So today is very much the day after the day before – inevitably, it will seem as a bit of an anticlimax after the very enjoyable night out that we had with our friends when we had a communal wedding anniversary celebratory meal in our favourite restaurant near Kidderminster. This morning, as it was the first time it had ever been broadcast, we saw the ‘Accessions Council’ which is when the Privy Council formally declares Charles III to be king. There is some debate as to what the new era may be called – ‘Eizabethan’ era is easily derived from ‘Elizabeth’ but in the case of King Charles III we may have to go back to a Latin root for the name. It may well be that the term ‘Carolean’ comes into vogue but it might be a case of seeing whether a consensus is arrived at amongst the modern historians. Meg and I made our way to the park again today when we met with our two park regulars – our University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller. As you might expect, we were swopping stories about what had engaged our interest in this transition period. We now know that the the funeral of the Queen has been fixed for a week on Monday. In the meanwhile, the airwaves are filled with ‘filler’ type programmes but this afternoon there is a programme on life in the 1950’s when the Queen ascended to the throne. I certainly can remember the music of the era, pre-rock and roll with recording artists like Dean Martin and Perry Como and where at school children were regularly hit with a jam spoon not necessarily for being naughty but for giving the wrong answers in our recitation of arithmetic tables. Being born in 1945, I was just at the start of what was known as ‘the bulge’ which typically occurs when there is a rapid increase in the birthrate after any major war. In the case of the UK, the peak of this bulge was in 1948 and of course the bulge hit the primary schools in 1953, the secondary schools in 1959, the universities in 1966, the housing market in about 1973 and then, of course, the retirement at the end of working life in about 2008. At university, we studied some demography as part of a course in ‘Social Statistics’ and I was always fascinated by the way in which demography affects our social lives as a kind of unseen force, a little like gravity. Having said that, I found my ‘Social Statistics’ one of the most informative and interesting parts of my university education.

At the moment, there seems to be wall-to-wall coverage of various aspects of the succession – and I have to tell myself that we are only two days into these events, the Queen having died on Thursday. I am not sure how more of this I can take, given that it is days yet even before the funeral and wherever one looks, there is blanket coverage of one aspect or another of the succession of the new King. These programmes are all very interesting and admittedly, events like this have not been seen for seventy years but I wonder whether the public should be given a little respite from it all. Today, the TV Guide to our copy of The Times seems to have missed out, so we are relying upon the EPG (Electronic programme Guide) to have a quick quide to some alternative viewing. Saturday is the day when we attend our weekly church service and after that, Meg and I feel the need for a little diversion. Although many sporting events have been cancelled, the cricket Test Match between England and South Africa have had one day off but I think are playing again today. It is being left to each sport whether fixtures are cancelled or not and in the case of football, some comments have been made that football matches have been cancelled as a mark of respect, but perhaps the opportunity could have been taken for a mass singing of the ‘revised’ national anthem and this might have filled some emotional needs. It might be stating the obvious but who is ‘looking after the shop’ whilst all of this ourpouring of grief is going on. We have to remember that we have not had any ‘normal’ politics all during the summer and were desperately looking forward to a new government, albeit shaped by the new Prime Minister but now ‘normal’ politics has been suspended for another two weeks or at least until the funeral has been held and the official period of mourning come to an end. Whilst it is important that the succession of the monarch is handled correctly, government has to go on as there are no doubt critical decisions that are still be taken concerning the way that our fuel bills are gong to be alleviated. After the Liz Truss statement on Tuesday last, there were still quite a lot of unanswered questions, not least an estimate of the total cost and these questions have not gone away.

The news of the Queen’s death came through to us just after I had completed yesterday’s blog and of course, this made it a momentous day. The fact that the Commons and the other members of the Royal Family moved with such alacrity made me wonder whether there was a coded message such as ‘London bridge is falling down’ as ‘London Bridge’ is the codename for the event of the Queen’s death and all of its consequeneces. As the Prime Minister was informed at about 4.30pm of the Queen’s demise, we can assume that the Queen herself actually died at about 4.00pm or even earlier. The strained faces of the members of the Royal Family when their limousines conveyed them from Aberdeen Airport to Balmorral indicates that they were probably already appraised of the grim news. I think a whole swirl of emotions presents itself at a time like this. First of all, there is the inevitable sadness which most of the poulation undoubtedly feels. But a second emotion is surely one that recognises the incredible devotion to duty and years of service given by the monarch. After all old people do die and 96 years is a ripe old age (my own mother died at the age of 95 and her death certificate merely read ‘Extreme Old Age’ as cause of death). As I was aged about 7 years old when George VI died, then for all of my adult life I have been familiar with Queen Elizabeth II, her images on our stamps, her cipher on Post Boxes, a national anthem of ‘God Save the Queen’ and so on. But, as of yesterday, we now have King Charles III and it now sounds less unfamiliar than it did yesterday. Late on last night, I indulged myself in watching a facinating programme made by Channel 4 which was entitled someting like, ‘The Queen: Power, Politics and Prime Ministers’ or similar. From this I learned that the Queen quite enjoyed her weekly audience with Harold Wilson, the Labout leader, but relationships with Margaret Thatcher were a lot more strained (‘who was going to be Queen Bee after all?’)According to this programme, the Queen and Thatcher fell out with each quite badly over two issues. The first of these was the Commonwealth and the Commonweath desire to impose sanctions against the Union of South Africe as the UK was the only country to oppose sanctions in order to bring about the downfall of the system of ‘apartheid’ The second source of disagreement was the whole Miners’s dispute of the 1970’s. The Queen apparently did not buy into the rhetoric of ‘the enemy within’ and did not enjoy the sight of watching the members of working class communities in the North and the Midlands quite savaegly beaten in defence of ther jobs. The Queen did recognise the transformation that Margaret Thatcher had wrought on British society and later gave her the appropriate honours and recognition.

Today is the long anticipated day which is our wedding anniversary, now that we have completed 55 years under the yoke. We had various plans for the day and hoped that the weather would not get in the way, which fortunately it did not. The day started with our domestic help arriving on a slightly different day this week and naturally we exchanged our reactions to the Queen’s death with each other. We then went down by car to collect our copy of The Times which, in common woth all the other newspapers, had published special supplements commemorating the Queen’s life in pictures. I also bought a copy of the Daily Mirror as I noticed from last night’s TV that they had produced an absolutely stunning profile of the Queen not in full regalia but just in profile with the simple message ‘Thank you’. I thought this to be an example of photo journalism at its very best sand I was pleased to buy this edition for posterity. As we had previously planned, we went down to our usual park bench but taking with us a bottle of prosecco and some cupcakes. We invited any of our acquaintances to help us celebrate and/or assist in a toast to the Queen’ memory and all of this worked as intended. I regaled the dog walkers with the following little story, gleaned from the internet. Apparently, the Queen and her entourage spent a miserable Christmas in Sandringham in 2003 as Priness Anne had taken along with her her English bulldog and this had attacked, and subsequently killed, the eldest of the Queen’s corgis. This had, understandably, put quite a damper on that year’s festivities.

The highlight of the day was when we with our two sets of friends from down the road, we all went out to one of our favourite restaurants where we all had a meal together because, by happy coincidence, all of our wedding anniversries fall within a week of each other. I had bought each of our friends a personalised anniversary cake and we were delighted that the hotel allowed us to take one of these cakes into the restaurant and consume it as our dessert, supplying us with some cream to help it down. One of our friends had so kindly organised a taxi for us there and back so that we could collectively enjoy a little alcohol with our meal to make it all a really enjoyable, and memorable,occasion.

This has been quite a day, what with one thing or another. I went shopping to my local supermarket as I always do on a Thursday and then collected the newspaper. On my way into my driveway back at home, I reversed into the drive but unfortunately reversed into the corner of my son’s car as I was parking. I must admit I was a little proccupied with the sequelae of the demise of Meg’s one surviving relative, her uncle Ken, who was a ripe old age but who we have tried to see as often as we can over the years although we live 130 miles away. The damage to my own car which was a little scrape was quite ‘liveable with’ once I had given everything some attention with a sponge cloth but the damage to my son’s car was a bit more extensive to one bumper and possibly involvig one of the rear sensors as well. We wondered what was to be done and we decided to leave my car alone for the time being. In the meanwhile, my son drove his car to the garage from where he had bought it only to be told that they did not have a body workshop and the regional workshop only covered warranty repairs. Eventually, I got onto my own insurance company since I had dug out the details and ‘fessed up to the accident caused by more inattention (Incidentally, I absolutely hate reversing and I swear the sensor at the back of the car only sounded for less than a second before the collision occurred.) After feeling more than upset about all of this, I told myself that nobody had been injured, my sons car was in the system whereby the insurance company would take to the relevant repair garage and perhaps offer a hire car if necessary and things could have been a lot worse. Needless to say, I will not repeat this mistake again in a hurry.

The principal political event of today was the statement that the Prime Minister was going to make on assistance with rapidly rising fuel bills.The announcement in Parliament had been massively briefed in advance and therefore nothing was actually a great surprise. The support package is due to last for two years and although the total cost has not been mentioned,most informed estimates put it in the region of £130 billion.

In the middle of the Commons statements, tweets and notes were seen as being hurriedly passed around and the Speaker made an intervention that the Queen ‘ was under medical supervision and resting in Balmoral’ A air of despondency descended on Westminster and all of the current news channels (BBC, Sky) have immediately concentrated on the Queen’s health. Evidently something quite significant has happened to which we are not party but all of the members of the Royal Family, moreorless wherever they happen to be, are immediately making their way to the Queen’s side. Nobody is daring the use the verb ‘dying’ but the reaction of all of the members of the Royal Family in itself speaks legions. As this news is being broadcast all day long and commentators are anxious to fill up the space, as it were, then we are having things like reports of which aircraft bearing which Royals are within how many minutes of the nearest airport which is Aberdeen. Meanwhile, whilst the handshake between the Queen and Liz Truss was widely disseminated,it has been noted that the Queen has a large purple bruise on her right wrist/hand. This could have been the result of a fall or could be some trauma after receiving some medical intervention of some sort. So as the hours pass, we are receiving sources of concern from many parties such as all of the major religious leaders as well as political leaders from different parts of the realm. Still, all that we really know at this stage is that the Queen is 96, that her doctors are ‘concerned’ about her health, that members of the Royal family are rushing to be by the Queen’s side and there is a general agreement that this is a ‘significant moment’ – the seriousness of this is underlined by the fact that Buckingham Palace that does normally comment on the Queen’s health felt the need to issue a statement half way through the morning.

Returning now to the Liz Truss statement, there are lots of unknowns emerging. We do not know the total cost of the support, different arrangements apply in Northern Ireland but we know not what, the support package for business is vague. There is a promise for ‘equivalent support’ for businesses, charities and schools for six months based on a government guess of the excess they would have to pay because of the gas price increase, but it is unclear how or when further details will emerge. Beyond six months, only vulnerable industries will be helped – but will this turn out to be every industry? Evidently, a lot had to be worked out at short notice but there are an awful lot of loose ends which may take some time for us to learn.

Today was always going to be dominated by Lix Truss’s first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions and as this is timed to start at 12.00pm promptly, Meg and I made sure that we fulfilled our normal morning routines in plenty of time. We went down by car to collect our newspaper and then popped into Waitrose to pick up some much needed supplies such as milk. Then we were home in plenty of time to witness the first of what will soon become the ritualised conflict between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Evidently, political commentators seize on such occasions to judge how each of the parties are performing. The general view is that there is now a pronounced change of style from Boris Johnson with less of the bluff and bluster and cheap debating points to which we have become accustomed. There now appears to be a clear ideological divide between the two parties. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, made the points clearly and forcefully that not taxing the excess profits of the oil and energy companies with a ‘windfall tax’ is, in effect, increasing the size of the borrowing the government needs to undertake and the rest of the working population will eventually have to pay the bill. For her part, Liz Truss made a clear and confident start repeating yet again her strong conviction that only by not taxing the profits of the energy companies, more investment from them will help to stimulate the whole of the UK economy. Neither side scored a ‘knock out blow’ on the other and so I suspect that we have to score this, like a boxing match, as a draw. Tomorrow will be an equally eventful day because the announcement is due to be made of the measures that the government are bringing forward to alleviate the hardship of the greatly increased fuel bills. The current rumour mill is suggesting something between 80 and 150 billion pounds. As there are approximately 28.1 million households in the UK then this would suggest that the average households will receive a subsidy (hand-out if you will) of over £4,000 pa. What is interesting is the political reaction to these enormous sums. To the Tory party right (i.e. the present PM and Cabinet) these are loans worth taking out so that as a society, we can survive another huge shock to the system in the same fashion as the pandemic. If the Labour party were to engage in such a policy, no doubt that there would be a lot of talk of there being ‘No Magic Money tree’ or of visiting huge bills onto future generations. The reaction of the city is fairly muted insofar as I can tell – after all, they are always friends with a right wing government and know that huge loans of in excess of £100 billion may well help to bring inflation down by about 4% points. In the next few weeks, if interest rates were to rise to help to combat inflation, this eventually might mean a rise in interest rates that would eventually feed through into higher mortgages. At that point, the reaction of the public may well become critical. I suppose that all we can say is the Government are committed to a wholesale adoption of that is popularly known as ‘supply side economics’ – the ideological position that we need a small state and a liberated and lightly taxed private sector to help to stimlate economic growth. It is possible that all of this might just work – but most economists and political commentators are of the view that the experiment will fail and perhaps, fail spectacularly, particularly if nobody wants to lend us the money any more and we have to approach the IMF for funds.

Today has been a day with some emails in my inbox. So close friends from South Oxfordshire have extended an invitation to visit them and suggested a journey by train. We have worked out some dates suitable for both of us and I have already got some tickets organised, at a good price, as we are talking about a journey in three week’s time, organised through my favourite supplier which is ‘thetrainline’. I communicated with a close family friend of Meg’s Uncle Ken, only to learn that he passed away in the small hours of Sunday morning with the funeral in about three weeks’s time. This was not unexpected and we are pleased that we have taken every opportunity to see Uncle Ken when we can over the years (pandemic permitting). We are hoping to avoid a clash of commitments but we shall just have to wait until we get a firm date for the funeral so that we can book accommodation, apart from other things. Just to complicate matters still further, we are all trying to coordinate days for a get together of our University of Winchester ‘Old Fogies’ so I can foresee a horrible clash of commitments coming up but that’s life, I suppose.

Tuesday is a day to which Meg and I increasingly look forward as it is the day upon which we traditionally meet with a clutch of our pre-pandemic friends in the Waitrose coffee bar. The day was one of those in which showers were quite frequent and there was quite a lot of rain ‘in the air’ but nonetheless, having picked up our newspaper, we made it to Waitrose by before 10.30am which is the time at which we conventionally meet. When we first arrived, I had a few political discussions with Seasoned World Traveller who is often there on a Tuesday morning together with our previous gardening guru. After that, the three old ladies plus Meg and myself formed a jolly little group – the Waitrose staff themselves said how much they enjoyed hearing the gaggle of voices because it reminded them a little of the pre-pandemic days. I took the opportunity to get some much needed supplies from the supermarket as I was there anyway including some cakes that I intend to share with others and consume on Friday. Once we got home, I changed into my Pilates track-suit trousers and attended my normal weekly Pilates session, after which I walked home and we had lunch. Walking home was quite an interesting experience as it was quite bright and sunny but nonetheless many leaves were falling off the trees as though it were later in the autumn. So we had the combination of a late summer’s day sunshine but with the leaf-fall associated with much later in the year. Once I get home after my Pilates session, we have a lunch traditional to us for a Tuesday of haddock fish cakes (warming in the oven whilst I am out) accompanied by those veg which can be quickly microwaved and only take a few minutes to prepare.

This afternoon the news, and the terrestial media, is dominated by the transfer of power as Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street for the last time, Boris Johnson flies north to Balmoral to see the Queen and formally tender his resignation, Liz Truss flies a little later in a separate jet to Balmoral to formally ‘kiss the hands of the monarch’ and to be asked to form a new government and finally, Liz Truss flies back to London destined for Downing Street in a separate jet. Apparently Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have to fly on separate jets for ‘security reasons’ but the unworthy thought occurred to me that if they on the same jet and it were to crash, then we could simultaneously get rid of two troublesome politicians at once. One suspects though that the reasons are slightly more prosaic than this – the fact that an ex and an incoming Prime Minister might be on the same flight might give rise to friction or even fisticuffs between the two. Then, a rather farcical staging of events took pace. When there is a transfer of power, traditionally the incoming Prime Minister is photographed on the steps of 10 Downing Street and then has to be seen to be entering the building (only through the front door but not through the back door) There were several MPs and anticipated cabinet mnisters huddled around the door of No. 10 but as the car bearing Liz Truss approached, there was a tremendous and fierce shower. To those who like to stage manage these events, it would have been unthinkable to have a symbolism of Liz Truss arriving in the pouring rain and, even worse, giving her first speech in the pouring rain. So the umbrellas went up and the lectern for the PM’s address was adorned with a black plastic sack in the vain attempt to keep it dry. Meanwhile the Liz Truss limousine kept circulating around the London streets until the worst of the shower had passed by so that the occasion of Liz Truss symbolically entering Downing Street was not accompanied by a shower of rain – the symbolism might have been prophetic. Then we had the normal incomer’s speech, but shorn of rhetoric with the first priority being not to do anything about the rocketing costs of living but to ‘grow the economy with tax cuts’ If it could be shown that the super-rich funnel tax cuts into productive investment, then this argument might carry some weight. But the weight of evidence, and of history, is that such tax funds tend to be squirrelled away into expensive consumption goods (country houses, yachts, tax havens) and goes nowhere the deprived communities that desperately need the inward investment.

Now for some slightly more cheerful news. When I was at work in the University of Winchester, many moons ago, a group of five of us had birthdays in May so we decided to have a collective birthday meal. Since then, we formed a group called ‘The Old Fogies’ and we used to meet at least twice a year to have a chat about how good things were when we ran them! But the pandemic has rather attenuated all of that but now there is a strong feeling that we should get together again. We are just in the process of trying to coordinate dates when all or most of us can meet so, hopefully, in a few weeks time we can all meet again for a meal in Winchester and renew old friendships. Most of us are saying that we cannot wait, so hopefully, we are sitting by our email boxes to see what emerges.

Monday, 5th September, 2022

[Day 903]

Last night, as I lay abed in the wee small hours of the morning, I heard the rumbles of thunder and the sound of heavy rain falling (which was, incidentally) a wonderful sound to hear. There is an app you can get which I have on an iPad which is just the sound of tropical rain falling steadily and indeed it is quite hypnotic and soothing, provided of course, one is not in a small 6’x.4′ tent which I had as a boy. I consulted the weather app on my phone and saw that it was not due for the band of rain sweeping up the country to hit us until about 4.00pm in the afternoon so we could walk to the park without the benefit of outerwear. We made our trips by car today which is becoming the norm and after we had picked up a copy of The Times, we made our way to the park not expecting to see many people as Monday is generally quite a light day. In the park, we met with a couple who had a very young and not-as-yet well trained Alsatian puppy who had a tendency to bark at other dogs that it encountered. However, its ‘owners’ indicated that they had only had the dog for about 15 hours as it was a ‘rescue’ dog and they were acting as sort of foster-carers for it. Presumably thy were ‘doggy’ people and were well used to getting dogs and licking them into shape, as it were, but it struck us us rather a bold and altruistic thing to take on as the dog’s eventual full time owner would be the ones who would eventually benefit. However, we had quite a foreshortened morning because we wanted to get home in time for the announcement of the next leader of the Conservative party at 12.30. There was quite a lot of self-congratulaory announcements about how well the election process had been run, what a depth of talent from which they had to draw and so on all of which delayed the actual announcement of the result by Sir Graham Brady, the Chair of the 1922 Committee. When the result was announced, it showed that Liz Truss had secured 57% of the vote and Rishi Sunak 43% – a margin of difference of only 14%. The victory of Liz Truss was quite significant in its own way because well before the event, it was said that Liz Truss had a lead of 30% plus. In the event, Rishi Sunak performed better than many had predicted and Liz Truss worse – in particular, the 57% of the vote that she secured was less than the 60% that many of her supporters were hoping for and significantly less than the 66% secured by Boris Johnson. The impact of all of this is almost immediate as to the informed political cognoscenti, it look as though Liz Truss might have to ditch plans to fill her cabinet with ‘trusted’ right wingers and instead appoint a cabinet (as most Prime Ministers until Johnson did) which is more representative of the party as a whole and make sure that potential enemies who might seek to undermine her are not given a lot of ammunition at the start. Of course, the really big policy announcement might have to wait until about Thursday with the overriding question being what to do about sky rocketing fuel bills. There is a suggestion abroad, even now, that the new prime Minister might do a complete volte-face and order a freeze of all energy bills, effectively stealing the Labour Party policy which seems to have a lot of public support.

This afternoon our calendar had two principal engagements. First of all, we had a visit from our chiropodist who helps to keep us mobile. I remember a cartoon in which a postman’s feet were being examined with the slogan ‘Good for another 3,000 miles’ After that, we had a video link with a health service professional who was helping us manage some of the conditions that are afflicting Meg at the moment. This consultation was three quarters of an hour long and whilst the health service worker was friendly and informative, at the end of our allotted time span we had not learnt a great deal, if anything. However, I think it is true to say that the little group of us who meet in Waitrose each Tuesday morning probably gives us the kind of mutual support that is as good as anything.

Late on this afternoon, the news broke that Priti Patel had resigned as Home Secretary – this largely bcause it had been intimated that she would not retain the position of Home Secretary in a Liz Truss administration so she jumped before she was pushed. I must say I could not resist a quick look at the Twitter-sphere who, as you might expect, was full of undisguised glee at what most contributors thought was the worst, and most duplicitous, Home Secretary we had ever had. In particular, her claim to have ‘added’ 20,000 police officers was regarded with astonishment when her own policing minister admitted that 45,000 officers were required just to back-fill retirements and that the police have also seen an 18% reduction in real terms pay under the Conservative Government.

This morning was a gloomy morning which threatened rain later on in the day. As it was, I walked down on my own to collect our copy of the Sunday Times and then it was time in home for what is now the Laura Kuennsberg show, now that Andrew Marr has retired. The show was memorable for an interview with Liz Truss who will surely get the news at 12.30 tomorrow that she has been elected as the leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister. For me, the whole show (apart from the antics of the comedian Joe Lycett who practically derailed the show) was a graph shown to Liz Truss showing how reducing the National Insurance contributions was amazingly regressive – the higher one moved up the income scale, the greater the benefit). Laura Kuennsberg’s question to Liz Truss was ‘that was not fair’ to which Liz Truss replied that it was absolutely fair. This is a jaw-dropping admission – that the richer one is, it is more fair to give them bigger tax reductions than it is to help the poorest who are are hardly helped at all by the reduction in National Insurance. Practically no politician has dared to day this in the last forty years (but I suppose Tories feel it to be true). Liz Truss went on to say that we should not be arguing about redistributing the wealth of the nation but stimulating economic growth by making the rich richer. This is part of a wider theory called ‘trickle down economics’ in which it is assumed (with very little evidence) that making the rich richer makes wealth ‘trickle down’ to reach the poower sections of our society. The renowned economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, described trickle-down theory as ‘the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.’ This pretty much summarises what has happened in practice over the past forty years as the theory has been rigorously applied by giving tax cuts to rich people and powerful corporations. But the rich have become very much richer, the corporations have become very much more powerful, and the sparrows are getting a whole lot thinner as fewer oats make it through the system. The Twitter-sphere is full of comments about this gaffe (if it was a gaffe) and are arguing that the Labour Party must be rubbing their hands in glee at this statement of philosophy before Truss is even elected. Others have commented that as we have had several years of trickle down economics, why do we have 200+ food banks across the country? I hope that Keir Starmer uses it to good effect at Question Time next Wednesday. The amazing thing is that even some Tories are even now, before she is even confirmed as having been elected, thinking of ways in which she can be removed – after all, only 30% Conservative MPs actually voted for her in the final ballot. If Liz Truss appoints an incredibly right wing cabinet, then this will spell masses of trouble on the back benches who feel that the Tory party is anything but united. On the other hand, if she appoints people who disagree with her, she must hate having them in the cabinet voicing their opinions and eventually being sacked in a blaze of publicity. It is no wonder that Boris Johnson is going to lurk around in the wings, assuming that a Liz Truss premiership will implode as right wing ideology has to meet with the reality of mass hardship and deaths amnongst the elderly. Of course, having appealed to right wing constituency party members with ‘no handouts’ she may have to ditch this ‘promise’ within hours when faced with the depth of the economic crisis coming down the road.

Meg and I took the car to the park as we often do on a Sunday mornimg. We had just drunk our coffee and were preparing to leave when our two friends, University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller strode into view, probably seeking us out. We had quite a jolly time joshing with each other about this and that. I had discovered a little child’s toy – a ball that illuminates when it is bounced – so they volunteered to hand it in at the cafe so that it can be donated by them (and not by me)to any passing toddler who can make use of it.

Today, we had a conventional beef dinner and teated ourselves to some Yorkshire puddings to go with it. After lunch, we were delighted to see that we had a really good old-fashioned downpour which did not last very long but is a sight to which we have not been treated for several weeks now. Later. on this afternoon, I am going to prepare some apples which my daughter-in-law picked for me and we can have a good old-fashioned nursery tea of stewed apple with custard. We are also looking forward to a BBC4 presentation later on this evening of the life of Beethoven on the one hand, to be followed by a rendition of the 9th Symphony (Choral Symphony) on the other.

Today there was a decidedly autumnal feel to the air when we got home. It had evidently rained during the night which is surely needed after all of these dry spells – I was pleased that we had got the lawns and the hedges cut before the rains came and we shall probably expect a little more tomorrow. The generally autumnal air was assisted by the choice of music by Alan Titchmarsh on ClassicFM this morning where we had a Mozart Horn concerto closely followed by the Elgar cello concerto. I think these two pieces were well-chosen to reflect the ambience of the day and although it is not exactly the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ in the words of the poet, the fact that so many trees are losing their leaves in a kind of false autumn means that the seasons are well and truly out-of-kilter with the actual months – after all, we are only just into September. Before we went down to the park, I had a large load of washing to peg out but no sooner had I started but the washing line broke in the very middle.I suspect that this is where our clothes prop that has a very tight clasp had worn away at the clothes line. Needless to say, I was being able assisted in putting out the clothes by Miggles, that cat who had adopted us. Repairing the line meant accessing the lower branches of one of our holly trees to release some spare portions of line. Once the line had been repaired (with a simple knot) the cat ascended the tree to inspect the cleat where the clothes line was affixed and almost got itself stuck. Afterwards, Meg and I went down by car to pick up our Saturday newspaper and after that, we made our way to the park. There we met up with Inveterate Octogenerian Hiker who we we had not seen for well over a week. We exchanged news of our various comings and goings and indeed we will not see our acquaintance again for at least a week as his daughter was going to whisk down to Chicester for a little holiday. I was reminded vividly of how the recent heat wave has thrown the seasons out of kilter because as I was cutting the lawns yesterday, I noticed that our solitary pear tree in the back garden was absolutely laden with fruit, whereas last year I think that it only bore a single pear. I selected the largest pear and sampled it, expecting it to be fairly tart but was pleasantly surprised that the taste was quite tolerable so I may have to think about picking the crop a bit earlier than I would have thought. At the same time, the old damson trees at the end of our garden (part of a hedgerow which I think forms part of the ancient boundary fence) is absolutely teeming with damsons. When I got indoors, I consulted my ‘gardening diary’ in which I record various things and notice that in the past I have picked damsons as early as 5th September. The only problem is that I still have not got around to bottling last years damson gin and damson vodka so I really need to find the time to do this in the next few days in order to release Kilner jars in which the damson gin is made. I should really have got around to this a lot earlier but somehow other things have always tended to intrude. This afternoon, Meg and I were watching ‘Sense and Sensibility‘ whilst simultaneously reading The Times not to mention my current writing. In the late afternoon, I also thought I would get back into soup making mode again as the nights are getting a little colder. I made tonight’s soup out of some fried onions, carrots, swede, celery, half a can of coconut milk and finally a dollop of Marsala sauce which adds just a little bit of piquancy to the whole. I started off this lot just before we set off for church and when we got back, the soup was all ready for us. We just needed a little bit of toast in lieu of croutons and a spoonful of greek yogurt and it feels like old times again. I have some cooked ingredients left over for an additional soup type meal during the week.

Finally,more Tory sleaze has energed. Liam Fox denies wrongdoing after receiving £20,000 from COVID testing firm he recommended but claims that all he did for his money was to make a recommendation to government. As we are in a kind of interregnum between Prime Ministers, I would be surprised if this was taken any further, particularly as so many ministers benefitted in a similar way at the start of the pandemic. Nobody seems to call out this corruption any more as it seems normal in the current state of politics.

We didn’t have anything much planned for today apart from a realisation that a period of wet and windy weather might be upon us over the weekend and so therefore today was a good day to apply the mower to the lawns (I hesitate to say ‘cut’ the lawns because they are still largely yellowy brown but they certainly need some tidying up as some tall weeds seem to be growing along their margins) We set off in the car this morning as we needed to make several calls along the road.The first was Asda because there are some things in that store that I cannot find anywhere else. We were successful in buying two of the three things we needed but could not find any of the brown paper bags designated for composting food waste which we use to store vegetables such as carrots in the fridge. To stop a lot of fruitless chasing around in the future, I have ordered some over the web which should take a few days to arrive. Then we went on to collect our newspaper and make our way to the park. The park’s car park seemed unusually full this morning but we occupied a space only when another visitor vacated it and enjoyed our coffee and biscuits when we were finally occupied our favourite bench. Finally, it was off to a petrol station to collect a gallon of petrol for the lawn mower – ideally, I wanted some ‘super’ petrol as I only buy two gallons of this a year for the lawn mower and I suspect it is ethanol-free. To cut a long story short, I concluded that the supermarket did not stock a ‘Super’ grade but filled up with regular petrol. When I enquired at the pay point, I was told they stock ‘Super’ grades of petrol but I had not found it because all of the pumps supplying it were busy with oher customers. I have a special Briggs and Stratton additive (‘Fuel Fit’)which I can add to my petrol and according to the website, it prevents stale fuel, stabilizes fuel up to 3 years, cleans the fuel system and is the perfect stabiliser for lawn mowers and other equipment. Finally, we got home and had a quick lunch of sea bass on a bed of lettuce. This is our Friday ‘treat’ and as well as being very tasty, it is incredibly quick to prepare and gets our lunch (and the subsequent washing up) over and done with quite quickly. Finally, I got out fairly early in the afternoon to get the lawns cut. The mower started (eventually – I suspect that the really hot weather has caused the fuel in the fuel line to vaporise) and the lawns then got cut in the normal time (40 minutes for the front, 20 minutes for the back).

The campaign to be the next leader of the Conservative party, and therefore Prime Minister, thankfully ended at 5.00pm this afternoon. The result, practically a foregone conclusion, will be announced about midday on Monday morning. There is an almost universal acceptance that the election process, consulting as it does with the ‘grass roots’, has gone on far too long. The MP’s whittled their choice of candidates down to the top two in about 10 days but this consultation with the constituency parties seem to have gone off for weeks, right during the summer. The MP’s had to make their decisions quickly before the Parliamentary session ended, but even so most people are now of the view that MP’s should have been given a little more time and the constituency parties considerably less. A figure of two weeks for the latter has, I think, been mentioned. The last time the Tories activated this procedure, Angela Leadsom quickly withdrew from the contest with Theresa May and hence the whole process of choosing a new leader was considerably shortened. It was unfortunate for the Tories that this period of consultation coincided with the war in Ukraine and one of the worst economic crises to hit us in decades. It may well be that once this election is well and truly over that the Tories learn the lesson and perhaps have different procedures for when the party is in government (which is practically all the time) and when they are in opposition (which is correspondingly quite rare). The Labour party could do well to draw lessons from all of this as well. After the ‘coronation’ of Liz Truss is confirmed next Monday, political attention will turn to the Committee of Privileges of the House of Commons and whether Boris Johnson, in his uttterances, misled the House. The critical phrase is whether this was an ‘intentional’ misleading or not. Boris Johnson has received un an anticipated boost as in a published legal opinion commissioned by the government, Lord Pannick – a crossbench peer who sits in the House of Lords – described the Privileges Committee’s approach to its investigation into whether the PM misled MPs as ‘unfair’ and ‘flawed’. Boris Johnson will always argue that he ‘unintentionally’ misled the House – but was he really totally ignorant of all the partying going on around him, not least in his own flat when Dominic Cummings resigned?

When I woke up this morning, I knew that I had to make an early start to get our weekly shopping done – and then realised, with a sort of sickening thud, that I had neglected to put our wheelie bins at the end of the drive ready for collection by the bin men. As we are a private road, I have to drag the bins about 150 yards along our access road to the end of the drive and, if you forget, this means a wait of a fortnight until that bin can be emptied again or an actual visit to the tip some 5-6 miles distant. Anyway, I got the bins there in time and so was mightily relieved. I then shot off to my shopping after accessing some cash from a nearby ATM and did a fairly full week’s shopping. This all worked out fine and I only forgot one item for my sins. Then it was a case of a slow unpacking after which I prepared our elevenses for the park. It was a beautiful day, albeit a trifle windy, so Meg and I decided that we would walk to the park today and not take to the car at all. We chatted to no-one in particular and therefore got home fairly quickly. Our daughter-in-law had made the very generous offer to come around to our house today and cut the tall growing hedge which surrounds our BioDisc (mini sewage treatment facility) with a pair of electric hedge clippers. Whilst we were outside the house, we had a jolly time with our next door neighbour who works at the big garden centre down the road and they are now reducing the prices of all of their plants by 20%. I suppose children will go back to school next Monday, summer holidays are over for many and perhaps people are turning to thoughts other than gardening. Then we all engaged in tidying up all of the hedge clippings and clippings from other shrubs that had received a haircut. As is typically the case in such circumsstances, it is not the actual clipping but the clearing away of the clippings that takes the time. I realise that the lawn has not received attention for a week or so and although the main body of the grass is still somewhat yellow, there is quite a lot of tidying up for a mower to perform around the edges. I need, though, to go and get a gallon of petrol for the lawnmover – it only takes two gallons a year but I generally buy high quality petrol to avoid the problem of the ethanol with which they bulk out petrol these days absorbing water vapour and causing mower problems. But as it was the height of rush hour, I decided to wait until tomorrow when Meg and I get the petrol whilst we have the car out to go to the park.

The Chancellor of the Excheqeur, Mr Zahawi, promised there would be additional help for struggling families. However, he stuck to the Downing Street line that it will be up to the new prime minister – due to be named on Monday – to decide what shape it takes. The chancellor’s comments come as the Resolution Foundation warns British households are on course for the deepest living standards squeeze in a century, with real household disposable incomes expected to fall by 10% this year and next. The trouble is that none of the present holders of a ministerial office may still be in post next Tuesday, after Liz Truss is confirmed as Prime Mnister next Monday. So there has been a period of complete government paralysis wilst the election campaign has rumbled on through the summer. Incidentally, I hear a ‘vox pop’ with a member of the Tory party in a leafy constituency somewhere in the south of England. When the interviewer pointed out that the next Prime Minister of the country was going to be selected on the basis of conservative constituency members, the lady replied, with no apparent sense of irony, that the next Prime Minister was going to be chosen by the ‘best’ people in the country! Meg and I are looking forward to tomorrow when we do not have to get up early for any pressing reason so we can allow ourselves the luxury of a little lie-in. We have not seen our normal gaggle of friends in the park over the last few days, so we are looking forward to more social intercourse tomorrow. According to the ‘auction’ of energy contracts last month, it now appears that the cost of generating elecrity from windpower is now one quarter of the price of the gas equivent – I did her on the radio a university academic arguing that the ratio is now one seventh (which I have not been able to verify) But I have to ask myself why the price of all energy is so high (and increasing) at the moment?