So Friday has dawned and two carers turned up this morning, one of them being one of our regulars and the other new to us. So between us, we got Meg up, washed, dressed and breakfasted and we started to look forward to the day ahead. Apart from our domestic help turning up which is our usual Friday commitment, the Eucharistic minister turned up as arranged from our local church and we had our usual little bit of spiritual solace. Then we had a very welcome telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend and we responded with due alacrity to his suggestion that we all meet for coffee in the Waitrose coffee bar, which we did in the late morning. Afterwards we had spent a very pleasant hour in each other’s company, we parted and it was time for me to come home and prepare our Friday lunchtime meal, whch was a fish pie. One way or another, we had had quite a busy morning which seemed to fly by. Our domestic help mentioned a TV programme which featured cookery and a visit to Santiago de Compostela so after we have had our post-prandial rest, we may see if we can get this on catch-up TV. I have consulted yesterday’s ‘T2’ section in ‘The Times‘ to see if any good films or series are available for us to watch later on this afternoon. Last Friday was the start of the ‘Six Nations’ rugby competition and I was not sure whether a match was going to be shown this evening or not. There are at least a couple of matches that are to be shown tomorrow afternoon of which the Wales vs. England match in the late afernoon is certainly the highlight.

I have just installed the type of memory card on my new PC which is normally reserved for photographers – technically, an SDHC card. This card was pretty cheap (£8) and stores 32GB of data and at the present rate at which this blog accumulates (2 x. 7kb a day) I calculate that I have enough space left to last me for over 1,000 years. Having said that, the manufacturers (Sandisk) give a warranty of 10 years but most computer experts advise against using this kind of flash memory for long term storage for a variety of technical reasons. Whilst you can read the card as many times as you lke, writing data to the disk actually degrades the memory cell by a few electrons and in the course of time, say after 10,000 writes, this type of memory may fail. However, I am happy sticking with it for a few years, say five, and then immediately replacing it with a newer version. Whilst memory has got cheaper and cheaper, the newer types of memory is not manufactured for long term storage. The old-fashioned hard disk drive may actually be somewhat better for long term storage and this type of drive has technology associated with it which can ‘tell’ when the disk is starting to fail and can map out ‘bad sectors’ In other words, the old fashioned drives degrade more gradually whereas the newer technology can fail more dramatically.

The police are now saying that the Afghan who conducted a chemical attack against a woman with whom he was previously in a relationship is now probably dead. The attack itself was quite horrific as a caustic soda solution was used in the attack on the woman and he had actually injured himself in the course of the attack. Every single bit of CCTV footage that could be scoured indicates that the Afghan was making his way to the River Thames and that some footage indicates that he was near to the water. Some medical experts were of the view that untreated, the chemical burns which the attacker had unintentionally inflicted upon himself would probably result in his own death and the pain must have been insufferable. The latest thinking of the police is that the suspect is almost certainly dead having thrown himself into the river but that his body may never be found. This is admittedly conjecture at the moment but is the best guess that the police have of the whereabouts of the attacker. On the other side of the Atlantic, President Biden is the subject of a report which indicates that he may be suffering from quite severe memory problems. This is a political nightmare for the Democrats who know in their heart of hearts that Biden is not the most suitable of canidates but it is now probably too late in the political process for him to be replaced. So the American electorate are faced with the choice between Trump who has a track record of inflammatory rhetoric if not downright insurrection on the one hand versus an aged and evidently ailing President on the other. From this side of the Atlantic, one would have thought that there might have been some time within both the Republican and the Democrat camps for new candidates to be chosen and to come to the fore in both cases. But given the popularity of Trump with a hardcore section of the American electorate for whom he can do no wrong, then Jo Biden seems to be the only Democrat who is capable of beating Trump amongst the non-committed. All of this is building up to a scenario in which Trump, against all of the odds, may well be re-elected and the consequences for Europeans and the rest of the ‘free’ world are almost unimaginable.

We have decided to have a slightly different pattern to our Thursday, starting today. Normally, I have asked Meg to stay in bed whilst I shoot out and attempt to do the shopping very quickly but I think the time has come to abandon this particular pattern. We have a carer allocated to us for this Thursday (the same one as yesterday who locked herself out!) so I thought I would wait until she came and then go and do the shopping. This worked out pretty well given that road works on the A38 impedes one’s progress to the supermarket but I managed to get there, get some money out of an ATM, do the shopping and get back in just a little over an hour. Today has been one of those wet, drizzly days where it stays gloomy all day long and there always seems to be rain hanging in the air, so to speak. The weather forecasters are talking about a band of snow sweeping across the North and the Midlands during the course of this afternoon and this evening. Insofar as I can discern from the weather maps, it looks as though Bromsgrove is absolutely on the edge of this snow line and so I am hopeful that we only get sleet or, if the snow does fall, it is sufficiently light to dissipate quite quickly. So having got the shopping done and then unpacked, we said goodbye to Meg’s carer who we might not see again if we replace her mid-day ‘sitting’ visit for an earlier one provided by the couple who get Meg up, washed and dressed. I promised to give her a reference if she applies for other jobs because, as a Psychology graduate, she may not to remain as a carer for the rest of her life. We had to have our lunch fairly expeditiously this lunchtime as I have a hospital appointment later on this afternoon and this having been done, I left for the hospital just after 2.00pm. When I got to the hospital, the car parking was a nightmare as we have come to expect oven the years. I joined the queue of cars searching desperately for a space and zigzagging through the car park on several circuits. The upshot of all of this is that I arrived some 5-10 minutes after my appointment time and apologised profusely although I suspect this must be happening all of the time. Nonetheless I was seen for my scan on time and chatted with the Polish radiology assistant about Brexit-related matters whilst she was getting me prepared (CT scans require a radio-opaque die to be delivered via a canula) This CT scan was routine insofar as it may be one of the end points of the monitoring of an operation that I had nearly six years ago now)

Now that I am exploring gradually some of the features of the Windows 11 operating system on the new laptop I have just acquired and on which I type as Meg is following news or listening to music in our Music Lounge. One such feature may seem a little like a gimmick but I found it quite intriguing. Once I got the webpage displayed that I composed for the benefit of fellow carers yesterday evening, I received a prompt that I could have the text on the website ‘read out’ to me if I pressed a combination of keys. This I did and heard an English style (i.e. not American-accented) female voice reading out the website to me. Excited by all of this, I thought I would try it out on the text version of these blog pages and again, this worked perfectly. I may get into a pattern where I play the ‘audio-enabled’ version of the blog to play the last day’s entry to Meg whilst she is sitting in her favourite armchair. I am intrigued to see what the reaction of various people might be (our domestic help, some of Meg’s carers) if I inflict any of my blog entries upon them.

Today, we feel as though we almost in an election mode as both of the principal party leaders attack each other. The Labour Party has decided to abandon its pledge to spend some £28 billions of both public and private sector money on green projects before the end of the next Parliament (always assuming they were the government of course) This pledge has become an albatross hung around the neck of the Labour Party even though it was first formulated in an era of low interest rates before Liz Truss trashed the economy and was always meant to be a mixture of public and private sector involvement. The Labour Party was finding that spokesman after spokesman were attacking the £28 billion figure as typical Labour profligacy and it was becoming evident that in the forthcoming election this attack line was going to be hammered to death across the social media and every time a Labour Party minister took to the airways. I think that ditching this figure was quite sensible even though environmentalists and the green lobby are up in arms. Rishi Sunak also massively opened his mouth and put a foot in it at PM’s question time yesterday by trying to taunt Keir Starmer over the definition of ‘a woman’ Whatever the rights and wrongs of this argument, the fact is that the murdered ‘trans’ adolescent’s mother was in the public benches of the House of Commons so this was not time or the place to issue what seemed a supremely insensitive comment into the debate at this particular point of time. In fact, the murdered girl’s father has already asked that Rishi Sunak’s insensitive comments should be withdrawn but of course, that is not going to happen either. One does get the feeling in these pre-election skirmishes that the personal attacks and ‘dirty tricks’ are only going to grow exponentially. A very ‘old fashioned’ political expression, taken from football, is that one ‘should play the ball not the man’ but one suspects this is going to be the reverse of what happens as the election campaigns unfold.

Today turned out to be quite an eventful day. We knew that in the morning, we were going to have the elecricity turned off whilst the power company took the opportunity to cut down the branches of trees that might be impeding their power lines. We were prepared for this to happen shortly after 9.00am so between the carers and myself, we ensured that Meg was up and breakfasted. Then we entertained ourselves with ClassicFM on a battery operated radio until it was time for us to have coffee in the Methodist Centre. Here we were greeted by another obstacle as the immediately adjacent local authority carpark that we generally use was out of commission for the week as they were doing some maintenance work upon it. So we had to hunt out a more distant carpark which entailed a more distant walk into the Centre itself. Once there, we sat ourselves down at the chatty table where we consumed some of our usual teacakes and coffee. We got into conversation with a couple who happened to be a retired health visitor married to a retired policeman. Meg had taught the Health Visitors some sociology and social policy whilst we were both lecturers at De Montfort University and I think that taught them them some elementary statistics, research methods and perhaps IT as well. We then left, wanting to get home just before 12.00pm when we assumed that the power would be restored. Our immediate next door neighbour had called around a few days ago and we agreed that we would use the contractors employed by the power company to radically prune back a conifer in our garden but which was causing a nuisance by intruding into our neighbour’s garden. My neighbour had agreed a ‘back pocket’ price with the men involved who, of course, had all of their necessary gear (shredding machines and the like) on site. So suddenly our back garden was filled with the three contractors who busied themselves with the job in hand, taking some 20-30 minutes altogether. I always prepare coffee for workers in this situation but the three of them waited until the job was done before having their drink.

This afternoon, I was going to attend a special neeting organised for carers and this was to be the second of two sessions, the first being last week where we concentrated on those being cared for whilst this week we were concentrating upon ourselves.The session was run by a couple of occupational therapists and in the course of the afternoon, we shared various concerns and problems with each other. I thought that it might be quite a good idea for us to form a self-help group so that we could swap ideas, strategies and even provide some practical support for each other. To facilitate this, I circulated a sheet of paper with contact details on it and we then put the filled-in sheet of paper on our mobile phones so that we all had a record of each other’s contact details. I then said that I would supply a list of some practical tips and hints to share with others that I would put on a simple one page website, which can grow and be expanded as the need arises. Whether anything will come of this, I cannot say at the moment but as I have a template prepared, it is only the work of a minute or so to get a simple web page prepared which I did when I got home. Whether or not, we can be of mutual support to each other as carers is a bit problematic as we all seem to have a plethora of individual problems and not many of the scenarios that we face are at all similar to each other. I had to leave the meeting a tad early as I did last week to ensure that I got home before Meg’s carer had overrun her allocated time slot. She is a good natured lass but had experienced a couple of problems to make her afternoon all the more eventful. The first thing that had happened is that car was in the way of the contracters who had been busy pruning the conifers in my garden and after she went outside to her car, she had not appreciated that the front door would lock automatically behind her – which it did. The contractors, evidently practical people, suggested that she contact our immediate next door neigbour to see if they had a key to our front door. We nearly always leave a key with next door neighbours for contingencies such as this so that one was one problem for our care worker resolved. The second was that Meg had experienced a fall which sounds dramatic but was actually more of a slither to the floor, but again presented the care worker with a dilemma. Se sensibly did not ring the ambulance which would have been a drastic solution but instead remembered some of the advice that I had given her when we first met with each other. This is to get the fallen person onto their hands and knees, then onto a low stool, then into a sitting position and finally into something like a standing state. So the girl managed to follow this advice and although I am sure she had some anxious moments, managed to get Meg back into her chair again. So at the end of the day, I was glad that I had given the care assistant the appropriate instructions when first we met to alleviate difficulties such a this (although I meet with this problem on a daily basis)

Tuesdays are always the days to which we generally look forward and today is no exception. That is because after meeting with our Waitrose friends, Mike goes off and does his weekly Pilates session whilst Meg communes with her (Peruvian-born) carer whilst Mike is out of the house. Today was no exception and we got down into town where we made contact with one of our usual crowd. Tomorrow is going to be quite an event-filled day as her husband who was several years her senior and in his 90’s had died recently and tomorrow was going to be the day of his funeral. So tonight and tomorrow night there was going to be a gathering of surviving relatives and evidently these had to be entertained and fed. But in some ways I felt that our friend would be keen to get the whole funeral business over and done with so that she could get on with more living of her own as she has own pattern of disabilities with which to cope. I was telling our friend what a deep impact the Channel4 series on the Miners’ dispute of 1984 had had upon Meg and myself and recounted some of the salient points from the TV program recorded in last night’s blog. The conversation then moved onto the Birmingham Six which was another miscarriage of British justice. After the Birmingham pub bombings, six local Irish men were rounded up and charged with the murder of the innocent civilians drinking within the pub. The Irish men were convicted on what was turned out to be the flimsiest of evidence. A Home Office pathologist who did not have a good reputation for competence used the traces of a cellulose type substance, found in the most minute quantities on the hands of those accused, had argued that this was evidence of bombmaking activity. The accused Irishmen argued that the cellulose type substance had been transferred onto their hands because they had all been playing cards on a train journey but they were not believed at the time and the Irish were convicted. Several years later, it transpired that the Irishmen’s explanation was quite valid and the Home Office pathologist’s evidence was fundamentally flawed. At the time, there was a huge outcry and there was a massive public demand that those guilty should be caught and convicted. And so the ‘Birmingham Six’ were put behind bars and I believe that at least one of them died in prison protesting his innocence. Now I have gathered that the substantial Irish community in Birmingham was put under severe pressure and felt the real weight of public anger directed against them. We can see parallels in the way in which the Jewish community is feeling such pressure today as anger is directed against them as a result of the Israel/Gaza conflict. All of this is, of course, history but our friend managed to convey a bit of oral history to us. This was that in the Longbridge car factory, often known locally as ‘The Rover’ there were groups of Irish workers on the assembly line but the management felt constrained to shut the whole of the plant (for how long I do not know) until public anger had subsided and the Irish workers were no longer deemed to be at risk of battery and assault by the rest of the workforce. I am reminded of the phrase which I encountered when I was a sociology undergraduate that the individual can be regarded as the point at which ‘biography and history intersect’

The email client that I have used also gives its users an allocation of filespace and the opportunity to create some webpages and I have taken this opportunity in the past but not consulted the websites recently which I had originally created. So I browsed one of these websites and was quite amazed at what I had re-discovered. On the website there were some snaps taken of my sister and brother-in-law who had helped us to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary celebrations in Spain some 16 years ago. But there were some gems of other family ‘heirlooms’ which must have been scanned in some time ago but I am not sure where the originals are now. I discovered three photographs of my mother, one resting up half way up ‘Catbells’ overlooking Derwent water in the Lake District, on on her Open University graduation day in Sheffield and one holding the hand of our son when he was about six years old. In the same collection I also discovered two photographs taken of our son when he was about two, one on his own and the other sitting in a push chair being pushed by a mini-skirted Meg. These last two photographs are now over half a century old but the oldest was a photo of myself at the age of about 14 taken in the school playground at my school in Bolton, Lancashire and the original of this would have been about 1959 or 1960 which makes it over 60 years old. So quite a find after all.

The news media is dominated by the news today of the cancer from which King Charles is suffering, discovered during another routine operation. Our close Spanish friend send me a quick email message expressing some surprise (or even shock) at the news. In my reply, I said that we had scarcely noticed the news announcement despite the fact that it had been mentioned in the news media outlooks as least 87 times before breakfast this morning. The ‘Sky News‘ commentator announced, somewhat gleefully I thought, that this may well be a topic of news for months to come and my heart did sink at the prospect. As my son and wife have have drily remarked ‘So an old man has cancer – where’s the news?’ with which sentiment I feel I must concur.

Today being a Monday, we look forward to our carers coming at 8.00am but we waited in vain. Eventually three turned up at 8.40am but then three turned up together (two regulars and a ‘newbie’ in training) but by this time everything had been done. We got Meg downstairs and breakfasted and then prepared for our trip to Droitwich, which is quite a regular event for us on a Monday morning. Then our University of Birmingham friend phoned up to see if we were free which was a welcome call for us. We decided to go to Droitwich as a threesome which we did, attending our our usual cafe and picking up a copy of ‘The Times‘ en route. Then we had a very pleasant chat and returned home in the late morning. We watched a little of the ‘Politics Live’ program on BBC2 just after midday and then prepared our lunch which consisted of some of the beef joint cooked yesterday, some broccoli and a baked potato.

This afternoon, after one or two false starts, I managed to access the ‘catch up’ of the astounding documentary series which is being broadcast on the events of the Miners’ strike of 1984, evidently 40 years ago now. This film I think it is fair to say was jaw-dropping in what it revealed but I managed to watch it for the second time (but Meg for the first time). A few of the most memorable points are recounted now. At the time, the police made every effort to stop miners joining the picket lines, even turning cars around at the ‘other’ end of a motorway if it was thought that miners were about to join the picket line. But in the ‘Battle for Orgreave’ coking works in the West Midlands, things were very, very different. No miners were turned back but the police were there in massive numbers with mounted horses on two sides of a valley and dogs on a third side. After an initial ‘push’ the police sent in the cavalry and some terrible truncheon damage was inflicted upon the miners fleeing the police. The mass of miners were pushed towards a neighbouring village for good reason – if it could be shown that members of the public were frightened or disturbed by unfolding events, then the miners could be charged with the much more serious offence of ‘riot’ rather than ‘unlawful assembly’ and this more serious offence could result in a gaol sentence of 25 years. The trial itself was a farce. When the police came to give their statements, many were practically identical as the police had been instructed what to write in their notebooks. They all claimed to have seen a barrage of missiles heading towards the police even after the police horses had charged. But the defence team managed to get hold of the police’s own video which did not show any missiles being thrown nor any of the offensive weapons which the police claimed the miners had in their possession. After a while, it became evident that the police were guilty of a mass perjury i.e. each one had lied under oath (but no-one has ever been charged) and faced with the overwhelming evidence of police perjury and concocted statements, the prosecution collapsed, every charge was withdrawn and every one of the nearly 100 miners were acquitted. There are even more shocking revelations insofar as the media were ‘tipped off’ and given prime vantage points on the top of buildings so that the results of the orchestrated confrontation could be filmed. Even the BBC admitted some years after the events that they reversed some of their footage to make it appear that the miners had charged the police who had then responded rather than the reverse which was actually the case. We now have the evidence of some footage shot on the miners’ side of the dispute which shows the police initiating the action against the miners which of course the government was determined to win. So why should all of this matter today so long after the event? The fact remains that even five years ago, the government have repeatedly denied that there is any need for an enquiry despite the emergence of a mass of new video and documentary evidence. One recent commentary put it thus: ‘An Orgreave inquiry is in the public interest in order to put the facts in the public domain and to put an end to years of lies and cover-ups by the Conservative government about the political role they played in orchestrating and managing the pit closure programme in the 1980’s, directing militaristic police operations in an industrial dispute and manipulating the courts and media to manufacture a false narrative to demonise and criminalise workers fighting for their jobs and communities.’

Just when we were hoping that there might be an imminent breakthrough in the Israel/Gaza conflict (or do we call it a war?), news has emerged that a big split within the Hamas movemmnt is preventing the emergence of a peace deal. One would have thought that the Americans could have forced a deal on the Israelis but the latter hold two ‘Trump’ cards (no pun intended) which is not only is it an election year in the US but also that the Americans know that the Israelis (and probably the Iranians as well) are in possession of nuclear weapons which they would not hesitate to use if the very existence of the state of Israel were to be threatened.

Meg and I had a better night’s sleep for which I think we are truly grateful after the disturbed sleep that we had the night before. We got ourselves up, washed and dressed and sitting down for the Lorna Kuenssberg politics program which runs from 9.00am and was characterised by a moving interview with the mother of the teenager murdered recently by other teenagers. We knew that our University of Birmingham friend was away this weekend but nonetheless we decided to pop down into Waitrose to see if there was anybody there that we recognised. But as it was a Sunday in February when no doubt everybody is spent up, Meg and I drank our coffee practically alone apart from one other family evidently treating their young children to a treat. But we made a point of getting back by 11.30 because there was going to be a programme on the TV which we thought we would find very interesting. Last week when we returned home from our coffee excursion, we dropped into the second half of Episode 2 of a programme called ‘Pilgrimage’ and found this so interesting that we thought we would make a point of watching the third and final episode this morning. A group of eight celebrities had been formed into a group and in their number were a couple of Catholics, one Jewish female, one Muslim female, a gay black of largely agnostic views and I do not know about the rest. They had started their pilgrimage in Orsieres in the Swiss Alps but were walking the Via Francigna, which in mediaeval times had started off in Canterbury with Rome being the ultimate destination of the pilgrimage. Whether there were any tensions within this group was not shown in the broadcast episodes but the programmes did concentrate upon the mutual help and support which members of the pilgrimage offered to each other. Of course, for everybody concerned, this was not just an (arduous) physical journey but a quasi-spiritual and emotional journey as well. In this respect the series was reminiscent of the film ‘The Way’ which detailed the pilgrimage journey from the French Alps to Santiago de Compestela in northern Spain. These films show some stunning scenery as well as the ancient towns and villages along the route and to some extent can be seen as a travelogue. The final episode was extremely compelling, including some of the final scenes. Having arrived in Rome, the group as a whole was granted a private audience with the Pope – no doubt, a street-wise and savvy media group within the Vatican realised the good propaganda value of this audience. The pilgrim who was the gay black person of no religious convictions was determined to make the most of his opportunity to have direct words with the Pope and explained that as a gay man, he did not feel at all welcome within the Catholic Church. The Pope’s words to him were both diplomatically skilful as well as indicating Pope Francis’ direction of travel on trying to modernise the modern Church. The Pope picked up on the phrase ‘as a gay man’ and indicated to the pilgrim that one should concentrate not on the adjective ‘gay’ but on the noun ‘man’ and these words were incredibly well received and a source of emotional support to the group as a whole. Meg and I checked that the series as a whole is still available on the BBC i-Player so we think that next Sunday we will probably start to watch the series from the very beginning and watch all three episodes on succeeding Sundays.

Meg and I lunched on beef at midday in which we cook the whole of a joint in the slow cooker and then cut it in half so that one half gets frozen in our freezer whilst the remaining half sees us through the week. We made a mash of parsnip and carrot which we feel always goes particularly well with beef, particularly as I always make an onion gravy to go with it. We try to keep our consumption of meat within strict limts these days and tend to eat meat three days a week, fish two days a week and a meat-free, vegetarian type meal for the two days a week. Ths afternoon, Meg and I thought that we would indulge ourselves in a rather different kind of quasi-documentary and this was a account over several hours on Channel 5 on the progress of the Great Fire of London of 1666. Of course after any catastrophe, there is always a search for a scapegoat but in this case it was not the baker on Pudding Lane where the fire is known to have started. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, there was a search for people to blame and the Dutch (with whom we were in maritime conflict at the time) and then the French (as they were Catholic) were the first suspects. The authorities at the time found a Frenchman fleeing the blaze by the name of Hubert whose mental health was poor and who ‘confessed’ to starting the fire by throwing a fireball into the premises of the bakers. The baker himself and the members of his family all attested to the fact that poor Hubert was to blame who was subsequently hanged at Tyburn, the traditional site of public executions at the time. Of course, there are echoes of this even today when there are hints of this in the ‘hue and cry’ over asylum seekers arriving by boats which can be seen as a cynical way of deflecting criticism from other aspects of immigration policy, not least when legal migration has reached an all time high.

Last night we had a rather disturbed night’s sleep what with one thing or another and we started to get ourselves up and ready at just about 6.30am whereas, ideally, we could have done with an extra hour or so of sleep. So after we had breakfasted, we were rather in advance of ourselves but were regarded with a nice, bright morning. I took the opportunity to photograph our latest ‘captain’s chair’ addition to our hall furniture to add to my collection of similar photos. I then took the opportunity to give a treatment of ‘orange oil’ to both of my captain’s chairs as one needs to choose quite a bright day so that one’s efforts are shown to their best. When you first apply the orange oil, it leaves quite a bright lustre on the woodwork but some of this evaporates and you are then left with a more subtle patina. I left the cushions off the chairs for the time being so that I can give both chairs a light buffing with a polishing cloth before the cushions get replaced. Then we went down to Waitrose at our normal time and were pleased to make contact with two of our regular friends and spent about three quarters of hour in a pleasant chat. I took the opportunity whilst in the store to buy a pack of four bottles of an alcohol-free lager which Waitrose sells and which has in incredible favor despite being alcohol free. The earliest versions of alcohol beer seemed to result in a vert tasteless not to say insipid product but I think that the brewers are doing a better and better job in producing low alcohol beers that are still quite flavoursome. I must confess I do not drink very much beer these days but it is always nice to have some of this favourite variety in stock. When we returned home, we lunched on quiche but put together a ‘melange’ of vegetables with which to complement it. As with so many things, I started with a couple of small onions and then added some small sweet peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes and a cup full of petit Bois. I added a squirt of tomato taste and also a squirt of hot sweet chili sauce just to add a little bit of piquancy and the results were absolutely delicious, so I think I shall repeat this little experiment which ended quite well.

This afternoon, we had some ‘Six Nations’ rugby matches to enjoy. The first of these was Italy vs. England in Rome and the Italians made a very good start to the first half and actually were still enjoying a narrow lead at half time. One always imagined that the English would gradually overwhelm the Italians in the second half and this proved to be the case. But both teams had a new generation of quite young and fit players and the Italians actually scored a try in the 85th minute of the game, making the victory seem somewhat harrower than it actually was. And so we settled down for the second game which was Wales vs. Scotland and I suspect that the Scots do not have a very good record against the Welsh. Having said, the Scots had an exceptionally good first half to their game and by half time, the Welsh had failed to put a single score on the board. However, the game proved to be absolutely remarkable because in the second half, the young Welsh team changed tactics and played out of their skins, finishing up within one point of the Scots at 26:27. One did have the feeling that as all of the momentum was with Wales and they playing before their home crowd in Cardiff, that they would actually manage to over some a deficit of 27 points to actually win the match. Instead, the Scots chalked up their first victory against the Welsh for 22 years and the match in the second half proved to be one of the most pulsating it was possible to see.

What is always intriguing about the first few matches of the ‘Six Nations’ competition is that this is after the opportunity for a rebuilding phase in the national teams – players who we have come to know and whose performances we have enjoyed in the past may well have retired or even be injured in pre-season training (which was true of the Ireland vs France match yesterday) This weekend is a little bereft for us because we generally meet up on a Sunday with our University of Birmingham friend but this weekend he is off on a visit to Yorkshire so we will be deprived of his company for a further week. The forthcoming week for us is going to be a trifle irksome as on both Wednesday and next Sunday, we have been warned to expect electricity disconnections as our power utility is having to turn off the power in order to prune back the overgrown branches of trees that are threatening to compromise some of the power lines. I also have the second of my meetings for carers organised in one of the local hospitals.

There is quite a momentous shift in the political scene in Northern Ireland where eventually, Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill has accepted the nomination to be the first minister. She accepted the nomination in the Irish language, a nationalist held the highest title in devolved government for the first time. Under the power sharing agreement, the deputy First Minister post will go to the (Protestant) DUP but the appointment of a National first minister has a huge symbolic significance. But the new first minister represents a party that does not acknowledge those six counties as separate from the 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland. This means that it is quite possible that within the foreseeable future, we shall see a united Ireland after the Protestants have held power since the creation of the state.

Today turned out to be quite a busy day, as it happens. We were expecting the duo of carers for Meg to turn up at 8.00am but nobody arrived. Even our domestic help was well delayed and we gathered that there had been a massive traffic jam right through the centre of Bromsgrove in the middle of rush hour. So Meg was got up, washed, dressed and breakfasted and then our two carers turned up, in a slightly different pairing to the normal. It it turned out that one of the pair, whose car had broken down and was still being repaired, was reliant upon the other carer who lived fairly nearby for transport but the second carer’s car had itself broken down. So when the pair of carers did manage to make it to our house, there was nothing left for them to do. Instead of turning them away, I invited them to stay and have a cup of coffee with us and I was glad that they accepted our invitation. As one of the carers comes from Peru and the other is Polish, it transpired that we are all co-religionists so we spent some time exploring the various things that we all had in common with each other. Normally, of course, it was all of a rush to get the job completed before they were off onto their next engagement so it was pleasant to be able to get them to know them a little under somewhat more relaxed circumstances. After they had left, we chatted as normal with our domestic help until it was time for the visit of our Eucharistic minister who calls from our local church each Friday to deliver us a little service. After her visit. we then thought that we would make our normal little trip into Waitrose, even though it was fairly late in the morning by now. In the car park as we were preparing to come home, we bumped into one of our Irish friends and she explained that she and her husband had been in Tenerife in search of a little winter warmth which explains why our paths have not happened to cross for several days. We promised to make contact again with each other, now that their little holiday is complete. Upon our return, it was time for our Friday style lunch and so we popped a bought fish pie into the oven and we then enjoyed this when it was ready.

By this morning’s mail we received the most interesting little letter from the wife of one of our oldest erstwhile Spanish friends who was the Head of the Department of Public Administration at the Complutense University, in Madrid Spain as well as being a member of the Spanish Supreme Court. In fact, earlier in his career, he had helped in the writing of the new democratic Spanish constitution after the death of Franco in 1975. He has died during the past year but we had sent a Christmas card, complete with some news about Meg’s health, to his widow who we also know quite well. What we got back was a sheet of folded A4 paper with a beautiful hand-drawn painting oe drawing of an angel and our friend had written her own letter, in English, on the reverse side. Tonight, when I have the time, I am going to reply but I suspect that I will need to cheat as my Spanish is nowwhere as good as her English. So I think I will compose a little letter in English giving her some of our more current news and then I will use one of the many translation services available via Google to turn it into respectable Spanish. Then I shall send off both the English and the Spanish version of my reply together. All of this is probably going to have to wait until Meg is safely tucked up in bed so that I can have a bit of time on my own to complete this little task. In the late afternoon, our hairdresser called around for an appointment which was on our planning board but about which we had forgotten for the moment. Our hairdresser has been coming to us for at least ten years now if not longer and she has learnt how to adapt what she does to Meg’s hair as our circumstances have changed. We do not normally talk about health-related issues but in the course of our normal conversation, it transpired that she had lost one brother to cancer in the last year or so and now another has been diagnosed with the disease with a prognosis that is less than favourable. We exchanged commiserations with her as her brothers had not reached what you might call a ripe old age and therefore were somewhat taken before their time.

Later on this evening, there will be a treat for us to which we have been looking forward for some time, namely the start of the ‘Six Nations’ rugby competition. Tonight’s match starts at 8.00pm and France v. Ireland is being played in Marseilles which is about Meg’s current bedtime. In order not to deprive either of us of this spectacle, I thought I would get Meg prepared well before the kick-off time and then I would get Meg propped up in bed to watch the first half whilst I sit myself in a chair to watch the match. No doubt, there will be other interesting matches over the weekend but I must await tomorrow’s newspaper for a full list of the rugby fixtures to which we can look forward.

Today is a shopping day and I managed, unlike last week, to get this done quite early in the morning. We had been anticipating a call from a carer later on the morning but were rather relieved when she did not show up. Later I got a telephone call apologising for the fact that the agency had some staff reporting as ill but, by mutual arrangement, we did not mind a miss on this particular occasion. So Meg and I decided to go off to the Coffee Bar in the Methodist Centre, exactly as we did yesterday, wondering whom we might meet. After supplying ourselves with our morning ration of coffee and teacakes, we did get into conversation with a couple of people that we know by sight and we were mainly discussing the books (and novels) that people liked to read. I must confess that I cannot remember the last time that I actually read a novel and I generally prefer books with a historical and/or scientific theme these days when I have the chance of a casual or relaxing read which is is rarely these days. Then a delightful couple joined us who had been married for 61 years and there quite a lot of jokes along the lines of ‘Have you discussed divorce ever?’ to which the response is ‘Divorce? never- Murder – often!’ I must say that they both looked remarkably well and in good spirits and I suppose that they must have been in their mid to late 80’s. By way of contrast, the lady sitting next to me had been married for only two thirds of this time and her husband ws a dementia sufferer in residential care. Nonetheless, Meg and I like the concept of the ‘chatty table’ in the Coffee Shop. By sitting down at this particular table, it is anticipated that you can chat with almost anybody about anything and it does not take long to find some topics of mutual interest to enjoy collectively, much as we did yesterday when we were discussing family histories. After we returned home, I cooked a fairly conventional lunch for us and then we settled down for the afternoon. Meg was not feeling well this afternoon so I eventually persuaded her to get into our lounge where I put on the fire, drew the blinds and was pleasantly surprised that she feel into a deep sleep. This is quite unusual for Meg in the afternoons but I was delighted that she had actually done so on this occasion. This is because I took the opportunity to write a fairly full and comprehensive email to one of the nurses who is helping to care for Meg’s condition as I was quite keen to get some advice on some practical questions of care management.

The Labour party at the moment is cosying up to big business and presenting itself as a ‘business friendly’ party after the Corbyn era and the infamous Boris Johnson outburst (expressed as an expletive) to ‘**** Business!’ which seems incredible to come out of the mouth of a Conservative party leader. But one of the Sky interviewers, Kay Burley, asked a question of, I think, the Labour party industry spokesman along the lines of ‘So you are going to cap Child Benefit – but not banker’s bonuses?’ The politician looked, in the vernacular, absolutely ‘gobsmacked’or in other words was speechless and absolutely stuck for words. All of this arises because in their attempt to appease the banks, the Labour Party are not going to impose or to reinstate the cap on the huge bonuses that bankers had been awarding themselves. The exact exchange has made it into the media outlets and was easy to find and I reproduce it below. Burley asked: ‘Just to clarify, Labour is happy to cap child benefits but not bankers bonuses?’ Reynolds then squirmed, before responding: ‘Well, I would not make that comparison.’ ‘I just did’ Burley nudged. This little exchange is fascinating for a whole series of reasons. Firstly, it shows that the values of the Labour party seem to be more akin to a softer version of the Tory party than a socialist party – in other words, the Labour Party is arguing that it can run capitalism better than the capitalists. The truth of the observation could not be denied but is shocking to think about the implications – the Labour Party is going to be friendlier to bankers than to parents who could be defined as ‘feckless’ if they have more than two children. As the Sky political correspondent was forced to observe, wryly, ‘This must have been a stomach churning moment for those in the Labour movement’. The other important talking point of the day is the fact that Rishi Sunak seems to have pulled off a Northern Ireland fudge that seemed to be impossible which is to satisfy the EU, the Northern Irish, the Brexiteers and even the ‘European Research Group’ (hardine Brexiteers) simultaneously. The Labour Party is endorsing the deal enthusiastically and even though some of the DUP (Northern Irish ) are talking about a sell-out, it does look as though the deal is working at least for now. How much credit Rishi Sunak manages to garner for all of this is unclear – it might be one of these rare events when a politician has achieved a reconciliation between opposing factions but hardly gained any credt for it at all. These moments do occur in our political life but they are quite rare.