Today dawned, and continued, as the most beautiful and sunny of spring days. Both in our gardens, and the public streets and naturally the parks, flowering trees such as flowering cherry are in full bloom and one really has the feeling that spring has arrived. Thursday is my supermarket shopping day so once this was all done and I was safely back in the house by 9.00, all that remained was to cook the breakfast and unpack the shopping. Meg and I thought that we would take a decision what to do this morning once we were up and breakfasted. We could have gone to the park on a beautiful spring day like today but instead opted for a trip out to Droitwich which is a weekly favourite of ours. Here we have our cappuchino and toasted teacake which is our normal fare and then popped next door into the charity shop whch is a regular haunt of ours. We bought quite a stylish top for Meg in an interestng shade of blue and I also acquired a shirt in my size. I have the impression that prices are creeping up quite a lot, even in the charity shops these days or perhaps it is just the more stylish of items that carry a higher price tag. The we popped into a stationery shop and bought a little hard backed notebook that I need for some record keeping purchases. No visit would be complete without a visit to Wilko where I made a beeline for the stationery department to replenish supplies. Then it was case of getting home and preparing our lunch of quiche and vegetables. At 2.35 in the afternoon, I was poised over my computer making a bid on eBay for a collection of 25 audio books. These were not any old books but some very interesting audio books spanning the worlds of both politics and history. The starting bid was £10.00 and there was one bid in the system. I waited until there was a minute to go in the auction, made my top price £25.50 but was outbid. I was encouraged to raise my bid to £28 but I was outbid at the end by a bid of £29.00 – who knows what the other bidder’s top price actually was. To be honest, I am not sure that Meg would take to the audio books for whose benefit I was making the bid but in the nature of these eBay auctions you win some and you lose some.

One newsworthy item today has been the test firing of the worlds biggest rocket, courtesy of Elon Musk’s SpaceX operation. This flew for about 4 minutes before blowing up. However, only the Americans could have labelled such an event a RUD, which acronym stands for a ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’. There was something rather bizarre absout seeing a huge meeting space full of rocket technicians actually cheering when the whole contraption blew up. The explanation is that they regarded success as getting the rocket itself off the ground but you would not normally expect to witness a huge crowd of technicians actually cheering when their creation blew up in front of their eyes.

We have been holding ourselves in readiness all day today as the report on the alleged bullying behaviour of Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minsister, was delivered to Rishi Sunak this morning. This report has taken months to compile and follows eight specific complaints from a score of civil servants across three ministries who have all attested to Raab’s bullying behaviour. Initially, we were told that the Prime Minister, having received the quite voluminous report, would announce a decision later on today. But as the afternoon wore on, Downing Street announced that no decision would be taken today so we will have to wait until tomorrow, at the earliest. Tonight the Guardian is reporting that the report is ‘searing’ and ‘stinging’ but this must be conjecture on the Guardian’s part unless there is a mole within Downing Street. The ‘dilemma’ facing Rishi Sunak is as follows. If there is a single damning sentence, then it would have been easy to ask for an immediate resignation. In the absence of this, the Prime Minister will be anxious not to antagonise the right wing of the Tory party or to dispense with the Deputy Prime Minister who has been one of his most vociferous of cheerleaders. On the other hand, he hardly has the option to do nothing given the volume and variety of complaints and his statement when made Prime Minister that he was going to put integrity at the heart of government. I predict a massive fudge is being constructed. I suspect that Sunak will relieve Raab of the Deputy Prime Ministership but not appoint a successor into the role. This might be deemed a ‘punishment’ but Sunak will still keep him in government and even in his present position – until the next reshuffle at least. This ‘fudge’ will serve to keep the disparate parts of the Tory party from fighting each other but the opposition parties will be able to claim, with a degree of justification, that Rishi Sunak is weak, indecisive and a ditherer. Of course all of this is playing out as the local elections on 4th May are looming larger.

Today was an interesting day, what with one thing or another. Last night, I went on the web to ascertain what services might be available locally to help Meg cope with her memory loss disability and I discovered a Day Centre that was relatively close by. So we decided that after breakfast, we would go in search of the centre and see what they had to offer. So having picked up our newspaper, I went in search of the facility which ominously had the number 6B as part of its address. According to Google, it is very near the Stroke Association centre in Bromsgrove and then, together with Meg, went in search of the facility. After a certain degree of roaming about, we did not find it and decided to cut our losses and come home. I did have a telephone number and did manage to phone them but given the scale of charges per hour, came to the conclusion that this was anything but a ‘not-for-profit’ foundation and, reading between the lines after the conversation that I had, I am not at all sure it will provide the type of help and support that I am seeking. I have some other ‘irons in the fire’ as well, so will see if these bear fruit. Incidentally, I have stopped some of Meg’s medication and she seems to be better off without it so it does make one wonder! When we got home, Meg and I had some elevenses watching PMQ (Prime Ministers Questions) which was the usual knockabout stuff. Why I continue to watch it, I don’t know as the ‘attack lines’ are all researched, prepared and rehearsed beforehand and hardly anything of real interest emerges. But I was conscious of the fact that I badly wanted to get the lawns cut as they were already two days overdue. This might not sound very bad but at this time of year, grass practically shoots out of the ground so I was determined to get the job done today whilst the weather was relatively fine. So, in short, I got the lawns done at the cost of just a slightly delayed lunch and was mighty pleased with myself that I had got this job fitted in as I wanted and needed.

The court case between Fox News and Dominion (voting machine manufacturer) very, very nearly cane to court. Dominion had put in a claim for $1.6bn and seemed to determined to have their day in court to salvage their reputation. Fox News, for their part, admitted to the judge that they were telling lies but relied upon the very flimsy case that they were only exercising their rights to ‘free speech’ and they were reporting a story that was widely believed (whether it was true or not) After the jurors were sworn in and Dominion were just about to produce their first prosecution witness (no less than Rupert Murdoch himself, the owner of Fox News but who himself believed that Trump was lying through his teeth). Fox has agreed to pay Dominion $787.5m (£634m) which is about one half of what was claimed. While the payout is large, it means Fox avoids what was billed by some as the defamation trial of the century. However, the network faces a second, similar lawsuit from another election technology firm, Smartmatic. The settlement means that Fox and Dominion can now put the case behind them with both firms being able to claim victory. But the analysis of why Fox settled is fascinating. It seems that Fox thouught that it would a lot of its audience to even more extreme right wing media who were even more unhinged than Fox themselves. Frightened of losing a large slice of their potential audience, Fox dispensed with ‘the facts’ (as they themselves knew them) and pandered to the prejudices of the extreme Trump supporters which is an extraordinary state of affairs for an organisation that is supposedly in the business of reporting news, not peddling propaganda. One now wonders what the impact will be when the other technology firm – Smartmatic – piles into action.

Meg and I are looking forward to our trip out on Friday to meet with offspring of cousins (are they cousins as well?) In the meanwhile, we are meant to be going to Winchester on Tuesday next week and have already bought train tickets. But the train company have already informed us that the advertised train is not now going to stop at Birmingham International and has offered us a refund. We have a bit of a dilemma which is whether to get other tickets which might be a bit of a stretch given Meg’s frail state of health. On the other hand, we might cancel the trip altogether although this would be a great shame not to see long cherished friends after a year. A third possibility is that I go on my own in the car to save time (paradoxically) as I am in control of my own arrival and departure times. I am still evaluating my options in all of this and may make up my mind tomorrow to see if Meg has improved somewhat as she seems to have done today. And just as a postscript, I received a wonderful little comment on last night’s blog from an ex-student of mine who had stumbled across this blog somehow – but remembers us drinking beer together on a student trip to Brussels about 18-20 years ago now.

Tuesday morning is always a day to which we look forward because it is the day when we normally meet up with friends in the Waitrose coffee bar. The day dawned bright and clear, although a trifle cold, but it was enough to lift the spirits after the gloom of yesterday. Sure enough, there was quite a gathering of the clans as there were three of our pre-pandemic friends gathered together in Waitrose together with Meg and myself. I think it is the case that when we gather it is always quite an uproarious occasion because I am generally telling a story or anecdote which is more true than untrue. Today I told a story that was essentially correct but I got some of the details badly wrong. It concerns a conversation with Madame De Gaulle whose command of English was rudimentary. I thought that the whole point of the story came in a BBC interview kept very much under wraps and only revealed on special occasions such as comical outclips played at Christmastime for example. But this is the full story with details I did not know but in many ways it makes it even funnier. I got the whole story from an account of it accessible via Google and here it is.

The Queen’s quick-witted sense of humour once saved her from a potentially awkward situation with an important guest, a royal author revealed. According to Adam Helliker, Her Majesty, 93, was hosting Charles de Gaulle – the former French president – and his wife Madame Yvonne De Gaulle at Buckingham Palace back in April 1960 when the cheeky quip was made. A guest asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent. With great elaboration (as she didn’t speak much English) she replied: ‘A penis.’ An awkward silence ensued for some time, until the Queen herself came to the rescue, and she said with a broad grin: ‘Ah, happiness.’

Our little group do not just meet for a coffee but we supply a little mutual support to each other. Three of us have partners suffering from dementia, two at home and one in residential care. We exchange little stories and hopefully, some helpful tips with each other but in the main we just enjoy a good laugh with each other. I think we are all agreed that the point in the day when we require most help is late in the day, getting our respective partners to bed and this is precisely the point at which we have to manage on our own and just get on with it. Occasionally some of us meet up on a Friday as well as a Tuesday so that is another day to which to look forward. We then had to do a bit of shopping from the supermarket shelves and then race home so that I could get ready for my Pilates class. It was still a beautiful day in which to walk down and to walk back to town and my Pilates class went well. Then after lunch, as the weather was fine, I intended to get the lawns mowed but it was not to be. Meg had another of her little falls and I found her on the kitchen floor after I had taken our post-prandial coffees into our lounge. After I had hoisted Meg up from the floor (not easy these days as I am a but worried about putting my back out which would be all too easy), I judged that I had better not leave her whilst I did this outside job so I shall just have to squeeze it in at some other time – perhaps tomorrow morning when Meg might be somewhat more stable.

There is a massive political scandal of sorts just waiting in the wings. According to Sky News, hundreds of thousands of people could be denied their right to vote unless new compulsory voter ID rules are delayed, a former Conservative cabinet minister has warned. Raising the alarm about the impact of forcing voters to produce ID in England for the first time at May’s local elections, Tory grandee David Davis urged the government to pause, or risk disenfranchising the poor and elderly. The former cabinet minister told Sky News that the uptake of free photo ID among those who do not already have one – such as a driver’s licence, a blue badge or a passport – was worryingly low. The government’s own data shows just over 48,000 people have registered online in the past two months, compared to estimates of between 925,000 and 3.5 million people without existing ID. ‘The system they put in place to deal with the problem of those with no ID has not worked,’ he said. The government is arguing that photo ID will have to be produced in the local elections due to take place in early May. But this is a ‘solution’ to a problem that does not exist because the amount of fraud associated with ‘personnation’ is incredibly low – at the rate of about 1 or 2 people in each election. But the government has been told repeatedly that there will be a massive detrimental effect upon those who do not have, and have not needed to have, photo ID such as some of the elderly, the poor, the disabled, ethnic minorites and the like. In short, this is rather like the trick that the Republicans in the US used to suppress the effect of the black vote and to swing things their way in tight elections.

Monday dawned as rather a dreary and gloomy day. We were promised a little bit of sunshine but none actually materialised and it stayed gloomy and threatening all day. Meg and I were in two minds what to do after we had breakfasted but eventually, we opted for a walk along Bromsgrove High Street which does not sound terribly exciting. We made our way to the cobblers in Bromgrove who install new batteries into watches and even give a warranty with them. We had a couple of watches, one of my son’s and one of my own, which have needed a new battery in for a week or so now so I was pleased to take this opportunity to get this done. Whilst we were on the road, we passed a cosmetics and toiletries shop and popped in for a few supplies. As our watch batteries were going to take a few minutes to fit, we were encouraged to wander up and down the High Street for a few minutes which we did, taking in some of the Bromsgrove generous collection of charity shops en route. This turned out to be quite productive because we managed to buy a couple of skirts for Meg of a plainish design, which are needed because we have no end of flowery tops to go with them. Whilst we were at it, we bought a new shirt for myself of a good make so that has gone into the wash ready to be worn in a day or so. When we eventually got home, we knew that we were due for a bit of a rush round because our chiropodist was arriving at 1.30 so we had some late elevenses and did some vegetable preparation so that the minute our feet were done, we could press on with our lunch. All of this worked out to plan and then we decided, in view of the weather, that there was no way I felt inclined to go mowing this afternoon. So we had a quietish afternoon and I got Meg settled down in our music room where they were playing some soothing Beethoven piano music whilst I got busy doing a little repair job. Then I got Meg to try on her new skirts and worked out what was going to be our evening viewing schedule.

A fascinating court case is due to be heard in Delaware, USA tomorrow- Fox News vs. Dominion Voting Machines might not sound the most exciting of court cases but the implications of this case cannot be overstated for the Trump case. Fox News had claimed that voting machines manufactured by Dominion containd an algorithm that systematically turned votes for Donald Trump into votes for Joe Biden during the last presidential election in 2020. Fox News just say that they were reporting ‘a story’ but Dominion, who are suing for $1.6bn, say they have incriminating emails which show some of the leading, naturally right wing, anchor men knew the story to be false but reported it gleefully anyway. The case should have been heard today but has been delayed for a day, presumably as the lawyers are fighting out over an out-of-court settlement. If the Dominion case is basically proved, then this proves that ‘The Big Lie’ (that Joe Biden actually lost the election and that Donald Trump won it) is itself the big lie. If Fox News were to win the case, then this might actually prove Trump correct and the consequence for his reselection are horrendous. If the lawyers come to an out-of-court settlement, then perhaps we shall never know wherein the truth lies as each side will no doubt ‘spin’ the lawyers conclusions to put themselves in the best light and we shall never know whether Fox News is sanctioned. The case has tremendous implications for the burgeoning right wing media outlets in the US who have repeated Donald Trump’s claims ‘ad nauseam’ One is reminded of Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist, whose dictum was ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak is himself under investigation by the parliamentary authorities for not being sufficiently frank over his wife’s shareholding in a childcare firm that benefitted from announcements in the recent budget. Before a Select Committee of MPs, Sunak himself said that he had made all of the necessary declarations in the Director of Ministerial Interests (I think it is called) but this has not been published for more than a year now so how are journalists and MPs meant to check whther Sunak was correct or not? Naturally, the Labour Party are crying ‘Tory sleaze’. This may, or may not, be the case but the point is that none of us in a parliamentary democracy will never know unless these directories of ministerial interests are accurate, comprehensive and then published. It is possible that Rishi Sunak is ‘squeaky clean’ but in a couple who are so wealthy and with so many shareholdings in diverse companies, perhaps it might be the case that there are multiple examples of shareholdings that can be shown to profit from government business. Perhaps we have never had a Prime Minister and his wife who are so incredibly wealthy that a case like this has not seen the light of day before.

It was a bit of a indeterminate day today after the beautiful clear skies and warm sunshine of yesterday. We did not really pay too much attention to the weather as we knew that, after the Laura Kuenssberg politics show, we would go down and meet up again with our University of Birmingham friend. It feels as though this is going to be a regular Sunday morning meeting but we always seem to have so much to talk about. We got home relatively early and started to think about lunch as we had some ham slowly cooking itself in the slow cooker. This was cooked to perfection, as it nearly always does, and we prepared some carrot (sliced into little thin batons and then after parboiling finished off with some oil and honey) We complemented this with some broccoli and had a very tasty meal, enhanced by a little honey mustard which I had bought some time ago but not had the opportunity to use. On consulting my mobile, I discovered two messages, both of which were pleasant to receive. The first one of these was the daughter of Meg’s cousin who we are going to have lunch with in Cheltenham next Friday. We are to be joined by her sister and husband who are journeying over from Derby so we are going to have, in effect, a miniature little family reunion and to repeat again, we have a lot of news to impart and to receive from other family members. The second message was from the daughter of the couple that we met in the club activity organised by Herefordshire and Age Concern during the week and whom we had invited around for a spot of afternoon tea. We have now agreed a date for just over a week’s time and this will be another engagement to which we can look forward. The daughter of the couple we have not met, as yet, but already we have quite a lot in common as she has spent quite a lot of her life both in Spain and also in Mexico. I am anticipating that we will spent a little of the time talking in Spanish with each other but I am sure mine will be somewhat rusty but I am hoping that bits of it will flood back all being well.

This afternoon, we thought we would be entertained by Leicester Tigers vs. Exeter Chiefs in a rugby cup match. For the first twenty minutes or so, they seemed very evenly matched and I thought that Exeter was playing the more adventurous rugby. But Leicester Tigers played incredibly good opportunistic rugby, capitalising on any Exeter handling errors or perceived weakneses. Eventually, Leicester assumed an incredible lead and won the match 62-19. What rather took the steam out of the match was that an Exeter player was issued a yellow card for an intentional knock-on. Later on in the match, in attempting to stop Ashton score a try for Leicester Tigers, he made a dive to prevent an Ashton try but only succeeded in making Ashton’s toe touch the line. This was adjudged to eventually be awarded a penalty try but the Exeter player was then awarded a second yellow, which then became a red and he was sent off for the rest of the match. The referee was applying the letter of the law correctly but to be awarded a red card for two unrelated technical offences might be thought of as being unduly harsh. An extraordinary and very amusing incident occurred towards the end of this rugby match. Chris Ashton of Leicester Tigers scored a hat-trick of tries and this made him one of a select few to have scored 100 tries in the course of his career. Upon scoring the try, he leapt over the barrier at the end of the pitch, seated himself in an empy seat on the front row and then applauded (his own try) by joining in the clapping and applause of the rest of the supporters. When Meg and I lived in Leicester, we never attended a Tiger’s match but we knew that they had a very strong and loyal local following. I arranged for a Spanish PhD student to have a term at De Montfort University because it is part of the ‘training’ progrm for a Spanish PhD that you spend a period of time studyig in a non-Spanish university. The student who came over was a very bright (and good looking) young man and whilst informing him about life in Leicester I said that he ought to go along to a Leicester Tiger’s match to experience a bit of the local culture. Although knowing nothing abour Rugby, he read up on the rules and certainly went to at least one match. But the photo that he sent to me showed him with two fellow female students, one blonde and the other brunette who he had persuaded to accompany him to the match. I sent the photo onto his supervisor (one of our own ex-students and a close family friend) showing her what happened to young Spanish PhD students when they meant to be hard at work in their ‘foreign’ university. I must say, in passing, that the student really enjoyed his stay in Leicester and derived lot of benefit from it, so I was pleased to have a hand in arranging it all.

We awoke to a beautiful and bright day and it looks as though a little spell of fine weather has arrived at last. After we had got ourselves up, showered and breakfasted, we made up a flask of coffee and prepared for a walk in the park. We collected our Saturday edition of ‘The Times‘ and then made our way to the park where there was a slightly cooling wind but nothing to trouble us. When we got to the park, there seemed to be quite a preponderance of really young chidren out on their tricycles. This is the last week of the Easter holidays so I imagine that families are getting a bit of oudoor relaxation time now that the weather has turned a bit more favourable. We lunched on quiche plus some spring greens which I must admit I really enjoyed as they were so fresh. We knew that it was the much anticipated England-Wales Womens International Rugby being broadcast from 2.15 so we determined to get washed up and ready to watch the match and indeed we were ready on time. The match itself proved to be a little of an anticlimax. The Welsh started really well, got three points on the board and were truly ferocious ‘in the breakdown’ But then the English gradually started to wear the Welsh team down and eventually ran in nine tries and beat the Welsh 59-3. Some of the English tries exhibited some brillint runs and performances whilst others just showed the raw power of the English pack. So one finished off feeling a little sorry for the Welsh pack who started of so well but then faded so badly. At one stage, towards the very end of the match, the English team had two players off the pitch as they were ‘yellow carded’ for incidents when a shoulder came into contact with the head of an opposing player but the team of 13 still managed to score a try. Later on today, it is the Grand National which spectacle I generally watch but not this year as the start is very near the time at which we leave for church on a Saturday afternoon. We may, though, be able to pick up a replay of it later if the mood takes us.

On our way to church, we traverse along what is a ‘de facto’ ringroad around the town and every time we travel along the road, we cannot fail to notice a huge new development which is in the process of being built. What used to be a green hillside upon which sheep grazed has now been transormed into a huge, muddy plot upon which they are building nearly 400 houses. If each house has an average of 2 cars and they are each 3 metres of length (or roadspace), then this new development would generate approximtely 2.4 kilometres of cars if they were parked end to end – which is approximately the distance from the new development down to the centre of town and then back again. I think it is quite within the realms of possibility that our town becomes the first in the country to be completely and utterly gridlocked so that each morning, nobody will travel anywhere (unless they decide to walk). I read a very interesting letter in ‘The Times‘ the other day from a local councillor, or it might have been a planning official, who argued that in his experience people were not opposed to new housing. But they were opposed to new housing without the requisite infrastructure of improved roads, footpaths, public transport facilities, schools, doctor’s surgeries, local shops, local community facilities and so on. The planning mode in the UK is that the housing comes first and any other infrastructure a very inadequate second place, if it ever becomes provided at all. I think that in Spain I have seen the reverse process in which local authorities, probably at the regional level, have provided roads, shops and other infrastructure which has been left unused as the building of new housing units has been left to the private sector which often bankrupted itself. In the case of the new development down the road from us, I sometimes wonder as well how much of the newly built housing will actually serve the existing residents of Bromsgrove and how much will be bought by people whose connection with the borough is tenuous.

I think there is now really serious concern that the NHS disputes may start to escalate. The possibility is being raised of ‘cordinated action’ in which both nurses and junior doctors, plus other ancillary staff, may all decide to strike at the same time. The problem is that both sides are now so deeply entrenched. The government regards anything in the region of 30% as being completely unaffordable, whereas the staff have witnessed real term wage cuts for most of the past decade and really feel that they are prepared to tolerate no more. Of course, we have elections looming at the end of the first week in May and possibly a settlement is not possible until the elections have been held and the appropriate lessons drawn. Public opinion may well work against the strikers if it is evident that several deaths are directly attributable to the dispute.

Today has been a very interesting day, alhough it started off dull and gloomy. It was the day when our domestic help calls around and she brought with her a specialist carpet spot cleaner which proved very useful after Meg had a little fall but a cup of coffee was sent flying everywhere. This little unit proved so good that, after a demonstration, I may even feel tempted to purchase one for ourselves in the fullness of time. After we had breakfasted, we knew that we would probably meet up with some of our friends and acquaintances in the Waitrose coffee lounge and so it proved. We met up with our University of Birmingham friend plus another two of our pre-pandemic friends and a jolly time was had by all. I recounted our experiences at the club the other day when we were treated to the renditions of some traditional early 1960’s songs by members of a ukelele band. I even sang (softly) the words of ‘The foggy, foggy Dew’ and one of my friends had heard it before, one denied all knowledge of it and the third was a bit unsure. I have Googled the words (although, confusingly, there are several versions) but I have downloaded the version that most closely accords to my own memory of the ditty so that when I render it next time (if there be a next time), I shall have memorised the words correctly.

This afternoon, I reviewed some of my WhatsApp messages and received a message which is always nice to receive. It was from the daughter of the couple we meet on Wednesday who has spent some of her life in Spain and some in Mexico and seems to try to get back to Hispanic cultures whenever she can. To cut a long story short, Meg and I have issued an invitation to her and her parents to pop around for an afternoon cup of tea and we are finalising some diary dates for this. When we do meet, I am sure it will be fascinating for us to exchange our reminisciences of our experiences of the two Hispanic countries we have in common (Spain itself and Mexico) and we may be able to try out some of our, by now, very rusty Spanish as well. We also sent a quick WhatsApp message to Meg’s cousin in Cheltenham just to confirm that we are still on track for our lunch date next Friday, to which we are looking forward as there is so much news to catch up on when we do meet.

Although today is wet and windy, there is every indication that the weather is going to improve quite markedly in the few days ahead. I am quite keen to get out into the garden and to start what I call my spring maintenance jobs. I know from bitter experience over the years that you more you get the garden basically shipshape during these early growing periods, it saves a lot of time and effort subsequently. I like to work on what I call ‘the gullies’ but basically it means that every border to each flower bed is maintained by cutting the grass short and ensuring that any adjacent and accessible weeds are well and truly dealt with. Over the years, I have evolved a technique to try to ensure that I do not engage in too much bending which can wreak havoc with one’s back. Rather, I lay semi-sideways so I can reach anything within about a two metre radius and thus work my way down the whole length of the garden. As with my other jobs of this nature, some sections always require a great deal of work whereas others allow me to proceed at a much faster pace. This year, though, instead of trying to do the whole of the back garden in a couple of days, I am going to confine myself to little increments of about 20-30 minutes at a time. We used to have a regular gardener to do some of the heavier pruning but in mid-Autumn of last year he was taken quite seriously ill and has to abandon his gardening activities.

There is some quite mixed news on the nurses and ancillary NHS workers in their pay dispute with the government. Members of the Royal College of Nursing are to go on strike again after they voted against the latest government pay offer. This result comes despite a recommendation from union leaders that they accept it and means there will be a round-the-clock 48-hour strike – without exemptions – from 8pm on 30 April to 8pm on 2 May. Meanwhile, members of Unison voted to accept the government’s latest pay deal. As of now, it is a little difficult to predict whether there will be a degree of solidarity to maintain the strike or whether there actually be a split with some going into work and others supporting the strike. Any split on the side of the workers actually plays into the hands of the government in this dispute and, as with doctors whose strike is due to end at 7.00am tomorrow morning, the degree to which public opinion remains supportive of the NHS workers will be a critical factor.

Today being a Thursday, I get up early to get some money out of an ATM and then get to the supermarket about one minute before it opens. This morning, all went to plan and I did a normal weekly shop-up, frustrated only by the fact that one or two of the regular items that I buy each week seem to be missing from the shelves. As I am in that particular part of town, I swing by the newspaper shop to collect my copy of The Times before arriving home to unpack the shopping and then cook breakfast. It was a beautiful fine day but rather windy as the weather forecasters had pre-warned us but we thought we would make the best of the morning with a trip to Droitwich, only seven miles down the road. We had our elevenses in our favourite coffee shop and then went next door to the cancer charity shop where we bought a couple of plain skirts for Meg. Then it was quick whizz through Wilko, our favourite hardware store, buying some grass seed which I think I can utilise in the next week or so. The communal grassed area which I mow once a week has a patch damaged a bit by the hot sun of last summer because there seem to be more weeds than grass plants so if I treat it quickly when the growing season is intense, this may help to alleviate the damage. After that we reparked he car, had a whizz around another charity shop where there was nothing that took our fancy and then popped in to Waitrose to buy some hosiery for Meg that she particularly likes. After that, it was a case of getting home and getting a curry cooked which used to be a regular dish of ours from our student days but one we make a little less frequently nowadays.

The death has been announced of Mary Quant, the iconic fashion designer of the 1960’s. Why this has a particular significance for us is that for our 50th wedding anniversary, I managed to digitise all of our (black-and-white) wedding photographs and I have these on my mobile phone. Quite often, when the occasion arises, I tell whoever is interested that Meg wore a ‘Mary Quant’ style wedding dress. Bur the full story is this. Meg’s mother was an excellent seamstress and before her marriage had her own shop. In preparation for our wedding, Meg sketched out a design which owed a lot to Mary Quant and then she and her mother bought the materials and Meg’s mother made it up. So the story is that Meg wore a Mary Quant style dress, although not one one actually designed by her but with the passage of time since then, the uninformed viewer of the photo would not be able to tell the difference. For the record, the wedding dress was worn just above the knee. It is being said today that Mary Quant ‘invented’ the miniskirt but this is not strictly true. Mary Quant popularised the miniskirt and helped to make it accessible to all and the consensus view today is that Mary Quant’s influence upon the UK fashion scene is hard to over-estimate and her influence lives on.

The Joe Biden visit to Ireland is evidently dominating the media at the moment. The US President has addressed a joint session of the Irish parliament – the first US president to do so since 1995, before the Good Friday Agreement was signed. However, despite the fact that all of the leaders of all of the political parties both north and south of the border were invited to the session, the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson chose to absent himself. The ‘optics’ of this look terrible as it rather reminds one of a child in a temper tantum who takes away his bat and ball and refuses to participate in a game if he cannot get his own way. The fact is that the Northern Irish Assembly has failed to operate for a year because the DUP will not join the power sharing executive which was one of the key provisions of the Good Friday Agreement. There is an ‘elephant in the room’ here because despite all of the diputes over the DUP not liking the Brexit trade agreements as renegotiated by Rishi Sunak, it is fairly obvious to all and sundry why the DUP is failing to cooperate. This is because the Nationalist vote now exeeds the Unionist vote in Northern Ireland which means that the first minister would be the leader of the Nationalist party, Sinn Fein. The fact that the DUP would have to play ‘second fiddle’ to Sinn Fein and would not automatically supply the First Minister means that Unionist domination of Northern Irish politics is well and truly over – and this fact is so unpalatable that it cannot be countenanced. I have a feeling that the DUP will never join the power sharing executive again until after fresh elections after which support for them may have dwindled even further.

There is the slightest glimmer of hope in the junior hospital doctors dispute this evening. It may be that that doctors will not hold fast to a pay claim of 35% and it looks as though ACAS (The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration service) may now be allowed a role in the dispute but I have a feeling there is a long way to go yet.

We knew that today was going to be quite a busy day so we got ourselves up and breakfasted with plenty of time to spare. The weather seemed fairly bright and sunny this morning but we knew from the weather forecast that we should expect some quite high winds today, as well as blustery squalls. When in 1973, we moved house in Wigston, Leicestershire there was a little name plaque on the front gate post which said ‘Finstall’. This was a mystery to us but one of our new neighbours informed us that she thought it was a little village in Worcestershire. Now that we have been settled in Worcestershire for so long, we know that Finstall is a village and civil parish in the Bromsgrove District of Worcestershire with a population of 663. To all intents and purposes, as Finstall is contiguous with Bromsgrove, it can almost be thought of as a district of Bromsgrove. We have never had occasion to visit Finstall as such before today but we aimed to attend an event in the village hall organised by Herefordshire and Worcestershire Age UK for those with memory difficulties and their carers. One of our Waitrose friends had told us about this ‘club’ and, upon consulting the web, we discovered that the club held an event every second Wednesday of the month so we decided to give it a try to see what was in store. We sat ourselves down at a table with two other couples and engaged in conversation wih them. It transpired that the lady who was opposite to us was actually born in Manchester, so this provided one avenue of communication between us as Meg and I met at Manchester University, our son was born in the local hospital there and my first teaching job was at a College pof Education in Manchester. But as our conversation developed, we found out that we were both worshippers at the same church (although typically at different services) and thus we had some contacts in common. Finally, the couple had travelled extensively in Mexico where our son had undertakn a year’s scholarship before he attended a university in the UK. When one thinks about it, this was an exraordinary set of coincidences (co-religionists, very familiar with a Northern town in which we had both lived and with an intimate knowledge of Mexico). The morning was structured around a Ukelele band which formed the backing group for a singalong of popular songs of the late 1950’s and 1960’s – I am thinking here of Connie Francis, John Denver and the like and we happened to know the majority of songs that were played. So we had quite a jolly sing-along washed down with tea and biscuits and the two hours allocated to the club meeting passed by very rapidly. In a month’s time, the theme is going to be ‘Photographs of Old Bromsgrove’ which I am sure is going to be a lot more meaningful to most of the participants rather than directly to Meg and myself but I am sure it will prove interesting nonetheless and Meg and I will certainly attend.

Meg and I dined on fishcakes which provided a fairly quick lunch for us with the minimum of preparation because our hairdresser was due to call around this afternoon. Our hairdresser was almost half an hour late but this in itself is not unusual and we still had to get ourselves ready in time. Soon it was time for the Skype call that we had pre-organised wih one of our Hampshire friends and so for about an hour and a half we enjoyed a wonderful session in which the time sped by. We have got quite a lot to say to each other, not to mention mutual support, as both of our wives are needing support with their various conditions. Hopefully, we shall actually see each other in the flesh, as it were, because the ‘Old Fogies’ dining club (ex-University of Winchester colleagues who meet up once or twice a year to chew over old times or the present political scene). Meg and I have just purchased our train tickets because we rather like ‘the train to take the strain’ when we engage on these litttle ventures. Instead of going to a suburban railway station and then on into Birmingham NeW Street and then onto the Winchester train we tend to short-circuit the whole process by travelling along the M40/M42 to Birmingham International. This way, we save about an hour and a half at each end of the journey which makes the whole day a bit less tiring. We also have another trip scheduled in about nine day’s time to Cheltenham where we have a lunch date organised with one of Meg’s cousins (or rather, daughter of a cousin). We have a lot to catch up when we do meet up because Meg’s cousins had spent some time in Paris and then also in Seattle before returning to the UK. As well, there are quite a lot of family news to impart to each other as children have establishd their own careers and are now making their own way in the world. I think we last met for our 50th wdding anniversary celebrations but that was five and a half years ago now.

We seemed to have a nice and bright day when we awoke this morning but we still had a nagging doubt that it might not last. After we got ourselves up and breakfasted, we went on the road to collect our newspaper. I asked why our newsagent had been shut for the past two days and he, for his turn, asked why I had not called by to pick up my reserved copy of the newspaper. It transpired that after opening at 8.00am or even earlier on these special days, he closes at 11.00am which I had not realised. So we had actually missed each for the past couple of days. Being a Tuesday but a non-Pilates day as my instructor is taking her Easter break, we popped into Waitrose as is our wont every Tuesday morning. There we bumped into two of our regular Waitrose, Tuesday crowd and spent a jolly half hour or so with them. Then we picked up a few supplies and made for home. By this time, it was midday and the sky was glowering somewhat but not actually raining. The weather app on my phone informed me that there was a 50% chance of rain after 2.00pm so I launched straight into a cutting of the lawns, whilst I could. I am always reminded that the gardening books I used to consult earlier in my youth were full of phrases such as ‘Choose a fine day’ as though one could. In April, particularly, one is always dodging the showers and fitting in jobs like mowing the lawn whilst one can is par for the course. As it turned out, this was a good decision because towards the end of my mowing ‘hour’, some spots of rain started to appear and the rain did, indeed, fall in more copious quantities as the afternoon progressed. So I was very pleased to get this job done as I have several commitments tomorrow. I came in and quickly cooked us a spot of lunch before having a well earned rest.

Last night, we abandoned the TV in order to listen to the last half hour of the ‘Hall of Fame’ on ClassicFM to see which piece of classical music would make it to No. 1 this year. I was pleased that the perennial favourite which is the ‘Lark Ascending’ has been knocked off its No. 1 spot to be replaced by Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. This latter piece is best known for being the background music to the classic black and white movie ‘Brief Encounter’ which had another showing about a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if this might have influenced just enough people to have cast a vote which enabled the Rachmaninoff to triumph once again. I am pleased, in any case, to see this change in fortunes. There was a rather snooty article in ‘The Times’ the tone of which I did not really like but which confirmed my impression that film music is coming more prominent in the ClassicFM charts. Now that I have some good audio installed in our living quarters, Meg and I are listening to the offerings each day and I gain the impression that they have somewhat more relaxing and soothing tracks on in the afternoon and early evening.

The visuals in the newscasts today have been rather dominated by the sight of thousands of young hospital doctors on strike and demonstrating their case to whoever is listening in Trafalgar Square. The junior doctors are saying that their real pay has been squeezed by some 35% in the past ten years whilst the government are saying that a claim of 35% is completely inadmissable. One can say that both sides are essentially correct but how this dispute gets resolved rather depends upon whether each side can successfully appeal to public opinion to sustain their case. So far, public opinion seems pretty firmly on the side of the hospital doctors and the interesting question is how far this might move in the next few weeks as the local elections approach. Whilst local elections do not generally attract very much interest, it feels very different this time around. If the Tories have a particularly bad night, they may lose up to 1,000 local seats which would be a great blow to party morale and to workers on the ground.

The IMF has warned that world economy is entering a ‘perilous phase’ of low economic growth and high financial risk, in its latest set of assessments. The forecasts are some of the most gloomy since prospects for the world ecoomy are published in the spring of each year. The prospects for growth in the UK were the lowest in the whole of the G7 group of advanced industrial economies. When one looks for reasons, the impact of high interest rates and high energy costs are more severe in the UK than amongst other member nations of the G7. Of course, Brexit never seems to be specifically mentioned in this context but it is hard not to draw the conclusion that this must be one of the contributory factors to the low projected UK growth rates. The fact that the IMF is using words like ominous, perilous and ‘significant vulnerabilities’ rather sum it up a great deal of nervousness about the future shape of the world economy.