It looks as though the current really cold snap may well be petering out. So this morning, after breakfast, Meg and I decided that we would brave the park today but not stay too long sitting down so that we did not get too cold. We decided on a slightly different strategy this morning and took a flask of coffee with us but in a smallish little bag instead of the more normal rucksack. There was a slightly icy wind but we sat down just long enough to have our customary coffee and then decided to return home fairly rapidly. Then we got home and we treated ourselves to a packet tomato soup and then read the paper quietly until it was time for lunch. As a treat, I had bought ourselves some venison meatballs and these were delicious, heated up initially and then complemented by some fried onions and a little gravy left over from past meals. We were anxious to get all fed and washed up before the rugby match (Italy vs. Wales, the two bottom teams both striving to avoid coming bottom of the table) but Wales won this match with ease. This afternoon, we shall watch the first half of the England vs France match, then go for church and, upon our return, we may be able to pickup the second half of the match on our PVR. This we did upon our return from church only to witness a massive win for the French, 53-10, and complete humilation for England.

I think it is fair to say that the Lineker/BBC row absolutely exploded this morning. It loks as though the BBC suspended Lineker at least for this week (using words like ‘stepping back’ from Match of the Day). Once this news had percolated through, all of his co-commentators immediately withdrew, as well as the presenters of other sports programmes this afternoon. I do not think for a moment that the BBC had anticipated this mass show of support from Lineker’s fellow commentators and what had started off with a dispute with one (admittedly well paid) presenter has become a major problem for the BBC. In this situation, the BBC may feel that they cannot possibly ‘back down’ and will not be in a mood for compromise as it looks as though they are abandoning the policy of impartiality. For his part, Lineker has no intention of backing down either, has the support of his fellow commentators and can probably increase his remuneration by going off to another network. It may be that the BBC and Lineker part company in which the BBC as a whole will be the ultimate loser. The wider picture of all of this is that the BBC is trying to operate impartiality in a political climate where the language used even by Government ministers is both extreme and inflammatory. Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, accused her own civil service of trying to thwart her cross-channel migrant policy which even the Bill that she is sponsoring admits may break the convention on Human Rights. Then Gary Lineker steps into the breach and complains that the language being used is redolent of 1930’s Germany which can be proven to be correct. However, the Lineker contribution to social media could well be (and has been) assumed to be a direct comparison of the present government with Nazi Germany, which, if this was the intention of the tweet, would be quite dispropotionate. There is a great difficuly in the climate in which the BBC is operating. Much of the press is exhibiting a marked right wing flavour and, as such, Brexit is lauded and hostile language against migrants coming to these shores is the order of the day (encouraged and sustained by a right wing government) The BBC finds itself in a position where right wing influences on the BBC are allowed or even condoned. Gary Lineker’s suspension for expressing political views set off an avalanche of comparisons with other BBC stars who have not been similarly sanctioned for lacking impartiality. Some of these were obvious: Lord Sugar of The Apprentice, whose 18 years of firing people have been punctuated by political outbursts, from newspaper interviews calling on people to vote Conservative to tweeting a mocked-up image of Jeremy Corbyn sitting next to Adolf Hitler. But Lineker has been suspnded whilst the recently appointed Chairman of the BBC is only under investigation (and not sanctioned) for his part in organising an £800,000 loan facility for Bris Johnson. So the BBC has regrettably got itself into a situation here it is loathe to criticise those on the right of politics but immediately jumps upon anybody who expresses opposition to present government policy on migration – largely because it fears the wrath of the right wing media (and calls for its disbandment)if it takes no action on the views expressed by Lineker. The backdrop to all of this is a massive threat to the independence of the BBC which has often in its history not seen eye-to-eye with the government of the day of whatever political persuasion. There are hints this evening that the BBC realises this, belatedly, and is rowing back on its previous decision and may be seeking an early resolution of the Lineker affair.

The weather this morning still showed flurries of snow but not quite the intensity of yesterday. Our domestic help had to switch her day this week to be with us this morning so I messaged her to offer to pick up up in our car if that would make her journey to us any easier. But she showed up at the appointed time so evidently the snow had not been sufficiently severe to make her think twice about the journey. As always, it was nice to see her and she had brought along a little present of a uniquely shaped colander that she had seen in a kitchen shop. For my part, I tend to buy cooking oil in bulk from a little company that grows its own rapeseed and then processes it and sells it on bulk containers which I then bottle and put into my own bottles on arrival. I then encourage our domestic help to take a bottle from our stock whenever she needs it. Today being a Friday, we anticipated that we would see our University of Birmingham friend in Waitrose which is becoming a Friday morning tradition for the two of us. Our friend is particularly fond of the ‘Moral Maze‘ programme broadcast every week on Radio 4 and one issue that emerged this week was whether it was legitimte to ‘break a confidence’ and report serious nefarious activity to the police. I wondered out loud whether a Catholic priest hearing something in confession could refuse to divulge something heard in the confessional to the police in serious cases. I always understood that what was heard in the confessional was in absolute confidence and should never be disclosed even under the pain of imprisonment or death in the most extreme of cases. But it may well be that things have ‘moved on’ since I was at school and taught the rudiments of theology because the more modern position seems much more sensible. On consulting the web, it appears that the church’s guidelines say that if someone discloses in confession that he or she has committed a serious crime such as child abuse, ‘the priest must require the penitent to report his or her conduct to the police or other statutory authority. If the penitent refuses to do so, the priest should withhold absolution.’ After a brief while, we were joined by one of our pre-pandemic acquaintances who has a lively sense of humour. I reminded her of the response that she made to one of my observations a month or so ago. I asked her whether she would like to live in a society where she was married to three or four husbands at the same time (technically known as ‘polyandry’ which is still to be found in Bhutan, Nepal and parts of Tibet) Our friend thought about this for a moment and concluded that she did not think she would enjoy living in a society such as this. When I enquired why, her reply has resonated with me for a long time as she stated that she did not think that she could ‘handle more than two men at once’. The part of this reply which tackled my fancy was the implications of the phrase ‘more than’ and the imagination can only boggle. Eventually, the elderly lady had to leave us to engage in sone chauffering duties and after she had left, another lady who we did not know passed us by and observed to us that we had evidently had a good time as so much laughter was emanating from our table. So then we left for home and cooked some Basa fillets for lunch. As Basa has only the mildest of flavours, I made a mixture of some seafood sauce and 1000 Island dressing which I heated in a glass to provide a hot sauce to accompany the fish and this worked out as intended.

An argument has broken out this afternoon over the ‘Gary Lineker’ affair. Lineker opined on social media that the tone of pronouncements from government ministers (particularly Suella Braverman) were redolent of the type of language which reminded one of Germany in the 1930s (in other words, the Nazi era). Opinion is quite sharply divided on this issue but the BBC feels that it cannot have a very prominent broadcaster (although on a freelance and not an employee status) to issue opinions that appear to compromise the duty of the BBC to strive for complete impartiality. Actually, I think that the BBC are handling this quite well and are saying that Gary Lineker is to step back from his role as presenter on ‘Match of the Day’ until such time as there is an agreed and clear position of Lineker’s use of social media. Actually, I think that both parties can learn from this episode. Lineker had used language that was capable of misinterpretation and was probably unwise. On the other hand, the BBC probably needs to refine its policies to make it clear to even freelance presenters that they have to ‘have regard’ to the BBC quidelines on impartiality. The wider point here is that Lineker is a sports presenter but should not be using the prominence afforded by his position to let his views be known (however morally correct or praiseworthy such opinions might be)

We knew from the weather forecast that we could expect a fall of snow overnight. Sure enough we did have a few centimetres but it was not quite bad enough to deter me from doing the weekly shopping. Admittedly, I did not feel inclined to get at the supermarket door on the dot of 8.00am so I delayed everything by about half an hour. The main roads were fine but the traffic was horrendous with lots of delays on a journey of a couple of miles. Whizzing around the supermarket when I know where everything is was straightforward and then it came to the journey home. For whatever reason, the journey back seemed choked up with traffic although the other lane of the dual carriage way seemed almost deserted. But this was one of those occasions when I was really pleased to get home with a carload of provisions for the forthcoming week. Before I attempted to unpack, I immediately got busy preparing a bowl of porridge after which I unpacked all of the shopping. When I picked up the nest of tables from the Age Concern furniture shop yesterday afternoon, I did a very quick perusal of their CD section and picked the six classical CDs that they had displayed. This is primarily because I really wanted the empty cases rather than their contents but eventually I finished up with six CDs for the princely sum of £1.25. One of these was a recording of the most well-known of the Beethoven piano sonatas and we really enjoyed playing this and savouring it whilst we were doing the unpacking. Then we got Meg ready to face the world and we got busy with our little project for the rest of the morning. By this stage of the morning, the snow flurries had finished for the day and there was some pale winter sun in evidence. I sat Meg down in our Music Room and put on a CD disk which we both enjoy tremendously entitled: ‘Ave Verum’ This is a CD of sacred choral favourites and was recorded at St. John’s College, Cambridge. It contains some of our especial favourites with pieces by Fauré and Brahms so whilst I had Meg (and myself) at peace with the world, I set to work putting the finishing touches to my restoration of the suite of nested tables. This consisted of a judicious polishing of the yew woodwork and a final cleaning of the glass inserts with some wipes especially formulated for the cleaning of glassware. Once this was all done, I had a bit of a brainwave and positioned the tables in the corner of the room recently occupied by my last renovation but one, which was the mahogany table whose bad ‘white ring’ stain I had all but eliminated. The effect was incredibly pleasing because now all of the furniture in lighter colours (maple, yew, perhaps walnut I would guess) are now on the same side of the room and the tonalities are nicely consistent with each other. Meanwhile, the mahogany table now looks quite handsome on the other side of the room where it sits besides one of the two comfortable armchairs. I raided the bottom drawers of a large unit in our dining room to see what bits of linen and ‘table dressing’ we could liberate and whilst this was largely Christmassy type things, we did remind ourselves where we kept a supply of scented candles and I liberated one small table decoration that we can immediately bring into use.

As is often the case when the government tries to avoid the fallout from making an unpleasant announcement, the Transport minister has announced a sigificant delay to a section of the HS2 line by making a written statement. The section from Birmingham to Crewe and then onwards to Manchester is to be delayed for two years in what appears to be a desperate attempt by the Treasury to save money. Long term critics of the HS2 project will be emboldened by this announcement and will still attempt to get the whole project dropped. In the meanwhile, it looks as though the concept of ‘levelling up’ will have received a severe knock by this announcement. But we know that similar projects e.g. in Spain, tend to benefit the capital city rather than the more distant cities served by the line. But in the London area, we have had both CrossRail and also the Elizabeth Line. Although these two projects were subject to significant cost overruns, the prospect of cancellation or deliberate delays was never on the cards. Meanwhile, in the murky world of Westminster politics, it has emerged recently that Boris Johnson is understood to have privately warned deputy prime minister Dominic Raab about his conduct. This long running investigation into allegations of bullying may well report fairly soon and Raab has suggested that he will resign if the complaints against him are said to be substantially correct. At the risk of a bit of ‘pop’ psychology, I wonder whether Ministers who feel intellectually inadequate are liable to resort to bullying behaviour in a desperate attempt to appear to be in charge of events. Senior civil servants tend to be highly educated and long standing in their positions and it is no wonder that ministers who may, in the famous words of Sir Robin Day, be ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ privately feel their inadequacy.

You never quite know what a day is going to bring. This morning it looked as though there were flurries of snow and that these might intensify. What a good day to have a good bowl of porridge with which to start the day, I thought to myself, and looked in the cupboard for my supplies of oats. To my dismay we were quite out of them so I decided that I would leave Meg in bed whilst I threw some clothes on and hurried down in the car both to collect the newspaper and also to avail myself of a goodly supply of oats. Waitrose had a special offer on oats which is just as well because I do not want to be without them when the weather is cold. By the time we had had some breakfast and got ourselves ready, we had a look outside and although we intended to pop down into town to pick up a purchase, we decided to abandon that particular activity at least for the morning. By the time we had some delayed elevenses in the comfort of our own home, it was not too far off 12.00 and Questions to the Prime Minister which was the usual knockabout stuff. The impression is quite strong abroad that Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman (Home Secretary) are actually relishing a fight over the Illegal Migration Bill. The Tories are arguing they are in touch with popular public opinion, not to mention thir own right wing, and whilst they privately may think that none of their provisions will actually work (and hence the absence of detail),nonetheless thay are more than happy to electioneer on a populist stance. I often think that when the Tories are up against it, they always fall back on the outright xenophobic dog whistles to act as a vote winner for them. Hence there were jibes against ‘Lefty lawyers’ and Suella Braverman even went as far as to argue that the opposition was assisted not only by lefty lawyers but the civil service as well. Naturally, this has incensed some of the civil service unions and when challenged, there was a certain amount of backing off. The Labour party for its part is arguing about the sheer unworkability of the new proposals and the track record that shows that ‘illegal’ migration has soared whilst more and more restrictive legislation is proposed. A loophole has already been spotted in the published Bill because although migrants should be returned to their country of origin or Rwanda, the provision of ‘habeas corpus’ still applies. This is a tremendously old and well established legal principal as Habeas Corpus – which means ‘you may have the body’ – is the right not to be unlawfully detained. This principle is regarded as so important that the High Court will hear an application of ‘habeas corpus’ immediately and the idea that the state can just detain people without charge is regarded as abhorrent, and rightly so. So this particular argument will run and run as the Tories will milk it for all it is worth whilst practically everybody else protests againsts its immorality, illegality and impractability.

In the late morning, I read my emails and was particularly interested in news from one of my University of Winchester friends whose wife was having an operation last Monday. I was relieved to be sent a photo of his wife smiling and waving once she had come round from the operation. On the spur of the moment, I decided to give him a phone call because it looked as though the hospital were quite keen to discharge his wife as soon as they could after the operation and would have done so except for a phyiotherapist who considered it was too early to consider a discharge. I communicated with my friend some of the experiences that I had had after a spell in hospital nearly five years ago by now. In particular, I stressed the importance of communicating with his doctor as all of the support services that he would need to assist in his wife’s recuperation are actually under the control of the doctor. But primary care services are under strain in all parts of the country and the patient, and the carers for whom the services are intended, have to be active in making sure that the intended services and care packages are actually delivered.

As the weather improved somewhat after lunch, Meg and I made a lightning visit into Bromsgrove town in order to pick up my purchase of a suite of three nesting tables, purchased recently at the Age Concern furniture shop on the High Street. These proved to be a more difficult to transport to the car than I anticipated as they are glass-topped tables which, of course, adds to the weight. I did the first stage of the restoration process including a little touching up of worn elements with a cotton wool bud soaked in scratch cover stain. I think I have effected quite an improvement as the furniture itself is a pleasant shade manufactured in yew. However, it will need a good examination in tomorrow’s daylight to ascertain whether I need to undertake a few finishing touches and, at the end of the day, I can live with a few blemishes so long as the furniture seems restored.

Today is always a day to which we look forward because it is the day when we tend to meet up with old friends in the Waitrose coffee bar. We were delighted to meet up with two of our pre-pandemic friends and, as usual, have a fair amount to chatter about. We always take the opportunity to buy some bits and pieces whilst in Waitrose and to that extent, we treat it rather like a corner shop instead of using it for our main weekly shop. After our weekly get-together, it was time for us to get home and I needed to get myself turned around for my Pilates session later on in the day. It was quite a pleasant walk down into town and I found the time to dive into a little charity shop and avail myself of a little insulated flask which I found on the shelves. The idea here is that in these cold days that when Meg and I venture out into the park we do not sit down for a prolonged rest as we have become accustomed over the months. Rather, we might have a smidgeon of tea/coffee in our little flask and then have a quick snifter of this coupled with a banana or similar whilst we have the briefest of rests but carry on walking. This way we hope we can get the fresh air and exercise but generally keep walking to keep ourselves from getting frozen.

I went down to Pilates as usual and the numbers were depleted by one today so there were only three of us. However, I do remember to turn my phone off these days which is only courtesy to my teacher and fellow class members. As I was walking home, I was surprised to see that our Italian friend had her front door open and was waiting for me to walk past. I was even more amazed to see that Meg was with her – she had apparently taken it on her own iniative to walk out of the house (with her outdoor shoes on but without a coat) and half a mile down the road where she recognised our friend’s house and presented herself at the back door. Apparently all kinds of frantic telephone calls had been made between our Italian friend and our son and my phone should have been red-hot with messages as well but I had failed to turn it on again afer my Pilates class. We stayed with our friend and her companion for about three quarters of an hour, accepting a very welcome cup of tea and biscuits before I walked Meg back to the house. When I know how unsteady Meg is on her feet these days and so prone to stumbles and trips, all I could do was to offer a silent prayer that she had not come to any harm in her venture down the road. Naturally, I gave profusive thanks to our friends and am now exercising my mind how I can keep Meg a little more safe and secure in the future. As soon as we got home, we started to think about a delayed lunch of fishcakes but suddenly realised by looking at our planning board upon which we record all our imminent engagements that our hairdresser was due round at 4.00 and it was already past that time. We realised that she is often a bit delayed and wondered if she had tried to call around when the house was empty. At 5.00pm, our hairdresser turned up to our very evident relief. One or other os us had made a mistake with the appointment which was at 5.00pm and not 4.00pm. We were evidently very pleased that we had not missed each other so we had both of our heads shorn before we cooked a somewhat delayed evening meal which was the meal that we intended to have at lunchtime.

With the events of the day, we have evidently not been following the TV news but it is the day when the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are proudly announcing the latest measures to deter the migration in small boats from across the Englsih Channel. The new policy is to declare everybody who arrives by boat an illegal immigrant and then to deport them as swiftly as possible (and we are talking here of a week or so and not months) back to their country from whence they came or else to a ‘friendly’ third country such as Rwanda. Once here, any person so deported would be automatically denied any further attempt at immigration whether it be ‘legal’ or not. The legislation is being dated from today to ensure that a huge backlog does not build up, as has happened in the past, whilst the new legislation is being put in place. The government, when publishing the bill, admits that international law may well be tested to the limit and the Human Rights Act will in all probability be violated. The response from the opposition parties and a variety of bodies concerned with immigration is that the new proposals have not been thought through and are unworkable. Where is the accommodation to be found for those who do arrive? And the migrants cannot lawfully be detained indefinitely where there is simply no prospect of removing them. So after the specified 28 days is it suggested that they may well have to be released and then left destitute on the streets?

Today was the first day in what may be a particularly cold snap and the weather forecasts show the cold air descending from the north and the east. A cold weather alert has been issued for all of England as much of the country braces for snow and icy conditions. The Met Office has already issued a yellow warning for snow and ice which is set to come into force tonight for Midlands, much of Wales and the Southeast, including London. Being a Monday, we never expect to bump into any of our park friends nor did we fancy exposing ourselves to some icy blasts. Nonetheless, we decided to make the best of a bad job and, having picked up our newspaper, we did journey to the park. There we decided to walk towards our normal bench but we had not provided any coffee to take with us. So we sat on the bench just long enough for Meg to eat her customary banana whilst I had a small orange. Then we retraced our steps back to the car and our little strategy has worked, in that we had taken some fresh air and exercise but not tarried too long to get chilled by a long sit down. Then we got home, had a packet soup to warm ourselves up and then I proceeded to make lunch.

Yesterday, the news came through that the United Nations has finally, after some fifteen years, decided on a new law of the sea which will protect some 30% of the earth’s oceans from predation by fishing, mining, or other polluting activities. I think I heard it correctly that the migration routes of whales are similarly protected. This is extraordinarily good news for the planet and the UN delegations seemed filled with justifiable emotion at their success. When this new UN resolution was discussed in the media, I saw a contribution from Dr Hannah Fry who is a British mathematician, author and radio/TV presenter and well known to most TV viewers by now. She used a phrase which struck me as being amazingly prescient when she mused that ‘Life is lived forwards but understood backwards’ I was intrigued by this expression and wondered whether she was the author of it or whether she was quoting another authority. The exact quote is this: ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’ and the author is the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. I must admit that I prefer the juxtaposition of the two sentiments that Hannah Fry gave voice to yesterday. In a similar vein, I remember once being told that ‘you always try and take the correct decision at the time’ which, again, is a bit of a truism. We none of us attempt to take incorrect decisions at important junctures in our lives but some decisions (e.g. shall I move house this year and to where?)may turn out to be extremly fortuitious and on the face of it a ‘good’ decision whereas it is possible that you make a leap out of the (proverbial) frying pan and into the fire. So sometimes our decisions turn out to have been very good ones, others may turn out not as would have liked but none of us ever tries and wants to make an incorrect decision.

This afternoon, we spent a certain amount of time listening to music on Radio 3 and ClassicFM whilst doing some routine tasks, such as making sure our accounts are up to date and going through some saved copies of newspapers to make sure that interesting items are cut out and filed away. These are often health-related issues and one that I came across was the recent research on how to keep your concentration levels and focus high throughout the day. Not surprisingly, it was a judicious combination of diet and exercise which constitute the recommendations here.

There seems to be a bit of a bitter row going on within the ranks of the Tory party this afternoon (but I suppose this is hardly news any more). The scale of the rancour and emotion over Boris Johnson and the decision by top official Sue Gray to work for Labour was on display today in a WhatsApp exchange obtained by Sky News. In a series of messages on a group chat this morning, allies of Johnson clashed with other Tories who warned against criticising the decision by Sir Keir Starmer to hire the author of the partygate report. The leaked WhatsApps show the depth of division between allies of Johnson and the rest. In case one might have thought that British politics could not get more disreputable, a story is emanating that in his resignation Honours list (the right of every ex-PM) Boris Johnson is nominating his own father for a peerage. He has already done the same for his own brother who was briefly in the cabinet but who then resigned. Apparently Johnson has submitted a huge list with about 200 names upon it and this is still bein ‘considered’ within the Cabinet Office. Rishi Sunak may have a word in it as well – but this is certainly on the ‘murkier’ side of our political life as pure nepotism would appear to be the order of the day.

Today the weather is turning noticeably colder and we need to get ourselves braced for a cold blast which may be the last that we have to endure this winter. The weather forecast is indicating a snowy belt that is going to afflict some northerly and easterly parts of the country but how quickly it is going to spread is an open question. Meg and I got upselves up and prepared to watch the Lorna Kuennsberg program which is part of our Sunday morning routine. Boris Johnson was being defended to the hilt by one of his acolytes but some other influential conservatives were not convinced by the linkage of the Sue Grey appointment as Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff and whether this might cast doubt upon the integrity of her report into ‘partygate’. I do not normally comment upon my television viewing but last night after we had returned from church and had a little supper, Meg and I channel-flipped to see what remained for the rest of the evening. We stumbled across the PBS (American) network that was running a big feature on ‘Hiroshima – the Real Story’. Although we got to bed later than intended, this documentary was riveting to watch. I learned that the Americans knew that Hiroshima was not a military but a civilian target (nowadays a war crime in itself), that the Americans moved heavan and earth to make sure that the suffering endured by the Japanese people did not see the light of day and even set up a special research facility to study the effects of the radiation (but not to attempt any treatment regimes). This is just a handful of the issues explored in the programme but I felt much better informed after the programme than before it.

In the late morning, we popped down to see our Irih frinds who live down the road and who had invited us round for coffee at midday. We were also delighted to be joined by a near neighbour who is French and very jolly and we repeated the good time that we had had at Christmas time. As a group we were all glad to be getting the winter behind us and to be rejoicing in the extra daylight that presages the start of spring. We all know that we have a bit of winter yet to experience but the end is in sight. We discussed some local affairs including a house along the road that had just gone on sale recently. This stimulated a disscussion between us that in decades gone by, when we were so much younger, then there generations of children that we were collectively raising and who formed a type of natural community. But now that the children have fled the nest years or even decades ago, such a sense of community is being lost and we face the prospect of all of us growing older gracefully (or disgracefully) together. We particularly remembered the good ten years that we had in Hampshire where there several children aged about 4-10 years old and became almost the collective responsibility of us all. Meg and I evidently no children of that age when we lived there but we were regarded as quasi-grandparents by the younger generation and baby-sitting was no real chore for us. But, of course, those days have gone as sixteen years have passed and the children of yore have grown up, gone to university and are not living in the locality any more.

In the various politics programmes that we have seen today, two little ‘facts’ stand out in my mind. The first of these was a graph shown I think on the Sky News programme which showed that whilst the Conservative party earnestly desire the ending of the immigration of asylum seekers and others in the small (and dangerous) boats that cross the channel. The graph that was particualy striking was since the Conservatives had been in power, the number of deportations had shrunk from 10,000 to about 2,000 whilst more and more legislation hs been passed in an attempt to ‘solve’ the problem. Next Rishi Sunak is going to annoounce even more legislation to ‘end’ the Cross-Channel immigration in small boats but declaring everybody illegal and instantly deporting them (even though this is contrary to international law) So judging by the evidence of the past few years, passing more and more legislation is not going, by itself, to solve the problem. The second statistics concerns the release of 10,000 WhatsApp messages which emanated from Matt Hancock and which has found its way via a biographer/journalist into the eager arms of the Daily Telegraph. The Andrew Neil show reported that the total number of words in the messages was equivalent to 2.5 times the entire collected works of Shakespeare. The Daily Telegraph is a long standing opponent of the policy of ‘lockdown’ to combat the COVID pandemic and so is milking this hoarde of emails and releasing one damaging story after another for as long as the story will run. I must say that using social media such as WhatsApp for policy discussions and the like does not strike me as the most appropriate vehicle, even in this modern age, by which policy discussions should be conducted.

Today we had to think what we were going to do as a late morning activity because now that the weather has turned a little more wintry again, neither of us particularly fancied the icy blasts afforded to us in the local park. I spent a certain amount of time messing about with my audio to get it absolutely the way I want and then Meg and I had a delayed breakfast. We then jointly decided that it would be a good idea to visit Droitwich again but the bottom end of town instead of the top end so that we could access some charity shops and do a quick whizz around the branch of Waitrose. I needed to fill up with petrol which I did on the way to Droitwich and then we parked outside Waitrose and hit the charity shops. I bought a new shirt in one and a couple of oven-proof vegetable dishes in one of the others before we set for home and had delayed elevenses as soon as we got in. Then I started cooking a curry meal for us as we have not made one for some time. It was a mix of the usual ingredients – onion, pepper, tomatoes, mushrooms supplemented by a diced apple, some sultanas and a modicum of brown sugar. I dish up Meg’s before my own because I only put the curry into the mixture afterwards and then Meg gets hers served on some white rice whilst to keep the carboydrate count down, I utilise a rice cake and a couple of cream crackers in place of the rice. We always add a dollop of plain yogurt to the top of the mixture to finish off the meal.

This afternon, I had an unexpected burst of pleasure. Whilst doing the delayed washing up, I turned on ClassicFM and when I tuned in, the transmission was half way though the first movement of the Mozart clainet concerto. To my delight, the broadcast carried on playing both the second (slow) movement followed by the third movement. Whether ClassicFM do this quite regularly (ie. play the whole of a work instead of just a movement from it) or whether it was just a one off, I cannot say. The combination of the DAB mode in the kitchem hifi and the wonderful reverberations in the kitchen (as there are no soft furnishings to absorb the sound) made the perfomance particularly enjoyable. This particular piece has quite a lot of significance for me. I first heard it when my art/music teacher who had a cubicle in the dormitory (as all the dormitaries had in those days) smuggled in a record of the concerto and played it on a little portable record player which he had acquired from somewhere. As it happened, about two or three of us in the small attic dormitory were in bed because it was the height of the Asian flu epidemic in 1957 and, as I remember it, as many as two thirds of the class could be absent when the epidemic was at its height. The second and slow movement of the clarinet concerto is particularly memorable because our son won the school music competition for his renditon of it when he was aged about 14. The adjudicator, who was a Professor of Music at York University, awarded the prize to our son because of the degree of expressivity and feeling for the music of Mozart – our hearts swelled with pride upon hearing the news. But after that a combination of enthusiasms of Deltic locomotives, photography and young women (in which order I cannot say) meant that the clarinet playing became a thing of the past. But then Meg and I were on a brief half-term break with our son in the city of Bath- and as we passing the small Georgian theatre in the town, we noticed that the famous clarinetist Jack Brymer was to be playing the Mozart clarinet concerto and also on the bill was Marisa Robles, the world famous harpist. We enjoyed the concert enormously and even managed a few words with Jack Brymer after the performance. More recently, a local orchestral player of real talent played the concerto in our local church which acts as a venue for concert performances for the Bromsgrove festival held in the summer months.

Although the news broke yesterday, the media is today taking the Committee of Privileges report into Boris Johnson’s possible misleading of Parliament as very serious news. But allies of the Prime Mnister are trying to minimise the impact of the interim report from the Privileges Committee. Mr Johnson has also said it was ‘surreal’ the committee proposes to rely on evidence ‘culled and orchestrated’ by Sue Gray, who was a highly regarded top civil servant. The committee has defended its probe insisting it is ‘not based on the Sue Gray report’, which last year detailed lockdown-breaking, booze-fuelled parties in Downing Street during Mr Johnson’s leadership and played a role in his downfall. As always on a Saturday evening, one awaits the full in-depth analysis provided by the Sunday papers and whether Johnson receives any support (or fails to gain support) from the trawl around the TV studios on a Sunday morning. Evidently, the oral evidence that Johnson will give to the committee may well prove interesting viewing as the Committee have already decided that Johnson probably misled the House of Commons on about four occasions.

Being a Friday, it was a day when we might meet up with some of our Waitrose gang. We were delighted to meet one of our pre-pandemic friends and, shortly afterwards, our University of Birmingham friend turned up and we spent a hilarious half hour or so. I am not sure what we find to laugh about but laugh we do. We spent a certain amount of time talking about the films and TV series in which we have taken particular enjoyment and then it was time for us to leave, but not before we had done a little bit of shopping for extras. When we got home, we watched some of the political news of the day on the BBC2 Politics programme just after midday and then it was time for lunch. As we cooking a bought haddock pie in the oven, I parboiled some sprouts (which I wanted to use up) and a carrot cut into sticks and then finished them off in the oven with some oil and a dollop of honey. All in all, we had a very pleasant meal. After lunch, we used the BBC i-player to catch up up the next episode of a series that we are starting to watch and which has been recommended to us by several people.

Feeling refreshed after lunch, I decided to have a further little ‘go’ at the occasional mahogany table which I restored yesterday. There was still the faintest sign of a circular ring so I attacked this with a kettle of boiling water, a tube of toothpaste, some stain, some furniture polish and a hairdryer in various combinations. To my dismay, but not complete surprise, I succeeded in dispersing the original stain somewhat but to a wider area of the table so being somewhat perfectionist, I had a an imperfect renovation now made somewhat worse. However, I did various rubbings way of the stain I had used and the furniture polish and then reverted to a warmed dishcloth with quite a wide weave and a drying off on paper towel. It now did not look too bad so I put it back into place, complete with a little coaster mat in each corner and table lamp the design of which is a near perfect match with the coasters. Once I had got everything back into place, to my amazement I could scarcely tell in which corner I had been trying to effect improvements. Perhaps the hairdryer had faciliated the removal of some stain inducing water vapour from underneath the varnish but in any case I now have a table which is completely ‘fit for purpose’ which does not look evidently damaged as was the case when it was purchased and which is now renovated to my satisfaction. I think I draw three morals from this little saga. The first of these is undoubtedly to ‘quit whilst you are ahead’ and know when to stop improving things. The second is not to try to be too perfectionist in one’s little activities but try and find a sweet spot between the ‘this will do’ point and the point where the repair is as good as it can be. The third point is that in any handicraft or do-it-yourself activities, one can be beset by a host of misfortunes (when things do not go quite right) and fortunes (when things, by chance, turn out just right and sometimes better than anticipated)

There are two big political stories today which the Tory party are desperately trying to link together. The Committee on Privileges is the House of Commons committee investigating Boris Johnson for misleading the House of Commons over the illegal drinks parties held at the height of the pandemic in Downing Street. Today the committee has published its initial report, saying the Commons may have been misled multiple times. For his part,Boris Johnson has taken to the airways claiming that the interim report vindicates his account that he was not informed of the illegality of any social gatherings. The second story is the fact that the senior civil servant who investigated and then reported upon ‘partygate’ (Sue Grey) has now been appointed by Keir Starmer as his ‘Chief of Staff’ – an enormously powerful role if and when the Labour party forms the next government. Some members of the Tory and in particlar Nadine Dorries, an ecstatic Boris Johnson supporter, is arguing that Sue Grey was evidently a closet Labour party supporter, was not therefore impartial and therefore the whole enquiry which led to the resignation of Boris Johnson was in effect a stitch up. Most of the informed comment is that these two events are not connected but the timing of the two events within 24 hours of each other is unfortunate. Boris Johnson will give oral evidence in about three weeks time and they wil have to determine whether Johnson knowingly misled Parliment. ‘Knowingly’ wil be hard to prove – and does the Committee on Privileges use the criteria of ‘balance of probabilities’ or ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ Even if the Committee does find him ‘guilty’ the sanction imposed will be interesting – beyond a suspension of two weeks or so, then Johnson could be subject to recall by his own constituency association where he does not have a huge majority in any case.

Thursday is my shopping day so I presented myself bright and early at the doors of the supermarket, which opened a minute or so early for a change. Then I got home and got the shopping unpacked and the breakfast cooked. Meg and I felt like a little toddle out rather than a full scale walk in the park and I had a little venture in mind. Meg came with me and fortunately, I managed to get parked fairly near to the shop that I wished to visit. This was the Age Concern furniture shop on the Bromsgrove High Street where there was a little piece that I have been wondering about. This was a delightful little mahogany side table but you could see why it had not been sold and was constantly rejected by people who walked past it. This was because in one corner there were was a fairly bad ‘white ring’ stain evidently caused by a hot cup of some kind and there were some very minor little scratches on the top as well. Nonetheless, I had a word with the furniture manager and I pointed out that she had it in stock for weeks and that it might be possible (or it might not) to alleviate the damage to it. We agreed a 30% reduction so I bought the table for £3.50 (the price of a cup of coffee, which is my unit of currency these days) and then, after lunch, I set to work giving it a general clean up and tackling the damage. At first, I tried my simple stain cover which I have used successfully in the past but this was not sufficient for the job, which was no surprise. So I went on the web to see that others had suggested. Apart from the hairdryer suggestion which I rejected there were two other home-made remedies. The first of these was to use a vinegar and olive oil mixture to rub into the stain but this was pretty ineffective. But then I tried another solution which was to try rubbing with toothpaste and a rag dipped in boiling water. After an appropriate amount of elbow grease, I managed to reduce the bad stain by some 80-90% which I think is about the best that can be achieved. I gave the finished product another slight coating of stain and followed it up with a bit of polishing up using a wet wipe designed for cleaning windows. This actually works by spreading out the stain to a beautiful fine and glossy patina so now was the time to get the table into position in the corner of the room lit by a small table lamp. I had a spare set of quite elegant coasters with a floral design that are a pretty good match for the lampshade so all in all I am quite pleased with my afternoon’s work and the effect I have been trying to achieve.

This afternoon there have beem several stories competing for attention on the airways, not least the discovery of the dead child born to the couple who have been avoiding the attention of the police for the last few weeks. The police have also indicated that the baby might have been dead for several weeks. But at last Boris Johnson has given his reaction to the deal that Rishi Sunak has negotiated and this has presented Johnson with a bit of a dilemma. In view of the favourable reaction of many Tory MPs and the fact that the DUP (Unionists in Northern Ireland) are still considering their position, then outright opposition is likely to leave Boris Jhnson out on a limb. Instead, he has given a rather nuanced response in which he is simultaneously arguing that ‘we have to hope’ that the deal is successful. On the other hand, he has indicated that he himself could not bring himself to vote for the bill and would find it very difficult to back it, not least because the bill of which he was the author to unilaterally suspend part of the NI Protocol will now have to bite the dust. In all probability, Johnson desperately wanted the Sunak initiative to fail and its very relative success is a constant reminder to him that Sunak had achieved with the EU a deal which had eluded both him and Teresa May. Some commentators are making the point that this refusal to back the bill presents Rishi Snak with a dilemma – does he withdraw the whip from Johnson which,in effect, expels him from the parliamentary party? There are some voices that are saying that Johnson has been well and truly ‘put in his box’ which is probaby a very accurate assessment of his position. The view in the Twittersphere is that Johnson is ‘toast’ and good riddance but of course the contributers to Twitter are hardly a reresentative sample. Again, this story may develop as the days unfold.

The final report into the Manchester Arena bombings some five and a half years ago has been published today and whilst criticism of our security services is rare, it does look as though MI5 have really taken their eye off the ball in this instance and the whole bombing episode should have been anticipated and averted.