Thursday is my shopping day and for some reason, things seemed very quiet this morning so I got my money out of an ATM and whizzed around the supermarket in record time. After I had got home, breakfasted and unpacked, Meg and I treated ourselves to another little mini-concert on our newly resurrected CD player and then decided to make a trip to the park. The weather was a little indeterminate but we thought that a breath of fresh air would do us good, which I am sure that it did. Upon our return, I noticed that a little bundle of CDs had arrived, all courtesy of Ebay. One of these was Vladimir Askenazy set of the five most popular Mozart piano concertos which came on 2 CDs and for which I paid less than £3.00. The bigger bundle was a 12 disk set of Murray Perahia playing almost every piano concerto that Mozart ever wrote (1-27 but missing Nos. 7 and 10 for some reason) and this bundle came in at less than 40p a disk. I cannot say how much these would have cost when they were just released but, for whatever reason, they are now being sold at almost give away prices, particularly once you subtract the cost of the postage. We have played some of the Asknenazy disks and the quality seems fine but evidently it will take me many hours of listening pleasure to work my way through the entire collection to see if they are all play as they should.

The American election results continue to fascinate but some of the final votes seem to be incredibly slow to declare. This may be because postal votes are not counted until the day after the election and are counted by hand rather than by machine but the final results are better than the Democrats had dared hoped and worse than the Republicans had come to expect. The latest estimate from NBC News has the Republicans winning 222 House seats compared with the Democrats’ 213, meaning they would still take control but with much less authority. And a Democrat win is still within the margin of error. As I write, the latest estimate from NBC News has the Republicans winning 222 House seats compared with the Democrats 213, meaning they would still take control but with much less authority than the 40+ gains anticipated by some pollsters. A majority of 9 is still sufficient for the Republicans to follow much of their own agenda but in today’s climate, how many independently minded Republicans are left who may defy how the rest of the party are voting? The race for the Senate is also very much in the balance, with just three seats left to declare. Georgia’s race is set for a run-off on 6 December so we may have to wait until then for the final result. Whichever party wins two of the three outstanding contests in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada will control the Senate. With about 70 percent of the vote tallied in Arizona, incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly maintains a 5-point lead over Republican challenger Blake Masters. But election officials in Democrat-heavy Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county, have said it could take until at least Friday to tally the hundreds of thousands of remaining votes. About 80 percent of the vote has been tallied in Nevada, where Republican Adam Laxalt has a slight edge over Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. But late-arriving mail-in ballots, especially in Democratic strongholds of Clark and Washoe Counties, that have yet to be counted could still tip the scales in the incumbent’s favor. Election officials are saying that the results of these votes might not be known until Friday. The US newspapers owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch make brutal reading for Donald Trump today. Once again, the two flagship Murdoch titles – the upscale conservative-leaning Wall St Journal (WSJ), which is influential with deep pocketed Republican donors, and the tabloid New York Post – have united to tell their collective readership that it is time for Republicans to move beyond Donald Trump. New York Post columnist John Podhoretz wrote a blistering editorial, saying: ‘After three straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it is time for even his fans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.’ While Republican lawmakers are so far loyal to the former president in public, the debate emerging from the Murdoch-owned press reflects the conversations Republicans are having in private.

In the Ukraine, the fact that the Russians seem to be abandoning Kherson might appear to be good news for the Ukraine but the military command is being very cautious. It may be that several ‘traps’ have been laid by the retreating troops. The fact that they are retreating to the east bank of a river means that they can still shell Kherson at will and may be difficult to attack. But it does appear that the Russians had little choice but to abandon the city as their supply lines had been so successfully disrupted by the Ukrainians seeking to liberate their own territory.

Meg and I look forward to Wednesday because it is the day when our domestic help comes round to work her magic and after a cup of tea first thing, we exchange news of each other’s week. I showed her the improvements that we had made to our little music corner and, in particular, how I had interfaced my old iphone (with about 200 tracks on it) to an external Bluetooth speaker. We knew that Prime Minister’s Questions would be especially good today after the resignation last night of Gavin Williamson (who had previously been sacked as one of the most incompetent Education Secretaries of all time) We enjoyed our coffee in the park and just got back in time, having bought some essential supplies in Waitrose, to make us all a nice cup of coffee and settled down to PMQ. In this, Keir Starmer had some excellent attack lines which he delivered in a fashion described by some as ‘brutal’. For example, Keir Starmer referred to Sir Gavin as ‘a sad middle manager getting off on intimidating those beneath him’ and a ‘cartoon bully with a pet spider’. Williamson, I think it is fair to say, was known across the House of Commons as a ‘nasty piece of work’. As an ex-Chief Whip and a record of incompetence as a defence and latterly education secretary he had practically no friends amongst fellow Conservative MPs. It could be that Sunak employed him as a type of enforcer over recalcitrant MPs but eventually the costs of keeping him far exceeded the costs of letting him go. Once the tirade of foul epithets with the Conservative chief whip became public as well as other damning remarks to a senior civil servant that he ‘should slit his own throat’ then it was only a question of time before he had to go. Indeed, Sunak did not even have to sack him because other parts of the Tory party indicated him that it was time to go and his future is bound to be oblivion (and it would not surprise me if he left politics at the next general election).

After lunch, we knew that I had to go to a routine annual monitoring after my operation of a few years ago and for this, we needed to make a trip to the local hospital some 11 miles distant. Compared with the last time I visited, I now needed to take a ticket to gain access to the car park and when we got to the outpatient clinic a wait of some 45 minutes ensured. I had taken Meg with me so that she was not left on her own for too long and when we left, having paid a £4 fee for an hour’s visit, the barriers were open so the £4 payment proved not to be necessary after all. Then it was home and a quick tea before we caught up with the news.

The Channel 4 analysis of the American election results was illuminating in the extreme. The Republicans had been predicted to do incredibly well as inflation is hitting American society hard and Trump was on the rampage. But the ‘red wave’ turned out to be a ‘red trickle’ and although the Republicans will take the House of Representatives, it should be by a much smaller margin than was predicted. This still means that the enquiry into the insurrection and invasion of the Capitol building will be called off, however, as they go after Jo Biden’s son. But the Senate race is still far too hard to call. There are three more results to be declared but one of the most critical is Georgia. In this state, there is a third candidate who will take away sufficient votes for either Republican or Democrat to cross the 50% line, so it appears that there will be a run off election between these two top candidates in the first week of December. So the ultimate result may not be known for several weeks. In the meantime. the Democrats have even taken the state of Pennsylvania from red (Republican) to blue (Democrat) But of much more significance is the fact that the especially endorsed Trump candidates seem to have fared less well than those not so endorsed- in other words, Trump’s influence has been negative. He is reportedly livid about this and is ‘throwing his toys out of his pram’ There is no great love for the Democrats but the abortion issue has harmed rather than helped the Republicans. Also the American electorate seem to have failed to have voted for the mediocrity of some of the Trump candidates. This may play into the hands of DeSantis, the Florida senator. While Republican candidates across the country met unexpectedly tight races, Mr DeSantis, 44, swept to a nearly 20-point landslide victory over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist, including a clear majority among Latino voters. Four years ago, by comparison, he won by less than half a percentage point. No doubt, there will have to much more analysis in the days ahead but it looks as though the ‘MAGA’ (Make America Great Again) brand of conservatism may just have had its day.

Tuesday morning is the day upon which we typically repair to Waitrose and meet with some of our pre-pandemic friends in the coffee bar. Today was no exception and we met with a couple of them and exchanged gossip of the day. We do not spend too long over our coffees as it is my Pilates day so we need to get home and then I change into my track suit bottoms before I walk down into town. Despite the fierce winds and rain that swept across the country in the last few hours, the weather had cleared and we were treated to some blue skies and quite mild weather, so the walk down to my class was not unpleasant. On my way down into town, I just managed to sneak into Poundland and managed to purchase one of those units used to supply power to a mobile low on power – I believe that the generic term for these is a ‘Power Bank’. When I got it home, I set it to work to charge up (although the first charge takes some hours) and am going to use it to power a little portable bluetooth speaker which I had purchased some years ago but had fallen into disuse. Being ‘Bluetooth’ means that I can play some of the 200-odd classical tracks on my old iphone through an audible speaker so this, too, is going to add to my range of music options in the days ahead.

This afternoon, I have been quite enjoying myself as the Labour party are debating a motion of their own choosing which is a motion critical of the appointment of, and actions, of the current Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. The latter had been appointed to the role of Home Secretary by Rishi Sunak six days after she had been sacked by Liz Truss for breaking the Ministerial Code for transmitting government documents using her own private email. Of course, there is a certain amount of posturing by the Labour Party and the Conservative members of the Commons are sustained by the fact that Suella Braverman’s harsh, if not draconian, treatment of asylum seekers meets with the great approval of Conservative Party members. Of course, there is also the issue of Gavin Williamson who is similarly under a shadow, not least for telling a senior civil servant that he should ‘slit his own throat’. One has to ask why Rishi Sunak appointed these two errant ministers to his government in the first place. The short answer is that in the case of Gavin Williamson, he was dependent upon him to (successfully) run his election campaign. The case of Suella Braverman is less transparent but is probably a case of keeping the darling of the Tory right wing in the ERG group more or less on side as he attempts to unite the Tory party, currently riven by many competing factions.

Today is the day of the mid-term American elections, the importance of which is almost impossible to overestimate. The results of the elections will not start to percolate through until the very late evening and probably the wee small hours of the morning. According to reports, though, Donald Trump has been dancing on stage in Ohio, all smiles and clenched fists. Trump has labelled Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, an ‘animal’. This is despite the fact that her husband was recently attacked by an intruder with a hammer inside their home. One has to wonder if there not new lows to which political discourse has fallen in the US and no wonder that all Democrats and some Republicans fear for the future of democracy in that country. But some news emerging through this afternoon is due to the tightness of the election in several states and the varied arrangements, state by state, for both the counting of votes and the possiblities of recounts, the definitive results may not be known for days or even, in extreme cases if the courts get involved, for weeks. Of course, this will only happen if the Republicans are deemed to have narrowly ‘lost’ because if they were to get their noses ahead in various states, there will be no problems of recounts or recourse to the courts.

Some sports news with which to conclude today. The regional news is informing us that ‘Perry’ the huge mechanical bull which was a symbol of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham is being ‘weather proofed’ so that he can can go on a permanent display in central Birmingham. Mowever, these games are in credit and are donating used equipment to local sorts clubs. On an international level, the Qatar football world cup is to start in a couple of weeks and I could not be less interested. The whole choice of venue was the result of a corrupt process and tonight an official amabassador to the games has been spouting forth homophobic nonsense that many feared. More positively, the England women rugby team are playing New Zealand in a final on Saturday evening so this will be a match well worth watching – I think it’s going to be shown live on ITV.

Today was rather dominated by both the weather which was showery and blustery and also by the fact that I had a dental appointment in the early afternoon. This morning after Meg and I had breakfasted, I treated her to a mini-concert which was a playing of Cecilia Bartoli singing Mozart arias played on my speaker-enhanced CD player. We must have played this CD in the past but I do not remember hearing it before and the singing was superb. It was a Decca recording, made in 1991, and with Vienna Philharmonic as the resident orchestra and so one would have expected a fine recording. Having said that, I was delighted by how my little newly configured system performed and I can forsee some hours of pleasure ahead when doing Christmas cooking or even Damson gin bottling. As the weather was evidently unpleasant and time was a little limited, Meg and I decided to forgo a drink sitting on our normal bench in the park but confined ourselves to a circuit of the park with the pool in the centre. This gave us the opportunity to have a breath of fresh air before we returned home to have our elevenses at home. Sometimes, we drive past our friends on the Kidderminster Road to see if anyone is around but today (and tomorrow) they are relaying and re-tarmacing the whole of the side road so this was denied to us. We lunched on some chicken legs which I made sure were well done and served with baked potato and green beans. And so it was off to the dentist which was scheduled to start at 2.15. I got there about 10 minutes early and was almost immediately whisked into the dentist’s chair. Our dentist is a very personable Irish lady who is evidently very skilful. Having had years since I can last remember needing a filling, today, I needed quite a lot of work doing and this resulted in three fillings plus a temporary crown fitted. I must say that the modern dental anaesthetics are brilliant because I have vivid memories of the times I used to go the dentist in the early 1950’s. There were a couple of aged dentists (who appeared to me then to be in their 80’s) who operated an old fashioned belt driven drill which they operated by pressing pedals on the floor. They refused categorically to give anyone an injection for the pain as they declared, emphatically, that if they did they could not tell if they were drilling on a nerve but without an anaesthetic, they would soon tell. A visit to the dentist was like a scene from a horror movie because as you sat in the waiting room, you heard the howls of agony from the dentist’s surgery and you knew that it was your turn next. Things have evidently improved beyond recognition and I thought my own particular dentist was very skilful because all of the procedures were completed within about twenty minutes and very expeditiously as well. I am due to return in about three weeks time to have the temporary crown replaced by a more permanent one. As the anaesthetic has worn off, I have the slightest of aches but nothing that a good night’s sleep will not put right.

This afternoon, I finally got around to booking the train tickets for Meg nd I to make a trip to Winchester in about 9 days time. This is a meeting of the ‘Old Fogies’ who are a group of colleagues who all retired some 12-15 years ago and used to meet regularly twice a year to have a lunch and a reunion. But with the pandemic, we have not managed to meet for about three years and even this year’s meeting has been thwarted on two occasions by the rail strikes. We are hopeful, though, that we are now set fair. After the meal, we may end up in a local hostelry where we can have a beer or two until it is time for our train to depart. Meg and I are going to travel from Birmingham International which saves the time of having to get into Birmingham and then out again which saves up about an hour and a half at each end of the day.

Tomorrow is the day of the American mid-term elections which are particularly important on this particular occasion. It seems likely that the Republicans will capture both houses of the Congress and there is little, if any bipartisan spirit left in the American legislature. Republican gains may well result with plans to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Jo Biden’s ability to push through any new laws in his remaining two years may be severely curtailed. Trump has endorsed nearly 300 candidates and a large measure of success for them would embolden Trump to push ahead with a further bid for the presidency. Finally, the enquiry into the 6th January, 2021 attack on the Capitol which was, in effect, a right wing insurrection designed to restore Trump to the presidency by force will be terminated. Any one of these outcomes would be pretty bleak but if the Republicans succeed in all of their aims then the results might mean an America so bitterly divided it is not an exaggeration to say they may be on the brink of a civil war.

I got up early this morning and walked down into town to collect my Sunday newspaper, as I normally do, treating myself to a little Mozart concert as I walked. But when I got to the shop, there was a bit of disappointment as the Sunday Times had been left off the delivery pattern to the newsagent, although there was a possibility it could be delivered later. So I walked home empty handed and listened to the Laura Kuennsberg program whilst having breakfast (and then dozing). After Meg and I had got our act together, we decided to make a trip to the park even though it was gloomy. When we started off, there was the finest of drizzle that did not bother us greatly but by the time we were sitting on the park bench, the rain had intensified quite a lot. We were just finishing off our coffee and deciding to cut our losses and get home quickly when we had a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend. It did not take us long to decide that we should all like to treat ourselves to a coffee in Waitrose so we got there as soon as we could, braving the elements as we went. After we had made a rendez-vous with our friend inside the café, Meg and I treated ourselves to a bowl of chicken and vegetable soup which was delicious. We spent the best part of two hours altogether in Waitrose as we seemed to have a lot to chat about. We were exploring regional dialects and regional accents and, in particular, whether people felt held back in their educational or occupational careers if they had a marked regional accent. Of course, sometimes regional accents seem to be in and out of fashion but we were both fascinated by the way in which accents can change over quite a short distance. For example, the distance beween Manchester and Bolton is only about 11 miles but there is a distinct change of accent to be found as one moves from the orbit of one to the other. The same thing can be found more locally as the Black country accent (for example found in Dudley) is distinct from central Birmingham, even though the distances involved are only about 8-9 miles. One suspects with greater degrees of geographical and social mobility some of these regional differences may be lessening. On the other hand, there are always those who like to play upon and possibly play up a regional accent if they think they might add to their political image – I am thinking of prticular Labour Party politicians at this point. After we had coffee in the park and soup in the café, Meg and I did not feel the need for a further cooked lunch, so we made ourelves some cheese and biscuits which we consumed with a cup of tea when we got in.

Sunday afternoons were devoted to a good read of the Sunday newspapers – in the event we had called in at our usual newsagents and a copy of the Sunday Times had been delivered to them by then. Half way through the afternoon, we received a delivery from Amazon and it was the notepad speakers I had ordered a few days ago to interface with my newly resurrected CD/DVD player. These were a small pair of German made cubes which stood about 7cm tall whilst the actual speaker diameters were about 3.5 cm. At first, I thought these were not going to work and then I remembered that they needed their own independent power supply and this could be provided by one of these ‘power brick’ chargers that you can utilise to give your phone an emergency boost of power should it run flat. I paid £8.00 only for these speakers on the grounds that I did not need anything too big and bulky and were they to fail to work, I would have not wasted a great deal of money. Once I had connected the power brick, the whole rig exceeded my expectations. Often connecting external speakers will disconnect the unit’s own internal speakers (as it does on my laptop, for example) But in the case of the CD/DVD player, the external speakers with their independently provided volume control worked in tandem with the internal speakers, making four speakers all in all. I tested my configuration by playing my recently acquired copy of Brahm’s German Requiem and it filled my kitchen with as much sound as I could possibly need without any discernible distortion when it came to the highest and lowest notes at near maximum volume. I might try it out on my son whose hearing is much more acute than mine and who used to be a bit of an audiophile in his time but at the end of the day, I am very pleased with both my purchase and the results I have achieved.

Some late breaking news is that the Argentinians have beaten narrowly beaten England at Rugby for the first time ever and by a single point. I suppose that that if this trend continues, there is a case for expanding the Six Nations rugby to the Seven Nations and this may come about in the fullness of time.

It was just as well that we got the lawns cut and the mower put away yesterday because today was gloomy and overcast with the occasional shower. We had a provisional arrangement to meet with our University of Birmingham friend in the park today but after a swift telephone call between us, we both concluded that Waitrose coffee bar was a far better place in which to meet and so we did. After we had said our farewells to each other, Meg and I had a brief saunter along the High Street in which we met a couple of our Kidderminster Road friends who were in generally good heart, except that that the local authority had ordered them to cut back some of the conifers fronting their garden on the basis that they were occluding the pavement. They were not best pleased about this as, in strict legal theory, their conifers did extend across the line adjudged to be the pavement border but in no ways could the vegetation be said to be an obstruction. I wondered to myself if an envious or malicious neighbour had telephoned the council to lodge a complaint but we shall never know. Just to demonstrate how we are entering a sort of ‘silly’ season, I saw in my local supermarket when I went shopping on Thursday an advent calendar for dogs – no doubt there is a big pent-up demand for this amongst the barking mad. For their part, ClassicFM are putting on a special service of quiet and contemplative music this evening so that household pets are not unduly distressed by the sound of fireworks going off this evening (perhaps) They even have listeners emailing in with stories of how calming the ClassicFM policy has been in the past at bringing sanity to their pets but methinks that they might have a pruduction assistant in one of their back rooms busy composing emails (much in the same way that it is said that people fake but glowing reviews of products on Amazon).

By this morning’s post, the CD arrived of ‘Rigoletto‘ which I had ordered from Ebay at the incredible price of £2.99. But when I totted up the cost of the postage of the chap who had sold it to me, it had cost the sender about £2.55 so he only made about 45p on the deal. The CD,though, was wonderful and I enjoyed listening to it whilst I prepared our elevenses for later on in the day. After we had lunch, we entertained ourself with the Rugby League quarter-finals in which England were playing Papua New Guinea, often abbreviated to PNG. In theory, this should have been a very close contest but in practice the English team through some excellent play absolutely ran away with the first half so I did not bother with watching the second half. I decided to do some soup ready for when we return from church later on this evening – fortunately, I already had some root vegetables prepared and already frozen in the freezer, so it was qute a simple job to fry up some onions and then put the parboiled vegetables into the soupmaker.

The enquiry into COVID-19 and the nation’s preparedness for it hs just opened – no doubt this will take months and perhaps evn a year or so. What, though, is interesting is that the enquiry has asked to see Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp correspondence. If our memories stretch back that far, Boris Johnson did not even bother to attend the first COBRA briefings which was examining the seriousness of the pandemic shortly to hit the country and this delay may well have cost hundreds or even thouands of lives. A more contemporary narrative is that Johnson got the pandemic ‘sorted’ and takes massive credit for getting the vaccine programme under way. One has to wonder whether more comprehensive and balanced judgements may hold sway once the enquiry report is published but an awful lot of water will have flowed under the bridge by then and the public may not be particularly interested in attributing praise or blame to Johnson for his role in the pandemic.

Tonight is Bonfire Night but there is not much evidence of celebrations anywhere. If the weather is clear, then this is generally an occasion when youngish children can enjoy a bonfire and some fireworks but tonight is wet and squally. Furthermore, I suspect that family finances are a little too stretched to let some of them go up in a puff of smoke. There were a few fireworks last night when the weather was better and some families may be hoping for better weather tomorrow. But as a sign of the times, Waitrose were selling their pumpkin carving kits marked down to 15p a throw. In the little village where I lived in Yorkshire from the ages of 9-14, the whole village contributed towards the communal bonfire whilst the menfolk brought along (and drank) beer whilst women were expected to povide some homemade parkin (sticky gingerbread?) We kids had a fantastic time seeing if we could trace where the rocket staves had landed once they had ‘whooshed’into the sky.

Today had been forecast as the finest day of the week which was just as well giving that I wanted to give the lawns their last cut of the season this afternoon and for this, I certainly needed a fine day. Meg and I had quite a busy morning because there were a collection of things we needed to get done on the High Street. Having picked up my newspaper, our first port of call was Waitrose in search of eggs that were unavailable in our regular supermarket yesterday. To my pleasant surprise, Waitrose seemed qute well supplied with eggs and there did not seem to be an evident panic to buy the available stock so perhaps our experience of yesterday was just a ‘one-off’. Then we went looking for the stall that is normally there on Tuesdays and Fridays where the stallholder sells leather goods, watches, watch straps and watch batteries. I was disappointed not to find her and, having used her for years, hope that she has not ceased trading. So then I proceeded to our next port of call which was to buy some cosmetics at a shop which also sells lady’s knee-highs of which I needed a supply for Meg. Fortunately, what we particularly wanted they had in stock so we purchased what we needed and proceeded to a pharmacist at the far end of the High Street. As our normal pharmacy could not supply some medication for Meg which the doctor had prescribed, a community pharmacist attached to the doctor’s practice had rung around to find some supplies for us and had issued a new prescription and all we needed to do was to collect this. On the way back, we called in at our usual cobbler’s shop which sells watch straps and watch batteries and had a new watch strap fitted, the previous one having dropped to pieces. It has been quite disconcerting to go around with my watch in my pocket rather than on my wrist so now it is almost back to normal. On our way down the High Street, we popped into an Age Concern shop which is selling recycled and reconditioned furniture so this is always worth keeping a eye as I am looking for a small but elegant corner table upon which to place a corner light in our hall. This place in the hall took over from the Christmas tree last year and it will be not too long before the season starts again but I refuse to contemplate anything ‘Christmassy’ until the month of December is upon us. When we got to the park, we felt well in need of our coffee and we were delighted to be soon joined by our University of Birmingham friend which is quite a typical pattern for Fridays. Our friend had joined a University of the Third Age (U3A) goup in Kidderminster and had joined a discussion on ‘Moral Mazes’ (after the Radio4 program of the same name, I wonder?) Recently, the group had been discussing the role of grandparents in families and I was reminded of the role of the community at large. In particular, I rather like the expression originating from the Indian culture that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and I reminisced about the time when Meg and I lived in Hampshire and bought a house in a cul-de-sac in which there several childrn aged 3-11 or thereabouts and the parents seemed to take a collective approach to the children’s activities – for example supplying a plaster and a bit of parental support if a child had had a tumble from their bike. I shared with our friend the anguish that I feel that some grandparents must feel if their own offspring divorce and separate and contact with beloved grandchildren is lost if they move away or are absorbed into their ‘new’ families. Under these circumstances, I suspect that grandparents have very few, if any, legal rights and these might be difficult to enforce.

Meg and I had a fairly rapid lunch because I was anxious to make a start on the grass mowing in plenty of time. We had made a risotto out of some basa fillets which I had steamed and then cooked with a cauliflower (=low calorie) rice, tarted up with a bit of seafood sauce as an experiment. After lunch, Meg and I had a wonderful half hour or so relaxing in our newly created ‘relaxation’ space where we put on Brahm’s Requiem and just dozed with the strains of the music coming over us in waves. Then it was time to jump and start mowing and everything went to plan – the grass had certainly grown apace in just the last two weeks. Halfway through, our next door neighbour emerged for a chat and it was good to get his latest news. He is recovering from having three stents inserted into an heart artery by an eminent visiting Japanese surgeon and is making good progress so far. The mowing having completed, I got the residual petrol emptied and this season’s oil removed in record time and was mightily relieved to get my trusty machine put to bed for another winter’s rest before we start again next March.

Today is my shopping day so I arrived at my favourite supermarket a few minutes before it opened. All went as would be expected but the ‘eggs’ shelves was completely bare – members of staff informed us that the outbreak of avian flu was impacting upon their supply chain but in the next few days we will find out whether this a localised or a more widespread problem. After I had got home, breakfasted and then unpacked the shopping, the weather seemed to set fair so we decided to sally forth to Droitwich is almost just down the road. In Droitwich, we had our coffee and toasted teacake in a little cafe quite near to the Waitrose store because I wanted to go in search of a little antiques/jumble/curios type shop to see if anything caught our fancy. But it had unfortunately gone out of business so we proceeded to have a quick saunter through a charity shop which was just around the corner. We finished up buying a new Jaeger woollen top for Meg as well as a hat whilst I bought a shirt for myself which is just my size and colour. Then we went for a whizz around our favourite hardware store which is Wilko but I found the shelves a little empty of the things that I had hoped to buy. However, I bought some electrical supplies and some stationery. In the kitchen department, I was intrigued to find a couple of non-stick silicone egg poachers. As we have started to poach our eggs for our morning breakfast (although we have currently run out of eggs upon which to trial it), we will have to see if this lives up to its promise or not.

Before we went shopping this morning, a pleasant surprise turned up by the morning’s mail. On a whim, I had done a quick trawl on ebay and discovered a copy of Brahm’s ‘A German Requiem‘ which I always enjoy but I don’t think we have it anywhere on disk. This I had ordered about a couple of days ago not least because it was on offer for less than £3 with postage included but also the quality of the performers. It was Elizabeth Schwartzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau conducted by Otto Klemperer, which trio must be considered the finest performers in the classical world at the time of the original recording in 1962. EMI had digitally remastered this recording in 1986 and all in all, the performance was about 70 minutes in length. Last night,I had located a Sony CD/DVD portable recorder which I think I must have purchased at about the time of our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations to play our wedding music but I had put it in a bookcase and forgotten about it over the years. Meg and I spent a very pleasant hour listening to this outstanding recording in the new quiet music corner I have just created and it played equally well both on the Sony sound system inherited from my son and the recently discovered CD player. I was intrigued by the firm that had sold us this outstanding CD at such a reasonable price and it turned out that they were a small, specialised Scottish charity that specialised in reselling second hand goods (many of them donated?) and giving the proceeds to local charitable causes. I wondered if there was more where this came from and although the organisation itself did not seem to have other CDs available, I did find a superbly good recording of Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto‘, again for less than £3 and so this, too, was promptly ordered. However, later on in the morning, another pleasant surprise came along. I was doing an experiment to see if a tiny little notebook speaker that I had would increase the volume of the sound somewhat as the maximum volume on the CD player is adequate but could do with being a bit louder. In the course of my experiments, I relocated the player and turned it on forgetting that I had not connected the AC power supply. To my amazement, it actually started playing and I then realised that it must have an internal rechargeable power source which gets topped up, much like a laptop, every time you connect it to the mains. Naturally, the original manual had long since been mislaid but the day before I had managed to locate the manual on the web and downloaded it into my ‘Manuals’ folder. A quick consultation of this showed that the whole CD player would take about three hours to fully charge but this ought to give about 4 hours of play time. This was designed way back, I suppose, so that those taking long train journeys or European flights could watch their own DVD or listen to CDs to alleviate the tedium of the journey. I honestly did not know (or had forgotten) that the player had this play facility but am naturally delighted to have discovered it. It did cross my mind whether to go on the web and get a pair of really cheap notebook speakers but resisted the temptaion as the occasions that I might actually need a bit of enhanced volume might be few and far between.

We are really into the typical November weather being wet and blustery – but not particularly cold as yet. We are always pleased to see our domestic help whose day it is each Wednesday and I gave her a little present of some homemade soup (carrot and basil) for her to try. We went off to collect our newspaper and then started on a couple of visits that we needed to make. The first of these was to a furniture store which is set up so that individuals wishing to furnish a home can do at a minimal cost. Most of the furniture and household artefacts is donated by individuals who wish to de-clutter their own house but are more than happy to see any unwanted goods go to a good home and not end up in landfill. I particularly wanted to acquire a small occasional table to go into the corner of a room and as soon as Meg and I walked into the cavernous type rooms in which the furniture was stored, we saw something that caught our eye. This was a miniature drop leaf table which was oval in shape but the two sides folded down to create a small rectangular top. The wood was a mahogany or rosewood type of wood and it was in pretty good condition but with some minor scuff marks. What was particularly attractive was a tooled leather insert for the table top so this added to its charm. I needed this table to put a little table lamp upon it so after a little hunt around, we discovered a smallish table lamp but with an attractive ‘autumn leaves’ lampshade. I put the lamp on the little drop leaf table to see how they looked together and was then delighted to purchase the two of them together for £20. Then we went on the road to collect a purchase for the George store internal to Asda where I had ordered and paid for a little item on line and could pick it up at out local Asda store. As soon as I got the little dtop leaf table home, I could gave it a really good wipe down with a clean sponge and some warm soapy water and was pleasantly surprised by how restored it looked. I do have a little bottle of one of those special ‘scratch remover’ types of fluid which I have very successfully used in the past to renovate furniture and remove minor scuffs and the like. I then hunted around in my box of old light bulbs and discovered that I actually already had in stock a 60 watt mushrrom shaped bulb which Marks and Spencer had sold some years before calling it a ‘peach’ light. I wanted these items for a particular place in the corner of the room where I have created a little music and relaxation centre for the benefit of both Meg and myself when the occasion arises. The overall effect of the renovated little table with an interesting design of table lamp upon it, complete with its ‘soft light’ bulb, have created an effect far in excess of what i could possibly hope for when I woke up this morning. So I now have a little occasional piece which absolutely fulfills the function I had intended for it which was to create some warm and welcomingly looking relaxation space. The purchase from Asda was an occasional lamp with a small wooden base and a linen look shade of which I actually have another to illuminate a spare corner and this has now been pressed into service to illuminate the CDs which now have pride of place in an adjoining bookcase. So I have now managed to achieve what I wanted at minimal expense and hardly any ‘running around’. There was also a bonus to this in the mid afternoon. My son was just leaving the house and I mentioned to him that the CD component of the miniature hifi systm I had inherited from him seemed to be on its last legs as whether it started to play a CD disk or not was decidedly ‘iffy’. With a thumb he wiped clean the plastic lens cover to the laser unit with the player. This seemed to work short term but to make sure, I popped into the garage and located an absolutely brand new, and therefore clean, paintbrush which I use to give the lens cover a good clean. This has evidently been effective because I had a Renato Scotti (Italian soprano) disk in which the first track would not play but it would from the second track onwards. After my cleaning efforts, it now worked first time so that was another bonus to the afternoon.

This afternoon, Meg and I had a regular i.e. timetabled, telephone appointment with one of the doctors from our practice. We spent a lot of time discussing some of Meg’s medication which seems to be unavailable so he is going to try to expedite this or prescribe another. His advice was all a bit general but I was pleased that he seemed as concerned about my health as well as that of Meg as it is important that I am kept going to keep ‘the whole show on the road’.

November was heralded last night by some exceptionally strong winds and heavy rain and much of this persisted throughout the day. Having picked up our newspaper, we battled our way through the rain in the Waitrose carpark and even had to resort to an umbrella to ensure that we were not absolutely soaked on our way into the cafe. There, we met up with seasoned World Traveller and one of our regular pre-pandemic regulars and we enjoyed our weekly chat. We chatted about how our friend quite regularly played bowls and she was telling me about a recent match with a team from Solihull which the Bromsgove team expected to lose but actually won, much to the disgust of their opponents who responded by handing out a heap of sarcastic comments. They also say that croquet can be a vicious game with many undercurrents but I have never played the game so all of this is news to me. Finally, we made our way home and then I prepared for my weekly Pilates class which involved battling with the elements again. It was not too bad walking down to my class but the heavans seemed to open when the class was over so it was a pretty unpleasant walk home. The afternoon turned out not to be a restful one because as soon as lunch was completed and the dishes washed up and put away then our hairdresser came along, quite promptly, and Meg was due to have a perm which actually takes up a lot of the afternoon. We commiserated with our hairdresser whose father had died yesterday afternoon. Hw was a ripe old 96 year old and his death was anticipated but it is always a bit of a shock when the event actually occurs.

There is some news emerging this evening which suggests that Boris Johnson is courting several ‘speakers circuits’ which, if he is engaged and carries on with a variety of speeches for several years, could generate him an income of millions of pounds. I suspect that as he a supreme narcissist, Boris Johnson would not welcome a re-entry into the British political scene if it were not possible for him to be top dog anymore. Given the likely defeat of the Conservatives in the next election in two years time and then a possible ten years in opposition, I do not see Boris Johnson as being at all attracted to this type of political role so it would not surprise me if he were to walk away from British politics. Meanwhile, in the domestic British scene, a lot of attention is bing directed towards the feisty performance of Suella Braverman in the House of Commons yesterday. She actually gave vent to an infamous phrase the effect that the public needs to know which party is serious about ‘stopping the invasion’ of migrants on the southern coast of the UK. The use of the word ‘invasion’ has generated howls of protest but there is a massive political divide at work here. Members of the ERG (members of the European Research Group) who crowded in to the Commons yesterday to give support to the Home Secretary were ecstatic about the use of the use of the phrase whereas the counter-reaction was that this was deliberately inflammatory language designed to appeal to certain sections of the electorate. Even Braverman’s own deputy, the immigration minister Robert Jenrick has argued that he would not use language like this which has the effect of demonising some very distressed migrants.

The population as a whole are being ‘softened up’for some very wide ranging tax increases in the forthcoming budget in just over two weeks time. The Treasury has let if be known that they have ‘agreed on the principle that those with the broadest shoulder should be asked to bear the greatest burden’ and this effectively stamps out Liz Truss’s trickle-down economics. A further warning is being given that ‘given the enormity of the challenge, it is inevitable that everybody would need to contribute more in tax in the years ahead’ So it is pretty evident that a fairly hostile reaction is going to be expected from the nation’s elite but they have had it pretty good during the last twelve years of a conservative governnment and can probably stand the pain. One way or another, the country has got to find some £40-£50 billion and evidently this has got to come from somewhere if it cannot be borrowed. Although the public sector has already been cut to the bone, there is chatter of still more public sector cuts, probably to be achieved by only offering pay rises of 2% (when the inflation rate is 10%, so an effective 8% cut in pay).

Attention next week will switch to the American mid-term elections in a society which is bitterly divided. It is possible that the Republicans will be able to take control of both the House of Representatives and also the Senate which will make any Democratic legislation almost impossible to achieve in the next two years. The Republicans, many of whom believe that Trump was defrauded of the last Presidential election, are also seizing control of the electoral machine in various states which means that the Reublican party will control all aspects of the eletoral processes and even deny their own State legislators any oversight in the case of either fraud, malfeasance or voter suppression (which is quite likely in Republican controlled areas)