Well, today of all days did not start well. As I was concluding this blog last night, suddenly my MacBook upon which I write this blog (whilst keeping one ear on the TV and the other ear on Meg) became completely unresponsive. I tried a reset of the computer, including a reset in ‘Safe’ mode (i.e. with minimal drivers ) but I could only get as far as the ‘Log In’ screen and no further.  I went on the web to identify problems and solutions and it was not uncommon for MACs to stick at this stage, particularly after an upgrade. So for hours I tried a variety of solutions thinking that I would have to take the laptop off to the Apple Centre in Solihull for a diagnosis and repair. At about 2.45 in the morning, I noticed that although my mouse showed a cursor across the screen but would not effect a double-click, the trackpad appear to work as intended (although I never use it). After some experience with another (wired) mouse, I finally came to the conclusion that it was my own mouse that was faulty because of practically spent batteries. The fact that I could move the mouse cursor across the screen did not alert me to exhausted batteries but evidently, the batteries had sufficient for a cursor movement but insufficient for a double click. The relief when I got the problem both identified and solved was overwhelming because I was having to contemplate the prospect that the entire laptop had gone ‘belly up’ and there would be no alternative but to replace it. So I crawled into bed, tired but happy, at 3.15 in the morning.

Today being my birthday, I had a whole series of interesting cards – nearly all of them relating to age/gardening/neighbourly activities. I must say I particularly liked one card in which one neighbour had been shaping the dividing privet hedge into a series of topiaries shaped as as a series of ‘V’ signs. The caption read ‘Relations with the neighbors seem to be deteriorating’ so I thought I would share the joke with my next door neighbour when next I see him. A present of a series of craft beers had been left on our doorstep by our Irish friends before they got away to Munich – fortunately for them, the airport was relatively clear because Birmingham Airport has been badly hit in recent days with an excess of passengers over staff to deal with them. Our domestic help called around today rather than Friday, again bearing some cake (as did our former Waitrose friends who dropped a specially baked cake around for me last night) I now have enough cake to put on several pounds but I am pleased to report that I have now shed 3½lbs in 10 days which is just about the right rate of weight loss for me so I am hoping I can maintain this progress. Meg and I decided to go to our favourite little Georgian town of Alcester down the road – this will be our third visit but we did have an ulterior motive as the range of good quality charity shops is superb. We got there and had a coffee before diving into one of the shops and buying a couple of skirts for Meg.  We have noticed that the charity shops seem awash with tops but comparatively few skirts which reflects the fact that so many trousers are worn these days. Then we went off to our favourite hotel for a meal of lasagne which again was excellent. We had taken the opportunity of making a booking just before we came out which was just as well because with no booking we would have had to have waited for our meal. After the meal, we proceeded to the end of the high street where I purchased a series of beets ready to be planted out. They looked a little the ‘worse for wear’ to be honest but if I get them planted out quickly (tomorrow) they will revive. I also bought some ‘Rosso’ lettuce plants and some runner beans which I am sure I can plant in a little ‘wigwam’ built of canes in a corner of the garden.  I treated myself to a high qulity shirt as well, very much like I already own but obviously the collar and cuffs are pristine and not showing signs of wear. After this huge meal we got home and collapsed a little in front of the TV after our exertions of the day.  

There was an item on the news which was quite shocking. The Ukrainians exploring the areas that the Russians has first invaded and from which they have been beaten back have discovered the bodies of several dead Russian soldiers. The Russian authorities, though, are refusing to take them back or to share any DNA database with the Ukrainians so the soldiers can be identified. At the moment, they are being stored in refrigerated railway wagons until, presumably, the conflict is over.

Another beautiful spring day has dawned but as it is my Pilates class today, the schedule of the morning’s activities has to be carefully managed. After collecting the newspaper by car, Meg and I started a fairly gentle walk to the park. On the way down, we were delighted to bump into our Italian friend and we stayed chatting for several minutes, swapping tips and hints about to keep our patios in good condition. When we got down to the park, we had hoped to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend but it was not to be today. So we had a pleasant drink of our coffee and a pleasant stay in the warm sunshine before we made our way up to the hill to home. Then I changed into my track suit bottoms and proceeded down the hill again walking to my Pilates class. It has become a tradition in our little class that in every six week session, we have two sessions of relaxation for a few minutes at the end of our routines, typically in week 3 and week 6. However, if it is your birthday (or even birthday week) then for a special treat, an additional relaxation session is provided as  a type of birthday treat from the rest of the group. As it is my birthday tomorrow, we enjoyed our little relaxation at the end of our session today and, in return, some cup cakes were distributed to my fellow class members, as well as some gluten-free cookies for my Pilates teacher. On my way home, I popped into Waitrose and there I presented myself at the Help Desk and managed to reclaim the £10.00 note which had been retrieved from the nether regions of the conveyor belt leading to one of the tills which I had lost yesterday. The staff and I reminded each other that tomorrow was the fifth anniversary of the opening of this particular Waitrose store, a fact that sticks in the mind as it just happens to be my own birthday as well. Five years ago, I had hoped to be the first person through the doors when the store opened – in the event, I ended up as the second as I was beaten to it by a rather pushy young woman. Then it was a walk home and the by now traditiuonal lunch on a Tuesday of haddock fish cakes which ‘do’ in the oven whilst I am doing my Pilates and can be quickly complemented by one of those vegetabke packs that can be cooked in the micrwave for about three minutes.

This afternoon, although time was a little limited, I thought I would spend a small amount of time doing some weeding at the front of the house. We have across our access road a series of large cobbles which technically mark the boundary between our own property and the roadways accessed by all of the houses in the Close. This task was not particularly difficult but I am determined not to injure my back by over-much bending. Accordingly, i sort of ‘lay’ on my side on the ground from which position I could quickly attack the weeds I wisjed to remove. As I was just about completing my task, my neighbour approached in his car (we often swing our cars into each other’s space so that we can reverse into our own properties, thus enabling us to drive out forwards the next time we use the car). When I saw my neighbour’s car approaching, I thought for a moment that he was not going to be able to stop in time and I was in danger of being run over. I jumped up to get out of the way and when my neighbour strolled over for a chat he was laughing his head off because he had seen me in plenty of time but he reckoned he had never seen a prostrate figure get to their feet so fast in all of his life. Actually, I was glad to have a chat because my neighbour has absolutely transformed the bungalow which is next to us and has generated a whole raft of improvements both inside the house but even more outsides. He is extremely knowledgeable about gardening ‘things’ particularly when it comes to little landscaping projects so I was very pleased to be able to tap into his expertise about the most effective way to get my patio repointed/re-grouted as necessary and how he would tackly my own patio if it were his.

Today was the State Opening of Parliament which is normally the preserve of the monarch. On this occasion, the Queen had very reluctantly decided that her mobility problems meant she had to miss this occasion which has happened only twice before and that when she was pregnant. So the Queen’s speech from the throne outlining the government’s legislative programme  was actually read by Prince Charles acting under ‘Letters Patent’ whilst the absent Queen was symbolised by a crown on a table placed besides Prince Charles. It was all rather poignant and ceratinly may be a sign that the monarchy is itself in a transitional period.

It was an intermediate day today but pleasant enough for our daily walk. My routine differs a little these days in that I tend to take the car down into town on my own in order to collect our daily newspaper and this means that Meg and I for a walk only to walk as far as the park (about 800m at a rough guess) and not the 1200m to the newsagent. Although we visit the park every day, we always notice new things that hadn’t impinged upon our consciousness. As we looked down the hill towards the cafe in the park, I noticed that it was one of those modernistic 1970’s type designs in which the roof took the shape of a ‘V’ rather than the conventional hipped roof. At the same time, I noticed that there were no rainwear goods attached to the outside of the building  and therefore I speculated that the design of the roof must be such that with a slight ‘fall’ for water to drain away, then might be the need for only one drainpipe in an unobtrustive space towards the rear of the building. Perhaps some of my park acquaintances might be able to put me wise on this. Whilst sitting on our normal bench, I started to speculate how far the distance was from the point at which we were sitting to  make a complete detour of the lake by the normal paths and return to one’s starting point. At a guess, I would think this is 1km so I may ask some of the regular runners and/or walkers in the park if they have any measuring devices with them to measure this distance for me. I suppose I could get an app and do it myself on the iPhone but it might be easier to ask someone. On our way back from the park, we walked past the garden of our closest Irish friends one of whom was gardening (until we interrupted him) and the other was busy hoovering. As they are going on a trip shortly and will be away for eleven days, no doubt there are a lot of domestic jobs to be done before they depart in a day or so’s time.

After lunch, I had only the briefest of rests because I wanted to really ‘crack on’ and get the weeding of the patio outside our kitchen window completed. I have got my technique off to a fine art now and after about an hour and a half of concentrated effort, the task is now completed to my satisfaction. I think the ‘root’ of the problem, if I can put it this way, is that we used to have a regular gardner who kept the terrace looking neat and tidy. However, I suspect that the strimmer that he used took the top off the weeds but left the root systems in the ground, free to grow away again if left unattended. Now that I have done a ‘root and branch’ clearance, I intend to keep it that way. I think that I may use a combination of an old but stiff washing up brush together with a small wire brush to eliminate any weeds too small to be grasped by the fingers. If I do this on a regular basis, then I can keep the terrace looking pristine. After this task had been completed, I dashed off into town because I wanted to go into our local Waitrose to avail myself of some cupcakes because it had been intimated to me that the rest of my Pilates classmates would expect no less of me in a birthday week. Having got my cupcakes, including some gluten-free goodies for my Pilates teacher, I then bought two or three things to keep us going until our next shop up. Then I was the ‘victim’ of one of the most obscure accidents in the history of shopping.  I was behind one other customer and so I slapped my £10 note, my car parking token and my Waitrose card on the conveyor belt. When I came to be served, the £10 note and car parking token had disappeared and the assistant and I concluded that the belt had transported both of them neatly into the internal workings of the belt. Neither of us had ever known this to happen before but I said I was quite happy to wait a day or so in case an engineer had to be called. I left my name and contact number with the assistant who served me and came home to tell the story. Then I got a call on my mobile. The Waitrose manager had equipped himself with a screwdriver, taken off a panel by the side of the belt and retrieved the errant note! They are going to leave it at the Help Desk so that I can retrieve it when I return from my Pilates class tomorrow.

Today being Sunday, I got up early and strolled down to pick up my copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘. On my walk down, I entertain myself to listening to some classical music tracks on my trusty old iPhone, retained just for this purpose. The first track which played was Handel’s ‘Zadoc the Priest‘ composed for the coronation of George II and played at every coronation ever since. The interesting thing about this piece is that there a long introduction of what might be termed ‘tum-ti-tum’ music played on the strings which occasionally swells and diminishes in volume without seemingly going away. One can imagine the rows packed into Westminster Abbey with the crowd waiting patiently in their crinolines (or whatever else was fashionable in 1727). Eventually, the choir breaks in, declaiming in full voice with the start of the anthem singing ‘Zadoc the Priest..” One can only imagine the impact that must have been made on the congregation when it was heard for the very first time and it still thrills. Another track was the ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks‘ and I discerned it was excellent marching music as I could time my steps to the on beats – it would have to be a quick march, I imagine. Another concert favourite was ‘Jerusalem’ which must be, by now, practically England’s (if not the UK’s) second national anthem. I have always found it interesting that the Blake poem decrying the ‘dark Satanic Mills’ of the early periods of industrialisation evokes sympathetic responses from both the political left as well as the political right. I cannot think of any other tract or poetic work of a similar ilk. The final piece that caught my attention was the ‘Halleluja‘ chorus from Handel’s ‘Messiah‘ and this also evokes a memory of the Huddersfield Choral Society singing in Huddersfield Town Hall, which itself contains a Concert Hall seating some 1200 people. I believe that it is still the case that in various towns and cities across the land, if you have a reasonable single voice you can turn up to perform a rendition just needing a score in your hand and allocation to sopranos, altos, tenors or bases. I have never done this but I reckon it would be quite an inspiring experience to do it.

Meg and I made our way to the park after watching the ‘Sunday Morning‘ (politics) programme and there we coincided, as we thought that we might, with our University of Birmingham friend. He had been busy yesterday in a community workshop repairing whatever came before him – generally radios with corroded contacts and the like. Then we bumped some other mutual acquaintances who we have not seen for a week or so but they had been away on a trip to Yorkshire. Then we made our way home for a nice Sunday lunch of chicken which was one of these supermarket offerings complete in its tray and roasting bag which just has to be popped into the oven for an hour and a half before its final finishing off with the roasting bag removed. After lunch and a brief rest reading the Sunday Times, I resumed my task in weeding the patio outside our kitchen window. These tasks always seem to take longer than you think if you do it relatively conscientiously and I had set myself the goal of doing one more ‘line’ of slabs makng only two more yet to be done. I set myself the goal of trying to get today’s quota done in ¾ hour because we had decided to watch a repeat episode of Morse on ITV3. This episode we thought we had not seen before but half way though we realise how the plot unfolded to its denouement but it was enjoyable all the same. When this episode of Morse was over, we wanted to watch Andrew Neil whose politics show, including interview, is starting a run on Channel 4. This first programme was pretty good, I thought and Andrew Neil was just about getting the better of  William Rees-Mogg when the interview was made to give way to a set of adverts half through the programme. To my mind, the program seemed slightly too short at 30 minutes and I felt it could easily have been extended to 40-45 minutes. Anyway I shall watch the next one next Sunday as I think that Andrew Neil takes no prisoners and will ‘go after’ an interviewee if he feels it to be necessary.

There is an interesting ‘afterthought’ that has been occurring to some political analysts after the elections last Thursday. The popular view was that Labour had done OK but had not any dramatic further advances apart from capturing key seats in London. The Tories, for their part, felt it could have been worse and they can probably rise out any short tern unpopularity. But another view which is circulating is that voters in the South were determined to punish Johnson not just by not voting Tory but actively voting Liberal Democrat to actually punish the Tory party. If this view persists, then in the next general election, it may well be that the Tories will lose power, ceding to a minority Labour government tacitly supported by the Lib Dems.

It was a most beautiful day today so Meg and I were keen to get a ‘normal’ walk in whilst the weather was set fair.  We did not quite get up at the crack of dawn, recouping somewhat some of the sleep that we had lost by staying up for the early election results on Friday morning. So when we had breakfasted and showered, we went together by car to collect our Saturday edition of ‘The Times‘ which is always stuffed full of a variety of supplements. Then dropping the car back home, we started a gentle walk down to the park which was generally in its spring greenery. I had noticed with a certain amount of satisfaction that the hornbeam tree I planted about a year ago and which looked pretty dead only about two weeks ago had now burst fully into leaf which proves, I suppose, that it is in a certain amount of health. It was planted on a slope in ‘Mog’s Den‘ and so is not the easiest of locations to ensure that it has an adequate water supply whilst relatively young as water tends to drain away quite rapidly. In the park, we met with our University of Birmingham friend briefly but he had to leave us quite quickly to lend his  expertise to a type of community repair service. I think that the idea behind this is that anyone can bring along an appliance of any type that needs fixing and the volunteers can bring their experience and skills along to see what they can do. I suppose you could call it a type of recycling as otherwise relatively useful appliances might be consigned to landfill or wherever else they go. When we got home, we had a midday meal of mince and veg before listening to ‘Any Questions‘ and ‘Any Answers‘ on Radio 4. I can listen to this program whilst preparing lunch and it sort of keeps me in touch with ‘Middle England’ but the panellists are generally quite sensible (Matthew Parris who writes for ‘The Times’ being one of them)

After lunch, I decided that I really needed to tackle the weeds on the patio outside the kitchen window. The most eye-sore weeds had already been removed but I decided that the remaining moss and weeds in between the paving slabs had to be tackled. This proved a much bigger job then I had first anticipated. Eventually, I worked out that for each slab I needed a three stage process. The first involves a gloved hand to remove or pull out whatever weed was easily graspable. Then for the second stage, I had a spcial tool designed to remove weeds from in between paving slabs and then finally, the most useful tool of all is a wire brush which does a magnificent job in removing all remnants of even the tiniest of weeds from between the slabs. I also found an old washing up brush quite useful to be pressed into service to make things neat and tidy. Of five ‘lines’ of slabs, I have managed to do two of them so I am 40% of the way through the job – more tomorrow if the weather holds good.

There is a rumour doing the rounds of the media this afternoon. Next weekend, the Eurovision Song Contest is going to be held in Italy. But certain interesting rumours are alreasdy circulating: in particular that the song from the Ukraine is bound to win. I suspect the European song contest has got more and more political as the years have gone by but this year, the Ukrainian band, will use their presence at the contest to ‘remind’ the audience of the war in Ukraine. I think that people have surmised that all of the Baltic countries and countries neighbouring the Ukraine will vote for it (rather than for each other). In addition, there may be massive sympathy votes from all quarters of the continent and, if you add all of these factors together, one can predict an out and out win for the Ukraine. Russia is banned from the contest (if they had not been, can you imagine a Russian jury voting for the Urainian entry) So this is not exactly a fix but an infomed guess as to how things will work out. I will watch it with a particular interest this year (rather than having it on in the background which is normal)

All this afternoon, the elections in Northern Ireland have been unfolding. I say ‘unfolding’ because in the system of proportional representation adopted in the province, the voters number preferences 1 to 5 in groups of constituencies each group generating 5 MLA (Members of the Legialative Assembly). In the Northern Ireland context, any member gaining 1/6th of the vote is automatically elected but that is when it becomes interesting. The person who gets the fewest vote in a round is eliminated and the  second preferences are allocated. This process proceeds until all of the seats have been filled. It now looks certain that Sinn Féin will have the highest portion of seats and of votes, beating the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) Whether the DUP will participate in the process whereby the  Sinn Féin leader becomes First Minister and the Leader of the DUP becomes their deputy remains to be seen – I suspect not.

Last night, Meg and I decided that we would stay up for an hour or so to watch the Election programmes which were being broadcast from 11.00pm onwards. In the event, nothing really dramatic was apparent in the opening hours but we both managed to fall asleep in our chairs and then drag ourselves off to bed at about 2.30 in the morning. Consequently, we have both felt somewhat like ‘death warmed up’ today and, in truth, it would have been better if we had gone to bed at the normal time and listened to results on the radio (and, no doubt, we would have fallen asleep in the middle of this also) This morning, it was the day when our domestic help calls around and so we had our normal chat and a joke or two before we took the car into town. I collected the newspaper, bought a few provisions at Waitrose that I had forgotten about last Thursday and then we made our way to the park. It was quite pleasant although a little cool on our normal park bench and after a little while, we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend to which we had been looking forward as we often ‘touch base’ with each on Friday mornings. Our friend is trying to plan a trip to Spain on his own to improve his Spanish so we spent several happy minutes talking about potential routes, towns, airports and the like. No doubt, we will carry on a bit more tomorrow once we have had the chance to Google a bit more information for ourselves.

Once we eventually made it home, I started cooking what used to be a Friday favourite of ours which was a risotto. Our domestic help is particularly partial to the risottos that I make but I started off putting some smoked haddock into the oven to cook for the prescribed 17 minutes. Then I built up the risotto in stages starting off with clarifying an onion and then gradually adding the chicken stock, a bit of ready mashed potato which is a bit of a cheat but I use it as a  thickener. Then, after adding the cooked fish, I finish off with a couple of huge dollops of plain yogurt and some grated cheese. To keep the carb count down, I do not use convetnional rice any more but some of those veg alternatives such as cauliflower rice  which cuts the carb quotient dramatically. Once we had this meal inside us (washed down with a smidgeon of Pinot Grigio which all I had left in a bottle) I knew that the lawn mowing beckoned. Accordingly, I got my weary limbs into gear and started the weekly mowing, conscious of the fact that rain is threatening at about 4.00 in the afternoon. I reckoned I had an hour and ten minutes which should have been just about right. I got all of the mowing done in time just before the threatened rain was scheduled to arrive and then parked myself in front of the TV  to catch up on the local eletion results. By this stage in the afternoon, the results from Northern Ireland were starting to come through and it looks as though the Irish nationalist party of Sinn Féin may end up having the most seats and largest share of the popular vote. The fascinating question is whether the ‘Democratic’ Unionist Party (DUP) will live up to its name and accept its part in the democratic process, according to the Good Friday agreement, in which the two leading parties can nominate the roles of First Minister and the deputy. I am not going to get into the attempt to understand the labrinthine nature of Irish politics. But it is a case of ‘watch this space’ In Scotland, the Scottish Labour party has more or less got its act together and relegated the Tories to third place whilst the SNP goes onwards and upwards. I have not seen the analysis yet but no doubt the following analysis will be analysed in depth. This is that by the time you have put together the votes of the SMPs, the Liberals and the Greens will there now be a great push to advance the cause of Scottish independence. When the Scots view what the English parliament has got uo to in recent months, no doubt this will give a further impelling twist towards Scottish independence.

Whilst  the election results will no doubt be chewed over in the Saturday and Sunday quality press, a thought has occurred that if you put together the Labour votes with the great success of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, then it might just be possible for there to be an ‘anti-Tory alliance’ at the time of the next General Election. The Irish MP’s (Sinn Fein) do not take up their Westminster seats so there may be a majority of literally one or two for an ‘anti-Tory alliance’ to form without needing the support of the Scottish Nationalists. This, in turn, has implications for any future push to Scottish independence. Food for thought only, at this stage.

Thursday is my shopping day but I departed early so that I can make a flying visit into the adjacent Morrison’s supermarket which is practically next door. I was pretty sure that they would stock the Beet juice that I wanted (but our local Asda was out of stock). I availed myself of a couple of cartons and at my normal rate of consumption, that should last me for a couple of weeks. When I eventually got home, I checked whether I could get it online to save me a lot of traipsing around and indeed I can, so I think I will do that in future. I completed my Aldi shopping getting everything I wanted and was pleased to be able to buy one of those chickens that you roast completely in its own bag, just popping it into the oven for the relevant amount of time. I have found in the past that this saves so much time and hassle so that is destined for our Sunday roast. When I got home, I unpacked the shopping but Meg was not feeling too well so was spending some extra time in bed whilst I occupied myself with other tasks. I had intended to go off to the Domestic Refuse facility (‘the tip’) in order to dispose of my final garden bag of plants clippings but I just filled up my brown bin (only emptied this morning), judging that I could better use of my time and money than making a round trip to dispose of one bag full of rubbish. A second task in which I was engaged was attempting to get a really accurate measure of my height, so that I can feed them into my BMI (Body Mass Index) calculations. This is quite difficult to do on one’s own. It is easy to get a measure of your height when lying down – I tend to use an empty shoe box as a ‘top’ marker and then measure the distance from the skirting board to the shoebox. But your height is different by quite an amount when you measure yourself standing up. Each vertebrae compressed very slightly but the cumulative effect is to make a difference of about ½” – and even this amount can vary during the day. Using the shoebox method on the top of one’s head, followed by a pencil mark and subsequent measurement with a tape measure, I think I have lost about 3.6cm (1.4″) over the last four years. I know that I had a really accurate measure of my height just before I was in hospital some four years ago now but I thought as I am now in a measuring of BMI mode again, I would try and get a really up-to-date and accurate measure. I think I might enlist the assistance of my domestic help tomorrow as an extra pair of hands and eyes to make my measurements accurate to the millimetre.

This afternoon was quite a fine afternoon. Just before lunch, I managed to get my lawn edges a quick whizz with my manual mower before the main cut with the petrol mower tomorrow. This afternoon, I really wanted to get a big pebble-dressed circular bed weeded and tidied up and this job too was satisfying to get done of the day. Meg and I enjoyed a bit of late afternoon sunshine after I had flashed a cleaning sponge over the outside table and chairs and the day’s gardening quota had been completed.

Today is Election Day and of course nothing really kicks off until about 11.00pm this evening. Nonetheless, being a self-confessed election junkie. I thought I would get myself prepared in the tradiitonal fashion. I have bought today a bottle of Newcastle Brown and some bottles of a particularly good low alcohol lager which I used to buy from Waitrose but was being sold in Morrisons. I have a strategy in place to consume this alcohol as the election results trickle in. If it appears that the parties that I support or doing somewhat less well than the pundits predict, I shall open the good low alcohol lager. On the other hand, if the results are just about what we would anticipate, then I enjoy a can of low-alcohol Guinness that I happened to have in stock. But if the results are much better than predicted, then I shall go the whole hog and drink the bottle of Newcastle Brown bought for such an occasion as this.

The Bank of England interest rate was raised to 1% today and there are predictions of more rises to come. But there is also a prediction that inflation will exceed 10% in the year ahead and the economy as a whole may contract by ¼%. The present generation has never known such economic pain before. The reasons for this are put to a combination of the Ukrainian war, the rising fuel prices and the aftermath of the pandemic. Strange that Brexit does not get a mention, though, isn’t it?

Today started off with sporadic rainfall, although it was quite sustained in the early part of the morning. We did have some tentative plans to have a mini-day out this morning but, having picked up our newspaper, we only made a decision where to go at the very last moment. We eventually set course for a local crafts centre called Jinney Ring. This curious name comes from the invention of the Jinney Ring which allowed horse power to be converted to drive the previously manual farm equipment. The horse would walk around a large wheel with cogs, which turned shafts, and then the belts and chains of the farm equipment. We had often seen signs to Jinney Ring but never got round to actually going there until this morning. We made straight for the restaurant where we ate some locally prepared produce (apple pie) to go with our cappucchinos. Then we had a cursory look at some of the arts and crafts on display but I did not have a burning desire to purchase a pen with a genuine wood-turned barrel (at either £49.99 or £99.99) or to buy any glassware or pottery. But we did tarry a little at one of the units which was selling plants and purchased both a sweet pea plant also a mange tout pea plant – these we can plant out almost straight away. As our elevenses turned out to be quite filling, we decided to prepare a light lunch once we returned home as we had most of the ingredients to make up quite an extensive salad lunch for ourselves. This turned out a bit bigger than we initially thought but there again we did manage to combine a lot of different flavours and if we hadn’t used up some of the ingredients they would have gone to waste anyway.

As from 1st May, I have decided to try and keep a tight control over my diet with the aim of losing 7 lbs (½ stone) over the next few weeks. This is going to be established not by a rigid or a crash diet but just by being careful with my carbohydrate intake, whilst at the same time keeping my exercise levels at just above the previous level. So far (after only a few days) I am on track and am keeping my results in a little spreadsheet. I do have some historic spreadsheets where I have recorded BMI and body-fat indicators and I am stitching my recent results into this historical series (which, I must say, is rather sporadic) However, it is quite reassuring to know that I am only 2-3 lbs away from the weight that I recorded at the same time of year three years ago.

This afternoon, the highlight of my afternoon was a Skype call to one of my Hampshire friends. We have been in touch by email quite a lot over the last few weeks but have not had a face-to-face session via Skype so we thought we would make up for it today. We had a good old natter over topics more numerous to mention but after an hour and a half we felt our respective spouses might be wondering what had happened to us so we decided to call it a day. I knew that in the late afternoon, I had a job to do which had to wait until it was the relevent bin-emptying day. This was to take the canvas bag garden waste containers in which I had stored my chopped up pieces of my moribund clematis plant and dispose of the contents via my neighbour’s ‘brown bins’.  I managed to squeeze three of my four bags of clippings into two of my neighbour’s bins but they were already at least three quarters full. I was relying upon the fact that the bin belonging to the empty house across the way from our communal green area could be utilised but it looks as though the relatives of our neighbour (who died last August) had turned up to tidy up the garden, no doubt to attempt it to make it look more attractive to facilitate its sale. So it looks as though once the shopping has been done in the morning, I shall have to make a ten mile round trip to our local domestic refuse site to completely get rid of garden clippings.

A bit of breaking news which is quite significant. Last week, the High Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully by discharging untested hospital patients into care homes during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government have decided not to appeal against this ruling and therefore, it should follow, that relatives might have a claim for compensation against the government. The Government may have cynically calculated, of course, that any court case claiming compensation may well fail because of the difficulty in establishing an exact line of causation or route of infection. The Government could argue that COVID-19 could have been brought into the home by a care worker or transmitted from another resident.

Today is the day for my Pilates session so that rather dictates how we plan out our morning.It was a somewhat gloomy start but with the promise of better weather to come later in the day. Meg and I went by car to collect our newspaper and there we were quite surprised when the newsagent enquired after my five daughters.  I had to disabuse him of the fact that I had any daughters, let alone five, and I was reminded that even Mr. Bennet, the patermilias of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice only laid claim to four. I cannot for the life of me think how such an impression might have arisen apart from the fact that in the very earliest day of the pandemic my son and/or daughter-in-law used to call in at the newsagent, complete with my token, to collect the newspaper on a daily basis. Perhaps he thought that each time my daughter-in-law entered the shop, she was a different person but who can say – anyway after this revelation we journeyed on to Waitrose. We rather hoped that being a Tuesday, we might bump into one or two of our pre-pandemic Waitrose friends but it was not to be. So we made our way home and I got things prepared for the rapid lunch that we have when I return from my Pilates class. On my way back home, I made a lightning visit to my local Asda store because there are one or two things which I know can only buy there. It was frustrating to find the item that I really wanted to buy was sold out so I shall have to see that as we are on the road, we might be able to find out what we want from Waitrose in Droitwich. But whilst in the Bromsgrove store, I did manage to get one or two things that we needed. Later on this afternoon, we popped round to see our neighbours because I needed them to witness a document which they readily did and provided us with a nice cup of tea and biscuits as we were there. In the late afternoon, we always FaceTime some of our Waitrose friends and we exchange news about the sort of week we have had. Both of our friends have badly compromised immune systems so thay were incredibly cautious during the whole of the two years of lockdown that they had endured. Anyway, now they are getting out and about quite a lot more and really appreciating a taste of liberty. They gave us some advice about a local Crafts Centre complex in the locality that we intend to visit  tomorrow. We understand there are a variety of craft workshops which we can visit as well as a tearoom/restaurant so we shall have to see how it all works out.

There is quite a big political story playing out in the Unites States at the moment. One ‘achievement’ of the Donald Trump presidency was to make nominations of known right-wingers to the Supreme Court such that the balance of the Supreme Court has changed from a position of approximate equality to a conservative majority of 5:4 or even a 6:3 split on some issues. Many on the extreme right of american politics have been waiting to bring a raft of issues to the Supreme Court of which the most prominent and important is abortion but many other issues queuing up behind such as LGBT rights and some raclal equality cases. The most famous case in abortion law is Roe v. Wade which is the classic case that guaranteed abortion rights to US women for the last half century. But the conservative right have been pushing issues upwards towards the Supreme Court to facilitate it making a decision that would effectively set back abortion law to the position of at least fifty years ago. There are several states which have already passed legislation such that when Roe v Wade is nullified, their own state legislatures will immediately bring in draconian abortion laws into action. In the case of Texas, a prosecution can take place when a women is only six weeks pregant (as soon as a foetal heartbeat can be detected) and before some women even realise they are pregnant. Any citizen can initiate a prosecution and anybody even remotely involved in an abortion, e.g. a taxi driver taking a women to an abortion clinic can also be prosucuted and sued for thousands of dollars. Now to bring us up-to-date. It seems that the draft of what may be the majority opinion has been leaked, the full judgement being available in July. The draft judgement is rumoured to rule that Roe v Wade has never been constitutional and should be repealed immediately. This judgement is much more severe than anybody could possibly have projected nd the whole issue  seems likely to split the USA from top to bottom. Most of the population support the abortion provisions of Roe v Wade but the conservative right have money, a lot of the airwaves and extremely vocal advocates so a battle royal is in the making. 

The gloomy spell is continuing but we hope not for very long as the forecast for the next few days ahead indicates that a high pressure system might be heading our way from the Azores so that we have something approximating to May rather than April weather. According to the weather app on my iPhone, it was going to be cloudy and gloomy all day but no actual rain was forecast. Meg and I were just about prepared for this but no sooner had we got outside then a few splatters of rain started to fall, so we cut our losses and decided to go by car. We picked up the newspaper and then made our way to the park but even for a Bank Holiday the numbers in the park were reduced apart, of course, from the inveterate dog walkers, who like us brave the elements almost every single day. We were not surprised not to see any of our park regulars so after a chilly episode drinking our coffee we made for home where we made short work of polishing off the beef that we slow-cooked yesterday.

After lunch, we thought we would entertain ourselves a little by looking at some old films broadcast on ITV4. Whilst tuning into this channel, i saw the last five minutes of ‘Bridge over the River Kwai‘ (British POWs captured by the Japanese) and was just in time to see the denouement of the film which I vaguely remember from about sixty years ago. In this final scene, the British hero played by Alec Guiness collapses on top of the detonator which happens to blow up the bridge built by the British in Burma, just at the point where a train was crossing and evidently  plunged into the river below. I was glad not to have seen any of the preceding action because I stumbled upon the most memorable part of the film at the very end. Then Meg and I started to watch ‘Spartacus‘ (made in 1955) but this was so naff for modern tastes that we abandoned this fairly quickly. Flipping through the channels, we found a ‘Mr Bean goes on holiday‘ type of film but this was not particularly funny so we abandoned this as well. Having got to this stage in the afternoon and as the weather had brightened somewhat, I decided to go and spend some 20-30 minutes carrying on the big job of lawn edging/gully clearing. I must say this was not the most pleasant of jobs when everything was still a bit soggy but nonetheless, I made a bit of progress. ‘En route’ I took out some enormous dandelions that had established themselves in the back lawn. I have a specialist dandelion ‘rooter’ which is almost exactly like the old fashioned tack lifters but on a bigger and heavier scale. In theory, this should enable you to take out the whole of the dandelion the roots of which might extend for several inches into the earth. Sometimes, though, the dandelion root will break off half way down but at least its regenerative powers ought to have been severely compromised.  This being completed, I came in for a cup of tea and then deployed a certain amount of willpower to start off again with a series of ‘stepper’ routines to keep myself fit. The theory here is not only to reduce carbohydrate intake wheever this is possible but also to increase your exercise quotient slightly so that your body responds to these two extra demands by burning off some fat reserves. I have a particular ‘stepper routine’ video which I have used for about four years and have found very good. The video figures a yong American instructor called Kelly Anne who I think has a good instructional technique and after some warm-up exercises, you enter the main body of exercises which each take about a minute. All in all, the entire regime takes about 12 minutes and to ensure that I am in the right mind set for this, I change into the track suit bottoms which I wear for my Pilates exercises each Tuesday. Not having done these exercises for a bit, I must say that I found them somewhat on the ‘tough’ side today compared with how I found them four years ago but that is only to be expected, I suppose. I am hoping to achieve a steady but unspectactular weight loss of about 2lbs a week (a kilo per week) and at least I know I have done this all before. One factor impelling me onwards is a recent article in The Times extolling the virtues of losing ½ stone in weight so I keeping it and re-reading it every so often to keep the goal before my eyes. Earlier in the day, we have made an arrangement to have a meal with four of ex-Leicester Polytechnic colleagues and we have now found a date and time in about a couple of weeks and a location which is relatively central for all of us (Leamington Spa in a little bistro that we used in out last pre-pandemic ‘rendez-vous’)