Today was not quite our normal Sunday routine as my normal newsagent is still on holiday in Vienna until Tuesday. So Meg and I had a ‘normal’ Sunday morning breakfast and then set out for Asda so that I could obtain a copy of the Sunday Times and one or two other bits and pieces of things that I know I can only buy in Asda. Well, Sod’s Law kicked in and the only newspaper of which they were sold out was the Sunday Times so whilst we were in the car we made for a local garage. Here we were at last successful in getting the last copy of the Sunday Times that they had and so we made for the park. It was quite a pleasant day today and sitting waiting for us on our usual bench we met up with Seasoned World Traveller. Somehow we got onto Hippocrates theory of personality and although Hippocrates is generally known in the West as the ‘father of modern medicine’ (and hence the Hippocratic oath – ‘do no harm’) his theory of personality found expression in the Middle Ages as the various ‘humours’ in the human body. Whilst our level of knowledge has moved on and we no longer believe in the predominance of ‘humours’ the theory of Hippocrates is not without modern interest. This is because it was claimed to be based upon a lifetime’s observations of people i,.e. not theorising purely as a cerebral exercise and also modern psychologists have come up with schemas of personality types that are not a million miles away from the Hippocratic notions. We parted with a brief discussion of ‘Emotional intelligence’ (labelled EQ) to distinguish it from the generally accepted measure of intelligence or IQ (=intelligence quotient). When we got home, we had a Sunday lunch of cooked gammon, baked potato and mange tout, made a bit more enjoyable for us by not making a lunch that was too overwhelming. Like yesterday afternoon, we soon quite absorbed into some of the men’s gymnastics individual champioships for each individual piece of apparatus and the British team are so far doing their bit by bringing in a fair haul of medals. But tonight, on the athletics track, it is going to be the finals of a lot of track and field events including some of the relay races which are always incredibly exciting because all kinds of things can go wrong, not least in the handovers of the baton which can make or break a victory.

The contest of the Tory party leadership trundles on, for an apparently ridiculous amount of time, as there is still a couple of weeks to go before the final result is announced. Even some Tory party ‘grandees’ are saying this is all a bit ridiculous as a couple of well publicised video debates followed by voting meant that the whole context could have been concluded within a week or so. I happened to hear at lunchtime (in the Radio 4 ‘World at One’) a bit of ‘vox pop’ from a conservative association in I think Sussex. Airtime was given to one view by an elderly white female that they were voting for Liz Truss because she wanted to have a tax cut (most economists conclude this is ridiculous when inflation is over 10%), that Liz Truss would cut a lot of bureaucracy out of the NHS (the NHS is actually one of the most under-managed of all western healthcare systems) and that the civil service needed slimming down (was she not aware of the staff cuts and restrictions on salary that the public sector have experienced, with public sctor pay rises lagging well behind the private sector as of now) Of course, all of these opinions could have been taken straight out of the columns of the Daily Mail (about which the best that can said is they are ‘evidence light’ but ‘prejudice heavy’) The thought that the next Prime Minister of the country is being chosen for us by people as uninformed as this is truly depressing. The interesting thing about the Liz Truss campaign is that in the early stages and until very recently, she has campaigning on a slogan of ‘no handouts’ However, the fact that three out of four Tory voters support the Starmer policy of keeping the cap on energy prices in October not to mention that this is a very popular policy in the country as a whole means, that Liz Truss is already starting to hint that some extra support ‘might be available’ In the meantime, there are a team of officials and ministers-in-waiting busy assembling a package of measures for any ‘incoming Prime Minister’. So we may shortly have the spectacle of a Tory politician elected on a policy of no handouts which is abandoned within minutes or hours of being elected when the reality principle kicks in (quite neatly expressed by the Americanism ‘when the rubber hits the road’)

Today dawned as a bright and cheerful day but after Meg and I had breakfasted, I needed to go in search of some pharmaceutical stores where I could buy some medicaments for Meg wo has been suffering lately with the excessively high temperatures that we have experienced of late. I got several preparations that I think are going to be useful for Meg so after applying one of these, we were ready for our venture into the park today. Perhaps because it was a Saturday, we seemed to bump into a lot of people, some of whom we have not seen for some time. We had just about finished our coffee when we bumped into a couple who are the next door neighbours to one of ex-Waitrose regulars. They had been on holiday to Croatia which explains why we had not seen them for some time. Wev exchanged news about the holidays that we had taken in the former Yugoslovia and it happened that we had both visited some of the same places in the extreme north of the country – Pula with its magnificent Roman ampitheatre which must be one of the best preserved outside Italy and the lakes of Bled (where rowing competitions are often held) and Bohinj both on Slovenia. Then we were joined by Seasoned World Traveller and shortly afterwards by our University of Birmingham friend. Then, they too were joined by dog-owning friends and their dogs so lots of multiple little conversations were taking place between several of us. Then we made for home and had a completely vegeterian lunch of some quiche, primo cabbage and a melange of tomatoes, peppers, onions made a little spicier with some tomato and some brown sauce.

This afternoon, Meg and I were absorbed in the mens team event finals in the European gymnastics competition being held in Munich, which may be a part of the entire athletics competition. Here there were five male British gymnastics who have to perform on four pieces of gymastic equipment as well as a floor piece. The British team were favourites and eventially won the competition with over 6.5 points clear which is quite a high margin. The gold medals have to take an awful lot of winning when you think of the various events at which needs to excel. When it came to the medals ceremony, it was interesting to see that the coach is also awarded a medal which must surely be fair. What is extraordinary about this competition is that the gymnasts have come hot from the Commonwealth Games of only two weeks ago so the amount of recovery time after competition must be minimal. To cap all of this, two British girls have just won gold in the Diving finals held in Rome although the field of competition was quite low. But the British pairing had only to start to dive with each other a few weeks before the Commonwealth Games competition and this one so that is a gold-rush if ever there was one. Tonight, as last night, will be a fairly full night of semifinals and finals in the track and field events so we will probably be glued to this all night. Earlier in the afternoon, I suddenly thought about the train tickets that I needed to buy for our journey from Harrogate to York next week. I use ‘thetrainline’ to buy tickets but with the pandemic having been rampant, I have not bought any train tickets for a couple of years. I had forgotten that you can actually nominate a train station from which you can pick up the actual physical tickets if you feel he need for them. However, I opted for electronic tickets and, fortunately, this worked out OK and I printed out the electronic tickets complete with QR-codes. There is probably an app I can download onto my phone but I have not investigated this yet.

In the Tory leadership elections, Michael Gove has accused Liz Truss of taking a ‘holiday from reality’ with her plans to cut taxes during the cost-of-living crisis, and warned the Tory leadership frontrunner is putting ‘the stock options of FTSE 100 executives’ before the nation’s poorest people. The former cabinet minister launched the outspoken attack as he endorsed Rishi Sunak to be the next Conservative leader. After this attack, perhaps it is no surprise that Michael Gove intimates that he will not be offered another Cabinet post and therefore he is resigned to living the rest of his Parliamentary days on the back benches. There is quite an irony in all of this as Michael Gove had the reputation of being one of the most effective ministers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, finally taking on some of the big builders to make them responsible for correcting the cladding on many of the hgh rise buildings that have been built recently. But as Enoch Powell, the notorious conservative politican observed (and I paraphrase a lengtheir quotation) : ‘All political careers end in failure’

Friday promises to be the most delightful day as it bright and sunny with a slight cooling breeze and rain quite a distance on the horizon. Meg and I popped down to Waitrose where we picked up our newspaper and much-needed supplies of icecream which I had forgotten to replenish when I shopping on Thursday. In the park, there was a little bit of the gathering of the clans. First, Seasoned World Traveller spotted us from afar and trotted over for a chat. Then we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend who we seem to have missed for some days now so it was good to all meet up. In the midst of all of this, our Irish friends (who live adjacent to the park) strolled along and conveyed some good news about the wedding anniversary celebrations we hope to hold in about three week’s time. It looks as though the three couples who are all celebrating (commiserating?) wedding anniversaries in some three weeks time can all coincide to have a joint meal as it now looks as though all of our dates can be made to coincide. I am awaiting a text from our Irish friends who is coordinating the whole of this little celebration for us. When we got home, we indulged in a little of the sports competitions and watched some of the heats in the kayak, and two varities of canoe before cooking our traditional Friday meal of sea bass served on a bed of salad.

This afternoon, I spent a certain amount of time getting some of my financial records in an easily understood form before we have a meeting with the bank at the end of the month. This is a fairly long job but I am half way through it so should manage to complete the rest fairly easily. Before our neeting, though, certain documents have to be assembled before we submit them to a secure website so I am busy at the moment ‘getting all of my ducks in a row’ so to speak. When Meg and I were having our afternoon cup of tea, I half listened to a Science item on Sky News which I found quite exciting. It is fifty years since the American moon landings and one wonders why we, as a civilation, would want to return. But the Americans are planning to do that in about three years time and to that end are going to test a huge rocket which is the largest ever built. The object of the American interest is the Southern (I think) pole of the moon in which there are some parts in permanent shadow and other parts in total sunshine. The thoughts are that the deeply shadowed areas may contain water in the shape of ice. At the same time, those parts in permanent sunshine might lend themselves to power generation via solar cells. So if that portion of the Moon is found to be a resource in which there is both water and power available, then this might help as a launch base for any further interplanetary exploration.

Yesterday was the day when ‘A’-level results were to be published and it already been announced that the portion of ‘good’ grades was to be lower than last year (when grades were inflated because all of the assessments were teacher assessments and the traditional exam was abandoned for the time being) This year, though, traditional exams have been reinstated so the examination baords are trying to get back, in stages, to the ‘status quo ante’ before the pandemic struck two years ago. Over the years, we have got almost used to the same images of ‘A’ level students celebrating their success and the photographers have tended to focus on long-legged, blonde females jumping up and down with joy rather than their spottier and (glummer) male counterparts. These images had got so predictable over the years that I think the news gathering media were making some efforts this year to have less of stereotypical images. Nonetheless, my instant ‘content analysis’ of the media reaction this year was that photograpgers and electronic news gatherers were trying to be more representative than hitherto but I still imagine blondes to outnumber brunettes by three to one (but perhaps they do in the adolescent female ppoluation but I doubt it somehow).

More Donald Trump news now that I quote with a fascinated horror. After the FBI came after Trump raiding his Florida home to locate government documents that had been squirrelled away there, Trump’s response has been to appeal for funds. He is appealing to ‘all American patriots’ to help to fund his legal fees and, to date, he seems to have been receiving donations at the rate of $1 million a day. Once the money is received (as it was after the raid on the Capital building where Trump similarly appealed for funds) the money tends to get diverted sideways into various fringe organisations and therefore, not necessarily spent on legal fees. But one of Trump’s financial aides has pleaded guilty, as part of a plea bargain, in the investigation of Trump’s finances so the noose may be tightning if only ever so slightly.

Today is my shopping day so, as usual, it was up bright and early and to the supermarket, via an ATM, a minute or so before the supermarket opened. As we are going away next week, I have to cater for one day less in the week but on the other hand, tend to buy one or two things that will be useful as a repast during our journey. The shopping having been unpacked, it was then time for Meg and I to make our customary journey to the park. The car park seemed to be teeming with cars and, as we have come to expect, there were a fair sprinkling of scooters in variety. We did manage to have a few words with an acquaintance that we only meet every so often, and then she shot off in her motorised wheelchair which seems to go at a ferocious pace before she has a quiet read of a book under the shade of one of the park’s trees. When we got home, I resurrected the rest of the chicken carcase to make into a fricasee type meal and then we settled down to see what offerings there were in the various sporting competitions taking place at the moment. We were fairly interested in the one metre springboard synchronised diving and the female British pair were edged into a fourth place by 0.4 of a point which must be one of the cruellist place to be. On the other hand, our male gold medal holder successfully defended his title so there was fairly mixed news. Tonight, on the athletics track in Munich, there should be some interesting semi-finals with British interest as well as the final of the 1500 metres which, to a British audience, is always a ‘must watch’ event.

The latest news from the contest to lead the Conservative party is more of the same. It seems that Liz Truss has a lead of some 32 points (66 to 34) and some 57% of the constituency parties electorate have already voted. Of those who have yet to vote and have made up their minds, some 44% are committed to Truss and 29% to Sunak. The interesting thing about this campaign is that on the occasions when the two candidates have publically debated face-to-face, most famously in the Sky News debate, Rishi Sunak is nearly always adjudged to be the winner. Nonetheless, despite the very slight tightening of the polls that have taken place recently, this hardly seems to have harmed the Truss campaign at all. This reinforces, for me, a couple of points. Given the existing make up and mood the Conservative party out in the country, being ‘competent’ hardly seems to be important whereas garnering the votes of the right wing (and Brexist faction of the party) seem to be critical. Rishi Sunak is damaged, rightly or wrongly, for two things. The first is that he is blamed for using the dagger of revolt against Boris Johnson. This is despite the fact that eventually a substantial part of the Conservative party came to the view that Johnson was not fit to be their leader any more. A second factor was the non-dom status of his millionaire wife damaged him enormously – a fact that was not helped by the the fact that Sunak has admitted to holding a green card while living in Downing Street – declaring him a permanent resident of the US and part of this arrangement is a declaration that one intends to become a permanent resident o the United Statess. Also reinforced is the point that the overall ‘look and feel’ of candidates is of greater significance than either the policies that one espouses or even the generally acknowledged level of competence one exhibits. Those of long political memories may recall that one of the most brilliant Conservative policians of the 1960’s and 1970’s – Iain McCloud – was damned by getting the reputation that he was ‘too clever by half’ Finally, the same survey showed that if Boris Johnson had been a candidate in the present election, not only would he have won but he would have garnered as many votes (practically) as the other two candidates put together. This must surely mean that to many conservatives, the fact that Johnson was demonstrated to be a serial liar as well as the Prime Minister who tried to dissolve Parliament illegally is not at all important to them.

It has been rather a strange day today, but so it goes. It had been raining quite a lot yesterday evening and during the night so it was refreshing to wake up to quite a drippy morning. Our domestic help called round this morning but after a chat and some consultation, we felt that we needed to pop to a pharmacy to pick up some medication to cope with some problems caused by the excessive heat of the last few days. We went to our local Morrison’s store, if only because parking is so easy outside, and requested a consultation with the pharmacist. Normally, I have quite a regard for pharmacists and trust their advice but the service we got today was quite perfunctory. Eventually, though, we took the advice of other pharmacy assistants who seemed a lot more helpful than the actual pharmacist so once we had supplied ourselves with medications we made for home. I have quite a lot of my financial ‘book-keeping’ that I needed to do to keep my records up-to-date so this took the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon as well. I change to a different sheet of my financial spreadsheet once a month and this helps me keep track of my monthly receipts and outgoings.

Some of the recent projections about the cost-of-living and inflations crisis that is threatening to overwhelm us are mind boggling. Today, inflation has jumped to more than 10% – the highest for 40 years. One in four people won’t be able to afford to pay their energy bills in October, based on current forecasts. The figure could jump to one in three (34%) people in January when prices are predicted to soar above £4,200. Citizens Advice says more than 13 million people could be left in the red, as spiralling costs rapidly outstrip the support on offer. Of those who won’t be able to pay in October, the majority (68%) have a household income of less than £30,000. Some 3.2 million disabled people and 4.4 million families with children are set to be unable to afford October’s hikes. The political reaction to all of this is interesting, if only because in about three week’s time, we will have a new prime minister, probably Liz Truss, who is committed to providing ‘no handouts’ If and when Liz Truss is elected, this particular commitment of ‘no handouts’ will surely bite the dust, so we we will have the fascinating scenario of a politician elected on the slogan of ‘no handouts’ reversing the slogan upon which they have been elected within hours. Nobody is talking yet of a mass uprising on the streets but this must remain a possibility. I remember very vividly the story about the bankruptcy of Uper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971/72. The then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, receive a phone call from the Provost (equivalent of Lord Mayor) of Glasgow indicating that was the very real possibility of a violent uprising on the streets of Glasgow which the police and military would not be able to contain – therefore the Provost could not guarantee there wuld not be the equivalent of an insurrection in Glasgow, not to mention other parts of Scotland. Ted Heath apparently went white with fright after receiving the phone call and ordered an imediate ‘U-turn’ in whih Upper Clyde Shipbuilders was to be nationalised, even though the right wing members of his government wanted it to go bust and to tough out the consequences. I am not sure whether his story has ever been fully documented but that there was a very sudden U-turn which is well documented in all of the political histories.

Some politicl news from the other side of ‘the pond’ is disturbing. Liz Cheney has been one of her party’s most outspoken Trump critics, and was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president after the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021.
She has had to concede defeat to Harriet Hageman on Tuesday, whose candidacy was endorsed by Mr Trump in the Republican primary. Observers say Ms Cheney’s loss indicates that Mr Trump still has a grip on the Republican Party, as his critics fear he is considering running for president again in 2024. Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC News on the morning after her election defeat, Ms Cheney said she will do ‘whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office’. Dick Cheney was a former Vice-President of the United States and to British observers, it is a little jaw-dropping that the daughter of such a prominent ‘neo-con’ as Dick Cheney could come out so strongly against Trump. Her defeat in the State of Wyoming against Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for Congress, was massive – and Donald Trump’s reaction was that Republicans like Liz Cheney who is called a ‘RINO’ (Republican in Name Only) has evidently thrown in her lot with the radical left. But Liz Cheeney is convinced that Donald Trump is a truly dangerous actor but he seems to receive the adoration of much of the Republican party (who believe, like Trump, that the election was actually ‘stolen’ from them)

I know that I am the creature of habit but nonetheless it is pleasant to drop into our ‘normal’ Tuesday morning routine. The weather is going to break today and we shall expect showers at random intervals throughout the day. But we had a fairly leisurely breakfast and then popped down into Waitrose by car so that we can pick up our copy of The Times and also bump into some of our Tuesday morning regulars. First of all we met up with Seasoned World Traveller and after my experiences with the phone provider yesterday, I managed to pass a few tips about the tariff that he needed to request after he had installed the SIM that I had ordered for him. Then, seated at one of the tables was our Knowledgable Gardener who used to come along on a monthly basis and do the heavier ‘trimming’ work in the garden before he was taken ill. I enquired about the progress that he had been making in his recovery and it was reassuring to know that he is being monitored quite regularly by various clinicians i.e. not just abandoned to his own devices. Then I started chatting with one of pre-pandemic acquaintances who we often meet on a Tuesday. Her husband had recently been admitted to long term residential care but it appears that both ‘partners’ to the couple are adjusting reasonably well to their changed circumstances. Finally, I was delighted to espy ‘Bromsgrove School Teacher’ who often used to freqent the Waitrose coffee bar in the pre-pandemic days. She and I were both teachers of politics and I had actually given her some of my politics textbooks in the hope that some of them might be useful either for some of her young scholars or as an addition to the school library. I have only seen her once or twice in the past couple of years so we had we had an enjoyable chat and ‘catching up’ today. Her baby which was pretty young in the pre-pandemic days is now a boistrous three-year old but was in pre-school this morning. I managed to pass on the bad news that if her child had got into the habit of waking every morning at about 5.00am and he was anything like my own son, then this early riding habit would probably persist right throughout his working life. So all in all, as last Tuesday, it was a conversation filled morning. I walked down to my Pilates class in slightly muggy conditions but when the class finished at 2.15, it was announced to the class that it had rained and was, in fact, sill raining. In practice, it was the lightest spattering of rain that could be imagined and I am sure that the water would probably evaporate again the minute it touched the sun-scorched earth. Elsewhere in the South and the Midlands, it may be that the long expected rain was more like the deluge that some of us have been hoping for but all the rain has done for us so far has been to add to a general feeling of humidity.

In the latest political news, it has been revealed that eleven Government whips have now come out collectively in favour of Liz Truss. The fact that this expression of support has come so very late in the day speaks more of the fact that MP’s are positioning themselves for jobs in a new administration. It could well be that the race is already both won’and ‘lost’ as most of the Conservative party members will already have submitted their votes and there is almost no way in which the enormous lead that Liz Truss has in the polls is likely to be reversed. There is quite a wicked story doing the rounds that Boris Johnson is convinced that Liz Truss will prove to be so incompetent in the job that it is only a matter of time before the Tories say ‘Come back, Boris! All is forgiven!’ The first part of this proposition is almost certainly true – but who knows whether Boris Johnson will ever worm his way back into the affections of MPs? Meanwhile, the Labour Party and Keir Starmer have put forward a policy to combat astronomic fuel bills and inflation at the same time by suggesting that the ‘cap’ on fuel prices should not be lifted in October. This policy will be expensive (in the tens of billions) and may even rival the costs of the furlough scheme but it is a policy which even meets the approval of three out of four Tory voters – will this prove to be a game changer? Certainly, it makes the policies of the two Tory leadership contenders seem a little anaemic, not to say indecisive. But the interesting thing about the Labour policy is that telling people that Labour believe they shouldn’t pay ‘a penny more’ for energy over the winter than the current cap – an average saving of £1,000 – is easy to understand and promote. Also, whilst some may ask for a more targeted approach, the point about a universal policy is that there are no administrative costs in applying complex rules as to who may or may not qualify which always creates anomalies.

Today was meant to be the day when the temperatures moderated and the possibility of a smattering of rain increased. The weather app on my mobile which is generally quite reliable put the probability of rain at 12.00pm at 90% but it didn’t happen. Thereafter, the time at which we might get a shower was a moving feast being first 6.00pm and then 9.00pm and then, perhaps, tomorrow morning. But the weather is definitely on the change and we look forward to whatever rain we can get, when it comes. This morning, I had intended to pop along to our local branch of a high street bank in order to make an appointment for me to conduct some financial transactions but I thought I would make a quick telephone call to them first in order to make sure that I could make an appointment to make an apppintment. However, the number provided on the web was a national number and instead of getting through to the branch to make an appointment, I finished up doing a lot of the preliminary work over the phone. After waiting for three quarters of an hour on the phone, I was then on the phone for at least another half an hour where basically before I could make the appointment that I wanted, I had to supply a lot of the financial details (not to mention security questions) that would be discussed in the appointment even before I could make an appointment. This sounds excessively cumbersome and I am sure that the banks are trying hard to cover themselves. However, Meg and I were successful in getting through preliminary checks and we now have an appointment made by a real live person in Worcester in about a fortnight’s time. This took a certain amount of pushing but eventually everything worked out the way that I wanted but I do need to supply a lot of the documention that the bank requires several days before the appointment itself. At the end of the day, though, and although it took the best part of a morning, Meg and I are fairly satisfied that when we do have our meeting with a ‘real’ person (instead of doing everything over the phone) everything will be sorted out in the way that we would wish and intend. Meg and celebrated this minor triumph by going down to Waitrose for a cup of coffee and to pick up our copy of The Times, as our regular newsagent is on holiday for a week. Then we had a quick lunch and it was time for telephone marathon Number 2. First thing this morning, I got the correct credit allocated to my new tariff on Tescomobile (whose praises I have been singing recently) with the operative informing me that had been a ‘system error’ But the reaction I got when I wanted my second phone regularising could not be more different and the operative insisted that I had lost my credit by changing tariff, that his colleagues who had put things right for me in the morning had made a mistake in my favour. I asked to speak to a supervisor but none was available and although I kept my cool, basically I got nowhere. So I phone off, phoned in again and got a customer care staff member who could not have ben more helpful, made lots of reassuring noises and then eventually put the credit where it belonged in one or two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Who was actually ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in all of these transactions, I would not to speculate but again, at the end of the day, by being insistent and polite but getting a different operater, I achieved the result to which I think I was entitled. I think I draw no particular lessons from this story unless it is that if you draw a blank with one particular ‘customer care’ assistant,then you can always try another and you may well get a different result. I do resolve, though, not lose my temper despite the evident frustrations and try to not antaganise the person at the other end who is no doubt following a script and does not have the discretion to depart from it.

Meg and I got some washing both pegged out and also taken in which was a bit of a bonus for us. Whilst we were outdoors, I popped down into Mog’s Den and staked up a large buddleja I had purchased last year and half forgotten about. This has now grown to eight feet tall and I think it was sold to me as ‘tri-colour’ plants. Anyway, there are certainly purple and white flowers on it but what the third colour is meant to be, unless it is a type of pink, I cannot say. But it has certainly thrived on neglect – is that why you see it all over railway sidings when you are approaching a train station, I ask myself.

Today is hopefully the very end of the very hottest of days as tomorrow, according to the weather forecasts, the temperature should moderate by a degree or so whereas on Tuesday it may be that we have some thunderstorms and perhaps, if we are lucky, torrential rain. So Meg and I are doing what we can to keep ourselves cool all day long. As today is a Sunday, I walked down to get the newspaper and perhaps because of the heat, I did not come across any joggers or dog-walkers which is typical on Sunday morning. My newsagent told me yesterday that he and his wife were going to go on holiday for a week to Vienna. So I scoured the bookcase in which we shelve all of our travel books and guides and discovered that we had a Baedeker guide to Vienna that we must have purchased decades ago and has been languishing on our bookshelves ever since. So I was delighted to loan the guide to our newsagents and trust it will be useful. I asked them if they would say a special ‘Hello’ to the statue of Beethoven for me in central Vienna and I reminded them of my favourite Beethoven story. The memorial in central Vienna was not Beethoven’s initial resting place but some time in the late nineteenth century, his grave was relocated to central Vienna. When the coffin was disinterred, the gravediggers could not help but to have one last look at the body (or skeleton) of Beethoven. When the coffin was opened, they were amazed to discover that the skeleton was using his left hand and was evidently writing something but in a backwards direction. Then one of the gravediggers turned to each other and explained that it was evident that Beethoven was just busy de-composing!

Meg and I took the car to the park but today was a special ‘green fun day’ in which evidently Bromsgrove District Council were putting on some activities, perhaps to amuse children, in the middle of the summer holidays. So entrance to the park was restricted but we explained to the local authority personnel manning the gates that we visited the park every day and they allowed us to enter and park in our usual spot. We did bump into Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker again this morning who had busy walking since 9.30 in the morning and by this time it was nearly midday. But I must say that the normal clientele using the facilities of the park on a Sunday morning seemed to be much less than normal and we wondered if various people had turned up to the park, seen the control on the gates and had been deterred from entering. We occupied a shady seat but made sure that we did not stay too long and made for home. On the way home, we were greeted by our next door neighbour who made us a gift of some newly picked french beans which we were delghted to accept. In the oven whilst we were away, we had cooking one of those chickens that cook in their own tin tray and cooking bag. We complemented this with some carrots which I cut into small ‘sticks’ and then finished off in the hot oven with a drizzle of honey and this made for a really tasty and delicious dinner. We have masses of chicken left over for the rest of the week only consuming one breast for today’s lunch and leaving the other, the legs and other meat for meals later on this week. As today is likely to the hottest day in the current spell, Meg and I changed into really light clothing the minute we got into the house and made sure that we had doors and windows left suitably ajar to keep the house as cool as we can. This afternoon, we got rather absorbed into watching the final of the women’s gymnastic floor exercise. There were ten finalists and the first to perform was an Ialian girl who set an impressvely high standard. This performance was almost, but not quite, bettered by her Italian teammate so the first two competitors seemed to have set themselves up for gold and silver. This position remained throughout the competition until the British competitor, the current European’floor’ champion took to the floor as the last competitor and retained her gold medal beating the Italian girl by something like 0.066 of a point (out of a potental 15). So this was enjoyable in the extreme.

Today, there has been an update on the condition of Salman Rushdie, the object of an attempted assassination a day or so ago. The latest news is that he is now off a ventilator, can speak a few words and athough still quite critically injured, he appears to be on upwards trajectory (with, I am sure, a sigh of relief from most of the world community) I am wondering whether the world’s artistic elite, or an American benefactor, might club together to ensure that Rushdie has round the clock protection for the rest of his days.

We have two days of hot weather to either enjoy, or endure, and the weather forecasters tell us that the temperatures should dip a little lower on Monday and then we may have some thunder and rainstorms on Tuesday. Whether we get the rain or not, we shall have to wait and see. This morning, we thought we would make the best of the fine weather by having a full load of washing done and then pegged out onto the washing line by 10.30 and with these temperatures, it should not take too long to be completely dry. Meg and I went by car to pick up our newspaper and our friendly newsagent informed us that he was going to be shut for a week as he is going on holiday to Vienna, which sounds marvellous. Next week, we shall have to get used to getting our newspaper voucher exchanged at Waitrose, as we used to in years gone by. Meg and I made our way to the park and passed the time of day with Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who was half way through his regime of some 9-10 km per day. Then we were joined by Seasoned World Traveller for whom I had acquired a SIM for his standby mobile. We gossiped a bit about mutual acquaintances and thought we would probably rendezvous again on Tuesday morning in Waitrose. We drove home and made a lunch of mince,broccoli and baked potato – unremarkable but typical on a Saturday. This afternoon,after a siesta, I made a brief foray into the garden to remove a bramble that had suddenly grown and was annoying me but making descent into Mog’s Den for the first time in a week, I noticed with some pleasure that a buddleja I had planted last year has now grown to an enormous size. In fact, it probably needs a good tying up but I am going to wait until the weather cools down before I attempt this.

The news came through yesterday of the stabbing of Salman Rushdie and I found myself quite upset by it. I was talking to our chiropodist about the partition of India and the novel by Salman Rushie ‘Midnight’s Children’ which is fictitious in one sense, but absolutely realistic in another as it documents the traumas suffered when the Musim and Hindu populations that had coexisted pretty well for decades in Indian villages were wrenched apart by the dynamics set in place by partition, many families finding themselves the ‘wrong’ side of the line. The British by and large stood by and did nothing whilst the communal violence flared across the border areas. There are a series of programmes (on Channel 4 I think) where descendants of British Asians have gone back to find the villages in which their grandparents had lived and whether they were remembered at all from those traumatic times in 1947. Salman Rushdie appears to be quite seriously injured and as I write, it may be that he will lose one eye completely, the nerves in one of his arms has been severed and his liver badly damaged by the attack. One commentator has observed that ‘his fight is our fight’ and I suspect that this is a sentiment shared by many of us. It may be some time before Rushdie’s medical condition stabilises for a firm prognosis but what is particularly shocking is that this attack took place some 32 years after the fatwa (a type of call for assassination) was pronounced on Rushdie by the Ayatollah of Iran in 1989. The attacker has now been charged with murder but we must await some of the news bulletins to ascertain whether the attack actually was the result of the ‘fatwa’ or something more random.

I have been in contact with our friends in Scarborough to firm up the arrangements for us to meet in York in about twelve days time. I think I have found a suitable hotel on the appoaches to the station and once I have heard from our friends, I can go ahead and make a firm booking for the four of us. We will have tremendous amount to catch up on as we we have not actually met face-to-face for I think about four years now and quite a lot of water have flowed under the bridge in both of our lives. I have ensured that Meg and I both have up-to-date rail discount passes so that we can make the journey from Harrogate to York without having to trouble ourselves with car parking in central York. Meg and I decided to get married in York and our son went to boarding school there, so the city of York has very happy associations for all members of the family. We think we should be clear of train drivers’ disputes on the day we intend to travel but we will keep our fingers crossed!

Today we were pleased to have no particular commitments and all we had to do was to develop strategies to survive the heat. The next three days are probably going to be critical and, thereafter, there ought to be some cooling and the possibility of downpours with, perhaps, a thunderstorm or two thrown in. To avoid the heat, we travelled by car to pick up our newspaper and then made our way to the park. We were practically fried to a frazzle on our normal bench but shortly afterwards the adjacent bench. nicely located under a large sycamore tree, became vacant and we were delighted to occupy it and to enjoy some gentle breezes. We had hoped to see one or two of our regular park friends today but neither made an appearance so after a suitable wait, we made our way home. Fortunately today we had a very simple lunch planned which was a meal of seabass served on a bed of lettuce. This is quickly and easily prepared and is nutritious without being too filling but in view of the tremendous heat (28-29 degrees outside our back door), we treated ourselves to a sweet of cooling ice-cream. This afternoon, Meg and I started off the afternoon by changing into some nice cooling clothing, appropriate to today’s conditions, because we have to do everything we can to keep ourselves stable in these unprecedented times. I have already filled the fridge with several bottles of tap water so that we always have some cooled water available. Then I replied to some of my emails at length. First, one of my university flatmates who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, had lost the address of my blog so he had written to a mutual friend/flatmate. I supplied both the WordPress and the text version web addresses and also included my current business card which some months ago, I had the foresight to put on an easily accessible website. Then I wrote a long email to our University of Winchester friend who lives in a little hamlet in Berkshire and updated her on all of the activities in which we have been engaged since she came to stay with us about a month ago. After this, I texted one of our friends with whom we hope to rendezvous when we make our visit up to Yorkshire in about 12 days time. I have done preliminary research to locate a restaurant within easy reach of York station that will act as a meeting point for the four of us – my first choice of restaurant had to be abandoned when I discovered that it only opens in the evening and not at lunchtimes apart from the weekends but I have now located a hotel with a good restaurant in the approaches to the station which I think will fit the bill for us.

As I write today, there is a special program to which I am half listening on the heatwave and the drought. One fact that has emerged is that one fire started on a farm somewhere in the South where an agricultural implement had struck a stone which created a spark and that was enough to set the grassland alight and for the fire to take hold. There is also quite a lot of talk about the reservoirs that have been built (or rather not been built) in the past few decades. Although there are plans to build a new reservoir in Havant to assist the rain starved South of the country, it appears that many reservoirs have been been sold off to increase the profitability of the water companies rather than to enhance the supply of water. I heard one account that suggested that the last major reservoir to be built ‘in the South’ was Rutland Water, perhaps commentators being ignorant of the fact that this is the East Midlnds and not the South! There is also a report that the capacity of Rhine has reduced so much that the clearance of the huge barges that ply up and down the Rhine is now down to about 40cm (about the size of large rock) The Rhine is decribed as the ‘M1’ of Germany as so many heavy goods are distributed up and down its length. The solution of the Germans is to transport loads in much smaller barges only one quarter of the capacity of the normal transportation barges. This is evidently inefficient, clogs up the river and the cumulative effect of all of this may be to knock half a percentage point off the anticipated economic growth of the German economy this year. There seems to be a growing consensus that these extremes of heat are going to be the ‘new’ normal and this means that serious thought has to be given to stop leakages and increase investment in water. Of course, privatisation was meant to be the ‘solution’ to all of these problems but we are seeing a familiar pattern in which concern about returns to shareholders seems much important than investment to improve the water supply, whatever the water regulator attempts to do.