a wonderful day for walk but not today as we had plans to visit Droitwich (6.5 miles down the road). As is our new pattern on Thursdays, I leapt out of bed to get ready so that I can leave the house at 7.40 and get to the Waitrose store in Droitwich about one minute before it opens. Then I have quite a pleasant hour shopping and avoiding temptation (some of the time) but the eventual bill is mitigated somewhat by the £8 voucher if you spend over £40 and have a Waitrose loyalty card. After we had put the shopping away and had a delayed breakfast, we went by car to collect our newspapers and then made a journey straight to Droitwich as we had planned some days ago. We had made a lunch booking for 1.00am but arrived a few minutes earlier so decided to have a little wander via the chariry shops (of which there are several in Droitwich, as every other High Street these days) On our way we passed a second-hand shop full of all kinds of things that you imagine might be useful. For example, they had two guitars in stock – one at £15 and the other at £20 although they did not look like the full size article to me. But what caught our eye was a collection of 4 CD’s ( a total of 58 tracks altogether) of famous operatic arias  for the grand sum of £3.00 We bought this without demur because we thought it would provide a very good accompaniment for us when we go on a long car journey and we do have one in prospect. Then we make our way to ‘Ye Olde Worlde Coffee Shoppe‘ (not its actual name) where we had booked in for our roast dinner. Everybody is absolutely crammed in but there is always a lot of jollity around. We had a lamb roast where our plate was piled high and accompanied by roast potatoes and two other veg. The meals are always so huge that it is quite a struggle to finish them but we did polish them away together with a couple of glasses of cordial – all for the princely sum of £18 for the two of us. 

After that, we progressed onto one of our favourite hardware stores which is Wilko. This is a kind of hardware store that also sells stationary, cosmetics, kitchen and gardening goods and so on. I had a little list of some stationery items and some kitchen utensils and was moderately successful in buying what I wanted. One particular thing I wanted was some fairly long bladed scissors, a size greater than the normal offering you get in stores these days. On ‘spec’ I bought a pair of scissors advertised as ‘Fabric’ scissors, not knowing the exact difference beteen them and ordinary scissors.  When I got home, I did a bit of research and discovered that fabric scissors are generally longer-bladed and are manufactured from a carbon steel (easier to sharpen and harder) rather than stainless steel. There are lots of imprecations that you should never cut fabric with ordinary scissors and vice versa but I discovered a website which details the differences for you. Apparently, in the process of paper manufacture there are harsh fibres, minerals ,various clays, calcium carbonate and other additives that will blunt the scissors. The website had assembled a series of experts (usually scissor manufacturers) who explained why, in general terms, you should avoid cutting paper with fabric scissors. But according to at least some of the experts, all scissors become dull with use eventually. But if you do need to cut paper with fabric scissors, make sure that the paper lint is wiped off the blades after each use. One conclusion is that the harm done to scissors by cutting paper is often exaggerated by those who use them for dressmaking. So in conclusion, I am pleased to have paid £1 extra for a superior product that has a sharper blade, feels a ‘tighter’ fit and with larger, more comfortable handles. You live and learn.

The COVID story rumbles on and I have a fair idea of how this is all going to end (i.e. a government climb-down, too little and too late) The UK government has changed its booster jab advice so people can book without being contacted; more than 50,000 daily cases are recorded and it is the highest figure since 17 July; doctors warn the UK is being “wilfully negligent” by not moving to Plan B. In the meanwhile, the most mixed of messages are being conveyed. In the House of Commons, none of the Tories will wear face masks for, as the Leader of the House (Wiilliam Rees-Mogg explained) ‘after all, on this side of the house, we all know each other!‘ (I am sure the virus has the intelligence not to transmit itself if the recipient is already known to the transmitter)

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Today really was a rainy day and we were resigned to the fact that our normal activities would have to be curtailed somewhat. Consequently, we took our time getting ready and when we were ready to set forth, we had changed our plans somewhat. We collected our newspapers and then went to the park where we only intended to walk through the drizzle to the bandstand – which we did. Needless to say, nobody else of a sane disposition was walking in the park save one intrepid beagle owner so we went to the bandstand and ate a few biscuits which we had taken with us, foregoing the coffee which is fiddly when you do not have a park bench to perch upon. As we were finishing off, the clouds rolled away and we were subjected to that kind of really bright sunshine that you tend to get after a storm, with all the colours of the trees and shrubbery having a specially vivid appearance. We knew we had to have an early-ish lunch because I was going to be telephoned by the doctor to discuss some blood tests some time after 2.00pm. The doctor actually phoned at about 1.30 and we had a general discussion with the result that I am being prescribed some iron for my sins.

After we had discussions with family and neighbours we have heard mention to two or three free-to-air programmes at least that we do not seem to be able to receive. I am never very happy about re-tuning the TV but after some reading around the subject, it looks as though this is what is required in order to get the TV to update itself. So after midnight, I took my courage in both hands and re-tuned the TV which was actually quite a breeze and only took some five minutes or so.  Later on today, I thought I would have a quick look at the channels I hd managed to access. One of them is Sky Arts and another is PBS America (Public Service Broadcasting, America) and whilst lingering on the channel, we stumbled into a documentary on Annie Oakley, the great all-American ‘Wild West’ heroine. Another channel  is the Smithsonian (associated with the great American museum of that name) and I am looking forward to exploring this channel and the other two if nothing else grabs my attention. To be honest, I tend to find the things I want to watch on BBC2, BBC4 and Channel 4 so now I feel that I have expanded considerably my viewing options.

Late on this afternoon, I did some mundane little tasks (screwing a new head on a brush – something for some reason I seem to spend all of my time doing in my mid-teens) and then came the Wednesday afternoon ‘chore’ in which I drag our brown and green bins to the end of the drive where they can be accessed by the Refuse Disposal vehicles (we have to do this because our road is ‘private’ i.e. unadopted and the bin men do not/come down our road) Whilst doing this I met and had a long chat with one of our near neighbours who I had not seen to chat to for several weeks now. When we moved into this house her two children were very much younger. Now of course they have grown up, both gained first class degrees from De Monfort University in Leicester and are now in gainful employment and living fairly locally still. We were just finishing off this conversation when our immediate next door neigbour swept into view and we are always good for a natter whenever we coincide. Sometimes the topics centre around classic pop songs/groups of the1950’s and 1960’s of which our neighbours has an encyclopaedic knowledge (as well as a collection of juke boxes whih he lovingly collects whenever he comes across a good specimen) 

The COVID news is dominated this evening by our Health Secretary (Sajiv Javid) warning us that the number of cases of the virus, currently nearing 50,000 cases a day could well reach 100,000 cases before too long. It seems to me that the Health Secretary is almost trying to blame the public for this state of affairs by urging everyone to come forward as soon as possible for their booster jabs (as the immune status of the first vaccinated might be waning after six months) He could always make a start, of course, in making sure that the massive reservoir of infection otherwise known as schools receive the attention that they deserve (particularly as other societies have been vaccinating schoolchildren for months) I suspect that face-mask wearing (or the absence of it) is not helping the situation as it worsens day by day. I listened to an interview with an A&E consultant explaining that the number of attacks on staff was increasing rapidly. Some of the frustrations amongst patients was caused by the reluctance of patients to wear masks, wash their hands and generally accept that hospitals differ from other spaces!

Today is rather a ‘special’ type of day as it is 14 years ago by the date that we moved into our present house. Fourteen completed years seem to have flown by and exceeds by a few months the longest that we have ever stayed in any one house. We know that we moved in on a Friday and we can check that out in the following way: 14 years + 4 ‘leap’ years then there is an extra day (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) makes 18 days ‘forward’ as it were. If we were to count back 18 days from a Tuesday, we would get to a Friday which is absolutely correct. In our 14 years we have done a fair amount in that we have acquired the whole of the drainage field and associated roadways  (in concert with some neighbours), put a thick hedge around our BioDisk facility disguising it completely, acquired a thin triangular parcel of land which has become ‘Mog’s Den‘ and evidently kept all of the systems of the house up and running.  Meg and I treated ourselves to a trip down to Waitrose where we had a cappucino and met up with one of the erstwhile regulars. We had determined to do this anyway on a Tuesday because we need to be back in plenty of time for me to undertake my walk down to the Pilates class, which is a regular feature of every Tuesday. Whilst in Waitrose, I went to buy some vegetable stock and was delighted to find that a new line has been introduced into their store called ‘Zero Salt’ vegetable stock. What is interesting, though, is that a product without salt is twice the price of a comparable product with salt, which tells us something. The nutritionists tell us that ‘salt is the new sugar’ i.e. to be avoided by those in danger of developing hypertension. So we made our way rapidly home and I walked down to Pilates, avoiding the rain which I also avoided on the way back home again.

This afternoon, my son and daughter-in-law were upgrading their computer systems and there is always a certain element of doubt whether things will work as, in theory, they should. Anyway, all is well that end’s well and I am very pleased that they can relax knowing that their systems are now functioning well and as intended. Whilst they are at, they may be upgrading their TV system which is probably about ten years old and, of course, technology has moved quite a lot these days. 

I am not normally a follower of Twitter but a very authoritative source has posted the most disturbing of tweets. The expert in question is Anthony Costello who is Professor of International Child Health and Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health. He has tweeted the following, along with a table of data to prove his case:‘The UK has the highest case rates of COVID-19 in the world. One third of our population is not protected. China has already vaccinated a higher % and through infection control has a death rate of 3 per million. Our death rate is 2028 per million. The govt + advisers are silent.’ Even allowing for a selective quotation of statistics and perhaps a desire to make a political case, the implications of some of this data are disturbing in the extreme. Even the government is saying that it is getting worried as COVID cases top 40,000 a day and deaths are the highest for seven months at 223. One has to ask why these rates are so high compared wih the rest of continental Europe and it does appear that we have certainly unlocked down far, far too early. Other countries seem to have vaccinated their school populations starting months ago whilst we have only just got round to it. Also, the absence of facemask wearing not to mention absence of social distancing must collectively be taking their toll. In addition, the booster jabs seem to have slowed to a crawl just at the point where the effects of some of the earlier vaccinations might be washing themselves out.

The government has published its ‘Green’ Strategy in advance of the COP (Climate Change) meeting to be hosted in Glasgow in about three weeks time. This is a multi-pronged policy quite a lot aimed at the domestic market, the ambition being that no new gas boilers will be sold by 2035. It is anticipated that ‘heat pump’ technology will take over the role provided by today’s gas boilers and to this end, there will be a grant of up to £5,000 per household. In addition, there will be an end to the sale of diesel and petrol driven cars by 2030. It is intended that there will be a host of measures to have a new generation of small nuclear reactors. According to the PM, up to 440,000 new jobs will be created in ‘green industries’ by 2030. How much of all this will come to pass is unclear but the direction of travel has been laid out for us.

We knew that a band of rain was due to sweep across the country and so it proved. The rain was not particularly intense but enough to stop a normal sit down in the park. So Meg and I went together to pick up our daily newspaper and then swung back towards the park where we headed, as might be anticipated, for the bandstand. We imagined that this would be full of joggers and dog walkers but in the event, we had the whole bandstand to ourselves. Meg was seated in the middle of this on our three legged stool (which we take to act as. small improvided table as it is so light) and I juggled with the comestibles trusting that Meg would not make a sudden lurch to the left or right which, on a three-legged stool, might deposit her on the floor. Then we made for home so I could get on with a range of domestic jobs – principally getting on the phone to organise or reorganise various payments. Firstly, I mamaged to get the car booked in for a servivce and that was very easy. The next client along was the online delivery firm Ocado which I had used  about a year early in the early stages of the pandemic but not recently. I managed to  cancel my subscription to their services – incidentally, isn’t it interesting that to sign up for things takes only a few ‘clicks’ and is all too easy – whereas to cancel a service takes a phone call and is certainly not a prominent option on the organisation’s website. But this experience ended OK as well because I did get through to a friendly person who accepted my cancellation and even said they would return the small payment that had somehow crept onto their system (despite an out-of—date card) which was fine by now. After lunch, I was due to tackle ‘the big one’ because I have had a feeling that I am paying too much for my landline and feel the need to reduce the costs to an acceptable minimum. When I did get onto BT, I asked to be put through to their ‘retentions department’ and threaten to cancel my account altogether. My bills were higher than usual because I was on an unlimited tariff (which I didn’t realise) so I got this put right by getting put on to a minimal tariff. Then I was transferred to a different department to explain why my bills seemed to be doubling compared with last March but for no apparent reason. The explanation seemed rational but irrational at the same time – my bills last year might appear low because I had built up some credit which lowered the quarterly bill but as the quarters rolled by so the credit expired and the bills increased. Then I asked where the credit had come from and how it got built up and the explanation seemed arcane. However, I have now simplified my payment system to a single, direct debit system which avoids the problem of BT estimating my bills, charging me against that estimate and other weird and wonderful accounting methods which do not appear to be particularly transparent. However, by the end of the afternoon I got myself in the situation where I wanted to be which was lower bills for the same service and a more transparent insight into how my bills get calculated. In the fullness of time, I may try and get my broadband and fixed line systems aligned when they are each up for renewal provided always that I can keep my landline number which is on countless lists by now.

Later on this evening, it was my chance to put my newly acquired SoupMaker into use, now tht I have found out how to actually use it. The recipe I had downloaded from the net indicated that I should use four parsnips but did not specify their weight. I had bought some enormous parsnips from Waitrose the other day so I decided to peel 1½ of them and parboilded this as I suspected that it might be left a bit too chunky of I put them in absolutely raw. The recipe called for some sautéd onion as well as some Granny Smith apples – the apples were no problem as I now have plenty of those. And so I started on my first soupmaking venture – after some huffing, puffing and blending my first results were ready in about 25 minutes. The results were even better than I had anticipated as the result was very ‘creamy’  and piping hot and we really enjoyed our very first meal. I had prepared too much parsnip and apple as initially I looked as though I was going to exceed the ‘maximum’ limits so I swiftly divided my prepared veg into two tranches. No doubt tomorrow (carrot and coriander?) I will be able to make much faster progress than even today.  

So another Sunday dawns  which is always a mark of how the weeks are rolling by. This morning, having got up early, a tremendous rainstorm passed over the Midlands but it had done its worst by the time I came to walk down, on my own, to collect the Sunday newspaper. After the Andrew Marr show,  I prepared the elevenses and we walked slowly down to the park in weather that was damp but not actually raining. We found our University of Birmingham friend chatting with a dog owner (of a labradoodle, which are obviously quite popular). Not being a particularly ‘doggy’ person, I thought I would just put the word Labradoodle into Google to see what transpired. I was amazed at the wealth of information that the website provided on several headings of adaptability, all around friendliness, health and grooming needs, trainability, physical needs, vital statistics to be followed by extensive  additional information on coat types, general temperament and I know not what else besides. I must acknowledge that the days are long gone when you saw a puppy sitting in the corner of a per shop window and you paid about 7s6d for it – or was it even more? Anyway, we were soon deep into a conversation whether hypocrisy (engaging in activity despite one’s declared politics) was much more rampant on the left than on the right. I argued that hypocrisy is always less on the right because they ‘own’ the system, benefit from it, and therefore have less need to iron out inconsistencies whereas the claim on the left is that they can manage capitalism better than the capitalists (which is occasionally correct but the general electorate remain to be convinced) Our political dicussions are like that – but they are always a little inconclusive. There is another line that we might pursue in the days ahead i.e. that voters are more influenced by sheer emotion (and those who manipulate symbols better, generally true of the right) than rationality, facts, figures  and pure reason. 

Now for the biggest disappointment of the day. Before we went for our walk, I unpacked our brand-ndw Tefal SoupMaker and followed the instructions to give it a preliminary clean. All you had to do was to fill it with hot water and press a button. What actually happened was that each of the control LED lights lit up in a sequence and nothing else happened. This was repeated several times with the same result – so it could well be a case of not DOA (Dead on Arrival) but Malfunctioning on Arrival. So I consulted the website and submitted a form to TEFAL asking whether this was a fault and should the unit be returned? The form was accepted but with a message to say that because of COVID restrictions on staff, it might be some time before a response would be forthcoming. There is also a Customer Service telephone number so this might have be tried in the morning. I suspect that it is a case of returning the whole thing (fairly easy with Amazon but a nuisance all the same) and hope that I do not get another from the same batch with the same fault occurring on the next one. Just to rub salt into the wound, my book on  Making Soups in your SoupMaker arrived also from Amazon but this will have to wait until I get a unit that works. I tried a quick Google search to see how common faults might be on brand new machines but this information does not seem to be readily available (I wonder why?)

Sky news have produced a report called COVID crisis – The pandemic year. Their trailer for their report indicates: ‘You can look behind the scenes to discover what the government knew (and didn’t know) about the new coronavirus as the number of deaths began to rise. Make your own mind  up as to what the UK got right, and where lessons can be learnt.’

This looks as though it might be incredibly informative – it is interesting that SKY are producing a report like this but the BBC which seems to me to have been totally emasculated in recent years would not do anything that appeared so critical of the government. Anyway, I need to give this a good read to see if it fulfills the promise.

The week ahead looks as though we shall enjoy (?) a mild but wettish few days and then a really cold blast is going to hit us from the Arctic with zero and sub-zero temeperatures to which to look forward. If it is going to cold and dry then this is one thing but cold with an icy wind is something else altogether.  One is tempted to use the phrase ‘Winter drawers on‘ but people might realise that this phrase (or rather jokes)  was banned by the BBC in their ‘Green Book’ published in 1949 along with any references to ladies underwear, honeymoon couples or fig leaves. One can only say that times have changed!

For a whole variety of reasons, and now that the winter nights are drawing on, I have started to wonder whether a soup maker might be a worthwhile investment for the kitchen – particularly as after some rearrangement and rationalisation, I have now space for it. Our daughter-in-law is a great soup maker and consumer, as is our domestic help. So under these dual influences, I decided to take the plunge and order one. Although it was only ordered very late at night last night, nonetheless delivery was extraordinarily prompt and it was delivered before our morning walk this morning. During the night and having ordered the soup maker, I took the precaution of finding and then ordering a book full of  soupmaker recipes and I also ran off two or three that I discovered on the internet.  All of this was just as well because the Tefal soupmaker booklet which arrived with the machine which appeared voluminous was less so when you took into account that the booklet was written in 10 languages and included not only soups but also smoothies and purees. One of the recipes that rather took my fancy was a parsnip with apple soup and as I already had plenty of apples as of yesterday, all I needed to buy was some parsnips. I left Meg on her customary park bench and an earnest discussion soon ensured beween Our University of Birmingham friend, the ‘NHS Queen’, the ‘World Traveller’ and myself before I was despatched to run my errands. Just before I went, though, we knew that the towns local football team (Bromsgrove Sporting) were in a crucial FA preliminary match against Grimsby Town. By halftime, we discovered that Bromsgrove were 3-0 down and by the end of the match, they had been defeated 5–0 which is about as comprehensive a defeat as is possible. Having then picked up the newspaper, I then popped into Waitrose and noticed some huge parsnips, which I bought together wih a supply of carrots, the last remaining coriander plants and some biscuits of which we were running short. Now I have enough root vegetables to make soup until it is running out of my ears so tomorrow I will devote to a bit of experimentation with my new toy/kitchen gadget. When we got home, we feasted on a special ‘Steak and Ale’ pie which we had bought from the market when we had our little stay in the Brecon Beacons. I decided to give the pie a bit of an extra twist by painting its surface with a raw egg which worked fine. We used up some red cabbage supplemented by a bit of our own apple and finally augmented the ‘jus’ I made yesterday so we could have some more gravy with the pie. Altogether a success.

This afternoon, we had a quiet afternoon, as we always do when we we know we are going to church later on the evening. The church was rather a subdued affair – the church heating sysem had broken down, beeen repaired with a new part and had then broken down again.

The reverberations from the killing of Sir David Amess continue to dominate the media. As a very well respected local MP with no ministerial ambitions, there is now a lot of concern how we can protect a vital part of our constitution i.e. the link that an MP must have wih its constituents by face-to-face contact. The political elite have come together in the face of the tragic events. Both Boris Johnson and David Cameron went jointly to lay wreaths at the murder site today. Also, there is a report that in the ensuing by-election, the Conservative candidate when chosen will have no opposition as other political parties will not field candidates (Even if they did, they woiuld have lost massively anyway.)  The whole incident has been declared a terrorist incident  even though the attacker seems to have been a lone-wolf attacker of Somali origins. No count, this is so that the secret organs of the security services can trawl all kinds of data sets not available to the ‘normal’ police so that they can ascertain if the assassin is part of a wider social network or not. Great parallels are being drawn with the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour MP, during the referendum campaign some five years ago. Two MPs murdered within a space of five years is a bit of a frightening statistic and  one hopes does not lead to the situation, increasingly common in the US where elected populations feel the need to wear body armour and/or stab proof vests. As is often the case, one looks to the Sunday newspapers for a bit more in depth analysis of the background to a story like this. Normally NewsNight would fulful this function but not on a Saturday or a Sunday night.

Looking at today’s date, it makes one realise that the month of October is nearly half gone and, I suppose, it is a sign of advancing years that the weeks and months seem to fly by with increasing rapidity. The only problem with this is that October will soon give rise to November and November is one of my least favourite months of the year.  I think the reason for this is any last vestige of summer has gone and, apart from November 5th which doesn’t hold any real attractions for me, the month of November always seems to me to be a bit of a ‘non’-month i.e. halfway sandwiched in between the months of October when we had Meg’s birthday and other liaisons to which to look forward and the month of December which, of course, has Christmas at the end of it. Also after December 21st/22nd the nights are actually getting shorter by a smidgeon each day. So all in all November is just a month to be lived through. This morning was quite a fine day so although it was a little cooler than days in the past, Meg and I enjoyed our perambulation as far as the park. We had our coffee and I left Meg on the park bench knowing that some of our other park regulars would soon be on their way, which indeed they were. We were discussing, inter alia, how far such terms as are increasingly bandied about (bi-polar, schizophrenic, autistic spring to mind) refer to real and immutable phenomena or whether they are only just society’s ways of attributing a label to behaviours that are defined as some as problematic.  At other times and in other place e.g. Joan of Arc hearing ‘voices’ that led to the downfall of the English armies, what we now term as schizophrenia night have been interepreted as a ‘hotline to God’

After lunch, it was time to gather in this year’s apple crop. We have about 4 trees spread over two locations in the garden some of which are very productive and some of which have yielded practically nothing. The first tree was so laden with small, rosy eating  apples that some of the slender branches bearing them had actually split but I gathered about 12lb of fruit althogether from  this one tree. Its companion, though, bore practically nothing  but I am just concerned with the total yield. Thee young trees themselves were bought from that well known horticultal vendor, Messrs. Aldi and were about £1.99 each as far as I can remember.  I then moved on the fruit trees in Mog’s Den and these  were undoubedly cookers as they were much larger and much greener. At a guess, I would say that I harvested about 15lb of cookers from these trees – all in all,it was three bucket full of fruit. Then, of course, I had to prepare the fruit. I decided that it woiuld be a bad idea to actually wash the fruit as this might leave the fruit slightly damp from which infections might follow. What I actually did was to wipe each apple well with a barely damp cellulose cloth and the fruit was further divided in Grade A (capable of longer term storage) and Grade B (little imperfections such as a bird strike which meant that the fruit neded to be eaten almost immediately) Now that I have my boxes of fruit all prepared (courtesy of Asda whose fruit boxes are invaluable) I am keeping them in our ‘outer’ kitchen-cum-utility room where I can keep my eye on them and remove any immediately in case a mould or rot steps in. In the past, I have fed some of the local mice with some munchy morsels so I am determined not to let this mistake occur again.

The news headlines have been dominated by the stabbing to death of a Tory MP, Sir David Amess. Of course, this is a second killing of an MP in recent years, the other being Jo Cox the Labour MP for Batley and Spen who was killed by a far right fanatic during the refendum campaign. Sir David Amess seems to have been a very different kind of MP. He was not at all interested in climbing the ministerial ladder but, by all accounts, was very committed to actually improving the lives of his constituents. For him helping improve the lives of constituents not only meant understanding the inner working of the Commons – he sat on multiple committees doing the often grinding work of approving legislation – but it was also about understanding that politics involves convincing people to join forces, something he did not only through argument but through charm, wit, showmanship and kindness. What is so interesting is that this type of MP is in fact, quite rare, and so he was very well respected on both sides of the House of Commons. No doubt, we will hear a lot more in the days to come how MP’s can be protected adequately whilst maintaining contact with members of the public.

As today is Thursday, it is the day when I get up early and get myself off to Waitrose in Droitwich, hopefully as the store is just on the point of opening (today we were about four minutes late but that hardly matters) The nice thing about shopping at this hour is that you are absolutely free to browse without bumping into other shoppers. I tried shopping without a list today which is never a good idea and almost inevitably one discovers over the course of the next day or so what you have forgotten. One of the unexpected bonuses of shopping at this hour is that you can always go straight through a checkout with no waiting. Also, the checkout operators always seem incredibly chatty and so I learned this morning that it looks as Waitrose are going to charge for their home delivery service (so another reason to shop in store) After our normal, cooked breakfast, Meg and  I wandered down to the park but the weather was somewhat cooler and decidedly overcast so it was no surprise that we met none of our park regulars this morning. As has happened for the last two days, we had commitments in the early part of the afternoon so we had to have a rapid ‘put-me-on’ instead of a conventional lunch.

Meg and I had an appointment to have blood samples taken from us. This should have happened about a month ago but there was a scare over the shortage of blood sample phials and the appointment never took place. However, better late than never so Meg and I got seen in the middle of a clutch of patients arriving at the surgery to get their COVID-booster jabs. So we both had our blood samples taken and have to wait a week or so to see what the consequences will be.  As we were both in the car together, we decided to see if we could sneak into a parking place at the back of our local Asda and we were lucky. Whilst Meg stayed in the car listening to music, I went and got a few kitchen utensil type things which are always good value and of reasonable quaity if you avoid the bottom end of the range. As we have been in this house some fourteen years now, there are are always some items where you think they really need replacing or updating. I am amazed, for example, how long tin openers last given their heavy usage. Whilst I was in Asda, an all too rare occurrence these days, I made a tour of the fruit and vegetable sections and managed to liberate a couple of those long, low boxes which have contained fruit and is often used to display it. These boxes can be quite hard to find because Asda seem to make it a policy to never let an empty box stay in its place before it is whisked away for recycling, I presume. This type of box is excellent for the storage of my apple crop so presuming that it not raining cats and dogs, I intend to make this a priority job for tomorrow. 

This evening, Meg and I thought we would treat ourselves to a meal of venison which I bought from Waitrose last week. As we now have a really super new pan in which to cook things like this and fish, I am more than happy to refine my culinary skills. I had some baked potato and broccoli for accompanying veg which were being microwaved up before I started cooking, The venison was cut into quite (but not very thin) slices which I then seared for a minute or so on each side.  I then let it simmer for about 5 minutes but put a sprinkling of black paper and a splosh of red wine over it to keep it moist. I felt the need for a just a little sauce of some description so I made what I think might be called a ‘jus’ rather than a gravy. In a dinky little jug I had, I utillised a little onion gravy powder which I made a bit more exotic with a good dollop of brown sauce and a good old splosh of wine. When stirred and microwaved up, this exactly did the job I intended for it i.e. it gave us a little bit of a rich sauce to complement the venison without swamping the whole lot in gravy. It might be noted, at this point, that I am not really into precise measurements of ingredients but prefer to adopt a more intuitive approach.  Sometimes, this ends in failure but often it can be surprising successful, as indeed it was this evening. I shall go ahead and repeat this little experiment next week as Meg and I felt we had a really enjoyable meal this evening (and the wine which was now well ‘chambréd’) helped as well.

Today opened up as a dull and dreary day with a fair amount of rain ‘hanging around in the air’ That having been said, it was not actually raining and according to th BBC weather app, there was only a 10% of actual rain later on in the day. So we adopted our ‘normal’ routine for the day. When we arrive at our favourite  park bench, fortunately  I was able to bring into use the cellulose sponge and the old kithen towel that I always carry with me in the front compartment of my rucksack do give the park bench a good drying off. The park was practically deserted when we arrived, which is not unusual when we have rain during the night. Meg and I drank our coffee and ate our ‘snap’ before I set off on my my own to collect the newspaper. I popped into Waitrose on the way back because it seems to be traditional for us to run out of milk on a Wednesday (the day before our weekly shop). In my absence, Meg had been chatting with our friendly octogenarian who walks about 7-8 km each day, whatever the weather. Then we had to strike for home but en route, we bumped into Irish friends who, as the most conscientious of grandparents, were walking their (sleeping) granddaughter out in her buggy. We were a little short of time today, as yesterday, because our hairdresser was calling around at 12.30 (in theory!) and we both get done at home. Our hairdresser had previously made contact with us as she has a very heavy cold and she wondered whether to come or not. However, as she arrived suitably masked up, everything was fine and we were pleased to get our locks shorn. There does seem to ba a particularly vicious bad cold/chest infection sweeping the country – nothing to do with COVID as such. Various accounts in the social media are indicating that it might be the ‘worst cold ever’ and people are being badly effected by it, sometimes affected  a couple of weeks at a time .

Straight after we had our lunch, I had completed a form which required our doctor’s signature and practice official stamp. I imagined that I would drop the form in and after I had been signed, I could then collect it in a couple of days. In practice though, it was much more complicated. After waiting in a queue at the practice receptionists, I then explained what I required. I was required, though, to fill in a form completing the details of the form tht I required to be signed and informed that it would take anything up to three weeks for this to happen – they would communicate with me and not the other around. I suppose the minor good thing to come out of all of this was to be told that I would not require a fee to be paid to the doctor. There was a bonus because I managed to re-arrange the blood tests that Meg and I both required, postponed from the time about a month ago when we seem to have run of of blood sample phials all over the country.

At the end of the morning, we received the unfortunate news that our daughter-in-law had suffered an accident whilst in  school. We don’t have the full details yet but it seems that our daughter-in-law had missed a step and then badly twisted her ankle. She had attended our local community hospital which has a small accident and emergency department and after an X-ray determined that she had severe bruising. Presumably, after applications of bandages and the traditional remedy of bags of cold peas, things might settle down but I think we all have personal experience of how troublesome a sprained ankle can be. As a teenager, I attended the Leeds Branch College of Engineering Science and after a day release (three hours of Chmistry in the morning, three hours of Maths in the afternoon and three hours of Physics in the evening), we ran down the many flights of stairs, eager to be ‘let out’ after nine hours of study.  I used to jump a  flight of stairs (two flights to a floor) in two jumps – one half way down and the other jump to the floor. On one occasion, I jumped an entire flight of stairs and went over on my ankle and it swelled up to the size of a football. Fortunately, I got myself home using my scooter which I could just about ride home but it took a week or so for my ankle to return to normal.

We now have the highest number of new COVID infections since mid-July at narly 43,000 cases today. But the German infection seems considerably lower than ours as the the Germans have not abandoned their face masks and social distancing anything like the UK rate. One German study argued that the contunied use of facemasks lowered the daily infection rate by 47%. This makes you think!

Today turned out to be one of ‘non’-park days. Meg and I had been invited down to our Irish friends for a mid-morning coffee and more. As it happened, yesterday as I was cutting the grass I noticed that our clump of delphiniums seemed to be in full bloom again. Whether they have bloomed once, died away and come back again or whether they just stay throughout the summer I cannot say. I made a mental note to cut some tomorrow morning to take to our friends down the road. We also had a few apples that I had gathered as ‘tasters’ to see if the rest of the apple crop is worth harvesting and these I took down together with a little ‘something’ courtesy of our local Waitrose. Our friend had put quite a little spread for us and we really enjoyed both the natter and the food before we had to have for Mike’s Pilates class, which is a regular fixture on every Tuesday. We were running a little late so I cheated a little and went down in the car, parking some way from the centre but saving myself a vital 10 minutes or so.

After lunch, I needed to get my printer working again which I did by tweaking a printer driver.  I think that when the Mac operating system updates itself, it seems to knock out my printer driver on the grounds that it is not the current 64-bit ( or is 32-bit version?) Anyway, I know how to tweak the printer so that it now works which is a relief. Then I set to scanning a document of which I needed a permanent copy as a pdf. I use a piece of free software called VueScan which has an interesting providence. A computer expert in the US had worked that literally thousands of quite serviceable scanners all over the world were being thrown away beuase there were no  drivers available for them. So they started a company which distributed a programme that would work with any scanner and I am the happy recipient of this. Hover, I do not scan very often and scanning a single page is child’s play. Scanning a multi-part document seem a bit more problematic and eventually I found how to do it and got a .pdf of the document I wanted prepared. 

This evening, we decided to do something we have not done for a very long time. We have abandoned the TV as there seemed to be absolutely nothing that took our fancy. Instead, we raided our collection of CD’s and discovered one that is ‘Carreras, Domingo and Paravarotti in concert‘ (they being, of course, the Three Tenors in the classic concert that everybody remembers.) The trio began their collaboration with a performance at the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy, on 7 July 1990, the eve of the 1990 FIFA World Cup Final, watched by a global television audience of around 800 million. When our son and daughter-in-law were away one Christmas, we played this incredibly loudly on the kitchen stereo system as though it was a live performance in the house and had a wonderful time. There is something about performances recorded ‘live’ complete with audience applause because I do not mind the slight musical imperfection compared with the sense of participation you get by listening to a live recording. One of the sad features of our high streets is that the ‘good’ charity shops have been replaced by lower quality charity shops. In Bromsgrove, we used to have an Oxfam charity shop which I frequented frequently for a variety of things, principally classical CD’s sold off for about £1 each,  a wonderful supply of books (to which I used to contribute as well as occasionally buy from) and a collection of little knick knacks such as high quality porcelain dishes that I used as coasters for drinks and cups of tea. Unforunately, this went ‘belly up’ at the start of the pandemic and although there is more than the usual assortment of charity shops, one needs to be very discerning. I have noticed that really good little pieces do get snapped up by the cognoscenti very quickly though.

The interesting political story tonight is the report from two (combined) select committees of the House of Commons into the whole of the COVID pandemic. The report is very frank about some of the terrible mistakes that the UK government made particularly in the early days of the pandemic when lockdowns were being ruled out (even as other countries were introducing them) and relying upon a theory of ‘herd immunity’ The scientists do not come out of completely unscathed either. The net result is that the dithering cost the UK thousands of lives. A government minister (Stephen Barclay) was pressed very hard on the media but refused on eleven separate occasions to issue the word ‘sorry‘ – which is illuminating.