Today turned out to be one those frustrating days which will be familiar to most of us. In getting my broadband upgraded to ‘Super Fast Fibre’ for the same price that I am paying at the moment, BT OpenReach came to survey the roadways from our property to the BT junction box near the distributor road  which our own (private) residential road joins. The OpenReach team had found a problem which was not uncommon that they could pass a cable so far and no further so they reckoned that their ducting near to a neighbour’s fence was blocked. The BT staff reckoned that this was happening all the time and was quite a common problem. When a concrete fence post is driven in, then the BT ducting is often damaged and when concrete is poured in for the fence post, some enters the ducting, solidifies and a blockage ensues. BT sent out a civil engineering team some days later and they managed to clear the blockages and put a piece of rope through the ducting all the way from the BT junction area to the access point at the side of my house. Today, we were expecting an OpenSource engineer to call and install the fibre optic cable into the house attaching to a new router in the process. According to our calendar, we were expecting the engineer at any time betweem 8.00am and 1.00am but as nobody had turned up by about 11.00am, I started to get suspicious. So I phoned up my internet supplier who could find no record of today as an installation date even though I had been told of today’s date over the phone and had written it onto my calendar. After hurried consultations a date in about 9 days time was specified as the ‘correct’ date so we will just have to sit tight until that happens.  I am sure I am not the first person, or the last, to have waited in all morning for somebody not to turn up. I had made the best of a bad job by getting my accounts up-to-date and ordering a big new ledger book for myself as my existing one is practically full. When I knew that no one was now calling at the house, I made a quick visit into town by car and picked up the newspaper and then into Waitrose for some vital things (such as milk) of which we had completely run out.  This afternoon, the weather was set fair so I toddled around the garden getting some things tidied up before our visitor stays with us for a few days arriving on Wednesday.

Another Boris scandal is in the offing today.  Downing Street has confirmed it was in conversation with The Times around the time the newspaper dropped a report claiming Boris Johnson tried to appoint his now wife to a government role when he was foreign secretary. In a story published in the first edition on Friday night, the paper reported that Mr Johnson attempted to hire Carrie Johnson, then Carrie Symonds, as his chief of staff at the Foreign Office in 2018. But after a telephone call to The Times, it appears that the story was pulled. So it seems that Boris Johnson when he was foreign secretary attempted to have his then girlfriend made into his own ‘Chief of Staff’ which does reek of nepotism. It is reported that the post would have attracted a salary of £100,000 but Boris Johnson was given advice to the effect that this kind of appoitment should not go ahead. To compound this story, than any adverse criticism of this manouvre was then stifled by getting the story pulled from ‘The Times‘. I suppose these dodgy dealings are par from the course and may be common place in the vista of politics today but it does make the action of government ministers appear decidedly sleazy if not outright corrupt.

The media this evening is full of the  speculation that after the RMT strike actions later on this week, there is quite a large queue of public seector workers who will also shortly be pressing claims for substantial pay increases. At the moment, the list included teachers, nurses and other NHS staff. In case this sounds like a uniquely UK problem, nothing could be further from the truth. In Eire and many other EU countries, public sector workers who have had their wages held down throughout the days of the pandemic and are now faced  with rising rates of inflation which means that their real wages are, in effect, being cut and they are on the march. There is some talk of conditions approaching a general strike but certainly the discontent is very widespread.

If you thought that Brish politics was fractured, then it is even more so the case in France. In the French Parliamentary elections, Macron needed to to get 289 votes for a majority but only secured 245. A coalition on the left secured 131 votes whilst the combined right is 89. In other words, Macron has almost as many deputies ranged against him as his own deputies but that they are split between left and right who will not collaborate. So France will be entering a very unstable period for the months ahead. 

It is part of my normal Sunday routine that I get up early and then walk down to town to collect my Sunday newspaper. It had rained heavily yesterday and evidently the rain had dislodged some of the moss on my roof which I was anxious to remove from our newly restored patio. As I was sweeping the path near to our back gate, I heard a familiar rustling sound and, sure enough, it was Miggles (our adopted cat) who upon hearing the sound of the sweeping decided it was time to pay me a visit. Mind you, it not my company that he/she seeks but a little dish of premium cat food which is always forthcoming. I thought that the cat had showed a degree of prescience to associated the noise of my sweeping to the fact that food was in the offing. Once we had viewed the early morning politics program, Meg and I decided to go down into town by car as the weather looked a little indeterminate and we did not particularly want to get caught in a shower. So we made our way to our normal bench and wondered if we coincide with any of our park regulars. In the event, we did not, so we decided to walk in the region of the cafe to see of any regulars were having coffee in the park’s own coffee bar. Again, we were not in luck but as we walked back to our car in the top car park, we noticed that a huge branch of a weeping willow that must have been a foot in diameter had been wrenched off by the wind and had completely broken off. I imagine that it will some time with a chainsaw to chop it up into smaller pieces and do whatever is done with the timber from fallen branches. It rather reminded me of the occasion when we motoring in mid-Wales and on approaching Betws-y-Coed we were only a minute or so away from being at the receiving end of a falling tree with which fortunately we did not get entangled. And so it was home for a Sunday lunch that was rustled up from bits and pieces that we had in the fridge and the freezer but nonetheless gave us a tasty meal.

Last night, we promised ourselves that we would treat ourselves to an opera, courtesy of YouTube on the TV. But we started off with a frustrating period when our access to anything on the net was met with the informative message ‘You are not connected to a network’ or similar. I think, but am not sure, that I had activated a ‘Reset’  button but nothing seemed to happen for quite some time. Then, in about 10 minutes, the system indicated that it had made an internet connection so we pressed ahead and found a copy of La Bohème featuring Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni. The singing was of quite a high order although both singers looked as though they were in the mid-to-late stages of their careers. We got subtitles in Italian which was a little interesting in itself as you could match up the words coming out of the singer’s mouth with the actual text. Fortunately, this opera is not exceedingly long so it meant that Meg and I could crawl into our beds at a reasonable time.

The political story which is going to dominate the headlines for the next few days, or at least until  the results of Thursdays by-elections are known, are the three days of strikes timetabled for later on this week. About half of the entire rail network will be affected and the strategy of striking for three days in which trains are automatically out of position makes a three day strike into effectively a five day strike. Besides the transport workers, there are many other public sector unions queuing up for what may well be a ‘summer of discontent’ as wages have been ‘restrained’ for so long. But as the pandemic and associated furlough schemes have been wound down,  so a lack of parity is increasingly evident and all of this is before a predicted inflation rate of 11% hits us. Official data show annual growth in total average earnings reached a 15-year high of 6.2 per cent in the private sector in the first three months of 2022 — while falling to a five-year low of 1.9 per cent in the public sector. There are some indications that both unions and government are itching for a fight. From the government’s perspective, it is quite easy to demonise union leaders and to mobilise public opinion against the strikes. In a week when the government might appear to be on the back foot before voters go to the polls on Thursday, then the government must think of a strike as like manna from heaven. On the other hand, with so many public sector workers in the queue whose wages have been less than the inflation rate for years giving a real-terms pay cut, then the government must feel that it cannot afford to cede an inch to the transport workers. As the strike continues without a resolution, so the government must feel it is quite content to let it run and run if it delivers political advantages for them.

Today is the day when we return home from our mini-break holiday in Chester. Instead of bothering to do any packing last night, I reckoned it is so much easier to pack up when you are coming home rather than planning your outward trip – after all, everything in the romm is to be packed up or thrown away. We got up at 6.15 and basically we were all done and ready to go down for breakfast by 8.00am. We enjoyed our last breakfast as indeed we have enjoyed our previous two but today we felt the need to supply ourselves with a few comestibles for a little break half way though the journey. I made a couple of trips to the self-service coffee machine to fill up our flask and managed to snaffle a few little pastry type things plus a banana which all fitted beautifully into our little jute bag which had been so kindly donated to us yesterday. This little bag is going to be so useful to us when we have little breaks away that I have ensured that it is packed away into our normal ‘going away’ suitcase so that we wil always have it to hand. By the time we had breakfasted and checked out, it was a few minutes before 9.00am so we were pleased to make a prompt start. The first part of the journey was rain-free but the little splatters of rain become heavier and heavier so the second half of the journey was a wet affair.  We were in a bit of a dilemma where to have our mid-journey break because we did not really want to pull off at Shrewsbury services, which is a halfway point in the journey. So we were determined to find a convenient layby just short of the M54 motorway where evidently stopping for any purpose is not allowed. What we found interesting was that just before the clearway section at the end of the dual carriage way, there seemed to be several lay-by areas provided within the last mile or so. Thinking about, the road layout designers must have appreciated that people would want to stop for a variety of reasons before they eentered the M54-M6-M5 motorways network and hence we found about three substantial lay-bys provided within about a mile. Evidently, I have never thought about this before but it worked out really well for us. We availed ourselves of one of the lay-bys some five miles short of the M54 network which had the added bonus that a really colossal refuse bin had been provided for the disposal of travellers’ waste. As we were making good time, we popped by the newsagents so that I could pick up today’s newspaper before we arrived home.

The day was pretty humid and muggy when we got home so we dined on some icecream followed by cheese and biscuits which was more than adequate for us in the middle of the day. Then in a bustle of activity, I made sure that all of our holiday washing was put through the washing machine and dryer before being all put away.  We got out suitcases fuly unpacked and their contents restored to their ‘normal’ homes because, as well as clothes, we always have some items which are useful to us like teabags, a supply of plastic sacks, a range of cosmetics and medicaments and so on. It was very satisfying to get all of these put away before we settled down to a lesiurely read of the newspapers before we get ourselves prepared for chuch when we leave the house at 5.30. It is just as well that we got ourselves sorted and organised today as next week will prove to be quite busy for us. On Monday our broadband is due to be upgraded and on Tuesday, in addituon to my Pilates class we have made an arrangement to see our our pre-pandemic Waitrose freinds but in the park (weather permitting). On Wednesday, our University of Winchester colleague will be arriving for a couple of days stay but we have already got planned out a little priogram of activities to keep us all entertained.

Of course, the big event (in my calendar) next week is going to be the result of the two by elections to be held on Thursday. Wakefield looks a foregone conclusion but Tiverton and Honiton, a Devon rural seat, looks much more 50:50. There seems to be a summer spike of COVID hitting us shortly as the number of infections has risen by 43% in a single week. It looks as though the latest variants of the virus are less severe but more trasnmissible and with the virtual ending of ‘Test-and-trace’ how many of us are walking around and unintentionally infecting others? To be pessimistic, I suspect that we might get hit by something nasty in the autumn and winter months as we may have relaxed our guide far too early. Some commentators are blaming all the Jubilee get togethers for this rapid rise but who can tell?

Friday was the day when we had planned to visit Chester without any other obligations and we were not to be disappointed. We had another marvellous breakfast at our leisure and then set off for Chester, making for the ‘Park and Ride’ system on the outskirts of Chester. This really could not have been more straightforward – we entered  £4 into a machine to give us two inward and two outbound journeys and set off within about two minutes after boarding the bus. The journey into Chester is really quite interesting and we looked at the new building that had evidently been taking place since we last made this journey over some two years ago. But we trod a familiar route, visiting a cafe that we know well which is just inside the Roman walls where we had a coffee and some toasted fruitcake. Then we walked on down to town and made for an Italian restaurant – Sergios – which we know is immediately adjacent to the cathedral. We then did a tour of some of the ancient streets, doing some shopping for a few items as we progressed. But by this time, the sun was getting pretty high and so we were relieved to seek some solice in the cathedral. We particularly like Chester cathedral because unlike many Anglican cathedrals, it is not adorned with too much 18th and 19th century militaria – the military plaques that are displayed are relatively unostentatious and often quite interesting. We eventually found our way to a little chapel that seemed to be dedicated to the Ukraine. There was certainly a classical Byzantine Madonna on display, plus a statue and a crucifix that could have been of Ukrainian origin but there was a map of the Ukraine – evidently not of recent origin – where of course one could recognise many of the place names on it. We lit some candles in remembrance of some of our dear departed relatives. As we were leaving, it was quite touching to see that there were a plethora of Ukrainian ribbons tied onto the railings complete with a collection of little tapestries, many of them with appropiate homilies written and embroidered onto them. One typical example was ‘Albert Einstein was a refugee‘ which gives you a flavour of the type of homilies that were displayed.

Just after 1.00pm we strolled into our by now favourite Italian restaurant and immediately rewarded ourselves by sinking some cool Peroni (Italian) beer. We wanted to eat something that we wouldn’t necessarily have at home and having eaten some very filling pasta and risotto yesterday (which we enjoyed but didn’t quite finish) we decided to vary our choices. We started off with two different starters – a Funghi (mushrooms) for Meg and a stuffed Zucchini for myself. This we intended to share after we had eaten about half each which we often do. Then the menu had on offer a speciality Zuppa di Pesce  which is Italian Fish and Seafood Stew and we asked that we be served with just one portion of this but to be shared between the two of us. This the restaurant did and we both had a wonderful gastronomic experience without feeling over full or bloated at the end of it all. But we had an expected bonus as it transpired that at least three of the staff happened to be Spanish rather than Italian. So we chatted with one waiter who was from Malaga (in Andalucia) and another who hailed from Asturias in the north. Taking one thing with another, the food we were having, the conversations we were having and the whole ambience of the restaurant made us feel as though we were in Spain without being in Spain.

After lunch we made our way through sunny streets to the bus station where we caught the coach taking us to the Park and Ride. When we got back to the hotel, we are were feeling rather hot and thirsty so, rather unusually for us, decided to have a drink of lager in the hotel bar in order to cool off more than anything else. As we were leaving, we entered into a conversation with one of the hotel’s managerial staff asking her, as we often do these days, where she hailed from. She was Romanian and we chatted about when we had heard Romanian spoken on the TV, we were surprised that we could understand a fair proportion of it. The manageress explained how Romanian was one of the most latinate of languages being one of the first territories in the Roman conquests – it’s all in the name, after all. She herself had worked for three years in Rome and told us her Italian was better than her Romanian. She had also worked in the Italian restaurant in which we had just dined. So this was quite a fascinating little conversation. Whilst in our hotel bedroom and  before we start to think about packing, we discovered No. 10 had informed the Northern group of Tory MPs who were having a major ‘red wall’ regional conference that Boris Johnson was on a train to see them whereas in practice he was on a plane visiting Kyiv in the Ukraine. Some commentators have wryly pointed out that Boris Johnson would have a much friendlier welcome in the Ukraine than he would in the North of England – is this a sign that he knows that the Wakefield by-election next Thursday is irrevocably lost?

Today was the day when we had determined that we were going to visit Meg’s Uncle Ken in Rhos-on-Sea, Old Colwyn. But first we got up after a good night’s sleep and then had a marvellous breakfast, as we have by now come to expect from this particular Holiday Inn hotel. We had been informed by one of Ken’s relatives that we needed to have a negative lateral flow test before we entered the residential home. In the event, although we said we had both tested negative, the residential care staff did not seem to be unduly concerned. So we had a long chat with Uncle Ken in his own room and then decided to join the coffee morning that was taking place in the lounge downstairs. We arrived just at the end of the ‘coffee session’ and they were now preparing for lunch. But we got into conversation with a Methodist Homes for the Aged chaplain who seemed to be an almost permanent fixture of this particular home so he very kindly got us a coffee. He had had a varied and interesting career starting off as a maths teacher before becoming a methodist minister and then rising through the Methodist hierarchy. We exchanged some notes of an ecumenical flavour and then we took our leave of Uncle Ken. As we were only 5-6 miles from the town of Conwy (Conway in English) that we know well, we made our way to our favourite restaurant which is up a flight of stairs and not always attracting a lot of the normal ‘street’ trade. We imagined that it would be teeming but it was only about one third full so we were delighted to avail ourselves of one of their lunches. I had a pea and ham risotto and Meg had a salmon pasta – we swapped meals half way through and found then almost too abundant for us to do justice to them. As part of the music in the background that was being played, one of the tracks was the cabaret classic ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ I got into conversation with the waitress who was evidently enjoying the music and told her the story of  Eve Graham who sang this number to a nightclub (in which I worked as a barman)  stuffed full with about 1,000 people one Christmas Eve with such effect that everybody stopped dancing and/or drinking just to listen to this stupendous performance. Eve Graham became part of a group called the ‘New Seekers’ whose most famous claim to fame was to turn the Coca Cola jingle into the World beating ‘I want to teach the world to sing, in perfect har-mon-y‘ In 1972, the New Seekers took a follow up song to this to No. 2 in the Eurovision Song Context. Eve Graham is still alive and performing but she has let the world know that the singers did not accumulate any real riches afer their evident successes as so much money was creamed off by managers, agents and the like. After I told the waitress of my slight connections with the music world, I also pushed my luck and asked if I could retain the small 275 cl bottles in which we had had some elderflower cordial. I told her that these bottles were like gold dust as I needed about 20-30 for the damson gin which I still have to bottle.She agreed and let me have several more bottles which they would otherwise have thrown away. Not having a bag to carry them away in, I casually enquired if they had a spare bag behind the bar and was promptly supplied with quite a substantial jute bag which they just happened to have spare and very generously donated to me.

After lunch, we proceeded along the High Street in Conway to buy some things of which we were quite short, not least some fresh milk for our bedroom cups of tea. When I got back to the car, I looked in the boot and realised with some dismay that the file with a lot of booking information and sat-nav directions in it, I had left behind at Uncle Ken’s residential home. I managed to consult the Sat Nav history to get us back to the care home which was not too far distant, Fortunately, I then retrieved the file I had left in Uncle Kens room and so we could then make our way back the hotel bedroom for a bit of a rest and afternoon tea.

The Prime Minister’s adviser on Ethics, Lord Geidt, resigned yesterday with the briefest of resignation letters. But the mystery hs deepened today as Downing Street has published Lord Geidt’s resignation letter a day after he unexpectedly decided to step down. In his letter he said he had been asked to offer a view on ‘measures which risk a deliberate and purposeful breach of the ministerial code’. We shall have to wait and see what more there is to this story as the hours unfold but it looks like another brick in the wall around Boris Johnson has been removed.

Today was the day when we were due to travel to North Wales but there was a lot of running around to do before we got underway. Apart from the last minute packing including the laptop on which this blog is written, there were several urgent jobs to be done. One was to take the five sacks of hedge clippings that had been stored waiting for the day upon which gardening waste is collected. I was relying upon the fact that the empty bungalow has a practically empty bin apart from the grass mowings that the relatives are doing weekly to keep everything looking tidy. I was in luck and managed to squeeze my five sack fulls of clippings into their garden waste bin ready to be hauled to the end of the road. Then I had to get the document upon which I had been working ready for despatch but it required one more signature from a really obliging neighbour as a witness. Then all was ready so we shot into town and picked up our newspaper before dashing to the Post Office to get my document posted and ‘into the system’.  I realised that in my panic to get things packed quickly, I had forgotten some toothbrushes and toothpaste but this was quickly remedied by a dive into one of the many cosmetic type shops in the High Street and finally we set off, some ten minutes before the time I had scheduled for ourselves. The first half of the journey was uneventful and we had a pit stop at a halfway point where we ate some of our own elevenses on some benches meant to be used exclusively by Starbuck customers but nobody moved us on. In the second half of the journey, we encountered a fairly large traffic jam because of some roadworks south of the Langollen turn off but once this was put behind us we get to the hotel at about 12.30 after a journey of 97 miles.Then we dumped everything into the room, did a quick unpack and then had a quick freshen up and then made for our Country Club restaurant a couple of miles down the road at which we arrived some three minutes before our appointed luncheon time. We had a wonderful meal starting off with some starters (liver pate, wild mushrooms) which we shared and each had a panfried sea bream served with seasonable vegetables. We found this meal incredibly filling and satisfying and I quaffed a point of a dark local cask beer, vaguely reminiscient of a porter, which again I really enjoyed.

Meg and I enjoyed crashing out this afternoon and I must say, the Holiday Inn room that we have lived to all of our expectations. It is certainly large enough and well appointed and all of the systems seem to work as we would wish. We have been absorbing the news during the day of the fact that the flight of sylum seekers being sent to Rwanda for ‘processing’ was finally abandoned last night after a legal challenge by the European Court of Human Rights. Naturally our Home Secretary (Priti Patel) has been spitting teeth and there are all kinds of threats that we should withdraw from this court. But not many people realise that this court has nothing to do with the European Community which we have just left but its origins were in the early 1940s when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill raised the idea of a ‘Council of Europe’. In the wake of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, the idea behind the Council of Europe was to set up an international organisation to promote democracy, the rule of law and human rights. This was eventually to become the European Court on Human Rights. British lawyers were very much involved in the discussions of principles and the shaping of the Court. The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 and the UK was the first signatory to the Convention. The Convention entered into force on 3 September 1953. So all in all, if Britain were to leave such a court that we had helped to establish then Britain’s standing in the world would reduce our moral status almost to vanishing point. The whole of the Good Friday Agreement which has brought peace to Northern Ireland is underpinned by the ECHR so it is doubtful if the UK could withdraw without threatening the whole of this agreement. Nonetheless, some Tory MPs are calling for the UK to withdraw. As I write this blog, a story has broken in the last minute that Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, has resigned after saying there was a ‘legitimate question’ over whether the PM had broken ministerial rules over Partygate. He had threatened to do so a week or so ago and was evidently agonising over his role and function but he is now No. 2 in the queue to resign from this position.

Today was always going to be a really ‘action packed’ day and so it turned out to be. As Tuesday is my Pilates day, then we know we would have to have a quick turn-around so that I can be ready to walk down into town. So Meg and I went straight down to Waitrose by car expecting to see some of our friends and acquaintances. In the event, no sooner were we sitting down having our coffee and comestibles, than we bumped into a friend of our pre-pandemic friends who we have now got to know quite well. Then the wife of our pre-pandemic friends turned up so soon the four of us were busy chatting away at a table. As there was a photograph of some members of the Order of the Garter in my newspaper, I told the story of how King Edward III who founded the Order of the Garter was the recipient of several titters when a garter slipped from a lady’s leg (thigh?) whereupon he put it around his own leg and spake (in normal French) “Honi soit qui mal y pense. (‘Shame on anyone who thinks evil of it’.) This story is probably apocrypal and I may have mis-remembered some elements of it but it is essentially correct. I seem to remember my mother telling me the origin of the phrase whilst I was still quite young (and not into lady’s garters or any other kind) After this jollity, we were joined by a wheelchair associate of ours who had heard the peals of laughter and wanted to be a part of it. In the midst of all this jollity, Seasoned World Traveller turned up and I gave him a press-cutting I had been carrying around with me. Then I espied a particular friend of ours who teaches Politics and History at Bromsgrove School who was stuck in the middle of marking. I commiserated with her, explaining that the prospect of marking about 75 assignments at 45 minutes for each one making a total of 50 extra hours of work that had to be handed back within days was not a happy memory. This generally meant several late nights until about 3.00am armed with tea and biscuits which was not good for one’s waistline. When faced with a lot of irrelevant material (a common failing when students do not know the answer to the question but fling together random facts rather like mud at a wall hoping that some of it might stick), I was reminded of the schoolboy who answered thus. In a Religious Studies examination when asked for a list of the 10 commamdments he indicated that he had forgotten them but he could (and did) reproduce a list of the first thirty kings of Israel. So eventually, we left for home having met five of our acquaintances in one place.

When we got home, I prepared some of the elements of the quickie meal of fish fingers which we have upon my return from Pilates. Then immediately this was over, I needed to check over the document I as preparing that needed some signatures on it. Fortunately, my next door neighbour proved to be more than obliging and so I have all of the elements in place to have my document dspatched in the morning. Then I had to have a quick change of clothing into something vaguely respectable as I had been ‘volunteered’ for membership of the parochial church council which was meeting for its inaugural meeting tonight at 7.00pm. One of the chief items of business in the evening was to elect a Chairman and a Secretary. After an embarrassed pause in which no-one was willing to step forward, I made a suggestion which helped to ease the logjam. Instead of a permanent chair ‘person’ I suggested that we think of electing a Chair and a Vice-Chair (of different genders) so that one perosn could grow in to a role and take over after a year of observation and  experience of the meeting. Quite quickly, having gone round the table to introduce ourselves and indicate what we could offer to the Council, a Chair and a Secretary seemed to emerge quite quickly and we are are going to meet again in some 2-3 weeks time to refine some of the draft documents we had in front of us as models for our constitution so that we can fashion a Council in our own image. Tonight, of all nights, I had to miss ‘Today at the Test‘ where the England team had pulled off one of the most stunning of victories. Some 299 runs needed to be scored and the BBC Sports website gives us a summary: On a breathless final day at Trent Bridge, Bairstow made the second-fastest century by an England batter in Test cricket as the hosts strolled to what should have been a challenging target of 299 from 72 overs. Bairstow’s outrageous hitting in the spell after tea took him to three figures from 77 balls, only just missing the England record of 76 balls that has stood for 120 years. He was eventually out for 136 from 92 balls, having clubbed 14 fours and seven sixes in front of a delirious full house. Unfortunately attendance at the church meeting means that I missed seeing a summary on one of the most exciting day’s cricket in decades.

This morning, Meg and I spent a certain amount of time sorting out what clothes we intend to take away with us when we make our journey to North Wales starting on Wednesday. This really did take not too much sorting out as it was case of which top ‘goes with’ which skirt and we know that certain combinations work very well. So we have our Wednesday/Thursday kit sorted out as as well as our Friday/Saturday kit. According to the weather forecast, the temperature in certain parts of Englnd may well exceed that of Hawaii as it seems that a plume of hot air over Spain is being pushed northwards towards the UK.  Eventually, we decided to go and collect our newspapers by car as we needed to buy a few provisions from Waitrose. Whilst there,we  were tempted to buy a ‘butterfly’ mixture of seeds and bulbs for, as it happens, I just happen to have a little plot of spare land in Mog’s Den into which they can be sown.  Once we got onto our bench seat, we made our number with Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who was still completing his 9-12 kilometres a day as he has been doing for months now. We had not bumped into him for a week or so now but he still seemed hale and hearty – as always, he did not linger too long as his muscles get cold if he stops too long and he is eager to get on this way. After we had exchanged gossip with him we met a couple of our elderly Irish friends who had just returned from a cruise and I suspect might be preparing for another one. They were planning a trip down the Rhine and the tour company with which they are booked picks them up coach from Bromsgrove bus station and once their luggage is loaded, the next time they see it is when they are in their cabin in their cruise ship. To avoid all UK airports sounds fantastic so I think this may be an option well worth exploring. When we returned home, we cooked ourselves a fairly rapid midday meal of unsmoked gammon, baked potato and some Hispi cabbage and very tasty we found it.

When I was doing a tidy up of Mog’s Den yesterday, I was exploring some of the things that I had evidently rescued and after some months of benign neglect, were now busy growing away in some of the large pots I have distributed up and down the quite steep sides slopes of the den. When I examined one of the pots more closely, I realised that it was a lilac tree or bush which was about a metre tall. So I have made some space for it next to the much a larger lilac tree on the patio that was bought for me a couple of birthdays ago and which flowered for the first time this year. Apparently, it is a characteristic of lilac trees that they take about 2-3 years to flower but the specimen I have just discovered will no doubt respond to a bit of TLC, some fertiliser and a somewhat more regular watering.  Later on the afternoon, our next door neighbours popped round, by arrangement, to take a spot of afternoon tea with us. We wanted to show them the correspondence into which I had entered with the solicitors of the vacant bungalow across the communal green area from us. Like us, they were fairly amazed that we should have been put to so much trouble and reinforced our own view that the solicitor should have pressed their own clients much harder to supply all of the details of the property which they were trying to sell.

Late on this afternoon, the Government has published its proposal to overturn critical parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol – an international treaty which Boris Johnson had both negotiated and agreed to. So it appears that we may be on the edge of a trade war with the EU given the plain illegality of what is being proposed. However, the UK government is arguing that the Northern Irish situation is a ‘genuinely exceptional situation’ and because of this, the UK feels it feels it can disregard a treaty which it itself had signed. One has a suspicion that all of this may be just be playing ‘hard ball’ in negotiations with the EU but the legislation will have to  pass through the House of Commons first. This is by no means certain, because a significant numbers of MPs opposed to Boris Johnson many feel that this is a step too far and refuse to vote for the legislation in the Commons. Then, of course, the legislation will almost certainly fail to pass through the House of Lords. One does get the suspicion that ‘normal’ government has been suspended and that Boris Johnson will pursue whatever policies will feed the appetites of his own fervent Brexiteers. So anything that seems to pick a fight with the EU or draconian measures to deal with asylum seekers will  automatically throw ‘red meat’ to whatever supporters or voters he needs for his survival.

Today being Sunday, I walked down as usual to collect our Sunday newspapers. Knowing that our friend from Oxfordshire is coming in about 11 days time, I was trying to look at a familiar journey through the eyes of a visitor and noticed how green things were, taking one thing with another. On the way back, as I was crossing the road with a sustaining banana in hand, a car stopped for me and the lights flashed. When the window was wound down I then realised it was our Irish friends from further up the road. We had a snatched conversation for a few seconds before the traffic built up behind and we both had to resume our separate journeys. After the Sophie Raworth show at 9.00am and yet another apologist for Boris Johnson, we started to make preparations for our journey down into town. I prepared our normal flask for our elevenses  and then devoted some time to tidying up a table in our dining room that I use as a bit of overflow workspace and from where we occasionally FaceTime some of our friends on the iPad. This was a useful 15 minutes whilst waiting for Meg to get ready which were well spent so I can carry on and make it even more ship-shape in the next day or so. It rather looked as though a bit of rain might threaten, so Meg and I indulged ourselves by going down to the park by car. The park was teeming with 3-4 year olds on a medley of scooters, bikes and tricycles and we were lucky that the seat we were going to sit on was vacated for us just a minute or so before we arrived. We bumped into one of our regulars who whizzes all over the place at very great speed in her wheelchair but we had not seen her for about a week or so. After she left us, we walked down the hill and we made contact with Seasoned World Traveller. I had read an article in yesteday’s Times that I suspected might be of interest to him so I said that I would rescue it from the ‘vertical’ filing system and keep it in my rucksack ready for the next time I see him. Then it was a quick ride up the hill  and I started to think about the lunch that we were going to have. Fortunately, it was easy to prepare as I had taken the frozen half of a joint cooked some weeks before and all I had to do was to prepare some onion gravy, cut into slices and Voilá.

After lunch there was documentation I had set myself the task of completing and fortunately this seemed to be unproblematic. I needed to consult some government websites but these seemed to be well written and error-free as well as being easy to navigate so I was pleased to able to complete my task relatively quickly. As I had now had a bit of time in hand and the weather was set fair, I thought I would tackle some of the really overgrown bits of Mog’s Den. This is the sliver of land (more of a triangle actually) which was gifted to us when we settled the line of our boundary fence and which I am making into a sort of ‘wild’ garden. But the plum tree is manifesting a fair bit of fruit this year and some of the Vinca major (Greater Periwinkle) is doing a great job of providing some colourful ground cover where nothing else will grow as it is so shaded. A bit of benign neglect can sometimes yield some nice surprises. But not having tended Mog’s Den this season meant that some really tall weeds had gone somewhat rampant. These were largely rose bay willow herb and nettle and being shallow rooted I managed after half an hour’s work to effect quite a change. The idea is to do a little bit each day so that when our friend – a keen gardener- comes to stay with us, then Mog’s Den will look a little less of a wilderness. I am hopeful that after a bit of turning around, this little plot of land will stay pretty maintenance free.  

Before the two by-election results which will be a week on Thursday, Boris Johnson has evidently engaged to two policies designed to throw some ‘red meat’ to the most fervent of his supporters. One of these is the Northern Ireland Protocol  where one senior Tory has told Sky News that planned legislation on the Northern Ireland Protocol is ‘clearly not in the national interest but is about appeasing the ERG’. ERG is the ‘European Research Group’ and is a group of Tory MPs radically opposed to anything remotely European. The other policy is to take asylum seekers and to transport them to Rwanda – the policy of transporting such individuals to ‘darkest Africa’ is seen as a masterstroke by some of Johnson’s supporters. But an appeal against the first trasnportation of refugees to Rwanda will come before the Appeal Court tomorrow.

Today was a fairly typical Saturday but the day started off fairly bright, albeit breezy, so there was no reason for us both not to enjoy our walk onto the park. I popped into town to collect our newspapers by car and then we were ready for our walk. Before I left, I had exchanged some emails with our erstwhile colleague from the university of Winchester who is coming to stay with us in about 12 days time but in the meantime, we are getting a little more focused on our trip to North Wales starting next Wednesday. I did a quick web search and discovered a pub in Old Colwyn that seems to offer good but reasonably priced meals in the middle of the day so if we do not find anything else locally, we always have the postcode of an eating place that we might visit. The thing about pubs that offer food is that they typically have a reasonably sized car park which can make life easier than having to find a car park adjacent to a restaurant.  We walked down into the park and enjoyed our coffee on the park bench and were soon joined by our University of Birmingham friend. After we had chatted for a few minutes we were joined by our Seasoned World Traveller friend but then it started to spot with rain so we all repaired to the shade of a nearby tree which afforded us some respite. Then we had quite a discussion about the accuracy of blood pressure monitors and whether they should be deployed before or after taking blood pressure medication. All three of us males had been given somewhat differing modes of advice by our various surgeries and clinicians so we attempted to pool our knowledge and best practice. After all of this quasi-medical discussion, we walked slowly up the hill and prepared a salad for ourselves that was fairly easy to throw together. Then we had a quietish afternoon, knowing that we were going to attend our normal church service in the early evening.

According to Sky News, the government are shortly to intervene in the nation’s food habits. This is always a particularly tricky area for government because if they leave things to the untrammeled operation of the market (which is the natural default state for members of the Tory party) then we will be fed a diet high in salt, sugar and junk foods which are cheap to produce, profits are high and the nation’a health suffers dramatically (with increased incidences of diabetes, cancers and othet degenerative diseases) Intervene in the market, though, and the government’s critics will decry the operation of a ‘nanny state’ and the regulation of a market place which looks and feels somehow more ‘socialist’. A report due to be released on Monday contains recommendations to expand free school meals, impose a long-campaigned for salt and sugar tax, and introduce GP prescriptions for fruit and veg. At the same time, we will be urged to increase our consumption of ‘responsibly sourced venison’, increase the consumption of food from algae proteins, and encourage technology to help cattle produce less methane. This all sounds well and good but I suspect that some of the wilder recommendations (eating not just venison but ‘responsibly sourced venison’ however we are meant to ascertain that on the supermarket shelves) will be absolutely trashed by the Tory supporting ‘middle-brows’ of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. Then we will be left with a policy which is high on aspirational details but low on any practical policies. All of this is happening at a time when most of the population are cutting back on food in order to fund sky-high energy bills and the temptations to fill oneself with cheap but junk food must be considerable for the poorest parts of the population.

In the Ukraine war, there is intense street fighting in the strategically important city of Severodonetsk. It looks as though the Ukrainians are rapidly running out of ammunition and the Russians are fighting in the only way that they seem to know how. It is reported that Moscow is using 1960s era 5.5-tonne anti-ship missiles against land targets.  When employed in a ground attack role with a conventional warhead they are highly inaccurate and can therefore cause significant collateral damage and civilian casualties. The conventional military opinion at this stage in the war is that the Russians are likely to be successful in their policy of blasting their way into urban settlements but at the cost of many losses both to themselves and also to the Ukrainians. It may be that Russia is resorting to older technology because it is running hort of more modern and more precise missle systems. On the other hand, overwhelming and occupying a city is one thing, but holding on to it for any length of time is much more problematic and may take many more troops than Russia is prepared to commit.