Exactly as the weather forecasters had predicted, today was a showery and blustery type of day which was unpleasant enough without being thoroughly miserable. Our domestic help calls around on a Wednesday so we always have a good chat after the obligatory cup of tea as soon as she arrived. She had bought us some extra Christmas baubles with which to decorate the tree again next year so we need to put them away in the loft adjacent to all of the other Christmas paraphernalia. Eventually, and a little bit late, Meg and I decided to make up a flask of coffee and make our way to the park, sitting on our usual bench. The park was practically deserted and although the sky seemed sunny enough when we set off, by the time we were sitting on our bench it was pretty cold and unpleasant. So we drank up our coffee fairly quickly and decided to beat a hasty retreat to home where we regaled ourself with a cup of chicken soup which is always a good way to warm up and fill the gap before we cook lunch. This was a simple affair of quiche, white cabbage and a tomato+onion mixture which was actually quite tasty. Later in the day, some much delayed purchases arrived from ebay, originally scheduled for last Saturday but only actually arriving today.

In the Commons, a very prominent Brexiteer (and hard right winger) has lost the Conservative whip i.e. been suspended. Prominent backbencher Andrew Bridgen is no longer a Conservative MP after he compared the COVID vaccine to the Holocaust.
Mr Bridgen claimed COVID vaccines ‘are causing serious harms’ and said the programme was ‘the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust’. This statement has been condemned on all sides of the House so although he has been making anti-vaccination comments for some time, now it is evident that he has crossed the line of acceptability. Andrew Bridgen was the MP who led the fight against Theresa May’s attempts to reach a workable Brexit solution and is generally regarded as the moving force behind installing the hardest of Brexists possible, going far beyond that which was actually required to follow the wishes of the electorate as expressed in the referendum. What I think is interesting is the way that loud-mouthed self-opiniated populists such as Andrew Bridgen ever got elected to the House of Commons in the first place and should be allowed to wield the degree of political influence that they have. It seems remarkable that any MP could put himself at odds with the whole of the scientific community and then deny the evidence that thousands of lives have been saved by vaccines all over the world. To try to be fair to the MP, he must have a logic or a line of reasoning to come to the conclusions that he has but on the face of it, it seems to be a bizarre and extraordinary outburst and expelling him from the Tory party seems the only cause of action. One wonders whether the existing PM is actually quite glad to get rid of one of the coterie of extreme right wingers who have wrought so much damage on the country (and who John Major once in a famous outburst publically called ‘the bastards’ and then faced them down with a ‘back me or sack me’ election to cement hs own position as Prime Minister).

A huge statistical argument has been rumbling on for the last few days concerning the number of ‘excess deaths’ that are are being recorded over recent months. The College of Emergency Medicine has put out the figure that between 300-500 people a week (more than the average death rate per week) are dying but this figure is hotly disputed by the government (I wonder why?) Most independent data analysts are doing their own calculations and these are largely supportive of the figures published by the medics themselves whilst The Times this morning, in their headline figure, suggested that excess deaths may actually be nearer to 1,000. The reasons are not hard to see as during the COVID pandemic there was a huge backlog of undiagnosed and untreated conditions that are now coming to their grim conclusion. In addition, the enormous pressures that hospitals are now facing including waits in ambulances sometimes exceeding 24 hours almost inevitably are taking their toll on the population. These figures roughly approximate to a jumbo jet or a trainful of people dying every week – what is perhaps surprising is the absence of a huge outcry over the implications of these figures. Steven Barclay, the Health Secretary, has admitted that the situation of perhaps 50,000 excess deaths in 2022 is ‘extremely concerning’ but will only admit to the fact that the situation is very difficult to analyse (true!) and that other European countries are also experiencing post-pandemic excess deaths. But at the end of the day, it does look as though the pandemic on top of years of underfunding has contributed, as The Times has argued today, towards the worst excess deaths totals since 1951.

Last night, Meg and I had been invited out to have some ‘nibbles’ with our Catholic friends who live down the road and it turned out to be quite a gathering all in all. We have three sets of friends who live in close proximity to each other and another acquaintance who lives half way down the Kidderminster Road and with whom I have often discussed all things relating to Honda (principally cars and lawn mowers) So we formed a jolly little group and our hosts had laid on the most wonderful spread for us – I joked with her that if this was nibbles, I did not know what a full scale banquet would look like. So we spent a wonderful three hours with good company, good food and good drink – it was the kind of evening to which one looks back with a glow of pleasure. This morning we breakfasted as normal and having picked up our newspaper went for our regular Tuesday morning Waitrose coffee bar treat. Whilst we were there, we were soon joined by one of our pre-pandemic friends who is a Tuesday morning regular and finished off having a fascinating conversation with her. In the course of our conversation, it transpired that we both have a love of Brahm’s ‘German Requiem’ and then our friend told us some fascinating things about her own musical history. She had been part of a regular choir in Kidderminster until only few years ago but told us an interesting story about her son who had a career as a music editor with Decca. When Decca was winding up that side of the music business some years ago, her son had acquired a fair quantity of classical CDs which found their way into the possession of his mother i.e. our friend. She also let slip a fascinating story about her brother who served in Germany at the end of WWII – presumably BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) There her brother was friendly with a young Welshman who had a very good singing voice and to to whom he gave every encouragement to have some professional training and subsequently to pursue a singing year. This young Welshman was Geraint (later, of course) Sir Geraint Evans who was one of the most outstanding singers and teachers of his generation. I vividly remember a master class that he gave to young singers of one of classic Mozart operas – probably Don Giovanni but I do not remember exactly which opera it was. On our way out of Waitrose today, we met with a couple of ‘park’ friends with whom we often used to chat when they busy exercising their dog. We have not coincided for several weeks now as our park walks have diminished a bit from the everyday affair that they used to be. But we had an interesting little chat and a joke or so – so much that the Waitrose staff knew that we were back in town (and actually quite liked the sound of people laughing and enjoying themselves in the vicinity of the cafe as they reckon it reminds them of the pre-pandemic times and is good for business).

Today is my regular Pilates day which is only one hour in the whole week, I know, but one that I very rarely miss. Our instructor is quite gentle with us and once or twice in a six weekly session we have the luxury of a complete session of relaxation for the last five minutes. I generally succeed in almost falling completely asleep but a just a little of my brain keeps watch over the rest of me so when the five minutes is up, I know it is time for the session to end. The receptionists in the centre where the Pilates session is held let me know how much they enjoyed the damson gin so kindly provided by Fr. Christmas at the last Pilates session before Christmas and word has been passed down the line that at least one of my Pilates class members who has moved to a different day would quite appreciate some gin which she always used to get each year. So there are now at least two extra people who have let me know how much the gin is apprciated so I may always have a bottle or so kept ‘spare’ in my rucksack in case I happen to bump into people who would appreciate it.

The ambulance workers are due to strike tomorrow and some talks are proceeding in the HQ of the TUC to have some degree of coordination of all of the public sector strikes. This might mean that we are heading for a general strike in all but name. Meanwhile the Government is pressing ahead with legislation to ensure minimum levels of service agreemnt, in effect denying the ability to strike of certain groups of workers. William Rees-Mogg was interviewed in the House of Commons but refused to admit the proposed legislation would lead to nurses, ambulance workers and junior doctors getting the sack which is the whole point of the sanctions that lie behind the legislation. This legislation may never see the light of day but ‘timing is everything’ so it is pretty evident that the government is trying fairly crude tactics to bully the striking workers into submission which is only likely to inflame the situation and not bring it to an early end.

Today dawned bright and clear and it has all of the potents of being quite a fine day. I had a good night’s sleep last night, partly due to the fact that I tried an experiment which worked really well. I have a little legacy Sony DVD/CD player bought many moons ago but not really brought into much use until now. But last night, I had Brahm’s German Requiem playing gently in the background. The trick always of course is to set the level of the music sufficiently high to hear it if one wants to but at a sufficiently low level to fall asleep and this seems to work like a dream, so to speak. The little Sony is rechargeable so there are no cables involved to trip over and it just gets recharged in the morning. Before breakfast, I tried to contact a bank (nameless, but a High Street brand) in order to activate and solve a query but I was informed that there would be a wait of about 20 minutes so I followed their advice to try again later. After we had breakfasted and seen to some routine emails, we went down into town to pick up our newspaper and also made a lightning visit into Waitrose to pick up some last minute supplies. Then there was a walk round the lake in the park but, as it was such a fine dy, it might have been better for us to have prepared a flask of coffee and occupied our normal park bench. Over the last week or so with the interruption of Christmas and th New Year, we have rather got out of our normal park walk activities as we have sometimes succumbed to having coffee in the Waitrose coffee bar. So we had our elevenses back home and then cooked ourselves a conventional Monday type lunch. As part of the more general New Resolutions package, I am trying (and not for the first time) to train myself to do without sugar (evidently) and sweeteners in any tea or coffee drink that I make for myself. I have to say that the tea I usually drink just tasted like so much hot water so I looked at the contents of our pantry cupboards and discovered that I had some different teas to try out. We happened to have quite a large jar of ‘Rooibos’ tea (presumably Dutch/Afrikaans for ‘red bush’) which is not really a tea at all. It is caffeine free and a host of health benefits are claimed for it but these all tend to be at the ancdotal level rather than backed by any authoritative science. However, it probably does no harm and once you get used to the flavour, it is unquestionably superior to the alternative. So I will stick with this for a week or or to give it a good trial.

The Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, announced that the government intended to block book 2,500 places in residential homes and in hotels at a cost of about £200 million. Even in Parliament, Steve Barclay, was attacked by members from his own side when it was pointed out that other countries were coping with these winter pressures so why could not the UK? Another question raised in Parliament to which there was no real answer was that given the known shortages of staff in the care sector, where the extra staff was going to come from to cater for the needs of of those occupying the 2,500 places? There was some vague talk of increasing recruitment from overseas but presumably this would run foul of the Brexit philosophy and the notoriously underpaid social care sector would not meet the quite high income ‘bar’ that would be migrants would have to face. Another part of the policy that appeared farcical was the announcement that A&E departments could be augmented by ‘modular units’ which sounds suspiciously like a ‘PortaKabin’ solution to expand A&E bit without any plan to deal with the staffing issue. The talks with the health sector unions to halt the next wave of strikes came to nothing and was not even mentioned by the Health Secretary in his statement to Parliament. This does sound more like a bit of sticking plaster to close a gaping wound. As the government are even now publishing plans to make certain industries (such as health) agree to Minimum Service Levels or to be sacked, then the prospect is being raised that instead of increasing staff levels, the Government solution to the crisis is to talk of sacking the striking nurses and junior doctors. Will this ever come to fruition, one asks oneself.

The other big story, largely as the result of an initiative by Sky News, is the publication of a large database indicating the sources of extra ‘income’ that accrue to MPs other than their Parliamentary salary. The information released is jawdropping as in the current parliament some £183 million has gone, quite legally, into the pockets of MPs. In one case, Sky News discovered that nobody had heard of a company donating hundreds of thousands to Labour MPs on a visit to its registered address, while the office of another company that donates to 24 Tory MPs was shut and apparently out of action. As Sky news say ‘More than £183m has flowed into the British political system during this Parliament, straight from wealthy individuals or companies, and into the bank accounts of political parties, all-party parliamentary groups, and the campaign funds and constituencies of government ministers and MPs from all political parties.’

Today was a different kind of Sunday. As I had rather a disturbed night’s sleep last night, I did get up at a reasonably early time and then walked down into town to pick the Sunday newspapers. There was quite a sharp cold feel to the day but it was not actually raining and I had regaled myself with one of those little packets of ‘instant’ porridge oats before I ventured out. But when I got back, I tuned into the Laura Kuennsberg show but probably as a result of last night’s interrupted sleep I very promptly fell asleep and slept for the best part of a couple of hours. Meg had slept in whilst I was walking down into town but then we had to get up, dressed and breakfasted before we could make the best of the day. Our University of Birmingham friend phoned up to ask whether we intended to coffee together but I explained that we both felt a little rough today so we would postpone our next meeting until about next Friday. So the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon was left to a slow and lesiurely read of the Sunday Times which I rather enjoyed. We had a light lunch of some pork loin which was already cooked and deep frozen so it was just a job of making some onion gravy to make it spring into life again.

We are all awaiting for tomorrow when the Government announces a plan to release the log jam caused by ambulances queuing up ouside A&E departments across the length and breadth of the country becuse there is ‘nowhere’ to go for those adjudged medically fit for discharge. At this stage, all must be speculation but a plan, which Mr Barclay will announce on Monday, is understood to be aimed at block-buying up to 2,000 care home beds in Care Quality Commission-approved facilities over the next four weeks. There may well be other parts of this strategy as well but these may be longer term. One of these is called the ‘virtual’ ward. Virtual wards are in place in many parts of the country, for example, supporting people with frailty or acute respiratory infections. The NHS is introducing more virtual wards to support people at the place they call home, including care homes. In a virtual ward, support can include remote monitoring using apps, technology platforms, wearables and medical devices such as pulse oximeters. Support may also involve face-to-face care from multi-disciplinary teams based in the community, which is sometimes called ‘Hospital at Home’. Whether all of this is to be seen as just a sticking plaster or the start of a much more sensible strategy remains to be be seen. There is often a mantra put about that ‘you do not solve a problem just by throwing money at it’ but in this particular case, the government is doing exactly that at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds (and I suspect that eventually if this policy is to have any chance of uccess we are actually talking about billions i.e. thousands of millions).

One of the things that I enjoy about the New Year, is that once we get over the winter solstice on 21st December, the nights are getting lighter to the tune of about a minute and a half a day. In the past, I have actually searched the web where it is possible to find a calendar which details sunrises and sunsets for each day of the year. I have just consulted a quick on-line version which tells me that sunrise is one minute earlier tomorrow and sunset two minutes earlier making tomorrow three minutes longer than today. Of course it is true that some of the population suffer from ‘SAD’ (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and, in severe cases, I believe that people have recourse to light boxes, although this is not true in my own case. But as January proceeds, it is possible to think about some seeds that take a long time to germinate and are best planted out in early March. Parsnip is the seed that most springs to mind and I do not think that the seed keeps well from one year to the next so I may have to think about sourcing some as soon as they are in the shops and think about getting them going a window sill. After we had several Christmas card with messages inside to the effect that we must meet up as soon as we can in 2023, Meg and I are thinking about friends and relatives that we really must must make an effort to see and thinking about what emails we need to send and in what order. We still have a couple of our Christmas wreaths hanging outside our front door and these have not yet been taken down. One of them will probably end up on the grave of our domestic help’s relatives whilst the other we have, in the past, put on the grave of Tolkein’s mother, who happens to be buried in the churchyeard of our local church.

Today was a fairly typical Saturday apart from the fact that it was wet and blustery most of the day with only the occasional intermission. We got ourselves off to town eventually having breakfasted and then picked up the (voluminous) Saturday newspapers. As you might expect, many of the newspapers are full of health related issues at the start of the New Year when,no doubt, a lot of the population have over-indulged themselves on a surfeit of carbohydates and are full of good intentions about exercise and fitness regimes. But there was a very interesting article by an eminent neurosurgeon on the subject of how to improve your memory and brain at any age. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has argued in a recent book that the brain ‘is the most enigmatic three and a half pounds of flesh in the known universe’ The Times has published an easy guide to the 12 easy steps to achieve your brain functioning and this advice seems to be well-rooted in the science so I might be tempted to go ahead and buy (and intensively read and absorb) the whole book. Some of the advice is sort of intuitive (such as not only avoiding sugar but also artifical sweeteners) but other advice less so, such as the importance of brushing and flossing teeth daily or even twice daily. We made for the Waitrose café because we had arranged to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend and we also encountered one of our park friends that we have not seen since before Christmas. I suspect that there is a universal sigh of relief that we have Christmas and the New Year behind us so that we can get on with our more conventional daily and weekly routines. Having said that, we were delighted to get a telephone call from some of friends down the road who are inviting neighbours in for a drink and nibbles next Monday evening so we are looking forward to this as it may be the last of this round of Christmas get togethers.

We returned home to have a lunch of some chicken, ham and leek pies which I decided to sample when I bought them and then froze them before Christmas. These turned out to be pretty tasty and I just served them up with white cabbage and some tomatoes. This afternoon, apart from a good read of the newspapers, I spent some time getting my accounts up-to-date. I entertained myself whilst I was engaged in this task playing a CD on a little portable CD/DVD player I had bought several years when I was seeking to illustrate both the music and our original wedding photos using the USB port when we were putting on some little demonstrations on the occasion of our 50th anniversary (now wih another six years further on). This is a very useful bit of kit but because I have not used it a great deal, I need to keep consulting the manual online to find out how to utilise certain functions.

As of yesterday, it looked as though the Republican party would never elect a new party leader/Speaker of the House of Representatives but it took a total of 15 votes to do it. However, this is only the start of what is going to be a very ddisruptive period in American politics. It is being said that Kevin McCarthy had so make so many concessions that perhaps he has to feel whether he still possesses two kidneys. Donald Trump himself was telephoning some of the ultra conservatives to get them to support Kevin McCarthy. The latter had offered so many concessions to the small cohort of ultra-conservative Republicans who had blocked him for days as he had promised them plum, hugely influential committee positions, and promised to change the rules governing his stability. A certain amount of manhandling og some Republican congressmen could also be seen. So it looks as though the whole of the american machine is in the hands of these ultra conservatives, may of whom supported the physical insurrection and rampage through the Capital building some two years ago now.

The Prince Harry saga rumbles on and on. Many quite sympathetic observers are making the point that all families can recall occasions when there might have been severe rows and disagreements at some time over the years. At the same time, the well known saying to ‘not wash ones dirty linen in public’ comes to mind and the commitment and the slagging of the members of one’s own intimate family is hardly the way to effect a reconcilation. Certainly, all of the outpourings does have all of the indications of a very troubled mind. But polls for American news organisations have indicated there is more sympathy for Harry and Meghan’s plight with the US public than the UK. However, this sympathy may be shortlived as one headline has dubbed Prince Harry as the ‘Prince of Wails’ which might be hardhitting but accurate. Personally I think that too much attention has been paid to this saga and a dignified silence on the part of Buckingham Palace is probably the best response.

By this morning’s post, I received the collection of 6 classical CD’s for which I paid 0.99 and for which I assumed I was going to be outbid but in practice I won the auction. I did pay £3.50 for the postage but when I glanced at the stamps that had been used, the package had cost £4.50 to post. I did feel a tang of regret for the person who had sold it to me because with the low auction price being all used up to assist on the postage, I had, in effect, received the CDs for nothing – and, by the same token, the seller had received nothing for his CDs. I have started playing these CDs and one was a series of violin concertos played by Nigel Kennedy. I did notice that the performances seemed particularly arresting and when I read the program notes booklet written by Nigel Kennedy himself, the information was given that the performance was under the baton of an oustanding Dutch conductor. All of this suddenly became extremely relevant because when one of the concertos ended, there was a burst of applause so the performance had evidently been recorded live. This helps to explain why I was particularly struck as I listened to the recording for the first time as live performances always have that extra ‘something’ that helps to enhance the overall listening experience. This morning, after we had breakfasted, we collected our newspaper and made our way into Waitrose to treat ourselves to a coffee. Eventually, our University of Birmingham friend turned up and we spent a good half hour chatting before we needed to go on our prospective ways but with an agreement to meet again tomorrow. When we got home, we had a cook-in-the-oven fish based meal complemented with some Cavolo Nero and then wondered what the afternoon had to bring.

There are some interesting parallels between the shenanigans of both British and American politics at the moment. In this country we have suffered the trauma of three Prime Ministers within the last year and seen an experiment in far-right, libertarian politics which almost immediately blew up and which ultimately forced the resignation of Liz Truss. But on the other side of the pond, we are experiencing quite a drama in the ranks of the Republican party. Although they lost control of the Senate, the Republicans narrowly gained control of the House of Representatives. What should now happen is that Republicans select a Speaker from amongst their ranks and then the ‘normal’ business of politics, which includes the swearing in of newly elected members, can then proceed. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is an entirely partisan figure. In practice they are the leader of the majority party, which makes them the equivalent of prime minister in UK terms. But there is a small ultra-right wing group of Republicans who refuse to endorse the current Republican Party leader Kevin McCarthy who has failed in every round to secure the 218 votes needed to win. The House will now carry out a 12th round of voting later today and, as things stand, it has been about one hundred years since the Republicans last failed to agree a leader. It is difficult to see how this impasse is going to be resolved as the extreme right will brook absolutely no compromise and, as the Republican majority is so small, the recalcitrant right wingers hold the whip hand. It is possible that the process of ‘democracy in action’ may see America lose all moral authority in the world as it is hardly in a position to lecture others on the princples of sound government when their own version of democracy is such a shambles.

On the home front, there is now a report that many voters for Brexit are now experiencing ‘buyers remorse’ Among Leave voters who now regret voting for Brexit, the top reason given for their change of heart is a general sense that things have got worse since the 2016 referendum, according to a new poll. Before Christmas, pollsters at YouGov asked 616 people who voted to leave the union but have since changed their minds for their reasoning. It came after the pollster found in November that a record 19% of Brexit voters now think it was wrong to vote for Leave. Instead of providing options to choose from, people were free to give their own reasons. Of those surveyed, the most popular reason – held by a quarter of people – was that things have got worse since 2016. The next most popular answer – given by 19% of respondents – was the state of the economy or rising costs. A total of 11% felt they were lied to or things haven’t gone as expected since then. But the present attitude of the Labour Party, which has not opposed Brexit, means that both of the major political parties are out-of-step with the majority of public opinion. Could it be that the ‘red wall’voters (ex Labour voting MPs from declining industrial areas who voted Tory in the last election) are now such an important group that they are still wooed by Conservative and Labour like? At some time, we must draw closer again to our major trading partner which, of course, is the EU.

Today was always going to be quite a busy day but everything worked out OK. Firstly, I needed to go and get the shopping done and whereas a few weeks ago, there only used to be one or two people waiting for the store to open, today I was eighth in the queue so the habit of early shopping seems to be catching on. Fortunately, though, a lot of the Christmas excess stock had been cleared away so this made the whole shopping process so much easier and this was what I call a ‘light’ week in any case. After I had picked up the newspaper en route, I got home and cooked the breakfast and got most of the unpacking done before it was time to get Meg to the dental hygienist in about three quarters of an hour’s time. This worked out fine as well and our friendly hygienist made some appointments for us so that Meg and I can synchronise our visits (as they had got out of sync after I had a special session just before I had a crown fitted) Then it was a case of getting home and having our elevenses before our hairdresser called around. She was slightly late but this is par for the course but it did mean that it was all rather late before we could have our lunch of quiche and some fried vegetables.

I started the reconfiguration of the audio that I have in various parts of the house when I purchased a reconditioned Polaroid BoomBox for the princely sum of £15.00 which included postage. I was very impressed by this product and I still am because the quality of the sound was superb from fairly large speakers and as well as the CD player, one could Bluetooth music over from an iphone and there was, of course, an FM radio available as well. I was idly looking through the listings of eBay to see if other Boomboxes were on offer at a similar price and then stumbled across a little technology company in Cambridge who trade under the name of OakCastle. Following some links, I discovered a firm called XSonly and they evidently specialised in selling off ‘overstocks’ as well as refurbished products. What took my eye was the fact that one could buy a model similar to the Polaroid but with a USB port that could evidently play music files stored as MPs on a pendrive (USB stick) and the model sported an aerial for the FM radio (which the Polaroid lacked) But the company also advertised a product that was advertised as ‘Opened – never used’ and this seem to indicate a unit that was not refurbished nor of the Quality A,B or C which is often used to describe goods with some cosmetic damage. This product was advertised as £19.99 and, if it were absolutely new, then it would be possible to extend the warranty of one year to a manufacturer’s warranty of three years. I have two projected uses for this Boombox. The first and most important use is that with a memory stick inserted, one has hours of music of one’s own choice available and there must be occasions when this is superior to ClassicFM to accompany one through the night. My unit arrived today and I am delighted with it. The colour is a more subtle shade of blue than the images on the web tended to convey. But most importamtly, it was supplied in the manufacturer’s box with the manufacturer’s packing and accessories. Naturally I have given it a bit of a workout and I was delightd that the USB stick was recognised immediately and started playing shortly afer it was inserted. I have only used a small fraction of an 8GB memory stick and already an experiment had indicated this has given me more than two hours of playtime. The FM and CD player work as anticipated but the Bluetooth function has not been tried out yet. As soon as I had ascertained that all of the basic functions worked, I got onto the manufacturer’s website and got an extended warranty for three years with absolutely no problems at all. So all in all, happy days and I can use this little bit of technology to give me whatever music I could like whenever I am doing a kind of job, for example in the study, when I want more than ClassicFM can provide. Just as a final piece of technology news, my computer mouse ‘died’ on me yesterday. Naturally, I thought about changing the batteries but the fault could lie in the nano-receiver which occupies one of the USB ports or in the mouse itself. I got onto Amazon and bought one of their standard wireless free mice, manaufactured by Trust and it arrived today. I am pleased to say it worked immediately (once I had removed the cellophane from the battery they had supplied with it) The laptap I am using in the lounge does have a track pad which is always useful when a mouse dies on you but after years of using a mouse, I am rather set in my ways and much prefer it if I have the choice.

Today was the day when our domestic help calls around and together we set to in order to take down the Christmas decorations. Fortunately, it was a case of ‘many hands make light work’ and the major work was probably the ‘undressing’ of the Christmas tree. We have managed to get everything we needed in a neat pile and tomorrow my son and I will make a venture into the loft where we store everything in a neat pile such that it is instantly findable next year when we repeat the exercise. In fact, last year once the Christmas tree had gone, the hall seemed so bare and denuded of light that I almost immediately went out and bought a plain but very tasteful occasional lamp which runs on an incredibly economical LED-based light bulb where the costs even at today’s inflated prices are a few pence a year. We tend to leave this on during the night time and as a daytime security light when we leave the house so it has resumed its place and its role in dark corner of the hall. Today, we got several Christmas cards which may either have been posted late or else got delayed in the stike-prone Christmas post. But another thing that arrived by today’s post was a little solid but extendable conventional solid aerial to go on our legacy Sony system to replace the white cord that looks a little unsightly, even if disguised. The new little aerial works like a dream and had a variety of connectors supplied with it to maximise the chances of a successful fitting. I find that in particular location, I get the best possible connection on Classic FM (fortunate!), followed closely by Radio 4 but Radio 3 tends to be quite a challenge (presumably because of the paucity of people who listen to it and therefore low transmitter power?) Because this aerial has worked so well, I immediately sent off for another one as they were cheap enough and this can then replace the one remaining wire aerial we are still using.

Eventually, although it was quite late by this time, Meg and I set off to collect our newspaper and then go for a saunter the length of Bromsgrove High Street. We called in at our neighbourhood Poundland and as well as buying some cleaning products, we found two more of the little plastic containers that they stock which has the advantage of having a little handle and also happen to be just the right size to accommodate about 20 CD’s. I have some more CD’s arriving in a day or so after an offer of mine was accepted on eBay and so any ‘currently played’ CDs are available quickly to us. Incidentally, whilst hunting around my other CD stocks which I have in about three places, I discovered a set of three called ‘Classical Calm’ and so these have become an addition to the stock I have in the proximity of our kitchen system. We did have a browse in some of the charity shops and bought a stunning and stylish looking little fabric utility bag, well protected with a lot of zip compartments and complete with a couple of matching purses. We did not see anything else that took our fancy and therefore made getting home a priority so that I could get on with cooking a late pasta meal.

Rishi Sunak has been receiving a lot of press coverage this afternoon as he attempts to give the current government some degree of vision for the future. The current pledges are to to halve inflation, to grow the economy, to reduce debt, to cut hospital waiting lists, and to stop migrant crossings. Many of these will happen anyway such as inflation coming down- and is growing the economy of 0.01% next year really worth the paper it is written on? Some commentators, such as Beth Rigby of Sky News, have pointedly asked the Prime Minister why when the NHS is on its knees and there is a massive cost-of-living crisis, an unelected Prime Minister and the third in a row should be believed or given any credibility for a moment? Given the scale of problems that most families in the country are facing at the moment, the impression is rather being given of ‘the boy who stood on the burning deck’ This is a literary illusion which is quite well known but the full reference is ‘The boy stood on the burning deck. Whence all but he had fled.’ It is the story of Louis de Casabianca at the Battle of the Nile, a boy sailor who remains at his post until it finally explodes in a deluge of smoke and flame. The other story this afternoon is the news that as people are desperately trying to fight off seasonal coughs and colds not to mention ‘flu, the common over-the-counter remedies seem to be in very short supply. There must be a story within a story here but apart from factors being quoted such as ‘supply line deficiencies’ and ‘heavy seasonal demand’ I have not yet managed to find a plausible explanation why the country seems to be running short of such basic commodities. It all adds to the sense that the whole counry is falling apart before our very eyes.

So a Tuesday has dawned which means that we enter into our Tuesday routines. After we pick up the daily newspaper, Meg and I go to our local Waitrose because, in normal circumstances, we meet up to three of our pre-pandemic friends here each Tuesday morning. But today, everything seemed unusually quiet and none of our normal friends made an appearance. The counter assistant remarked how quiet the store was and the rest of the town as well, so that it appears that after the New Year holiday and celebrations, it is taking a little time to settle down and things to get returned to their ‘normal’ routines and rhythms. The weather was not particularly cold today but it was certainly wet and blustery and it seems that these conditions would be similar across much of the country as a huge band of rain sweeps its way across the country. So I made my way down to my usual Pilates class and, needless to say, after a gap of a week and filled with lots of Yuletide goodies, we all found that what comes easily to us took that little more effort this week. On my way home, I popped into our local Asda because I wanted to buy one or two of those ‘thin’ type calendars, one of which we hang up in the kitchen to record birthdays throughout the year and the second of which we have in our bedroom more because of custom and habit than any other reason. There was not a great deal of choice but avoiding Disney/cute kittens/puppies, settled on a National Trust ‘Coast and Countryside’ for one location and ‘Baby Animals’ for the other. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is the day when our domestic help calls around and very welcome she will be as we have not seen her for a fortnight. Tonight, I might do a quick scurry around removing some of the Christmas decorations and tomorrow our domestic help and I can ‘undress’ the Christms tree and this, too, can be put away until next year. I normally spend the minimum of time necessary to decorate the house so that clearing away the decorations can also be done expeditiously when the moment arrives.

At the top of the political agenda today is the most enormous pressure under which hospitals and particularly their A&E departments are facing at the moment, with a flood of potential patients even exceeding those at the height of the pandemic. The political commentators on ‘Sky News‘ are making the point that this is not a sudden emergency but one in which the demands upon A&E has been increasing steadily over the past ten years or so. The point is also being made that up to a third of the hospital inpatients have been certified as medically fit but with the absence of social care provision, there is no place to which these patients can be discharged. A lot of social care was technically provided by local authorities but their budgets have been squeezed and squeezed so much after years of austerity that local authorities can no longer afford to pay. In fact, many workers in the social care sector now find it much more worth their while to leave their employment in social care and enjoy higher rates of pay as a supermarket checkout operator. Meanwhile, much of social care has been privatised and is run by rather nebulous private equity firms who engage in a variety of financial dealings. One such is for the residential homes themselves to be owned by a separate company, often with headquarters in a tax haven, whilst the care home operators have to use a large part of their budget paying ‘rent’ for the use of the residential home building. The story is told, and not offically denied, that in the early days of the pandemic when it was thought that the NHS would be completely overwhelmed that the government called an urgent, top level meeting with the care home industry. The chiefs were told it was imperative that hospital wards be emptied as rapidly as possible with the social care provision providing the care places needed. The are home chiefs replied to the government that they would comply but it would cost (probably in the millions) The government agreed and paid over millions of pounds to the care home operators. Within minutes of receiving large cheques from the governmnt, most of this money was siphoned off into obscure off-shore private equity companies and tax havens never to be seen again. So the solution to this problem is to allow local authorities to run the residential care that they used to do decades ago, fund them properly, pay the staff the relevant rates to constitute a career structure and to fund all of these through increases (steep if necessary) in National Insurance rates. Of course, none of this is going to happen and the sector limps on from crisis one winter to an even more severe crisis the following winter and so on. Meanwhile, the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, is blaming ‘flu, COVID and Strep A cases which does nothing at all to address the underlying issues outlined above and for which the government have been responsible for the last decade.

Today is one of those strange days when one is not quite sure whether the Bank Holiday associated with New Year’s Day has been transferred to the following day or not. Meg and I decided that we would make a trip along the Bromsgrove High Street but before we got there, we made a call to see our Italian friend who lives just down the road to see if we can get together for a coffee and some nibbles. She has had a bad cold of late but we are hopeful that in a few days time we can get together as we have a fair amount of news to impart as we have not seen her for an extended chat for quite a long time now. When we eventually made it to the High Street, it was no surprise that some coffee shops were open but there was a very mixed pattern in the remaining shops with most actually being closed today. We had just about got to the far end of the High Street when I received a telephone call from our chiropodist. To my chagrin, she was waiting outside the house for us as although we had her appointment on our planning board, I had forgotten to look at the appointment this morning and assumed that we had a completely free day. So we raced home and had our feet done, by which time we needed to prepare lunch in any case. I was feeling a little fortunate this morning as a day or so ago, I had made a speculative offer on a set of 6 classical CD’s (Beethoven symphonies, Fauré’s Requiem, some Nigel Kennedy and that sort of thing) for the princely sum of 99p and nobody else had bid so I won the auction. Admittedly I have some postage to pay on this lot but I am still very pleased with what I had got. This afternoon is one of those nondescript, dull afternoons where nothing much seems to be in prospect but now that we have the internet working on our TV we can browse the net to see if anything takes our fancy.

The media is rather full of scary health warnings this afternoon. There are now 100 times as many people requiring hospitalisation and critical care for flu then the equivalent time last year. It looks as though we are now seeing a double whammy of both ‘normal’ flu as well as new variants of COVID. One of these new variants is called XBB 1.5 and is causing some significant concern. Some studies have found that the strain is capable of evading antibodies from previous COVID infections or vaccinations so will this sweep the country? Meanwhile, hospitals throughout the country are reporting that they are absolutely in a critical state and two authoritative sources are saying that the number of ‘excess’ deaths due to delays in admission to hospitals may be causing up to 500 ‘excess’ deaths a week. This figure is a disputed one and undoubtedly, it is a difficult job to disentangle the relevant statistics. However,Parliament is still in recess and although the Liberal Democrats have been calling for an urgent recall of Parliament, it looks as though nothing much will happen on the Parliamentary scene for a few days yet.

Denis Healey, the veteran Labour politician used to say that ‘in war, the first casualty is truth’ This is particularly true in the case of the Ukraine, I suppose, but there is a report that the Ukrainians have struck at an army battacks in the Russian occupied Donetsk region. The Russians are publishing a figure of 63 soldiers killed whilst the Ukrainians are suggesting that ‘up to’ 400 may have been killed and another 300 injured. But a former commander of pro-Russian troops in east Ukraine who has emerged as one of the highest-profile Russian nationalist military bloggers has said the death toll was in the hundreds. Whatever the truth of the situation, it appears that the American supplied missile system which is incredibly accurate has actually wrought the damage.

Christmas time always brings with it the messages written inside Christmas cards (and occasionally emails and text messages) and it always good to get the latest news from those who you normally communicate with at this time of year. However, one rather depressing feature in 2022 is the number of our friends who have experienced quite severe illness recently. Of course, we are all aging together collectively and a certain degree of deterioration is only to be expected. But even making allowance for this, it appears that many of our friends have been particularly hard hit. I remember with some affection when Meg and I used to go off on Saga holidays for a two week (and occasionally a four week) break in January each year, to pull the teeth of the winter. One met many interesting people and in general our fellow guests were always lively and interesting company. But there seemed to be an unwritten rule that one never discussed health isssues because we were all of the age when things were going wrong with each one of us so there was no point going on about it. Those days, and holidays, are behind us now but we have a lot of happy memories of the times that we had.