The spell of fine weather continues today so Meg and I thought that we would make the most of it whilst we could. Thursday is the day when the weekly shopping gets done and we have a sitting service from the care agency to enable Mike to go and get this done. The carer that we typically have is a young female psychology graduate and Meg is well used to her so we were pleased that she had been allocated to us again this morning. After I returned home with the shopping, I wheeled Meg into the kitchen as she was had been put into her going out’ wheelchair and the carer and I busied ourselves with unpacking the shopping. Then the time came for her to depart and we awaited the arrival of a couple of carers in the late morning who attend to Meg’s comfort. But whilst they were here and knowing there was typically not much to be done in a late morning call, I asked them if they would assist in a little project of mine. I am in email correspondence with Bromsgrove District Council/Worcestershire County Council concerning the absence of a pavement between our road and the main Kidderminster Road. This means that when I take Meg out in her wheelchair, I have to wheel Meg along what is a ‘de facto’ inner ring road around the town. I am trying to get the road authorities to alleviate this situation somehow and to assist me in my mini-campaign, I asked on one of the carers to make a videoclip of me wheeling Meg along the road. This he did and a car overtook us which rather makes the point. Of course this was crass bad planning and cost cutting some twenty years but my argument is that Worcestershire County Council has a duty of care to its residents and particularly to its disabled residents. If Meg and I were to be hit by a passing motorist and the local authority had done nothing to alleviate a clear and present danger, then my argument is going to be that they can sued for a considerable volume of money. Of course, none of this is going to happen and I would be amazed at the end of the day if I were to get any alleviation of our access problems but it will give me a certain amount of pleasure to keep pursuing the local authorities to see what solutions (or more likely excuses for inactivity) they come up with. The carers at the conclusion of each visit have to complete a task and a care log and I wonder what today’s entry might read – something along the lines of ‘assisting the service users to record a video documenting the dangers consequent upon no pavement being provided’ or something similar. Tonight, when Meg is safely abed and I hope, asleep, the video clips are to be forwarded onto the relevant County Councillor and we shall see what happens.
When it came to lunch today, the weather seemed a bit too warm for a conventional meal. I had already taken a quiche out of the freezer to defrost so I warmed this in the oven for the appropriate length of time. Then I made up a salad with tomato, pickled beetroot, cheese and some coleslaw. The coleslaw was actually made up myself with bits of pieces – I chopped some of the really bits of fine white cabbage up that I had in our fridge and then added a few sultanas and put it in a mayonnaise sauce with a topping of honey and mustard sauce. This sounds like a weird and wonderful combination but it actually worked pretty well, so much so that I will not mind repeating the experiment if I need to. The visit scheduled for the carers was an hour earlier in the afternoon than I would have liked so Meg and I had the prospect of a fairly long afternoon of Meg in her wheelchair. But we ‘solved’ this problem by having a trip to the park where we regaled ourselves with bananas. When we got home, we wondered what YouTube had to offer to us and the algorithm offered to us today ‘Romantic operatic arias for Valentine’s day’ Meg started to watch this and I attended to some emails but we were both enthralled by the music and enjoyed it more than we can say. Every one of the arias is known to us anyway as they are largely drawn from Puccini/Verdi/Mozart but why look a gift horse in the mouth. Just before lunch, I got a phone call from the nurse who specialises in Meg’s conditions who visit us about once a month or so and who is always available to advice and support where needed. She is always very helpful and supportive but was going off on holiday with her family and so was giving us a ring before she went. I mentioned Meg’s sleeping problems and she said that she would get into contact with the doctor on our behalf to see if a ‘melatonin’ agent could be prescribed for us which might be sleep inducing. The nurse always seems to get results when she communicates with the doctor and much more so when I do so, we shall have to see what happens in this instance as well.
Some of the political news today is highlighting the fact that Joe Biden is afflicted with a bout of Covid but according to the White House the symptoms are mild rather tan severe. But I wonder whether this medical event might be enough to induce senior members of the Democratic party to force a resignation of Joe Biden from the presidency. A factor that might be significant is that Joe Biden might not only lose the presidency but some Senate seats could also be lost giving the Senate as well as the Congress and the Supreme Court to Trump. This would hand Trump an unparalleled degree of power and is not the framers of the American constitution had ever envisaged. So once again, we shall have to see if this particular story stands up. The fact that a supreme isolationist, Vance, now has the ticket for the Vice Presidency means that the USA could well abandon Ukraine under a Trump presidency. He himself has indicated that he would force the Ukraine to accept a part of Ukraine back to the Russian state. At this point, I wonder if there is any truth in the rumours that the Russians have a video of Trump having sex with a Russian ‘honey pot’ when Trump was in Moscow and this helps explain why Trump is so beholden to Putin?