Saturday, 10th June, 2023 [Day 1181]

This morning dawned as another bright day but Meg and I had no particular commitments on today apart from our weekly visit to church in the early evening. As soon as breakfast was over, I hunted out a little spray container that I found in the garage, filled it with some ‘strong’ vinegar plus a little washing up liquid and decided to utilise it to spray on some little weeds that we have in some of our paving at the front of the house. I was relying upon the theory that the combination of acetic acid and hot sun would dessicate the weeds in pretty short order and then they could be removed in about a day’s time. This seemed to work absolutely as intended because after a few hours, the weed tops were completely brown and my patent treatment works so much faster than the proprietary prodcts that can take days to work. Meg and I collected our newspaper and made for the park where in the hot weather the population was desporting itself in a variety of suntops but this cannot last a great length of time because some thunderstorms are forecast to hit us in the Midlands quite soon now.

Late last night, I rang off a copy of the ‘Largo‘ from Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony which is very well known as ‘Going Home’ but which also looks quite easy to play. Now that I am getting the notes in the score allocated in my mind to the actual keys on the keyboard, I am very gradually improving my keyboard skills but I have only been practising for a day and, at my age, I tell myself it might take a smidgeon longer than if I were sixty five years younger. There was a section on the score that threw me a little because the notes were scored in what I now know as the bass clef rather than the treble clef and I have never sight read from this clef before. But a quick Google search has told me mnenomics by which to remember the staves and intervening spaces (‘Green Buses Drive Fast Always’.and ‘All Cows Eat Grass’) so now I know. This whole section of score that I located on the web and ran off is 30 bars long so all I have to do is to practise the various sections and then stitch them all together once each part has been learnt) Just after lunch, Meg and I had a little play around on the keyboard by trying the same tune to a variety of instruments, some of which work very well and give a good sound but others are invariably a little naff but I suppose we will gradually learn what is a good combination and what is not.

The news yesterday evening and today has been dominated by the shock resignation of Boris Johnson as an MP. He had been given an advance copy of the report by the Committee of Privileges into the allegations that he misled Parliament in his accounts of partygate within Downing Street by either deliberate or by reckless behaviour. In theory, there was a fortnight in which Johnson and his advisers in the shape of a bevy of well paid lawyers could have perused the report and presumably challenged matters of factual accuracy. But the report appears to have been so damning that it appears (but we will not know until it is published in full) that Johnson was found to have misled the House of Commons and the penalty might have been exclusion from the House for 10 days or more. Under existing legislation, if an MP is so suspended, then the electorate have the right to request a ‘recall election’ and Johnson would almost certainly have lost his seat in the present political climate. Seeing the ignomy of literally being thrown out of the House of Commons and then being spurned by he electorate was evidently far too much for a narcissist like Johnson to bear so he decided to be in control of his own destiny and narrative, announcing to the world that he was only leaving ‘for now’ The BBC pulled its punches by arguing that Johnson could never be underestimated and his political career was far from over. But Sky News is far more forthright than the BBC and has lost no time in announcing that they think that Johnson is a ‘busted flush’ He has also been followed by some camp followers, one of whom (Nadine Dorries) was hanging on in the Commons desperately hoping for a peerage but her name was excised by the House of Lords scrutiny committee leaving her with absolutely nothing (apart from her adoration of Boris Johnson) Johnson is very much doing a ‘Trump’ by claiming a witchhunt against him and a biased judicial process and has resigned with a vituperative letter casting doubt upon the integrity of the Committee of Privileges and the whole of the Sunak government to boot. An interesting quirk in all of this is the the Committee of Privileges is going to meet on Monday and is already regarding the comments made upon its integrity as an actionable matter. Over the next few days, we will no doubt see the whole of the report when it eventually sees the light of day but I imagine, now that Johnson has already resigned, that the critical parts of the report will find its way into the columns of the Sunday newspapers.

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