I got Meg into bed by 8.30 last night and was thus able to spare some time to get my accounts and finances up-to-date which was very satisfying. I try to ensure that I have a ‘daybook’ of all of my bank transactions which does have the advantage of being able to find past transactions very quickly and it also has the bonus of making me check each entry to ensure that nothing nefarious has taken place. This morning our son called round to do some work and he was not a happy bunny. His magnifient archive of rail related material was being given a new ‘functionality’ which actually meant that a lot of archive material was deficient or difficult to access. So he was in the process of transferring his entire collection to a photo archive called SmugMug. Despite the odd sounding name, this firm has a brilliant reputation and I actually knew of it because my own 50th wedding anniversary photos, as well as some other collections, are stored on it. I decided to do a little bit of research and found the following claim made by the firm, which I do not disbelieve: ‘All SmugMug photos and videos are stored at Amazon S3 for their 99.999999999% durability. If you have uploadeded 10,000 photos at Smug this means on average, Amazon will lose 1 pic every 10 million years.’ Nonetheless, despite the excellent functionality, our son still had a lot of background meta information to get updated on some thousands of files which he may have to do bit by bit. Actually, on the subject of upgrading I heard some news on ClassicFM which made my heart sink. ClassicFM announces that they were upgrading their service on January 2nd to DAB+ and the old DAB signal is to be discontinued. As it happens, I have several DAB radios scattered throughout the house and listen to ClassicFM whichever room I happen to be in. Now at a stroke, these radios are being declared redundant or I have the option of returning to a hit-and-miss and ‘hissy’ type signal of FM service. So in the name of progress one gets a worse service than one has been accustomed to over the years – unless, of course, you had bought a DAB+ radio in the last few years.

After we had breakfasted this morning, we fell into our normal Monday routine which is to pick up our newspaper and then make for our favourite cafe down the road in Droitwich. There we were greeted warmly and indulged ourselves in a huge pot of tea and a big bacon butty on chunky brown bread. We find that the way they make it in the cafe, one bacon butty is sufficient for the two of us- one each would be overwhelming. After we left, we made for the local Waitrose where we picked up some supplies and then started to make a somewhat delayed lunch. I had one particular little chore in mind for this afternoon which was to give our new car its first wash. This is the time when normally, you can give a car a minute examination to find any particular flaws but none have been detected so far. I decided to split the car washing routine I have developed over the years into a series of separate operations. The first of these is a ‘pre-wash’ in which I use a specialised watering can with a very long delivery arm (designed for hanging baskets) and I find thus useful for accessing all parts of the car e.g. the roof. Then I intend to streamline my car washing operations as I may have been slightly too fastidious over the years and now I need to simplify operations, not least to save my back from further assaults. I did a quick washing operation, shot inside to do the lunch and then did some of the finishing off bits (a final wipe down with a large car cleaning mitten as well as cleaning the windows with a specialised glass cleaner). These new operations helped me to save a little time but I need to add some refinements to next time. But I did notice a little sticker in the top corner of the windscreen which once I had gone on the web to give me an explanation is the information that the car has already been treated before delivery with one of those supposedly specialised treatments to help protect against tree sap, bird droppings and other misfortunes.

One of our afternoon routines is to access the music section of YouTube and let its algorithms serve up to us some of our favourites. One of the options this afternoon was a Dutch ensemble by the name of Voces8 whose renditions of Bach and Handel are superb. The performers all turn up in their everyday clothes i.e. not formally attired as though for a concert. The camera work focuses on the concentration and dedication showing on their faces and we are quite happy to hear their renditions again and again. One piece leads to another and we saw a version of ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ but with the parts normally played by flutes being played by a couple of performers on recorders and again, the effect was stunning. Many of these recordings are made in quite spartan Lutheran style churches where I am convinced that the acoustics are incredible because there are not any soft furnishings to absorb and muffle the sound. I must ask some of our musical friends whether this my conjecture is on the right lines.

Meg and I were up a little late this morning but nonetheless we had just about got ourselves up with our breakfast prepared in time to watch the Lorna Kuenssberg show. In advance of the Autumn statement (mini budget), both the Chacellor of the Exchequeur and the Shadow Chancellor were being interviewed. The one telling point in either of the two interviews is when Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, was asked to explain why he is taking all of the credit for the halving of the rate of inflation but was taking none of the blame for the rate of inflation having risen to about 11% in the first place. The answer in both cases is the fact that the rapid rise in oil prices caused the dramatic rise in the rate of inflation but the subsequent fall in the oil price and in fuel prices has resulted in the rate of inflation now being halved. This whole little episode does rather expose the hypocrisy of the modern politicians who blame ‘world events’ when the economy takes a massive downturn but always take the credit when the economy improves. After the politics show was over, we received the expected telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend who was suggesting that we meet up for our weekly cup of coffee together. Our little meeting today was actually quite important because our friend is due to travel to Coruña tomorrow and is going to meet up with our long standing friend who teaches at the University there. Our University of Birmingham friend is booked into our favourite hotel and he and our Spanish friend are due to meet in a large cafe just down the road from the hotel, all of which we know very well. I had spent a certain amount of time ensuring that I had a photograph so that the our two mutual friends would recognise each other when they were to meet in the cafe which is a large circular building on the edge of one of the squares in Coruña and is a very well known landmark. Whilst we were in the Waitrose cafeteria, I did a little experiment and our University of Birmingham friend and I ensured that we could have a videochat with other via WhatsApp. So when our two friends do meet up, I am going to contact them half an hour after they are due to meet so that we can have a little three way or even four way chat if Meg can be brought into the circle. I also took the opportunity to pass on some practical information and useful phrases if our friend follows our suggestion and takes a trip by train to go off to Santiago which is only 30 minutes away by fairly fast train. By the time we got home, it was nearly 1.00pm so I had to rush out feeding the cat (who often lurks around until he/she sees us reappear in the car) and then put a prepared chicken breast meal in the oven to cook for at least an hour. I enhanced a little gravy that I had left over with a chicken stock cube and the resulting meal was quite delicious, probably because some of the skin had been roasted nicely in the oven.

After lunch, we engaged in our diet of a little bit of the current news, dire as it is, before watching the next episode of ‘Outnumbered’. We then thought we would treat ourselves to a viewing of ‘The Inspector Calls’ which is a favourite J B Priestley play/film and which I thought we would probably get it via ITVX. All we could find was a ‘paid for’ version and this happened for a second version that we wanted to watch. I found a BBC colourized version which was unwatchable because the film was badly out of focus so we abandoned this. Eventually, though, we did find a version of the play which is not subject to a charge so it is playing away in the background, Meg watching it and I am actually blogging. By using a brass trivet which we have had in the family for a long time and a small table from one of our nest of tables, I have managed to make myself the equivalent of a little ‘escritoire’ so that I can sit in my newly acquired carver chair, blog away and still keep an eye on the TV playing away in the corner of the room. In the fullness of time, it might be that I can find a slightly more specialised and suitable piece of furniture, but in the meantime, I have an arrangement at just the right height, under which I can tuck my knees and then type away productively at my leisure.

We have no particular appointments as such next week, but there are several things to which we are looking forward. On both Tuesday and Thursday, we should be receiving the first of 2 x 2 hour tranches of assistance arranged via social services so that I actually have time to get our weekly shopping done and also see if it is possible to start to reattend my Pilates class after a gap of some weeks. On Wednesday, we will be visiting our Irish friends who live down the road and in the early evening, of course, should be video chatting with our two sets of friends as they meet up in Spain.

I happened to be up in the middle of the night last night and received the not very welcome news that one of our oldest friends in Spain had died a couple of days ago. Narciso was married to one of our Erasmus students and was incredibly kind to me when I spent a term teaching Information Technologqy to Public Administration students at the Complutense University in Madrid. Narciso was a very good friend to me when I was in Madrid and on several occasions invited me to dine with him at the little technology company that he owned in a village near to the University. Little incidents stick in one’s mind the most memorable being my infelicities with the Spanish language. He was offering me some whisky before the lunch and asked how much I wanted in my glass – half remembering some cowboy ‘B’ movies, I extended two figures and tried to say ‘two fingers’ which in Spanish is ‘dos dedos’ But I made a mistake with the initial consonant andt asked for ‘dos pedos’ which actually means ‘two farts’ Narciso was sufficiently polite apparently not to notice! He was an incredibly erudite scholar and at one time was a full Professor in Sociology in the University of Montreal being equally at home with Spanish, French or English. In fact I seem to remember he read Proust in the original French by way of relaxation. We spent a wonderful Christmas Eve meal one evening a decade or so back and more recently spent a couple of equally enjoyable evenings with Narciso and his wife when we were having a stay in Madrid. Quite by chance, the hotel in which we were lodged was only about half a mile from his flat and so was easily accessible to us. I do not know his exact age but suspect that he was something between five and ten years older than I am which would make him mid 80’s. So that is another life long friend who has departed recently, leaving behind only memories but always happy ones.

Once we had got ourselves up and breakfasted, we made our way to the Waitrose cafeteria to see our Saturday friends and were happy to see a couple of them. It was a little rainy and blustery this morning but nothing to dampen us too much in the journey across the car park. After we left Waitrose, I called in at a large general hardware store that sells all kinds of useful things. I particularly wanted to get a little tray of tea lights which is not something that one buys every day. But whilst hunting for these items, I passed the car accessories aisle and availed myself of a couple of car cleaning brushes and some some new sponges ready for what I hope to be a more regular car cleaning routine ( whilst I am still in the ‘new car neurotic’ stage). After lunch and a dose of our regular comedy, Meg and I are treating ourselves to a YouTube offering of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’. There were several renditions from which we could choose but we avoided the ones in modern dress and chose one we have seen before where the singing is superb and the subtitles are particularly clearly displayed. One of my favourite lines from the opera is the response of Don Giovanni when asked by his servant, Leporello, how he could be so unfaithfull to so many of his conquests. The reply will delight misogynists everywhere when the Don replies that to be faithful to any one of them would be unfaithful to all of the others! But the opera is essentially a morality story because in the final scenes of the opera, Don Giovanni is dragged off to the flames of hell as punishment for his various misdeeds, not least the killing of the father of one of his early conquests.

The conflict in Gaza seems to plumb new depths. Today, it looks as though there is a (forced) evacuation of one of the largest hospitals in Gaza and, presumably, the patients are having to make their escape from the hospital by foot. Of course, there is an increasing clamour for there to be a ceasefire and a return of the hostages. But in the face of overwhelming military superiority, the hostages are one of the few assets with which Hamas can counteract the onslaught. No doubt, the hostages are all held deep in the many tunnels in which case Israel has a massive problem. Are the tunnels bombed outright, thereby condemning many of the hostages to death? Or does there have to be hand to hand fighting within the tunnels? One cannot predict how all of this will end. Also a 2 state solution would imply that Israel abandon the left bank of the Jordan captured during a the 6 day war in the 1960’s – if you were to look at a map of Israel and exclude the desert areas, then this West Bank must equate to at least a 50% increase in the land that Israel holds compared with the 1948 boundaries. Can one see the Israelis giving up at least one third of the land of Israel that they regard as God given? So it looks like a stalemate or a fight to the death in which practically the whole population of Gaza is either killed or forced into a permanent exile. Who then will govern the ruins that remain of Gaza? Presumably, the Americans could put an end to all of this within days but then Israel could well threaten to use their nuclear weapons if America abandoned it. The Americans in a pre-election year will not do anything that might threaten election prospects in any case. Hence the reasons for my profound pessimism.

Today being a Friday was the day when our domestic help calls around which is always a joy for us. We had great pleasure in showing her our latest (and probably last) furniture acquisition which was the occasional chair that I had purchased at a good price from the local AgeUK shop on Bromsgrove High Street. I have given this chair both a clean up and a treatment of orange oil with a subsequent buffing up although it was in a pretty good state when it was purchased. Having taken a photograph of it, I then used the Google Images app to find similar images of it and I now have a fairly clear idea how it can be described. It is, in all probability, a repro Sabre Leg Regency style Carver chair when I match up the images of my photo with the images found by Google. It is were a genuine vintage chair, it would sell for about £1,000 but if I were to buy one new, as a piece of ‘modern’ repro furniture, it would retail for about £220 which is over 10 times what I actually paid for it. It has been brought into use twice already since I have spruced it up to its final condition so I am highly delighted with it. The day had dawned fairly bright and clear as a beautiful autumn day but after we had got up and breakfasted, we set off for Droitwich to our normal cafeteria. Here we treated ourselves to a big pot of tea and one huge bacon butty between us. In the cafe, there were a group of four friends celebrating a birthday so the whole cafe sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and we were all treated to a little piece of birthday cake. After we had left the cafe and as we were conveniently parked, we popped into the Worcestershire Association of Carers charity shop and I found two items for Meg which I think she will find particularly useful. One is a skirt in a very pleasant floral design and a very reputable make and the one was a long and quite colourful long cardigan which is particularly useful to start to wear in the late afternoons after the sun has gone down and it starts to get a little chilly.

After our Eucharistic minister had called around yesterday, as she is so musical and had such a wide repetoire, I managed to find a Handel aria ‘Waft her, angels, through the skies’ which is an piece from a little performed oratorio called ‘Jeptha‘, composed in 1752. YouTube provided us with three filmed versions of this and we delighted in the tenor performance. As a follow on, though, there was a concert of other Handel pieces performed, I think, by a Dutch ensemble on period instruments but the singing of the soprano was absolutely breathtaking – so much so, that I am resolved to listen to it on several more occasions. This evidently acts to gladden the spirit after the succession of depressing news if you tune too much into Sky News these days. We have witnessed recently rows of babies in Gaza taken out of their incubators and laid out in a row because there was no power left to power their incubators. The Israelis are claiming that Hamas are operating a command and control headquarters from underneath the principal hospital in Gaza and this justifies them entering the hospital complex with their tanks. Some automatic weapons and other munitions have indeed been discovered but the world is still waiting for definitive proof of the tunnel complex and command-control HQ which was the justification for the Israeli incursion into the hospital in the first place. Althpugh there is a United Nations attempting to gather evidence of a war crime, it is the case that some countries – including the United States, Russia and Israel — do not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, and the ICC does not have a police force to execute arrest warrants. So the world shall never know whether we are witnessing a war crime unfolding daily on our TV screens or not.

We pop into our usual Thursday routine today as Thursday is our shopping day. I was up reading my emails in the middle of the night and received some rather distressing news about the illness of a wife of one of my Hampshire friends who is currently in hospital. I have offered what advice and support I can but when we live a great distance apart, this is always electronically mediated and a poor substitute for face to face contact. We may Skype each other in a day or so so we can exchange information a little more easily. The shopping went off easily enough and I pop into a local branch of a neighbouring store to purchase a particular variety of wheel cleaning brush but, as so often happens, this design is now discontinued so I have to a make a compromise over what is available. Once I got the shopping home, it was a case of getting Meg up and washed and dressed and the shopping put away before we anticipate a visit from the Eucharistic minister who is calling round from the local church. As she is so musical, we swap some musical stories and. as she plays the cello, I asked her which famous cellist was her favourite. I mentioned the name of Rostropovitch and she had actually gone round to the stage door when he visited Birmingham and had a little chat with him. We were expecting further visit at midday from a team who may be offering both us some practical support after what seems to be weeks of negtiations, financial and otherwise, with Social Services. This organisation was scheduled to call around for a preliminary assessment but we received a telephone call to say they had heavy colds so this particular visit was going to be scrubbed and they were due to call around for their first visit next Tuesday, so that I can (hopefully) go off and recommence my Pilates sessions which have had to be abandoned for the last few weeks. For lunch, we used up a bought chicken pie that we had in stock and just had this with some sugar snap peas as neither of was feeling particularly hungry.

As you might imagine, both the visual and the printed media are full of analysis of two recent political events, the first being the comprehensive rejection of the Government’s Rwanda scheme to deport migrants and the second being a huge rebellion by Labour MPs who descided to vote for a SNP amendment calling for an immediate ceasefire rather than the Labour party’s own motion which called for a exended pause. For many MPs this was evidently a real conscience issue rather than a wholesale rejection of Labour party policy as a whole. All in all, 56 MPs sided with the SNP and I think there were 8 shadow cabinet members who automatically lose their portfolios after ignoring a three line whip. The Rwanda issue is amazing in many ways as the Government, rather than backing down in the face of a comprehensive defeat in the Supreme Court, are determined to press ahead with a new Treaty with Rwanda which ought to be legally binding. The government has indicated that it will legislate to say that Rwanda ‘is a safe country’ which seems to be to be a ridiculous piece of legislation. If the House of Commons were to vote that the moon was made of green cheese, then a vote would not make this so. Also, the Tory party, again appeasing its own Right Wing, is threatening to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights. But this is a smokescreen as those threateened with deportation to Rwanda (and from there back to the countries from which they fled) are protected by several interntional treaties, the whole body of international law and about four pieces of domestic legislation. The government is making noises about ignoring all of this body of international law but were it to do so, the UK would become a pariah state and our influence and standing in thr world would shrink to zero. Even if legislation is passed in the House of Commons, it is extremely problematic whether the Lords would pass a motion which allowed Britain to break so many international treaties. The normal pattern of ‘ping pong’ between the Lords and the Commons would run out of time in the present Parliament. All of this is even before any flights which would be subject to even more interventions by the High Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court (again). In short, I think there is an incredible amount of bluff and bluster going on but the more sober assessments in the quality press is of the view that further attempts to refine the arrangements with Rwanda would be doomed. For example, in the past the Courts in Rwanda have rejected 100% of all of the applications from Afghans who have come before it, with no legal representations or written court judgements. For this reason, our own Supreme Court are not all convinced that judicial pocesses in Rwanda would reach the standards of probity we have come to expect in the UK and how is the UK government to ensure that the Rwandan court adopt these enhanced standards of probity in the future?

Next week, our University of Birmingham friend is due to make a visit to Coruña in Northern Spain. Meg and I would really loved to have been with him but it would probably have been a step too far with Meg’s frail state of health. Our friend is going to meet up with our long standing and oldest friends in La Coruna and no doubt can give bring our friends up-to-date about the situation here at home.

As soon as we got up this morning, the airwaves were full of the news that at exactly 10.00am this morning, the Supreme Court was due to deliver its verdict on the legality of the government’s scheme to export migrants adjudged to be illegal to Rwanda. So we got ourselves up and breakfasted and then seated before the TV so that we could witness the live judgement of the Court. As the judgement was being delivered, it slowly became apparent what the judgement was likely to be. The Supreme Court took very seriously the opinions of the UNCHR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) which it looked as though lower courts have either ignored or downplayed. When the judgement came, it was a crystal clear 3-0 defeat for the government appeal so, in the short term at least, no flights will take off to Rwanda as the government scheme is now offically judged to be illegal. Throughout the day, there has been a lot of huffing and puffing about drafting a new treaty with Rwanda but there are various parts of the judgement over which the UK has little control. For example, can the UK insist to the legal authorities in Rwanda that all appellants will have adequate legal representation of their own choice (one of the sticking points) The flights to Rwanda policy on the one hand is being doubled up with the ‘Stop the Boats’ policy but the relationship between them is tenuous. The absolutely ultimate weapon that the UK goverment is urged to deploy (naturally by the Right of the Tory party) is to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights (which predates the EU by the way as the UK ratified it as far back as 1951) over the issue of asylum seekers. Were this to happen, then the UK would be judged to be similar to countries such as Russia and Belarus who are the only two European non-signers of the Convention.This would trash the UK’s standing in the world as a whole as a society that respects the ‘rule of law’ and the damage to the international reputation of the UK is almost incalculable. After we got the excitement of watching this judgement and seen the immediate political reactions to it, we set off for the Methodist Centre coffee bar which is becoming one of our regular morning haunts. Once there, we sat with one of our Waitrose circle who goes to the Methodist Centre for some gentle exercise and treats herself to a coffee beforehands. We chatted with one of her friends and neighbours who, as it turned out, knew Pickering quite well. Pickering was the town nearest to the little village of Levisham on the North York Moors where I lived from birth until about the age of 3-4. I think my sister used to go to her primary school in Pickering so the next time I am in contact with her, I must ask her whether she made that journey by train or by bus.

Later in the morning, we paid a visit to the AgeUK furniture shop and I found what I think is called a classic, possibly vintage, bentwood occasional chair with a beautiful upholstery and a pleasing inlay design on its back. It is not exactly what I was looking for but I made an offer for 80% of the asking price which was accepted and I managed to get it onto the back seat of the car. An initial examination and polish of it is that it is pretty good condition but tomorrow in the daylight, I will give it my ‘0000’ steel wool and beeswax treatment and see what the result is likely to be. I think the wood is walnut and although not completely consistent with the other furniture I have in the Music Room, I think it will serve the purpose well for what I have in mind for it. We had a fairly conventional lunch using up the remains of the beef from the weekend but we wanted to be all washed up and ready to go before a meeting with a couple of parishioners from our church that we have met in the AgeUK club which we attend monthly. We arranged to meet in the foyer of Webbs but after about 10 minutes or so, our friends were not in evidence. But we did run across two other ex-Waitrose friends that we used to see and FaceTime quite regularly in the height of the pandemic but as circumsances have changed, we see less of them now. We exchanged news of how we had been faring over the past few months and then decided to walk towards the cafeteria part of Webbs hoping that our church friends would have made their way there. As we were being shown to a table, we did run across them and there had been a certain amnount of confusion not to mention ambiguity whether we meant to meet in the main foyer or the entrance to the cafeteria part of Webbs. We ordered a pot of tea and indulged in some scones and then exchanged our various bits of news. Neither of us had much to report to the other, although in our case all we could and did recount was the couple of funerals of friends and relatives that we would have liked to have attended but could not for reasons related to distance or bad weather. Our friends did not want to stay too long and we were quite happy to point the car homewards and to get home before it got completely dark. Wednesday is the day when the dustbins have to be pulled to the end of our access road ready for emptying in the morning and I like to get this job done when it is not absolutely black outside.

Today, as always on a Tuesday, we look forward to seeing our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria. We were not disappointed and had a good old natter talking about things we had done in our youth (skinny dipping) as well as more current preoccupations such as the preparation of Christmas cake. Incidentally, many of the publicans in Yorkshire in my youth used to hand around portions of Christmas cake served with a slab of Wensleydale cheese which is a superb combination. I was keeping a fairly anxious eye on the weather because I had a job in mind for later on in the day and after I had Meg esconced in front of watching ‘Politics Today’ at midday, I set to work giving the lawns their last mow of the season. This was about 9-10 days later than my normal deadline at which I aim for November 5th for the last cut. The point here is that after the last cut, the mower has to be prepared for several months of inactivity and this means that the remaining petrol has to be completely drained out of the system as well as the old oil taken out. So I was organising today like a military operation and managed to get the front lawn cut (one cut lengthwise and the follow up cut width wise) before our normal Tuesday lunch of fishcakes. Then, after lunch, I started on the cut of the lawn to the rear of the house timed in so such a way that I would finish everything just before the time that we had arranged for our University of Birmingham friend to call around with his own lawnmower. We got mine given its normal end-of-season routine and it really was a case of two hands being better than one because draining the old petrol and oil out of the system needs one person to handle the machine and the other to put a suitable receptacle in place to receive the fluids that are drained out. Old fuel and oil left within the system are likely to result in gooey deposits which can only spell trouble at the start of the new season. Once my machine was successfully put to bed, we turned our attention to our friend’s machine which had been refusing to start. So to turn it around, we drained off the old fuel wich may have been the source of the problem. Then we put in a small amount of good fuel, well stabilised with a special Briggs and Stratton ‘fuel fix’ preparation, designed to solve the problems caused by ethylene in modern fuel. Then we cleaned the air filter and tried to start the recalcitrant machine. Our efforts did not meet with any success but then, as a desperate last fling, my friend put in a new sparking plug. This seemed to have done the trick so we were delighted when eventually our efforts were crowned with success and the machine (a good Honda) sprang into life. We ran the engine for a few minutes, sufficient to make the engine oil less viscous and then knowing that the machine was now in a functioning state, we drained off the fuel, emptied out the oil and give everything that needed it a good dosing of WD40. We were both delighted to succeed in our efforts, particularly as it looked at one point that defeat was staring us in the face. We organised a strategy for ourselves such that I store the machine alongside my own mower. Then in the spring, our friend and I can refuel our machines with premium and well-stabilised fuel, get them oiled up and make sure that they both work before the machines are located back into their respective homes. Our friend took it upon himself to dispose of the old oil and stale petrol for the two of us and then we had a celebratory cup of tea and biscuits, together with Meg, in our kitchen enjoying each other’s company. I must say that at the end of the afternoon, as I suspected, my back was complaining somewhat after an hour of mowing and then a good half hour hauling machines around so I think an early night with the benefit of the electric blanket may well be called for.

As we had been promised, the late afternoon saw the publication of Suella Braverman’s bitterly critical resignation letter. In it, she indicates that she writes to that Rishi Sunak that ‘Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time’. In short, the unleashed Braverman is making clear she will make life as uncomfortable as possible for Sunak and as soon as the Prime Minister resigns after an expected election defeat, she is planting her flag as the standard bearer of the right with the anticipation that she will become the next party leader. To a large extent, this reaction was expected and although the Right are furious with Sunak, it is fairly obvious to most of us that the Right has had its day. Having secured the Brexit of their dreams, the tides of public opinion are evidently turning against their agenda and they are probably vastly over estimating the influence that they can and will have in the remainder of this Parliament. If, as expected, the Labour party wins the next election with a landslide, then it takes a landslide to reverse a landslide and the Tories may be out of power for ten years. After that time, the Right may well have lost the chance to regain power ever again and they probably are feeling that after years of the political tides running in their favour, that their chances of power are rapidly receding and they are lashing out in complete desperation.

Today after we got up we were contemplating our (normal for us) Monday morning routines when I turned on Sky News so that we could get the day’s news as we ate our breakfasts in the Music Room. No sooner had we turned on the TV that we learnt that Suella Braverman had been sacked about 5 minutes previously and as the morning wore on, it was pretty clear that quite a wide ranging cabinet and government reshuffle was underway. There had been an expectation that Braverman might be despatched this week, perhaps on Wednesday when the High Court hands down its judgement on the Rwanda scheme and there was the slightest hint that things might be happening politically as early as this morning. But No. 10 had disguised its hand quite cleverly because nobody really expected what was to unfold in front of them. Many commentators thought that Braverman’s attack on the impartiality of the Metropolitan police was the last straw for No. 10. But another political source was of the view that Braverman’s latest indiscretion was not what actually ‘did’ for her as the preparations for her departure have been made for some days now. This source thought that the breaking point may have been Braverman attacking the homeless in their tents declaiming that this was their ‘life style choice’ If the Braverman rhetoric had been played out in full, we would have witenessed the police dragging people out of their tents in order to confiscate and destroy them. How the visuals of all of this would have played out acoss the media and endlessly repeated in a future election campaign might have been the point at which ‘enough is enough’ But later in the morning, the most jaw dropping shot of the day was to unfold – this was the sight of a car delivering David Cameron, the ex-Prime Minister, to the doors of No. 10 in order to emerge eventually as the new Foreign Secretary, the existing incumbent of that office, James Cleverley, having been given the brief of the recently vacated Home Office. The hiring of an ex-Prime Minister and giving them a seat in the Lords (as Lord Cameron) is unusual but it has been done before. Opinion, both in the Lords and the Commons, is divided over the wisdom of David Cameron being offered the post of Foreign Secretary. On the ‘con’ side, there is the fact that David Cameron has the misjudgement of Brexit hanging over him as well as the smell of the Greensill scandal(and which is still under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office) But on the ‘con’ side, we now have a Foreign Secretary who is probably universally known and who can help to restore a degree of credibility to the view of Britain overseas when there are a lot of current crises such as Ukraine not to mention Gaza. I can well remember the American Foreign Secretary being informed about the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary and he was caught, on camera, suppressing his mirth at the appointment. But more of the reshuffle later.

Meg and I made our way to Droitwich and were fortunate to secure a parking place immediately outside the shop of Worcestershire Association of Carers. I called in at the branch of Santander to deposit a cheque which turned out to be useful for us and then made our way to the cafe. We were experiencing some difficulty with the wheelchair as a motorist had parked and blocked off a nearby dropped kerb. But I was amazed, and then gratified, when a gentleman in a mobility scooter stopped to give us a hand. He explained that he was due to have a knee operated on later on that afternoon but in the morning was pleased to give us a hand., I never cease to be astonished at the kindness of strangers. Meg and I were rather looking forward to a treat of a bacon butty but the cafe was having a mini crisis becaue they were short of a chef for the day and hence all hot food was ‘off’. We treated ourselves to cappuchinos and a large rock cake which we shared and then onto the Worcestershire Association of Carers. Here we bought a necklace for Meg which would match the rest of her ‘blue’ gear, another suitable cushion and a rather fine bijou flower holder which I am sure we can utilise extensively in the summer months.

We return to reshuffle news. Our son has informed us that he keeps a spreadsheet of the Secretaries of State for Health since he has worked in the NHS and the total is now of the order of 17 (with a question whether a politician reappointed to the role can count as one or two). The current Steve Barclay is being moved on to the Environment and interviews with him in the street seem to indicate that he is none too happy with the appointment. Meanwhile, our son is getting Victoria Adams, an ex-Treasury minister, as his new political overlord and you might interpret this as a desperate desire to contain the costs of the NHS. The wider analysis seems to indicate that Rishi Sunak is moving the Cabinet and the government more onto the centre ground, which may well be an attempt to protect the ‘Blue wall’ (traditional Tory seats in the South of England) otherwise vulnerable to a Liberal Democrat challenge.

We woke up this morning to a rather dull and gloomy day in sharp contrast to yesterday when we had the first frost of the winter. Last night, I had taken the precaution of protecting the car windscreen with a ‘windscreen protector‘ I recently located in our garage and then utilised a couple of towels exclusively for use when I valet the car. Indeed, I need not have bothered because there was no frost to protect against last night. We received a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend and were happy to arrange to meet in Waitrose for our regular coffee. We discussed ways in which we might help each other with putting our respective lawn motors ‘to bed’ for the winter. Principally this involves ensuring the weather might be kind to us and when I can get the last cut of the summer done before we prepare for the winter. We have to ensure that this year’s petrol and oil is drained out of the machine and thus left ‘empty’ until ready to be refilled next Spring. Our friend is going to call around next Tuesday when we think the weather will be fine for the last cut of the summer and we can get things prepared for the winter. Then I hope that we can do the same for our friend’s lawnmower and so we can help each other out to get our respective machines retired for the winter. For lunch, we have decided that I needed to use up the ingredients I had bought to prepare a fish pie. I had not made a fish pie for a long time and was therefore a little out of practice but nonetheless I relied upon memory to throw things together into almost the right order. The resultant product was all right but I have made much better in the past so I am evidently out of practice. We ate one half of what we cooked today leaving the other in the freezer for a further meal when required.

This afternoon after we had got all washed up and had our post-lunch cup of tea, I decided to FaceTime my sister who I know is often quite alone on Sundays. We exchanged our various bits of news, largely of a medical nature, until we had a pleasant surprise as one of my sister’s daighters (i.e. one of my nieces) and her husband called around. This was a wonderful opportunity to exchange lots of family news and I could update them on Meg’s progress. As we were in our Music Room and my niece had no intimation of what we had done to it, I gave a quick flash round the room showing her the Casio keyboard, the music centre, Meg in her armchair, the organ we have acquired, the piano stools that we have obtained and restored and and finally what I call my ‘butterfly screen’ This latter is something I made up using some pages cannibalised from an art book and then decorating the cover of what been the large cardboard box in which the television has been delivered. This now stands at the other end of the room ands sits nicely in front of a TV stand that we no longer use, apart from the house’s router. There was a lot more that I could have shown her but enough to show her that I had been quite busy over the past few weeks and months either restoring furniture and/or developing some craft skills. So these conversations with family members were a wonderful way to enliven what would have been an otherwise quite pedestrian Synday afternoon. On which subject, I remember asking one of our Spanish ERASMUS exchange students what his worst time in England. He (deliberately) mis answered the question by replying ‘4.00pm on Sunday afternoons’. He was probably remembering that in Madrid he often used to meet up with friends in a coffee club each Sunday afternoon and was no doubt thinking of the contrasts with the UK.

Last night, just before Meg went to bed and afterwards when she was all tucked up safe and sound, I dipped in and out of the various programmes that were being devoted to the life and songs of Dolly Parton. Often in the progams there was a little strolling display of additional informtion, some of which I already knew but all of which is astounding. Dolly Parton was one of 12 children and she grew up in a one room shack in Tennessee and it was evident that she has not forgotten her roots as many of her songs recall such times of poverty and hardship. But there were two astounding facts that are worthy of note. One of these is that Dolly Parton gave a donation of $1 million to help develop the Moderna vaccine to help protect against the ravages of the recent pandemic. Another astonishing fact is that Dolly Parton has tried to ensure that each child in the primary schools in her state receives one free book per year. This scheme has been extended to other parts of the USA and Canda and even the UK. The most recent estimate is that her Foundation has given away 150 million books to date. But as well as being a philanthropist, Dolly Parton has evidently proved to be one of the most astute of business women, even on one occasion, refusing Elvis Presley to provide a cover version of one of her songs.

We always look forward on a Saturday to meeting up with our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria but first we got ourselves up and breakfasted. Overnight, there had been the first frost of the winter and so our new car received its first dose of a winter blast. Last night, before I went to bed, I treated myself to some little treats for myself and the new car. Firstly, I ordered a set of incredibly reasonably priced fabric car mats. I have a little system which has worked extremely well over the years. These fabric mats are placed on top of my regular car mats and capture the little pieces of grit and small leaves that find their way into a car. The fact that they are so light makes it incredibly easy to take them out, give them a quick shake, a brushing with a tyre wheel brush which is strategically placed just beside the front seat and then are quickly and easily put back into position. I find this little system, which has worked for me over the years, enables me to keep the car floor always reasonably clean and tidy looking with the minimum of effort. The last set of similar fabric mats have lasted for well over 3 years and are probably five years old but are at the end of their lives. I also treated myself to a new red Honda keyfob because the zip is starting to go on my existing fob and again, it needs to be replaced. Finally, I purchased a winter screen cover to help to defray the worst of the winter frosts and snow as and when they occur. I noticed that when both Meg and myself were accessing the car yesterday that the door sills were the most likely to be receive the impact of one’s heels as you were getting in, so I did contemplate wondering whether some high quality stick on Honda door sill protectors might be called for. I have not ruled this out entirely but in the meanwhile I have tried a little homemade solution which I must say has worked brilliantly well. I took one of those semi-rigid sheets of film that I utilise a lot when I am putting together a document such as a manual and of which I have a good supply. Then I cut off a carefully measured 4” wide strip which just sits in position held nicely by the robber door trim and fulfils its prorective function both effectively and incredibly cheaply.

After we had met our friends for coffee, we did some shopping and then returned home. It was a little too late to prepare and cook the fish pie that we had intended so instead had a meal of quiche, cabbage and baked tomatoes. After we had our post prandial tea, we tuned into what was happening in central London with the pro- Palestine march. The police have estimated that the march was 300,000 strong and seems to have passed off peacefully enough. But the media concentrated upon the splinter groups of ’counter demonstrators’ who came from a variety of right wing groups and who had evidently come prepared to cause trouble. It is not often that I feel complete sympathy for the police but they seemed to be doing a magnificent job in confronting the counter protestors and, at the time I am writing this, up to 100 arrests had been made. The political consequences of today’s demonstrations and counter demonstrations will prove to be fascinating. Despite the inflaming rhetoric of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, indicating that the demonstration in favour of Palestine was fuelled by hate, all of the violence seemed to come from the fascist right. They were frustrated by the police in their desire to confront the peaceful demonstrators but this was not the object of Suella Braverman’s attacks. Already it is being claimed that the rhetoric of the Home Secretary had inflamed passions and tacitly was giving support and comfort to the far right bully boys. She has so far refused to comment (I wonder why not?) but as is often the case when political events unfold on a Saturday, the reaction of the Sunday press and the rest of the political elite tomorrow may well seal the fate of the Home Secretary. It is being said that the next few hours might be crucial as, after the march officially finished at at 5pm, splinter groups of protestors and counter-protestors hunt each other out to have a go at each other. It could well be that Rishi Sunak stays his hand until the judgement of the High Court on Wednesday on the legality of the ‘export to Rwanda’ scheme receives a judgement and the result of this, together with today’s events and the reaction of the press and public opinion are all thrown into the mix.

Meanwhile the situation in Gaza is entering a phase perhaps described as dire. Gaza’s largest hospital has reportedly run out of power which means that any patients relying upon a power supply (e.g. babies in their incubators) will now die. Israel itself argues that Gaza has plenty of fuel but it is being herded by Hamas militants to fuel their war effort and therefore denied to the civilian population. Whether this is true or not, who can say except to make the observation that ‘in war, the first casualty is truth’. Meanwhile, the French president is openly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and at some stage when the Israelis have wrought further damage on Gaza, the Americans may follow suit.