Last night, in the middle of the night, I wrote a long and detailed account of Meg’s frailties for the benefit of social services from whom we were expecting a visit later on in the day. Meg and I have been anticipating this visit for several days, not knowing exactly what was going to be in store for us, later on in the day. But, as it is said ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’ Thursday is my shopping day and so I relieved the ATM of some cash and popped into the Morrison’s supermarket which was practically deserted at that time in the morning to buy some knee-high socks for Meg. I was quite fortunate in obtaining the supplies that I did and then I returned home at just after 9.00am with Meg still soundly in bed. THen it was a fairly leisurely case of getting Meg up and dressed before breakfast. THen the shopping needed to be put away and all of this took some time so it was all fairly late by the time we came to contemplate a trip onto the road. It was all a bit rainy and miserable so I wondered if I could find a coffee shop open in the suburban street where the AgeUK shop is located. I popped into the shop and bought a couple of really inexpensive items but they did not really have in stock what I was actually looking for. Then we shot back home and had our delayed elevenses at home, not managing to find a little coffee shop with adjacent parking. We then cooked a lunch which I suppose is best described as a chicken fricasée starting with an onion, peppers and peas and concluding with some bits of fried chicken seasoned with a peri- peri sauce. This turned out to be a nicer than might have been expected and Meg ate most of hers.
We got lunch eaten and the washing up just about eaten when I received a mobile call from the social worker who we were expecting in half an hour but actually turned up half an hour early. She tried her best to be helpful but, at the end of the day, I am not sure what we quite got the assessment that we had anticipated. I gather she was a bit appalled that we had the brush off from a unit that should have been able to get Meg some better medication. One suggestions were made for services for us to try out but at the end of the day, I am not convinced that there was anything on offer which really fitted our needs. So at the end of the day, it might be that Meg and I try some of the suggestions offered to us but without being convinced that they might turn out to see more trouble than they are actually worth. A further reference was going to be made for some physiotherapy but the last encounter that we had in this direction was not particularly helpful as we had some exercises recommended to us on a worksheet which I do not think addressed the core issues of a pattern of repeated falls. I do not wish to sound unduly negative at this juncture but perhaps I was hoping for a little more than was actually on offer.
The Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, is trying to ‘sell’ a new policy on the perennial problem of migration. Basically, he is going to have a robust policy on the people-smugglers by regarding them as terrorists. But to put this policy into effect, he needs to ‘nudge’ the Labour party policy so that it aligns more with an EU approach., This may involve a trade-off where the UK accepts a certain European quota of migrants in exchange for robust, collective action against the people smugglers. The liberal press such as ‘The Guardian‘ are regarding this as going to war with the people smugglers whilst the right wing press is portraying this as giving the green light for even more migration from the shores of the EU. I have a feeling that this issue will rumble on and on and will become practically the sole focus of the general election campaign which has practically started already months early. In face, the EU referendum campaign as I remember the closing stages was nearly all about ‘hordes’ of migrants from or via EU countries and there was the famous poster which tried to imply that the entire population of Turkey, not even an EU member, was eligible to enter the UK.
Now that we are through to this part if the week, the rugby World Cup is starting again with a vengeance. Our son phoned up giving me details of how the rugby is being broadcast tonight but on rather an obsscure ITV channel but as I had half forgotten about it, this has brightened my evening somewhat. Now that we are at this stage of the week, then I can look forward to several more nights of rugby – the last match that we watched which was Wales vs. Fiji turned out to be really exciting and let us hope that more is in store.
There is a hint tonight that the Government are considering scrapping the final leg of the HS2 project (broadly Birmingham to Manchester via Crewe) and, if this proves to be the case, it might prove to be the worst of all possible worlds with only one half of a high-speed line to the North actually built making a mockery of the whole project.