Yesterday I attended our local GP’s surgery for a planned routine health monitoring appointment. I knew the nursing assistant from my dealings with her in years gone by and a range of tests were undertaken (blood samples and the like) for which the results will be available next week. Today I had needed to arrange for a special ‘sit’ session to care for Meg whilst I attended the surgery and would normally have needed to attend next week for the results. However, the nursing assistant indicated I could have these results over the phone which option I actually chose as it will help to make life a little easier for us next week. As lunchtime would have been somewhat delayed, I changed plans and cooked a quicker lunch and was quite surprised by how tasty it turned out to be even though it was odds and ends left over from the weekend joint. After we had lunched, the weather seemed to have improved considerably over this morning so we decided to have a quick walk down into the park. This was quite beneficial for the two of us in terms of getting some good fresh air into our lungs but at that time in the afternoon, there were none of the usual park friends or acquaintances with whom it would have been nice for a chat. When the care worker called in the late afternoon for Meg’s comfort call, as I know him pretty well by now I asked him to give me an estimate in round terms of how many of his clients tend to get out and about (as Meg and I do) and how many are confined to their own homes. After some thought, the care worker thought that only about 40% of the people for whom he cared managed to get out of the house (where they were capable of it) and to enjoy some of the walks to which Meg and I have become accustomed. It might be the case that Meg sleeps a bit more soundly if she had a walk in the afternoon but this is only the slightest of impressions at this stage. In the middle of the day we received a phone call from the OT (Occupational Therapist) who had called around last week and she needed to check some of the access arrangements if a new hospital-style ‘floor bed’ is to be delivered. We conjecture that this might mean that the request for a floor bed has been granted but neither of us are certain of this at this stage.

After viewing some ‘vox pop’ with some American voters, my interest has been rekindled into why there seems to be such a resurgence in populist and extreme right wing leaders (Farage in the UK, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey and evidently Trump in the USA) and it did not take me too long to find an interesting piece of research published in the Harvard Business Review, which was written mainly from a social psychological perspective. The authors argue that there are two paths to leadership which they term the dominance model (assertive, controlling, dominating and intimidating) and the prestige model (individuals who are respected, admired and held in high esteem) We could almost think of this as ‘traditional patrician Conservative’ (Macmillan) versus the populist (Johnson, Farage). The gist of the article is that dominant leaders achieve their appeal when the socioeconomic environment is riddled with uncertainty and people experience a lack of personal control, The argument is supported by three empirical studies, two of which relate to the US (with sample sizes of 700 and 1400) and the final one derived from the World Attitudes Survey (with a sample size of 138,000) These findings are hardly new as the roots of fascism are well known to be associated with deep economic uncertainties. Although I found the argument appealing, I also thought that it was somewhat simplistic and was in need of some refinement. I would point out that in today’s society, the role of social media cannot be ignored and in particular the techniques deployed by the extreme right to offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. We are finding this in the British political scene and, in particular the way in which connection is made with the voting public by extremely simplistic three word slogans (‘Get Brexit Done’ ‘Stop the Boats’) Perhaps it goes without saying that I personally feel that the answer to complex problems must needs be complex and not the reduction to a simplistic three word slogan.

In the American Democratic Congress, Joe Biden is handing over the reins to the next generation in the form of Kamala Harris. I heard one pithy American commentator explain ‘now we can move onto real policies and not talking about Biden’s age and Trump’s dementia’) What will be interesting is to ascertain what degree of ‘political bounce’ Kamala Harris will receive in the polls after a few days of generally favourable TV and press coverage. I suspect that one of the keys in the American presidential election will be the attitudes taken to abortion. In the USA, state after state has made access to abortion progressively much more difficult and practically impossible in some states. There is a particular irony in all of this in that the American right who are responsible for much of the shift in abortion policies across the USA are generally committed to reducing the role of government in the private lives of citizens except in the case of abortion where in effect the power of the state to dictate the outcome of women’s lives is increasing. In the meanwhile, Trump is engaging in even more bizarre personal attacks (‘I am better looking than she is’ being one of the latest outbursts)

In general, I only scan the business pages of the newspapers with hardly much attention but one issue caught my attention. Apparently two of our supermarket chains (Asda, Morrisons) are in deep trouble recently and the root cause appears to be in the role of private equity firms who have increased their stake in these two firms. As a result, customers are being asked to pay the price for the fact that the private equity firms are extracting massive profits from what they perceive to be cash cows. I am undoubtedly over simplifying the nature of the economic analysis here but we have seen the role of private equity firms before in our High Streets (for example Boots the Chemist) and I try to make my own little protest about this by not shopping in Boots if I have the choice.

Last night, Meg and I had a much better night’s sleep which was very welcome to us both after the disturbed night’s sleep that we had the night before. Today is going to be a departure from our normal Tuesday routine as I have to attend an annual medical monitoring in my local doctor’s surgery. I have had to arrange with the care agency that the normal ‘sit’ arrangement we have with Meg on a Tuesday be advanced so that I can keep my appointment. The same thing will have to be done next week when there is a follow up appointment to discuss the results. Today is rather a wet and miserable day so I am not too unhappy that we are having to change the normal rhythm of our routine. But if the weather brightens up this afternoon, there is always the park to which I can take us both so that we have a breath of fresh air in our lungs.

After the reminiscences of my childhood, I started to think about some of the activities that engaged me when I was aged about 9-11. The family had moved to a very small village in Yorkshire outside Harrogate and the village as a whole was only 200+ souls so naturally all of the children knew each other. One activity which we did together was the construction of what we called go-carts (the American version is go-Kart and was motorised) This venture was started off by going to the local municipal tip which in those days anyone could wander around. The essential component was a discarded pram from which one could wrench off the wheels, preferably with the axle intact. Once having got these home, construction could start in earnest. One started off with planks of wood that were somewhere nailed or screwed together and then one longer and narrower projected piece rather like the vertical part of a ‘T’ Onto this we affixed a cross-bar onto which were screwed one set of wheels and evidently this had to be steerable. From somewhere we acquired a bolt which had to affix the cross member to the chassis but where young boys with access to only the most rudimentary of hand tools could make a hole large enough to receive the bolt. The other village boys taught me the skills and this is what we did. First a nail was hammered in slightly and then removed – into the hole left by the nail we screwed in a small screw to be replaced by a somewhat larger one. Eventually the hole was made the right size by making the poker used to poke the coal fire red hot (this was 1955!) and then running downstairs with it to plunge it into the hole in the cross member to make it the right size. To the cross member, one attached some stout string (in fact, in the fields of a rural community one often found baling twine) and this provided the steering mechanism. If you were really fortunate in finding a fifth wheel, this could always be utilised as a real steering wheel with the twine wrapped around the wheel and held in place by a tyre. Almost finally, one persuaded one’s mother to let you have some spare remnants of carpet and this was then tacked into place to provide a degree of comfort and to save one from splinters in the wood. As a final finishing touch, in the Yorkshire village we used to visit the yard of the village pub and find some discarded crown corks that could then be tacked into place to provide for a degree of decoration. To drive one’s go-cart, one generally knelt on it using the spare leg to kick the card into motion and then finally lie flat on it, particularly if one was fortunate enough to have a degree of slope in one’s local road down which you could travel. Brakes were generally frowned upon but of course the toes of shoes often served this purpose. One achieved a degree of street credibility if having whooshed down the slope of one’s local road or pavement there was a natural ginnel or opening in which one could steer one’s craft. As I remember it, girls and younger children were allowed to sit on the go-cart as passengers but they were not generally involved in the construction process ‘per se’ Naturally, one was always falling off and crashes were frequent so there were always running repairs to be undertaken. Having had this experience when I was young, when my son was of the appropriate age and living in Leicestershire, I built a go-cart for my son built upon the tried and tested principles. The other lads and dads in the immediate vicinity thought this was a great idea so I had inadvertently started a trend. The fathers generally looked on indulgently and evidently lent their sons some hand tools (it was the age before electric screwdrivers and the like) and they generally let their sons get on with their construction jobs, probably quite happy for them to learn construction skills on their own and to teach and occasionally help each other. In case my recollections seem excessively romantic, I did go on the internet to see how far my recollections were rooted in reality. Everything I remembered was documented on the web and I think that the go-cart construction thing was a 1950’s-1960’s thing as there was less traffic on the roads/pavements, pram wheels were easier to come by and the commercial ethic of the 1970’s and 1980’s had yet to take a hold. Incidentally, what I have termed ‘go-carts’ were known by the local name of ‘trollies’ in Leicestershire and my welsh neighbour with whom I discussed this subject at one time called them ‘gambos’ which I have found out is the traditional Welsh word for a farm cart.

Ukraine has put Vladimir Putin ‘into a position he never dreamt in his worst nightmares’, former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has told Sky News. But there is a report in the news media that the Russians were totally unprepared for the Ukrainian counter offensive and the elite Ukrainian troops were met by conscripts whose officers just ran away. This last sentiment has more than a hint of Western propaganda about it but there is probably a germ of truth in it. The move by Ukraine was a massive gamble and very risky but seems to have paid off not least in the propaganda war. The story is told in the early days of the war that the Ukrainians took their young captive conscript soldiers into custody, gave each of them a cheap mobile phone and told them to phone their mothers to tell the truth about where they were and what they were doing. This was an excellent propaganda move at the time given the misinformation that the Russian authorities were feeding their population.

Yesterday afternoon after we had lunched on ham, baked potato and some fine beans, Meg and I set ourselves to watch for probably the third time ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ which is both a love story and a war film of which we never tire. There are superb performances by the Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz as well as Nicholas Cage who plays Captain Corelli and John Hurt as the world weary but sagacious doctor village doctor. After we had enjoyed this film, we went into the back garden for about 20-30 minutes and was the opportunity for me to cut the back lawn which had been neglected for a couple of weeks. It goes without saying that our efforts were supervised by Miggles, our adopted cat, who is fed an occasional meal of Aldi’s finest premium fish based cat food. Unfortunately, Aldi have stopped stocking this so I had to buy an alternative which turned out to be more expensive but Miggles’ taste are such that he/she rejected the salmon and just about tolerated the cod version of the food when it was offered. Last night, Meg seemed to go off to sleep fairly rapidly but then had a rather disturbed night which involved me spending at least half an hour in the middle of the night attempting to keep her comfortable. This is rather difficult as Meg is such a dead weight and because of the lost sleep, she is sleeping on this morning and I am letting her so until the carers make an appearance.

Following on the reminiscences about my ‘Uncle Jim’ and the fact that he portrayed his Geordie origins as always referring to my sister and I as ‘hinny’, I started to wonder about the localised terms of endearment that are typically used even by strangers to each other, for example in the markets or on the buses. In Nottinghamshire/Leicester, the term ‘me Duck’ is used quite regularly but there is a slight linguistic shift between Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire which I cannot quite recall. Going up the country, the love ‘love’ was used quite a lot even by male bus conductors to their male passengers, as in ‘Come on, move down the bus love’ and we have referred to ‘hinny’ that the Geordies use. By the time one gets to Edinburgh, this has become ‘hen’ and the Scots are bound to have lots more expressions. Here in the West Midlands, the term ‘Bab’ is very well known in the Black Country and one of our carers was addressed as ‘cocka’ by her future mother-in-law. Although not a regionalised expression, our family use the term ‘sunshine’ quite frequently from each other and this term was popularised by Eric Morecombe (of ‘Morecombe and Wise’ fame). What I not fully appreciated was that the term ‘sunshine’ could be used both affectionately and sarcastically. When we say it sarcastically, we’re trying to refer to someone as a bubbly and warm person when it is clear that they are not. In fact, my wife and I used to use the term ‘Little Ray of Sunshine’ to refer to Meg’s mother whilst she was alive (but not to her face) and it was certainly used sarcastically but as a shorthand code between the two of us, we appreciated it to ‘LRS’.

This morning being a Monday, we are make a longer sally forth to our new found little cafe which greets us warmly. Whether we will actually get there is a little problematic because the little square off the High Street in which it is located has a sign indicting road works so I am wondering whether access to the businesses around the square is to be allowed or not. We used to attend the Methodist Centre when we could travel by car but this is just a little stretch beyond us now that we can only travel to places accessible by wheelchair. When we got to the square, though. access to businesses were still allowed but the work was due to proceed for another twelve weeks. After our pot of tea and toasted teacake, I popped into the nearby AgeUK furniture and charity shop where I bought a throw and some cushion covers. The latter are a subtle colour which will match much of our furniture but I will have to find some suitable filling materials. We made our way up the hill and in plenty of time for the carers. After they had left, I proceeded with our lunch of ham, broccoli and some bought carrot and swede mash just to make a change. This afternoon, we anticipate watching a film on the life and times of William Wordsworth that we just happened to flash by when I was accessing YouTube this morning.

Today is the first day of the Democrats national convention in Chicago, USA. All of the major networks will be capturing this event (as indeed they did the Republican convention about a month ago now) The convention will give the Democrats a lot free publicity with which both to ‘wow’ the audience to persuade the non-committed so it would not be surprising if there a positive bounce in the polls for the Democrats. Meanwhile, there are indications that even Republican ad fairly right wing sources are now indicating that Trump may have a real fight on his hands and may well lose in November. Having said that, there are some fairly blood-curdling predictions in the American media to the effect that Trump’s supporters will not actually allow him to lose the election. Many Trump supporters have got themselves into positions such hay are supervising and/or regulating the elections in key states and therefore would be very open to the suggestion that the Democrats if they happen to be ahead are actually ‘stealing’ the election. I have a foreboding that after the November election there will be weeks if not months of Republican challenge and prevarication to ensure that if the Democrats have actually technically ‘won’ the election, the Trump storm troopers will just not allow the Democrats to take over. The Americans are a litigious nation in the best of things so I perceive that if there as a projected Democratic victory in the election, the Republicans will utilise every legal and organisational trick known to them to ensure that the Democrats do not assume office. It goes without staying that America will become the laughing stock of the world and the American desire to lead the ‘free’ world as a model of democratic probity will be completely trashed. From all of this only Putin’s Russia will benefit and the consequences for the rest of us somewhat terrible for us to witness.

This morning being a Sunday, the care workers turn up half an hour earlier than the norm so I have to ensure that everything is in place for when they come. For a start, bed-linen, clothing, towels, flannels and washing materials have to be in place before the workers arrive so it takes part of 15 minutes to ensure that everything that they might need is at hand. After that we breakfasted and it seemed no time at all until our friendly Eucharistic minister calls around from church. She and her husband are taking a much needed break after a succession of funerals which has befallen them over the last week or so they are quite keen to get a break and we shall resume contact in September. We received a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend and were absolutely delighted that he was back into the country after his little break in Switzerland which is a country he knows well. We met in Waitrose, as much to save time as anything as we had quite a lot to impart to us as he told us about the walks he and his ‘amante’ had done in Switzerland whilst I communicated the results of the exchange of photographs with my niece over the last day or so.

Yesterday turned out to be quite an emotional day for myself and my sister. After reading in ‘The Times’ a proposal in Weston-super-Mare a plan to remove the donkeys who have donkey rides on the beach and have been doing for decades. This triggered yesterday’s blog in which I spoke about our ‘Uncle Jim’ and I trawled the internet to see if the faintest trace did remain of him, even though he died in 1960. What I did find fairly quickly was his tombstone in Scarborough so I transmitted this as a message both to my sister and one of my nieces. As I was recounting the story of the one day at the seaside we used to enjoy, I had more than one tear in my eye and, as it happened, the minute my sister received the photo of the tombstone, she too burst into tears. Now my niece just happened to be visiting her mother (my sister) and she immediately located in what the family call their ‘Black Magic’ box which is an old Black Magic chocolate box stuffed full of family photos. During an extended stay with my mother, my niece and my mother had gone through some of these photos trying to identity the people in the photo and the approximate date it would have been taken. My niece located six family photos on which two were me on a donkey about six, one sitting on my Uncle Jim’s knee and the others being seaside snaps of myself, my sister, my mother and occasionally Uncle Jim himself. Now the photos were taken half a century ago and I have not seen them for decades and decades so it was a completely emotional experience for me (and the wider family) to see these images from my past. Just to recap a little from yesterday’s blog – our ‘Uncle Jim’ was the nearest thing to a father that my sister and I have ever known even though we only saw him for a few hours on one day a year. But he always seemed to be ‘there’ even though he died at almost the same time as my grandmother and before either of them knew what results I had achieved in my GCSEs (‘O’-levels) which I obtained in 1961. So the tears I shed yesterday were not really of sadness because I am taking some delight in the photos that are now in my possession, but perhaps thoughts about what might have been but never was.

Yesterday, Meg and I really enjoyed the rendition that we saw on YouTube of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (‘Elvia Madigan’ which was, I believe a Swedish film where this formed the film score) But three things struck me about the performers and the performances and I am going to ask these questions of the Eucharistic minister who calls around each Sunday and is herself both a cellist and a pianist and still performs regularly. The first question relates to the clothing worn by the performers. Nearly all of the male performers are dressed in what looks like a black suit but I wonder if it is made of the finest silk or even a special glazed cotton so that the musicians can perform with hindrance in their garments. The second question relates to the young pianist we say yesterday for not only did he have no score in front of him but a lot of the time his eyes were either closed, semi-closed or fixed on the orchestra and therefore not on his own hands. So he question I ask myself is whether renowned pianists know exactly where each key and note are on their piano keyboards without needing to look at it. The third question relates to the ‘cadenza’ or section where a performer can show off their virtuosity playing solo without orchestral accompaniment and whilst composers such as Mozart and Beethoven probably improvised extensively, I wonder how many of these cadenzas are written down or whether each individual performer develops their own cadenza? I hope that some are all of these questions will be answered for me later on this morning.

An American columnist has written that in the US Presidential election it looks as though the personal attacks against Kamala Harris are going to get really vicious and persona. Donald Trump has said this week he thinks he is entitled to make those personal attacks after the warfare that the Democrats have waged against him in the US court system. It does not help that this week, Time magazine basically deified Kamala Harris’ candidacy by putting an illustration of her on the cover that made her look like Joan of Arc. It is always a sign of desperation when political candidates start to ‘play the man rather than the ball’ to use a sporting analogy and I am reminded of the wonderful riposte, repeated by some British politicians but first coined by an American in the 18th century about his political opponents that ‘I shall stop telling the truth about them if they stop telling lies about us’ Personal attacks on politicians is what alienates the public the most on both sides of the Atlantic from what we can tell – In British culture there is often a degree of humour involved which can be appreciated on both sides of the political divide but the American political system seems to lack that particular finesse by just engaging in frontal assaults upon each other.

This morning as Meg was being cared for by a couple of older, female workers (they even go away on holiday with each other), we decided to use the new appliance that I have just bought to wash Meg’s hair whilst she was flat on the board. This is an inflatable type of bowl with a drain hole in the bottom and a type of channel in which the patient’s neck rests. The carers had seen something similar before that so made fairly light work of the task which was great – from now on, we may well incorporate this into a routine for Meg each Saturday morning. After we had breakfasted, we made our usual trip into town and met up our three regular friends with whom we generally have a good chat each Saturday morning. We had to inform them that we might not see them next Tuesday morning as I have a doctor’s appointment which is rather getting in the way of our regular meeting but there will be further occasions in the week. In fact, we were ten minutes late returning and half way up the hill received an urgent telephone call from the care agency to the effect ‘Where are you?’ Fortunately we were only a few minutes late and so did not disrupt their schedule too badly. As we lunched we listened to a beautiful rendition of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (‘Elvira Madigan’ is the popular name, and we never tire of this particular work.)

As I was flicking through the pages of ‘The Times’ yesterday, I noticed that in one seaside town, Weston-Super-Mare, there is a movement to try to remove one of the enduring attractions of the seaside, namely the donkey rides. There are local campaigns both for and against the removal of the donkeys but it did put me mind on my own family holidays from the ages of about 6 to 11. Our holiday consisted of one day at the seaside which was always Scarborough some 60 miles distant from Harrogate. We always hunted around in a kitchen drawer for the front door key because we had the notion that when we were on holiday, even for one day, we needed to lock the front door which was normally left unlocked (this was the 1950’s where I do not think that people usually locked their front doors) Then my mother, sister and I caught the bus to Scarborough which was exciting enough in itself. Once we arrived in Scarborough we were met by ‘Uncle Jim’ who was not an actual friend but a life-long friend of my mothers. I learnt subsequently that ‘Uncle Jim’ had actually proposed to my mother who had evidently turned him down – had she accepted, I might not have existed or would be a very different person. To give him his full name, James Trotter was a High Anglican vicar and was much loved in his parish and community – as we walked down the street, he would be stopped every few yards by friends and acquaintances for a chat. Then we got ourselves onto the beach where my sister and I were treated to a stick of rock and some candy floss (which my mother hated) Then the absolute highlight of the day was the donkey rise which cost about 6d (2.5 pence) and where we were walked on the donkey for about a one hundred yard stretch and then back again. In the late afternoon we either went for a meal of fish and chips or went to the vicarage, where we served a high tea by Eve who was Uncle Jim’s present wife. She was always rather a cold and aloof figure and I now appreciate why. They also had the most enormous cat because it was fed on a diet of a huge slab of fish (which I surmise might have given him by a friendly parishioner) Then in about 1960, my mother received a letter from Uncle Jim with some devastating news. He had an operation for bowel cancer and we were told that they removed 80% of his intestines after which he did not survive very long. ‘Uncle Jim’ was a very significant part of our childhood and as he hailed from the NorthEast he always called us ‘hinny’ which is the local vernacular term of endearment amongst Geordies. I wondered whether any trace of his existence might be available on the internet as he had died in 1960. A search term of ‘James Trotter Anglican priest Scarborough’ revealed just one trace of his life which was a tombstone in a graveyard in Scarborough where he was buried. None of the family went to his funeral and I am not sure if we were invited. But the tombstone had an inscription upon it which was a biblical text ‘I thank my God upon every remembrance of you’ This is apparently a very well known text from an epistle of St Paul to the Philippians in Northern Greece. On a literal level, it refers to the feeling that ministers have towards their congregation when a new parish is started but on a more generic level, it refers to the fellow feeling which we are encouraged to have with our fellow men. I even found on the internet an hour long sermon preached by an evangelical American preacher who had taken these words as his opening text but knowing how loving and loved was my Uncle Jim, I am sure that these words were chosen by him before his death. I have a vague remembrance that my sister and her then boyfriend might have visited our Uncle Jim before his death but I need to check with her that my memories are correct on this point. In reflection, even though he died some 64 years ago now, all I can say that our Uncle Jim was a fixed point in our lives and he loved my sister and I as though we were his own children. He and his wife Eve did not have children of their own whether by choice or accident I can only conjecture. But the same letter which conveyed to us the news of his terminal illness also contained the news that Eve had promptly left him. Somewhere, and I must ask my niece about all of this, we might have a photograph lurking somewhere of our Uncle Jim but it would have been taken on a little Brownie 127 camera and the figures will be minute. I must confess I heard not thought about him now for years but the ‘donkey story’ triggered all of these childhood memories.

Today we woke up a little early but not early enough to bother going back to sleep so we decided to make a fairly early start to the day. Meg’s carers came on time and we discussed when we might wash Meg’s hair as I have just purchased a special (plastic) bowl which is designed in such a way that people can lie flat on a bed but with their neck in a sort of channel – anyway, tomorrow we shall put it to the test with two of the more experienced (female) carers who may have utilised something like this before. It was a beautiful bright day today so we set off down the hill and I remembered today to put on my Hi_Viz vest which I am sure makes motorists slightly more liable to stop to allow us to cross the road. This morning we called in at Waitrose to pick up our newspaper and some ‘Arborio’ rice and then made our way to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ cafe. There we were absolutely delighted to meet up with our nonagenarian chorister who we normally meet in Waitrose each Tuesday and Saturday for whom this particular cafe might be a little easier for her to access. We had made an arrangement to meet at 10.30 and were only a minute or so late – Meg and I enjoyed the treat of a bacon butty which is a treat reserved for days like today. After we had had our elevenses and a pleasant chat, we each went on our various ways and Meg and I called in at the AgeUk furniture and charity shop to see what they had on offer. We did espy a wonderful blanket made up of squares knit by the crochet method. It is possible that this blanket is machine made but I have visions of a little old lady knitting the squares in a range of colours and then stitching them altogether. We already have two of these blankets and one of these we put on Meg’s downstairs bed when required and the other goes across Meg’s knees when we venture out by wheelchair. A third blanket will always be useful because these days, even blankets are liable to end up in the washing machine so to have a third on standby will always be useful. When we returned this morning, it was not long before one of the young Asian male carers turned up with a new colleague who as we found out had worked as a student nurse on a neurosurgical ward and therefore had quite a tremendous amount of relevant experience that can be transferred over.

As we now have four care visits a day, it is inevitable that we develop relationships with the carers that we see regularly and, just occasionally, can even help them with some of the vicissitudes of life. Yesterday, we were delighted when one of the young female carers who is a sixth form student received her examination results by text and I was absolutely delighted for her that she had received a Distinction in ‘Health and Social Care’ of what I think is a BTEC qualification. But she is off on holiday for a couple of weeks with her family so as she announced yesterday, we will not see her again until September. In the meanwhile, her fellow carer who is a young male carer who cares for Meg several times a week and has a wonderful manner told me that he had never tasted the Italian meal of risotto. So today, I decided to make a risotto which I used to make every single week but I have got out of the habit recently. So I needed to resurrect my memory of how to make it which is to fry off an onion until translucent, throw some arborio rice for a minute or so (which trick I leaned from a Chinese chef) and then gradually add some chicken stock. At the appropriate point, I threw in some smoked mackerel which I defrosted from the freezer, some petit pois and then the final finishing touches. These are to add a small glass of vermouth (of which I was amazed to discover I still had some remnants in our alcohol cupboard), a good dollop of yogurt and finally one or two tablespoons full of grated cheese (this last tip given to me by our Italian friend) This all turned OK and I have put some on one side for our young care worker to try. It is evidently a characteristic of the care industry but the turnover of staff seems tremendously high. In the nature of things, it always seem to be the most committed and/or senior of staff who leave to get other jobs probably with more secure pay and conditions. For example, a couple who are sisters and who have cared for Meg for months have left to work in a special school for which they are both very well qualified. So although I attempt to ensure good relationships with all of the care staff, it is a little sad when the ones with whom you have developed a relationship over the months actually leave for pastures new.

Ever since Bill Clinton campaigned on the slogan ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ it has become a truism that how well off people feel is a critical factor in how election campaigns fare and on the relative popularity/unpopularity of the government. Now there are some small in indications that the UK economy might be gradually improving as we have recently had an interest cut a quarter of a percentage point and as the growth figures for the last quarter seem somewhat more positive. As we are only a few weeks on from the general election, the Tories are claiming that it any signs of economic recovery are ‘theirs’ and this raises a more general point as to how and when a government should claim credit for changes in the economy. I suspect that most Labour figures would agree that any turn around in the economy is probably due to the actions of the previous government but, of course, one should not read too much into one set of figures as it is the trend over several months that should be the focus of our attention. Despite the rhetoric, most governments accept the changes in legislation passed by a previous government and hence we have the spectacle of a Labour government with a huge majority not overturning the cap on child benefits beyond the second child upon which I expected a huge backbench Labour opinion which did not happen. But a little historical perspective might be in order. The system of child credits took over a system of what was termed ‘Family Allowances’ in which payments were only made from the second child onwards. So parents who currently receive child credit for the first two of their three children are in the same position as parents a generation ago who had three children but Family Allowance only for the second and third child.

Yesterday when the OT (Occupational Therapist) turned up, it was a person who saw Meg about a year ago and was surprised by the changes that she saw in her – of course since then we have had the hospital visit and then the moving of a bed downstairs. She is going to make the case for a ‘floor’ bed rather than a hospital bed which lowers to a low position, thinking this might be safer for Meg in the long run. She is also investigating whether adaptations to the wheelchair might help to keep Meg in a more upright and less slumped position in the chair – we shall have to wait and see what happens. This morning, I was awoken at 5.00am in the morning as Meg was uncomfortable but I did what I could do singlehanded before the carers turned up at 8.00am. We got about half and hour’s extra sleep which is always welcome.

Today is the day when the ‘A’-level results are announced to students and is evidently a day of great anticipation for all, joy for some, disappointment for others and general tension all round. In Leicester Polytechnic, the admission of students through ‘clearing’ if students did not quite achieve the grades for their first choice of university/course was decentralised to each individual course or group of courses. It was stressful for us staff because we had to take enquiries over the phone, ascertain whether they had enough points at ‘A’-level to satisfy our own course requirements and then make a provisional offer of a place. So we had a pro-forma upon which we could take the essential data and give a provisional ‘Yes’ ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’ – all of which depended upon how the market was operating in that particular year. Typically, we needed to enter clearing to get the course up to its full complement and if we fell short, this meant that we had fewer students in the system, less resources and ultimately perhaps even staff redundancies. If we over-recruited then as a college we were penalised by the funding bodies – so it was almost as stressful for us as admitting tutors as it was for the students (and their parents with whom we were not supposed to deal) as it was for the students themselves. This is the background to one of the best practical jokes I have ever played. We ensured that absolutely on the stroke of 9.00am my son would phone in as a ‘fake’ student and by appearing to be busy we ensured that one of our fellow tutors, who I shall call Robert, would answer the phone. Then my son went his well-rehearsed script which ran as follows. Would the following collection of ‘A’-levels gain admission to a degree course in Public Administration – an ‘A’ in Classical Arabic, a ‘B’ in Equine Management and a ‘D’ in Catering Studies (these are fictitious ‘A’-levels by the way). Robert replied with some surprise at such a mix of ‘A’ levels that it appeared to meet the points total we were demanding and now for the name. So our son spelled out the letters of a surname ‘P’ ‘H’ ‘A’ ‘C’ ‘E’ and then the letters of a first name ‘U’ ‘D’ ‘I’ ‘Q’ – in order to fully appreciate what this name sounds like it has to read aloud, first name followed by Surname. So ‘Udiq’ was offered a place on our degree course until the rest of the tutors informed our colleague who and what he had accepted. My son won £5 for his part in this joke which was probably the easiest money he has earned in his life. Not to be outdone, the daughter of a colleague phoned up the same colleague at the same time of day with an application number which looked correct but was equally fictitious. When the application form with the erroneous number could not be located, the daughter went into a torrent of invective such as ‘Call yourselves a Department of Public Administration – I doubt you could organise a (party) in a brewery! Do I wish to take a place with as shambolic an administration such as this!’ and so on and so forth. The daughter earned herself £5.00 as well. I do not want to give the impression that these practical jokes were typical or frequent as trying to make sure that the course recruited with reasonable students was a stressful activity.

On a more serious note, after we had several cohorts of graduates, I decided to undertake a piece of statistical work to see if we could predict the class of degree earned from the admission profile. In statistical terms we were looking for a correlation between the points total at ‘A’-level and the overall average grade achieved at the end of the degree course. We found that the association was very low (of the order of 0.25 on a scale which rums from -1 to +1) but we did find that ‘O’ level grades (or more specifically the grades achieved from the best five ‘O’-levels taken at any one sitting) had a better predictive ability than ‘A’-levels. Then we went ahead and complemented this statistical analysis with a bit of what is called ‘qualitative analysis’ Now Meg as the tutor who organised work placements for the ‘sandwich’ element of the degree often had a detailed knowledge of personal circumstances which it was necessary to have to ensure that the ‘best’ students were put forward for the most suitable placements. Although no personal or confidential information was disclosed, Meg supplied the information that approximately 30% of the students that we recruited had suffered a severe trauma at some point in the lives between the ages of 15-18. This could be anything from an illness of self or a parent, to a change of school or a marital dissolution. So now we had some kind of explanation as to why many of our students had a reasonable profile at ‘O’level, had under performed in their ‘A’-level examinations and then realised some of their true potential when they eventually graduated with good degrees some years later. This process was known by some as ‘precious metal recovery’ but it did help us to refine our admission procedures in the light of our more detailed researches. I repeated the same type of analysis at the University of Winchester with broadly similar results. These two investigations did not leave to published papers as such but had a fair degree of ‘political’ impact (for example in Council for National Academic Awards submission documents) that we needed to prepare at regular intervals.

One of Meg’s carers turned up yesterday afternoon with a rather unusual request, namely did I have a paint scraper? As it happened, and quite amazingly, I managed to put my hands on a new paint scraper relatively quickly. My young carer needed to remove some tinting material from the front windows of his car and as this is not legal he intended to remove it. I assembled together a range of materials (brillo pads, cream cleaner, scouring pads etc) that I thought might assist him and he together with a fellow care worker they were going to undertake their repair work. It was only when I did some research on the internet I came to appreciate that tinting is allowed for the back windows of a car but not the front. The weather this morning is gloomy and overcast and it had evidently rained overnight. This we did not mind too much as Wednesdays are the days when our domestic help calls around and it is always good to have a chat with her. But the principal appointment this morning is with an OT (occupational therapist) who is calling round by appointment to assess a series of aids to help to manage Meg’s condition. We know that the appointment is this morning but we do not have an exact time so we need to be in for all of the morning. If the weather brightens up this afternoon which well it might then we might treat ourselves to a trip in the park later on. My niece got into contact with me to indicate that she could not get through to this blog so this is taking some investigation – for some reason, the domain name which is fully paid up and in date will not point to the relevant server so I have support tickets in place with my website provider to provide a solution to why something that has been working for months if not years has suddenly decided to go belly up. In the meanwhile, here is an address to which the domain name is meant to point and this might help readers of this blog to get through to it: https://mch-net.info/wordpress This morning, i made a lightning visit down into town to collect our newspaper and whilst in the store, I happened to notice our window cleaner who was on the top of a tall ladder cleaning the windows of a building opposite the supermarket. I was tempted to call out a greeting but restrained myself on the grounds that whilst on the top of a ladder, he could hardly turn round and wave. I am reminded that when we undertook a statistics exam at the end of our second year in university, we were given to a graph where we had to interpret the results. The graph was entitled ‘Death to Window Cleaners by Age’ and demonstrated a generally ‘U’ shaped curve with deaths being quite high when window cleaners were in their 20’s but then dropped markedly when they were in the 30’s and 40’s. Then the death rates started to rise again as taw window cleaners were in their 40’s, and 50’s reaching a peak in their 60’s. The explanation which I supplied to the examiners (together with most of the rest of the 200 of us) was that whilst they were young, the cleaners were somewhat more daring and liable to take risks with their ladders. Then as they got older and acquired wives, children and mortgages they tended to be sober up somewhat and be much more risk averse. As they aged, so almost inevitably they started to lose their grip and their balance and hence the death rates rose steadily as they aged. However, this was a totally incorrect answer. We discovered via a friendly examiner some time later that the correct answer was there was insufficient data to form any conclusions from the data that was supplied and therefore any answers that we might give were completely in the realm of speculation and not at all warranted by the data sets with which we were supplied.

There is a group of activists entitled ‘Led by Donkeys’ which likes to use bill boards and other visual methods to lampoon political figures. In their latest stunt, Liz Truss was captured storming off stage during a book promotion event, after she was interrupted by a remote-controlled banner mocking the comparisons made between her and a lettuce. The former prime minister was pledging her support for Donald Trump when the sign rolled out in the background, featuring a photo of a lettuce with googly eyes, which read: ‘I crashed the economy’. The whole point of this stunt was a comparison that was made during Lizz Truss’s ill-fated premiership between her shelf life and that of a lettuce (in point of fact, the lettuce won) Lizz Truss is trying to endear herself to the American right where her style of free-market economics might find some adherents. However, she is constantly lampooned by the British media and I suspect that she dare not show her face at venues in Britain lest even more fun be poked at her.

With the American elections approaching, I have decided to bookmark some relevant websites that I think I will find especially useful. But first, on my Thinkpad laptop, I have downloaded the DuckDuckGo browser which has very prominent for preserving online privacy and not allowing cookies or websites to have your IP details. I have used this before and its search facilities for simple items seem to be as good as Google. Once the browser was installed I did pay a subscription to the New York Times (which has a very heavily discounted price to new subscribers of only £20.00 for the first year) as its has excellent election trackers. To complement these, I am also bookmarking two other liberal-inclined websites in CNN and MSNBC so I have the three websites available to me very easily and quickly by just using the DuckDuckGo. This curiously named browser, I discover, is really named a children’s game of ‘Duck..Duck..Goose’ and I do not know whether it has been popularised in any parts of the UK. I seem to remember that at the time of the last Presidential elections in 2020 I did something similar and then got rid of all of the bookmarked websites when the elections were well and truly over. But I have the feeing that this time around, the US elections might drag for months with challenges in the courts and Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters refusing to accept the result.

There have been two particularly gruesome cases which have come to light recently in which evidently very ill and disturbed patents with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, after being in their local hospital, are then released ‘under the care of their GP’ But the individuals in question seem to have refused their medication, failed to keep appointments and then have gone on to kill by stabbing individuals in broad daylight. The acute services, and this applied equally to mental as well as to physical health concerns, do a good job but after the acute phases of their operations have been conducted they then discharge individuals ‘back into the he care of their local GP’ This is the point at which our health services completely break down. We are led to believe that a person who has had perhaps multiple instances of an acute mental illness or disorder with then fail to take their medication and are supposed to wait patiently at the end of a telephone for several minutes to try to arrange an appointment with their doctor, which in the first instance is a telephone consultation. Now this is not going to happen and typically does not, the overall problem being that we know how to treat acute episodes or conditions but problems of a more chronic nature are left to fester. We know from our own family experiences that this is the weak point in the system and it is far easier to state the problem than to attempt to resolve it. Our GP services are under such pressure that there has been talk of limiting the number of patients that can be seen in one day (say to 25 rather than the 40 which I think is more the norm). Even pay itself, although an irritant, is not the complete answer which really lies in the fact that we need many GPs in the system. The government is trying to alleviate this problem by recruiting ‘Physician Associates’ who are individuals with some biological background who are then a crash course in medicine and thrown into the front line. We have seen this before with ‘Teaching Assistants’ in schools and the thinking behind this all is eventually to attempt to cheapen the resource total as a whole by recruiting only half trained staff. Now many of these newly recruited staff no doubt do an excellent job and routine conditions may be easy to treat but there is a worry that more complex or complicated conditions will not be diagnosed or treated. The long term solution would be to rapidly expand our medical schools and of course in the short term we could recruit more from our European neighbours – but this is no longer a feasible option after Brexit. Without wishing to sound xenophobic, I read recently that approximately one half of the new jobs created in the UK recently have been filled with personnel of either Nigerian or Indian origin between 2019 and 2023. I somehow do not feel that replacing the predominantly white labour force supplied to us by our continental neighbour and replacing them with personnel from the Asian and African continent is what those who voted for Brexit intended.

Today is the day when we go down the road to make contact with our Waitrose friends. We were particularly glad to see our chorister friend who is in her 90’s but who we have not seen for a couple of occasions so a smidgeon of worry about her was arising within us. She had been finding the walk down to town a little arduous possibly because her medication had been altered. We told her about ‘The Lemon Tree’ which might be a slightly shorter journey for her so we said that we would like to see her on Friday if that is a little easier for her to access. It was a beautiful day today and so the journey up and down the hill was quite a pleasant one today. Meg has a sitter today so that in theory I can attend Pilates – in practice, there is something else urgent for me to attend to and such was the case today when I needed to pay a visit to our local Post Office.On the occasions that i go there, I always seem to be behind someone in a queue whose Post Office transaction is long and complicated and today was no exception. But on the way home, I did the quickest of tours around our local Salvation Army and relieved them of a wall clock which I badly need in the upstairs bedroom where I have relocated the radio which displayed the time next to my bed downstairs.

You would imagine that pushing Meg and up down the hill would be quite arduous but not is all that it seems. Going on the downhill sections is a breeze if the slope is gentle but when the slope is more severe I have to use my triceps to ensure that the Meg and the wheelchair do not tun away with me. You would have thought that pushing Meg up hill would be difficult but this is only true for the (thankfully few) steeper sections. If there is a slight incline upwards then the weight of my body pushing Meg up the hill is not stressful. Also, since I have invested in my Hi-Vis vest (bright yellow) I am pretty sure that motorists are more inclined to stop and let me cross the road. There is a special unit that you can buy which affixes to a rear bar of the wheelchair (although ours does not have one) and this is a battery driven power wheel which gives particular assistance on going up hill.I have considered this but think that the benefits might be outweighed by the costs. I will not need the unit when going downhill or up very moderate uphill sections so the unit would only come into its own on the more steep uphill sections. Also it would add to the weight of the whole and possibly make it less manoeuvrable, particularly over kerbs so I am coming to the view that what initially looks like a good idea but not be overall.

I heard fragments of an interview in which Elon Musk and Donald Trump were forming a mutual adoration society with each other. Not only did I find this odious but I wonder whey the Main Street Media give it any airtime. The BBC reported some of the interview comments but then added that it was ‘fact checking’ some of the claims that Trump had made. But the BBC did not announce any of the results of the fact checking and I wonder when they are going to publish or release the same (I suspect never).

Last night, I watched (or rather dozed through) the closing ceremonies of the Olympic games in Paris. This was conducted with traditional French flair and at the end of the ceremonies there was the traditional hand over of the Olympic flag to the next host city which is going to be Los Angeles in the USA in 2028. All of the American razzmatazz was in evidence in the hand over ceremony and I don’t think I will enjoy the excess of Americana to which we will be exposed in four years time. The commentators are saying this morning that the Olympic games will not return to Europe for at least sixteen years (the next two games to be held in USA and then Australia in 2028 and 2032) and in 2036 it will probably be the turn of the Asian continent to host the games. I would imagine that after years of striving and then succeeding in their various disciplines, many of the athletes may experience a massive ‘post-Olympic’ blues. I remember the feeling after I had working hard for my finals in 1968 and suddenly, all you have been working for has realised. There is some concern that whilst Team GB have exceeded the last Olympic medals haul by 1, the number of gold medals gained is markedly down. But there have been several instances in both athletics and swimming where the margins between success and victory have been incredibly small. Just as a small end note to the Paris Olympics, one of Meg’s carers told me with a certain amount of glee that some 300,000 condoms have supplied for the use of approx 5,000 male athletes which works out at 60 per athlete. If it was a female planner ordering these supplied, I wonder if she was suffering from an excess of caution – on the other hand, if it was a male planner, it might have been an excess of optimism. I wonder if we will ever know what proportion were actually used?

Today being a Monday, Meg and I are to make a trip to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ which is now a part of our Monday morning routines. The care workers are due to call half an hour earlier today in their late morning comfort call so I am advancing our normal timetable by half an hour. It looks as though two tremendously hot days are in prospect for us followed (hopefully!) by some thunderstorms. So thunder was rolling across the sky when Meg and I were preparing our venture out but the thunderclouds had rolled on once we actually got underway. The weather, though, was incredibly humid and after our tea and toasted teacake in our newfound cafe, we got home to the relative cool of the house. The push up and down the hill had proved to be so humid that when we got home, I needed to change into a tee shirt and shorts, putting my other clothes straight into the wash. On the way home, I acquired a wonderful little (red) Squirrel Nutkin badged for the Rothsay Manor hotel in Ambleside, which is a little toy/plaything that may help to divert Meg on occasions. We could not really fancy a conventional cooked meal so I took the cold beef which was cooked yesterday and made a salad of it using grated carrots, tomato and choose. To the grated carrots I add a few walnuts and soma sultanas to make it all a little more interesting and appetising.

I have come across an American website called ‘Alternet’ and on this website there is an article asking the question why the media is not calling out the evident and growing signs of dementia exhibited by Donald Trump. His behaviour, outbursts, speech patterns and grasp on reality are now leading to a slew of commentators asking questions about Trump’s hold on reality but the same concern has not made it yet to this side of the Atlantic. One commentator has observed that his description of his departure from the White House as a ‘peaceful’ transfer of power, his insistence that the group that mounted the assault on the Capitol was relatively small, and his boast that attendance at his January 6 rally preceding the assault was larger than the crowd Martin Luther King Jr. drew on the National Mall for his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech all point to a presidential candidate who is seriously unhinged. Amongst various claims are that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, is ‘very smart.’ That whales are being killed by windmills. That he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. That the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. We could go on but the Democrats are certainly tapping into this growing feeling by using the term ‘weird’ to describe both Trump and his coterie. Even Republican strategists are concerned that Trump does not seem to be campaigning in the crucial ‘swing’ states where the latest polls put Kamala Harris some 4% ahead. It is also being said that Trump cannot cope with the fact that he is being outgunned not just by a woman but by a black woman (and Trump in characteristic stye has attacked her racial origins rather than her policies) Kamala Harris does not come with the same baggage as did Hillary Clinton at the time of the last presidential elections and now that Biden has departed from the race there is only one old (and increasingly senile) candidate left in the race.

I was a little distressed to learn today, that Graham Thorpe who died recently had suffered from a major anxiety and depression two years ago and attempted to take his own life. His recent demise may have been related to this but the full facts have just been released by his widow. For some reason, perhaps unexplored, cricketers are particularly prone to depression but I cannot be sure of the causal factors or triggers in this case. As a more general point, whereas sportsmen and women by definition are in a good physical shape when they are in their prime, I wonder whether their pursuit of their sport pushes their bodies to the limit and whether they consequently die younger than the rest of the population? I have read of some respectable research that indicates that famous sports stars, singers, dancers and actors all tend to show that the price for making it big in performance terms may be a shorter life.