Today started off with an interesting knock at the door from a team from BT OpenReach who had come along to see what could be done about the blockage in the ducting that they had identified which means that we cannot yet install some superfast broadband via a fibre cable. Three large vans turned up but eventually they got to work at the site around the corner next to our neighbour’s garden fence where the blockage had been identified. After an initial lack of success they identified the source of the problem. This is a common problem with which they have to cope most of the time. When a fence post is being erected, whatever digging tool is being used may well damage the ducting. There is generally a telecommunications cable of some kind within this but when the concrete for the fence post is inserted into the hole, it enters the ducting and then blocks it off. Having got the problem identified, they managed to rectify it and put a rope through it (so they said) so that when the installation comes along in a week or so’s time, all they have to do is to attach the cable to the end of the rope and then pull it through. Then it will go as far as the access point outside our house, be taken inside the  house and then the engineer will install the new fibre cable into a router that they will supply and then, if all goes well, we ought to have superfast broadband. When Meg started our walk down into the park, the men were still working away but had just completed their work (successfully) upon our return. We bumped into our Italian friend just down the road and then in the park met up with our University of Birmingham friend. He had phoned me up earlier in the morning asking if he could borrow again some ‘Teach yourself Spanish’ books which I had lent to him before but now he wanted to extend his knowledge. I also had a couple of travel guides (the kind copiously illustrated with photos of interesting things to see in whatever region of Spain you visit) so our friend could delight in leafing through these as well. We also met up with Seasoned World Traveller who hunted us out and we continued our discussions of what makes people tick – unusually, we did not broach the subject of politics in any shape or form today. Once we returned home, we had a meal of fish to which we often treat ourselves on a Friday which is seabass cooked for three minutes on one side, two minutes on the other (with some capers) and then served directly onto a small bed of crispy salad.

After lunch, we knew that it was lawn cutting day again but at least we had a wonderfully fine afternoon. Once the lawncutting had been completed, Meg and I treated ourselves to a little bit of afternoon tea in the garden. Then I had a recently purchased sweet pea to plant and fortunately, I already have the trellis in place by the side of the house. Then I needed to tie back a rose in the front garden that was in danger of falling over in the high winds but I suspect given the age of the rose, I will need a much longer stake in time. I also gave my recently planted clematis plants a bit of support and hope to train them to occupy the space previously occupied by a much older plant, now deceased. Whilst at the front of the house, I saw our neighbour and invited him and his wife around for tea late on Monday afternoon. What I want to do is to show them the email correspondence I have recently had with the vendor’s solicitors for the vacant house across our communal green area. As the solicitors are in Guildford,Surry and the house was sold through the Purple Bricks agency we are speculating whether the purchaser has used the internal photographs of the house but has not actually seen the garden and the environs of the house. An ‘old fashioned’ estate agent would have shown people around and answered a lot of questions but I have every indication that this is not what has happened on this occasion.

During the day I have been in email correspondence with one of my ex-University of Winchester friends who has recently retired. She has visited the house before and gave me a lot of practical and useful advice and support when I was ill some four years ago now. So she accepted a long standing invitation to come and stay with us for a day or so, so having booked her cat into a cattery all is now organised for her to visit in about two weeks time. Although we have been in regular email contact over the years, it is so much nicer to have a face-to-face so that we can catch upon all of the news that we wish to impart to each other.

This turned out to be an interesting day for reasons that will become apparent. But being a Thursday, it was my normal ‘shopping’ day but I must say that things seemed extraordinarily quiet this morning, for reasons I cannot immediately discern. As we intend to go away in the middle of next week, I made the shopping into a very ‘light’ week as I hate shopping for food only to throw it away a few days later. The shopping having been done, I returned home for a quickie breakfast and then wrote a quick note to Meg’s Uncle Ken in North Wales to remind him that we were due to visit him in a week’s time. When we started to think about our walk, it was evidently a very indeterminate type of day, weatherwise, and we were unsure whether little spots of rain were threatened and whether we were due to experience a more serious downpour. By the time we got ourselves ready for a walk in the park, it had already stated to spot with rain so we had to reluctantly dive back inside the house and don some outerwear. By the time we were firmly seated on our park bench, it started to rain quite steadily so I did what I have never done before. I took our poured out coffee and put back into the flask. Then we headed for the bandstand, knowing that it would give us respite from the rain for sufficient time for the rain to blow over. Sheltering under the bandstand roof, there was a motley crew of individuals all sheltering from the rain. We had small children and dogs as well as an adverising board for a local radio station and a presenter who was awaiting a person running across England to raise money for diabetes research. When the rain ceased, we struck out for home and I previously prepared some veg to have with our quiche at lunchtime. I had pre-prepared some little sticks of carrots and parboiled them with some petit pois. Then, when we got into the house, we finished off the cooking of the veg and then gave them a quick stir in some hot olive oil, to which we added a spoonful of runny honey. This makes a fairly boring vegetable mix a bit more exciting and we enjoyed it very much with our quiche.

In the afternoon, I knew that I needed to send a long and detailed reply to a solicitor who was representing the relatives of our neighbour who lived ‘across the green’ from us and died last August. The solicitor had submitted a lengthy list of questions on matters generally related to the ‘drainage field’  and associated access pipes and roadways. A lot of these questions could have been answered if the relevant documents had been supplied to the solicitor in the first place. But this involved sorting through historic files and then the computer to see if I had these documents as a PDF. The documents were quite various and included things such as the legal agreement that we and a couple of our neighbours had signed giving us a mutal purchase of the drainage field, the Klargester BioDisk and all of the associated roadways and fences. In addition, we had been gifted a long sliver of land by the previous owner of the field upon a new mini-estate has been built. Several years ago we had needed to establish exactly where our boundary line lay because it had been very vague in the past (‘following the tree line’) but once we had been gifted this land, it needed a trust agreement establishing joint ownership and then registration with the Land Registry. So all in all, I needed to supply a variety of legal instruments, location maps, Land Registry TP1 forms and the like so that the conveyancing could go ahead. But the lady across the green from us who had died had all of these documents in her possession but it looked as though they had never been bundled up with the rest of the legal documents or handed over to the solicitor. So it ws evident from the list of questions that the old lady’s relatives did not really know what they were selling so it took several hours of work for me to indicate who owned what and in what proportions. This whole venture took several hours of concentrated work and I was not best pleased, particularly as I had offered to discuss any practical details of these deals with the neighbour’s relatives but they brushed off us off indicating that they knew all that they needed to know (which was evidently not the case) So at end of the transmission of several documents to the vendor’s solicitors, I did indicate my displeasure at having to spend hours of work to establish who owned what when it was not my place to do so. But at least, the hard work is now done and I await a response from the solicitor with interest.

We knew that today was going to be a messed around day as we had a telephone consultation scheduled with the doctor for this morning and we had been told to hold ourselves in readiness for the call some time between 8.30 and 12.30 which is a long time slot.  We were actually phoned up at about 9.30am and altogether, the consultation lasted the best part of half-an-hour, which I suppose is an improvement over the more general 10 minutes and we felt that we had a fairly satisfactory session. Knowing that doctors typically take your blood pressure if attending face-to-face, we thought it would be a good idea for Meg to have some up-to-date readings before we chatted with the GP. We had recently bought a new blood pressure monitor for ourselves as we suspected that the one we have had for years may be becoming unreliable.So I took two sets of blood pressure readings, one with the old machine and one with the new before our consultation with the doctor. The upshot of all of this is that out doctor in a telephone consultation wanted us to take a week full of observations and then get them into the clinic so that one of the doctors can decide whether any medication is called for or not.

By the time we had done all of this and greeted our domestic help who was here for her weekly session, we then set off for the park as it was quite a beautiful fine day. On our way down to the park, we were pleased to run across our Italian friend who was busy poring over the innards of her car. But all she was doing was adding some oil to her trusty Toyota Corolla. She and her neighbour who we we know well by sight were marvelling how clean and orderly the engine appeared even though the car was approximately 17 years old so we went on our way to the park. There we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend who had been busy in a community ‘repair’ shop where anybody who wants can bring along a household appliance that just requires a bit of attention to get it functioning again. This sounded like an excellent idea but the only trouble is that there were more volunteers offering their time and skills to repair household items than there were clients bringing along objects for them to repair. It all sounded like a sound idea but its long term future does not seem assured.

This afternoon we were expecting a visit from a gentleman who for some years now was doing some of the ‘heavier’ gardening for us (such as shaping and trimming bushes and the like) We knew that he had been incredibly ill having collapsed in a garden whilst he was working and consequently had spent several weeks in hospital receiving multiple blood transfusions. When he got home, he had had a whole series of domestic misfortunes and when our domestic help had run across him by accident in the High Street in Bromsgrove, it seemed as though a cup of tea and biscuits and a shoulder to cry on might prove timely. So our gardener called around and we spent a certain amount of time inside the house talking over the issues that had affected him. Eventually, the clouds rolled away and there was a burst of sunshine where we all sat outside and our friend could admire our patio which of course he had seen countless times as he worked in our garden but he, like us, were amazed at the variety and appearance of the patio once we had engaged in a radical clean up of the paving stones two or three weeks ago. As our gardener has been a horticulturist nearly all of his life, I took the opportunity of rescuing a shrub that was being grown in a large pot in the recesses of Mog’s den. He identified it for us as a hazel shrub/tree – now all we have to do, is to find a nice location for it. I cannot remember how I came by it except to say that I often rescue viable little shrubs and trees without always knowing what they are. We finished off our afternoon exchanging contact details so that we can keep in touch on a regular basis.

Sky News is reporting today severe disquiet at the way that the new ‘deportation to Rwanda’ policy is working out. A Home Officer worker has reported they feel ashamed to work for the government because of its plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. They told us there is ‘disbelief’ at the policy within their department – likening it to a form of human trafficking. The worker – who we have agreed to give anonymity to – has been in the asylum department for a number of years and spoke to us exclusively just days before the first flight is due to leave. They told us: ‘We should offer sanctuary and provide safe haven for those who need it but it feels like we are taking part in human trafficking – transporting people against their will and paying another country to take them‘.

Tuesday is always the day of my Pilates class so this rather dictates how the morning will pan out. Meg and I have decided that whatever the weather, we will always pop down into Waitrose by car every Tuesday morning because this is the way in which we can bump into some of our pre-pandemic friends. We got down to Waitrose in plenty of time and, in truth, we were a little too early for some of our regulars. But by arriving early, we did make contact again wth a young mother who we used to see regularly in our our pre-Covid days. We have seen her once by accident in the past two years but as we used to chat about twice a week, this was one social contact that I have rather missed. The ‘baby’ she had more than two and a half years ago is now aged 3+ and consequently is at nursery school. Our friend is a teacher of politics and modern history in one of the local schools and in the past I have off-loaded a lot of my somewhat dated politics books onto her so that she could either use them herself, donate them to the school library or even let some deserving students have them if they would prove useful. Naturally, as this was the ‘morning after the night before’ we spent some time discussing last night’s vote on the leadership of the Tory party where the result was announced at about 9.00pm last night. More on this later, though. After we had been in the café for about an hour, we were joined by two of the friends that we were expecting to see in the café this morning. The four of us were soon joined by a mutual friend so we formed a jolly little table of five of the erstwhile regulars. Then Seasoned World Traveller hove into view so I split my time talking politics with him and more gentle banter with our friends on the other table.

Now for a discussion of last night’s vote. This needs to be contextualised in a way that is evading most of the commentary found on the media. When the vote was announced, it was evident that Boris Johnson was always going to win it but the margin of the scale of the rebellion against him was the subject of much speculation. Of the 359 Tory MPs, one has to be aware that some 160-170 of them are already on the government payroll. This means that if they voted against Johnson and were successful, they would be voting themselves out of a job. For this reason, we could anticipate that the vast majority of the ‘payroll’ vote would vote in favour of Johnson and their own jobs. Subtracting the ‘payroll’ faction from the electorate leaves about 199-200 ‘non-payroll’ MPs. The vote against Johnson was 148 votes which means that 3 out of even 4 ‘non-payroll’ MPs voted  that they had no confidence in the PM. Although the MSM (Main Street Media) have not really undertaken this analysis, I was delighted to see that Channel 4 news were forcibly making this point and confronting a ‘Red Wall’ Tory MP with these unpalatable truths to which he had no reply or response. For this reason, most of the informed commentary who have worked out that Johnson received a lower proportion of supportive votes of either Teresa May or  Margaret Thatcher and both of these resigned very shortly after a damaging vote although, like Boris Johnson, they had mathematically ‘won’ the vote. So a lot of the discussion today has been on the political rather than the mathematical implications of the vote. The conclusion is that the Tory party is very, very badly split at the moment and divided parties do not win general elections. Most of the opposition parties are silently rubbing their hands in glee, watching the Tories tear them themselves apart with ‘blue on blue’ personal attacks on each other already taking place.

My Pilates class took place as normal today. When I got home, I cooked a meal of smoked hake which we served on a bed of salad. The beauty of a meal like this, apart from its health-giving properties, is that it is incredibly quick and easy to prepare and with the minumum of washing up afterwards. In the middle of the day, I was delighted to get a phone call from one of my Hampshire friends. He had just returned from a business-cum-vacation trip to Portugal that sounded anything like restful. He had been delayed in the airport on the way out for five hours and then the hotel he was intending to stay in had an out-of-hours service by the time he arrived where the system seemed to fall over. So it seemed like quite a stressful time and makes me wonder whether things will have improved by September when we may (or may not) make a trip to Coruña in Northern Spain after an absence of some 2-3 years.

In the last few days, I have been saying in this blog that when MPs return to Westminster after the Jubilee celebrations at the weekend, then politics would return with a vengeance. It seems, though, that many MPs have had their ears bent by members of their constituency parties as they have been with them since last Wednesday evening, ready for the two Bank Holidays. It now seems that a clutch of MPs have sent in letters but ‘post-dated” as it were, to allow for the Queen’s celebrations to take place without the intrusion of politics. We now know that by last night, Sir Graham Brady the Chair of the Tory backbenchers 1922 committee had enough letters to cross the threshold of 54 MPs, being 15% of the parliamentary party. Incidentally, if you ignore the ‘payroll’ vote of ministers of all ranks who cannot make a profession on disloyalty without losing their jobs, then the 15% becomes about 30% of Tory MPs who are not office holders. This is getting on for a third of the ‘genuine’ back benchers and is quite a sizable chunk when viewed in this light. We woke up this morning to hear that the Chairman of the 1922 committee and the PM had been in touch last night, and there was agreement that now the 15% threshhold had been breached,  a vote on Johnson’s leadership would take place from 6.00pm-8.00pm tonight in a secret ballet with the result announced at about 9.00pm. Boris Johnson needs to retain the support of 180 MPs but as 160-170 MPs form the payroll vote (ministers of various ranks, parliamentary private secretaries, trade envoys and an unknown number of party vice-chairs), he only needs 10-20 of the remaining 190 odd MPs to retain his position. It is widely anticipated that Boris Johnson will certainly get the 180 votes that are needed but the critical question is the size of the rebellion against him. To use an analogy popular with the grouse-sheeting fraternity, it is probable that the PM will be ‘winged’ but not brought down. However, the historical precedents of Margaret Thatcher and John Major suggest that even though a Prime Minister easily survives a vote of this nature, they are mortally wounded and their demise might only be weeks or months away. Certainly, the prospects of Boris Johnson leading the Tories into the next general election in about two year’s time will be much diminished – and the greater the vote against him, the less likely he is to be at the helm when the next general election comes. In two and a half week’s time, there are the two critical by-elections in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton. In Wakefield, the Tories may already have written this off as the Labour lead appears to 20% according to an opinion poll but I have not seen any opinion polls on the situation in Tiverton as yet.  

When I showered this morning, the water pressure from the shower head seemed rather weak and then I discovered that there was a leak near the shower head and therefore a new shower cable was indicated. So we decided to go and collect our newspaper by car and then made our way to the local hardware centre to get a new shower cable. I chose one from a selection of cables that was hanging up, checked with the assistant it was probably what I needed and then popped into Waitrose to get some de-caff tea which I needed. Then in view of the political situation and the poor weather, it being quite cold, we decided to go home avoiding the park for the day and have our elevenses in front of the TV in view of the rapidly developing political situation. After lunch, I set to work fitting the new shower cable and was then faced with the reluctant conclusion that the cable I had not bought did not have the correct fittings at one end. So I took the old cable with me down to the hardware shop and got what I had purchased this morning with was properly packaged up and sold as a ‘shower cable’ The moral to all of this is that I should have taken off the old part and showed it to them in the store before I purchased the new one. I was pleased to see that the new cable seemed to go on quite easily with no dribbles or leaks which can occur if the cable and/or associated washers are of a lower quality that is necessary.  Whilst I was out, some neighbours called round wanting to seek clarification about what work the BT team were going to do to install our fast broadband cable and that a blockage had been identified adjacent to their property. I managed to reassure them that the guys who popped round to see them from BT were genuine and not some kind of con artists. At the same time, I managed to show them the markings on the kerbstones adjacent to their property and the point at which a civil engineering team would call around to repair the portion of the BT cable that was blocked.

Last night their was a massive concert staged in front of Buckingham Palace for the 3rd day of the Queens Jubilee weekend celebrations. But what stole the show was a 2½ minute video clip of Paddington Bear having tea with the Queen. Paddington, when invited to have a drink of tea, drank a whole teapot full directly from the spout of the teapot, leaving only a few drops for the Queen. Then followed some antics in which the teapot itself was juggled and an equerry got spattered with cream. Finally, Paddington offered the Queen some of his trademark marmalade sandwiches whilst the Queen revealed that she always kept some marmalade sandwiches in her handbag ‘for later’ The clip ended with the Queen and Paddington accompanying the band playing outside  by chinking their teaspons on their cups. This was a delightfully and skilfully played sketch in which the Queen displayed her own sense of humour. Parallels were inevitably drawn with the way in which the Queen participated in another comic sketch at the time of the opening of the Olympic Games in London when it appeared that the Qeen was being whisked by helicopter to the Olympic stadium and was then parachuting down in order to open the games. In order to play the clip again to Meg, rather frustratingly many sources cut the clip from 2½ minutes down to 1 or 1½ minutes but I think I found the whole thing on Twitter rather than YouTube. One cannot just imagine other national leaders having the self-confidence of participating in a huge national joke like this.  

As it had rained throughout the night and seemed to be still smattering with rain this morning, Meg and I went down to the park by car. There we were pleased to join our University of Birmingham friend and after a short interval we were also joined by Seasoned World Traveller. We discussed our reactions to the Jubilee party last night, which I rather enjoyed and then inevitably some politics. Some of our discussion centred upon the micture of boos and cheers (far more boos than cheers) than greeted the Prime Minister and his wife when they attended the service at St. Paul’s yesterday. It is interesting to see what effect the whole of this adverse crowd reaction from committed royalists might have had upon wavering Tory MPs when it comes to ‘normal’ politics which will no doubt resume tomorrow morning. There is a joke circulating around the web at the moment which I must say I really enjoyed so here it is.

“Grandad, how did you spend the Platinum Jubilee weekend?”  “I watched the video of Boris Johnson being booed 2100 times.”

Today, we feel rather ‘Jubileed out’ as we watched the whole of the fantastical Jubilee pageant that took place in London from about 1.30 until 5.00pm. More than 10,000 people – including the military, performers and key workers – took part, while politicians and members of the Royal Family watched from stands outside Buckingham Palace. The variety, versatility and sheer ‘quirkiness’ of some of the floats almost defied imagination and illustrates the fact that the British are rather good at pageantry and displays, although one suspects that quite a deal of money had been thrown in the direction of the performers. Various community groups had no doubt prepared for months but obviously rehearsals were limited and it had to all come right on the day. Given that an event like this is a one in 70 years occurrence, it was well worth watching. The Jubilee has given the broadcasters the opportunity to use a lot of their archived material – and not just images of the Queen over the decades.The opportunity has been taken, and this was well exemplified in today’s pageant, to record the cultural and musical highlights of the last seventy years. So, for example, the pageant today had a series of open top buses each of which contain celebrities from the appropriate decade together with the music and images of the decade. This is a good way of providing something for everyone because all of us have memories of past decades which it is interesting to remember.

Politics with a vengeance will return at Westminster tomorrow morning. MP’s will have spent several days in their constituencies and will have been told in no uncertain terms what their local electorates think. The so-called ‘Red Wall’ seats are that traditionally used to return Labour MPs but which the Tories captured at the last election under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’.  One of these seats is Wakefield and there will be a by-election there on June 23rd. An opinion poll has put the Labour party 20 points in the lead over the Tories  and if turns out to be the case in all of the ‘Red Wall’ seats then the Conservatives are destined to lose power unless they change the leader who is causing so much voter dissatisfaction. The answer lies in the hands of Tory MPs themselves of whom exactly a half (180) would need to vote against Boris Johnson for him to lose power, even if an election for a new party leader to be called.

Today started off in rather a gloomy manner and we suspected that whatever day we were going to have would be rain bespattered. I walked off down into town firstly to get my trusty black leather hat – my constant companion – picked up after its repair and also to have the battery replaced in my car’s remote control. Whilst near the High Street in Bromsgrove, I allowed myself to be tempted by a shirt I had seen in one of the charity shops which I then tried on the minute I got home. It was one of those items that looks better on than off and was absolutely the right size for me. Afterwards, I picked up our (fat) Saturday newspaper and then walked home for breakfast. Meg and I decided to brave the weather and, having got dressed in slightly warmer clothes, we then made for the park. Whilst there, we had to endure a bit of gentle rain but we soon shook it off. Then, on our way out of the park, we ran across our University of Birmingham friend and exchanged notes about what we had been doing or were about to do in the next few days. As we passed our long-established Irish friends wer were hailed inside and were then given an impromtu lunch of soup followed by strawberries and cream. We had a wonderful chat for well over an hour and then made for home when, fortunately, the rain clouds had swept away.

Saturday afternoons are always rather quiet affairs as Meg and I know that we are going to leave the house  in the early evening to attend the Saturday evening church service. However, I made one important telephone call during the afternoon and I was glad that I had. When our domestic help called round in the last few days, she told us the sorry tale of the person who used to come along about once a month to do the kind of gardening for which I normally do not have the time nor the inclination. Several months we received the message that he collapsed in a garden (whether his own or a client’s I cannot say) and then had a long period of illness in hospital having to receive several blood transfusions. Evidently, this put paid to his gardening activities and to be honest, I did not know whether he was in the land of the living or not. Our domestic help informed us that she had seen our gardener in the streets of Bromsgrove and was told a story of a whole series of domestic tragedies which had befallen him and which made feel that the whole of his world had collapsed. I made the telephone call to invite our gardening friend to the house just for a cup of tea, a chat and a shouldier to cry upon. He was tremendously grateful to receive my call and we have arranged one day in the afternoon next week when we can have tea in the garden.

In the late afternoon, I took some of the excess vegetables from the last time I made one of my special soups (courtesy of the soup maker) This was a blend of carrot, parsnip, swede and celery put upon a base of fried onions and then supplemented with some coconut milk, an onion gravy stock and a touch of balti sauce to make a really delicious but somewhat spicy vegetable soup. I got the soup prepared and put some into a container for our friends that we we knew we were going to see at church later that evening. Then when we returned, we had our portion of the soup  which we really enjoyed. If it had been a failure, then I would have owned up to that but I have tried this combination of root vegetables before so I know it is pretty reliable. When we got back from church, we looked at ‘Today at the Test’ which is the highlights of the day’s play in the cricket Test of England versus New Zealand. Today’s play had everything you could wish for and suffice it to say that the day started with England facing a potential defeat but ended with England in sight of victory if they continue to play as well as tomorrow as they did today. Tonight, there is a special ‘Platinum Party at the Palace’ being performed on a specially constructed stage in front of Buckingham Palace. Although popular music is not really ‘my scene’, I have to admit that from what I have seen this evening the atmosphere seems to be electric and the excitement practically contagious. It must have cost millions to stage and I wonder (cynically) if the government is funding it all  on the ‘bread and circuses’ principle. Those who know their Roman history will know that when the Romans were faced with incipient revolts from the population, they bought them off with a free suppy of bread (help with gas bills?) and a free show in the ampitheatre – hence bread and circuses. Nothing changes!

Today was scheduled to be quite a heavy gardening day because we knew that the weather was going to be fine and a Jubilee bank holiday meant that nobody was going to work. There were two tasks scheduled for today and my son and daughter-in-law had very kindly volunteered to get stuck into what you might call ‘once in a year’ tasks. My son had volunteered to clear out the gutters on our dormer bungalow as the east facing side of the house always seems to generate a lot of moss much of which detaches and finds its way into the gutters. Without periodic clearning this would create problems for when we have heavy rainfall which is, of course, quite common at this time of year. So whilst my son busied himself clearing out the gutters, my daughter-in-law had brought along her battery operated hedge trimmers to trim the hedge that we had planted around the BioDisk some fourteen years ago now. The hedge is probably about 20 metres around but is a metre and a half high and the same width. We had it massively pruned back about  a year or so ago but consequently, it has gone really thick and bushy evidently relishing being pruned. Whilst the cutting job is arduous enough, the real work is in the clearing up. One garden wheelie bin was vey quickly filled up and we then used our garden rakes to fill about half a dozen large, heavy duty plastic sacks to take the rest. However, armed with copious cups of tea and a really fine morning, we got the job completed relatively quickly so now to have to choose an opportunity to dispose of the clippings. It might be worth a trip to the domestic tip even though it is some 5-6 miles distant but otherwise we will see if we persuade other neighbours to accept some of our excess when the gardening wheelie bins get collected in another ten day’s time. After a salad lunch, it was time to do the routine lawn cutting which is a job generally reserved for Fridays. At about half past two, there was a most tremendous roar overhead so I rushed out into the open to see if I could spot what aircraft was going overhead. It was pretty cloudy when I heard the sound so I did not manage to spot anything. I have done a quick search on the web which details a lot of the flypasts that are taking place this Jubilee weekend. Yesterday, though, I think I missed a Lancaster and possibly a Hurricane and a Spitfire  which were on their way to a Midland airshow yesterday afternoon – the flypast was when I was walking down to Bromsgrove and I did not notice anything yesterday.

I must say that having two Bank Holidays on a Thursday and a Friday before a weekend rather plays havoc with one’s sense of time. I had the feeling all day that today is a Saturday and not a Friday. Thinking how the present Jubilee celebrations have been planned for quite some time now, I wonder whether anything is being planned for the 70th anniversary of the Coronation in 2023 i.e. next year. Of course, too much advance planning might be difficult as the Queen may not survive that long. But her mother lived to be 101 so perhaps genetics is on her side. As a child, I seem to remember painting in lots of illustrations of the Coronation coach which is how they used to entertain us in primary schools in 1953 and make us anticipate the event.

There is a sort of moratorium on political activity this weekend as I suspect that politicians themselved want to engage with their local communities and overt politicking might seem to be counterproductive. No doubt, on Monday morning or whenever the Commons resume, politics will resume with a vengeance. Some commentators believe that the challenge to Boris Johnson may come in the next week whilst others think many MP’s will stay their hand until the results of the two by-elections to be held on Thursday, June 23rd (Wakefield, Tiverton and Honiton). But when Boris Johnson and his wife arrived at St.Pauls today, then Sky News reports that the PM was greeted with a mixture of ‘boos and cheers’. But if you listen to the clip on Sky News, then it appears that there was probably four to one in favour of the boos. The only other PM I can recall being booed in this way was Tony Blair addressing the Women’s Institute, mis-cuing the tone of what needed to be said and then faced with a completely hostile audience and a slow hand clap. Tony Blair should have made his speech totally non-political but he viewed this as a potential platform for a relaunch of Labour’s policies with disastrous consequences.

Rather late in the day, some accounts are now emerging of the violence inflicted at the ill-fated final in Paris between Real Madrid and Liverpool. UEFA have now issued a formal apology to both clubs as it has emerged that there appeared to be groups of 30 men, running around in big packs. Some of them had weapons: machetes, knives, bars and bats. People were being pinned to the floor and having their watches taken.

Today being a Thursday it is my routine shopping day so I set my alarm to get up a little earlier tham usual. Then I made for my local supermarket but as I was several minutes early, I managed to get some money out of an ATM and also fill-up with petrol at an adjacent supermarket. Then it was a case of getting home, having a ‘quickie’ breakfast and an unpacking before I prepared our coffee and ‘small-eats’ ready for our trip down to the park. It was beautiful day down in the park and we assumed that it would be teeming with children. But there seemed to be no more children that we anticipate in a normal weekend and we were diverted by some of the local dogs trying hard (and failing) to catch a squirrel that scampered amonst them and then made an escape up one of the trees in the park, much to the frustration of the local dogs who could not follow. On the way down to the park, we spent a few minutes in discussion with our Italian friend and she explained to us how typically a fiesta would take place in Italy. What made these things special for her in her home town is that her father was a talented musician and was always heavily involved  in both both organising and participating in local concerts whenever it was fiesta time.

After lunch, I knew that I needed to go into town to collect my repaired leather hat from the local cobblers. This morning, though, when I got into the car to go shopping, a strange symbol appeared as a warning message in my car’s notification area. I had no idea what is meant to symbolise so I needed to consult the car manual and after wading through masses of information symbols, I discovered that it meant that the battery in my key fob (used for opening/shutting the car) was running low. So knowing that my cobbler changes batteries in car key fobs, this was an additional incentive to walk down to town and to get the battery renewed once I was picking up my repaired hat. On my way down into town, I bumped into a Teaching Assistant neighbour who we know fairly well, living on the main Kidderminster Road. Her husband/partner had been incredibly ill some three or four years ago but is making. long, slow recovery. So we exchanged some notes about caring functions and it may well be that we invite each around to each other’s houses for a cup of tea and a chat.

When I got to the shop it was shut even though yesterday, they had said to me ‘See you tomorrow’ Eventually, I walked the entire length of the High Street hoping I could find a jeweller or similar shop who would change the battery for me. I know that I have been caught out with these kinds of dilemmas before – typically on Good Friday, despite  the Bank Holiday status, one half of the shops are likely to be open and the other half shut. At the end of the High Street, my local Waitrose store was open so I managed to get some (but not all) of the things I need to buy in Waitrose as the Aldi in which I do my main shopping does not stock them.

There is wall-to-wall coverage of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations today and tonight as you might expect. I will be quite interested to see how the media covers the lighting of the beacons across the country and whether you will see the beacons gradually being lit if the media capture this event with modern technology at their disposal. Of course, in the past these beacons were spread at strategic locations across the country such that one beacon was visible from another. Hence in days of great national danger (for example, the Armada in 1588), the beacons were a way of quickly disseminating a message across the whole if the country. Evidently, as soon as we had modern communications, this function became redundant  but over time, the lighting of beacons across the country is deployed at times of national celebration and this contunues to this day. When we lived in Leicester, the highest point of the county in the north of the county was called ‘Beacon Hill’ for evident reasons and I am sure that there are similarly named high points across the country.

No doubt thousands of words will be written about the Depp/Heard libel trial but theee particular features stand out. Firstly, Johnny Depp lost a similar case in the UK but won it (against the odds) in the USA. Secondly, the social media massively swung behind Depp for whatever reason. And finally, as strategy was deployed in the USA court case in which the accused becomes the accuser and vice versa. “Lawyers and judges tend not to fall for it, but it’s very, very effective against juries” one american lawyer has argued.

We were a bit delayed this morning for a variety of reasons, not least sleeping in a little longer than usual. Then when we did get going, our domestic help turned up as she has switched her day from Friday to Wednesday for the next few weeks ahead. Answering a ring on the doorbell, two large BT Openreach vans had turned up intending to do a survey (from the outside) on our property to ascertain whether it would be feasible to supply us with BT Fast Fibre broadband which is being organised for us by our current broadband supplier. The two youngish operatives set to work identifying the location of the ducting that would bring the fibre optic cable into our house and then got stuck. It transpired that there was a blockage outside one of our neighbours houses. The BT personnel indicated that this happened quite often – typically fencing posts when driven in damaged the BT cables. So we informed that a civil engineering team would work on the blockage and repair the damaged section – fortunately, the BT staff had secured the permission of the relevant neighbour to work on their property boundary so we shall just sit tight and wait for this to happen, with the bill being picked up by BT. Once the BT staff have established a clear run, then we shall some cable put into place stopping short of our access point but waiting for the installation to be completed together with a new router inside the house. The BT staff were pretty confident that they would be overcome the slight difficulties that they had encountered and which they reckoned were commonplace. Having been delayed by all of this, we decided to go into town by car to collect our newspaper and to take the car to the park for our daily walk. We swung by the café to see Seasoned World Traveller but he was a bit preoccupied evidently waiting for a telephone call. So we left him in piece and tracked up to our normal bench to have our coffee. Then on the way back down, we managed to have a brief conversation with our friend in the cafe but the expected telephone call came through so we took our leave. Then it was a case of getting home and putting together a quick kind of lunch where we had promised our domestic help a taster of a specialist type of fish risotto I was preparing. Our hairdresser turned up just before we dished up our meal but our domestic help and I ate the meal off our knees in the living room whilst the hairdresser worked on Meg in the kitchen (where we normally eat our meals). The meal lived up to all our expectations I am pleased to say and then after a brief rest, it was time to go into town.

I walked into town primarily to visit our local cobblers who offer a wide range of services. Firstly I had a couple of new (and spare) keys cut which I felt were needed and to be kept in a secure place in case I ever lost the front door key I use every day. Then, I needed some new and fairly long bootlaces of the correct type to go into the boots that I purchased yesterday. As they were one size too large, I had fitted some insoles into them and put on an extra pair of socks and then walked into town in my newly acquired boots to ‘break them in’ if necessary. But in the event, they turned out to be supremely comfortable.  Whilst I was the cobblers, I took in our portable stool and had three new rubber ferrules fitted which have been needed for some time now but I was waiting until I needed to go into the cobblers to get this job done. Finally, I handed in my trusted leather hat which I wear every day as it has a leather band glued above the rim but over time, the glue dries out and it needs to be replaced. These particular cobblers, well known throughout Bromsgrove do all kinds of leather work repairs so they take this in their stride and have done it for me me, albeit some two and half years ago now in the pre-pandemic days.

Tomorrow the Jubilee clebrations are going to kick off with a vengeance and consequently all political activity will be stayed for a few days until the MPs return from their constituencies after the various junketings. The number of MPs voicing their dissatisfaction with Boris Johnson has now reached 28 and experienced commentators say that this figure can be multiplied by 1.5 to ‘guesstimate’ the number of letters actually submitted to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee which may now number 42 – approaching the 54 letters needed to trigger an election. Again, some commentators are saying that many in the party may see the result of the bye-elections to be held in three weeks time to guage precisely the extent of dissatisfaction with the Tories in general and Boris Johnson in particular.