The day started off to the peals of rolling thunder but this was not outside but an option available under the Alexa suite of programs to help to induce sleep. I selected this on a whim and it must have worked in the middle of the night because I did not stay awake for very long. I was up quite bright and early, ready to greet our two carers one of whom was both new to us and fairly new in the job as well. I suspect she was a little nervous but anxious to please but had she arrived slightly in advance of the other carer, I took the opportunity to introduce her to our little systems with which she will no doubt familiarise herself were she to become a regular carer. I had been expecting our son to come over fairly early in the morning and he would have done were it not for the fact that the battery in his car had gone flat and even the first aid supplied from the garage who supplied him with the car did not do much to resolve the problem so a new battery needed to be installed. But the new battery was of a higher capacity to the one that it replaced so one wonders whether the battery supplied when the car was new was somewhat under-specified. When our son did call around, I was eager to get all of his news after his recent hospital stay and he now seems to be on the mend but he realises (and I keep nagging him) to the effect that he really does have to take it easily and ease himself back into work which will no doubt be horrendous once he is back in harness. I am relieved, though, that he is to have a meeting with his line manager early on next week and no doubt a somewhat lighter scheduLe of work might be heLpful until his long function is more fully restored.

As it was quite a beautiful fine and clear day with just a hint of winter warmth, I pushed Meg down the hill to take a coffee in Waitrose. We dod not expect to see any of our regulars on a Friday but we did get into conversation with a couple who lived in an avenue round the corner from us in which there is a field (soon to be built on) separating our respective roads. They recognised me by sight and said that they had often observed me pushing Meg up and down the hill. Later we had a few words with a gentleman who we know quite well by sight and have, on occasion, shared a joke with him. I just got the feeling that he might be a retired schoolteacher from Bromsgrove School as he had that kind of bearing. So I pluck up my courage and approached him asking if he was a retired academic. He explained that he had been a GP and then moved into a role where he was engaged in some medical research and even advised the courts on occasion. We ascertained that we had both acquired our PhD’s late in life (i.e. in our 50’s and not our 20’s) and then swapped some observations about the distinctions between and appropriateness of parametric vs. non-parametric tests of significance in statistical research. But we could not prolong the conversation because Meg was getting a little cold and impatient to be off so we made our way home. We were expecting a visit from the Occupational Therapist some time after 1.00pm and he turned up, together with a student on attachment and the sole carer all at the same time. We thought that we might have to hoist Meg into her new chair so that the OT could check that all was well but we explained that we were very satisfied (in fact, delighted) with it all and I acquired an email address so that I could write a note to his superiors commending him for a superb service, given that the chair arrived n about three weeks. in the early afternoon, we got the vote for the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons and the Bill was approve in the second reading by a majority of 55. The debate proved to be the House of Commons at its best with each side respecting the firmly held convictions of the other side and allowing interventions when necessary to clarify or to reinforce particular points. Of course it was a free vote as the bill was a Private Member’s bill and was an issue of conscience like the Abortion Law Reform bill sponsored by David Steele in the 1960’s. The Bill now goes into committee where it will be argued over line by line and it is possible that amendments might be made which would then have to be approved in further votes in the House of Commons before the eventual Third Reading. A majority of 55 was perhaps a little more that might have been expected but it appears that a majority of Tories voted against the bill, a majority of Labour MPs for it with significant exceptions on both sides. I would be amazed, though if the House of Lords were not to amend it or throw it out completely. Although a Private Members Bill, the government will now be involved in severely practical details such as can the NHS cope with the increased demand on its resources and a parallel argument applies to the judiciary as well.

On the news, there were some clips of video of Notre Dame in Paris after its restoration. The French President, Emmanuel Macron was being given a preview but I think the formal reopening ceremony is due in about a week’s time. I understand that the French ecclesiastical authorities were keen for the Pope to perform a reopening ceremony but the Vatican was not playing ball on this one, using the excuse that France was too secular a society nowadays. But the restoration work seemed stunning. When Meg and I went round it approximately ten years ago its was a bit grimy but the whole cathedral has been restored to its former glory. I think a lot of oak trees had to be felled in France to replace the originals destroyed in the fire but the French have managed a restoration in about 5 years which is remarkable. But being one of the national symbols of French art and culture, I think that the restoration went ahead whatever the cost.

Yesterday the two carers turned up on cue starting at 8.10 and I was pleased to see them if only because the icy weather (about -3 degrees) meant that a delay in getting to us because of car starting difficulties was absolutely on the cards. But we always suspected that today might prove to be a rather difficult day to organise because although it was my normal shopping day, it was also the day when the delivery of Meg’s new specialist chair was scheduled. We had been given a time slot of anywhere between 9.00am and 12.00am but in the event the chair was delivered at 8.45 as our call had been made the first drop in the morning. We knew what the chair was to look like as a sample chair had been brought along by a representative of the firm that supplies it to ensure that the correct model and fitments were supplied. The chair is actually manually operated rather than having electric controls. I am quite happy with this because once we have the adjustment just right for Meg, there is actually little need to alter anything. We knew that a certain degree of reorganisation of the furniture was due to take place but to our pleasant surprise Meg’s new chair and her existing, quite wide, leather armchair would live quite happily next to each other. We realised that various little tables used for plates, cups of tea, books and the like would need to be placed adjacent to the new chair and this was performed quite expeditiously. Meg’s specialist chair actually sits quite high off the ground but she is gently tilted backwards and with excellent leg and foot supports so when she is sitting in it, she is very comfortable and is starting to live up to the title of ‘Queen Meg’ which the younger care workers have bestowed upon her. But I did need something upon which I can sit so that I can administer both food and drink to Meg and, fortunately, I happened to one high kitchen stool which used to be part of a set but which was soon pressed into service. This turned out to be just the right height for us and I was delighted that we were in luck once again. Now that Meg was safely enthroned, all we needed to do was to give Meg her usual breakfast and then await the arrival of the carer scheduled to do a ‘sit’ with Meg whilst I go off and do my weekly shopping. On previous occasions,Meg has exhibited some separation anxiety symptoms but today when I returned with the shopping, the carer informed me that Meg had a very pleasant time. We had starting to listen to a selection of Fauré courtesy of Alexa and finished up watching a Jeremy Clarkson programme which involved him making a real pig’s ear of a ploughing job on his recently acquired farm. As we had a fairly full morning, we were not tempted to make any trips out which was perhaps just as well because the temperatures have been pretty low all day and we are hopeful that they may improve by tomorrow.

Immigration has been an explosive issue in British politics for about a decade now and all kinds of political debates are shortly to be re-opened following the publication of the most recent set of official statistics. Net migration stood at an estimated 728,000 in the year to June, a 20% decrease compared to the year before. But that was down from a record high of 906,000, which the PM said showed the Tories had run an ‘open borders experiment’ Keir Starmer said the UK had become ‘hopelessly reliant on immigration’ and vowed to turn the page by boosting skills training for British youngsters and taking action against employers who are over-dependent on migrants. But despite an up tick in processing asylum claims, spending has hit a record £5.38bn and there are thousands of migrants in hotels. As was pointed in the excellent couple of programmes recently broadcast by the BBC, there is a lot of confusion in the public mind between legal migration, not-legal migration often for economic reasons and ‘asylum seekers’ many in the infamous small boats crossing the English Channel. Whilst the last government directed much of its attention and energies to a policy of ‘Stop the Boats’, legal migration was hitting higher and higher levels, much of it necessary to fuel the demands of the care sector. As the weather conditions have worsened and the nights have become longer so the dangers attached to crossing the Channel in boats has increased and perhaps some of the pent-up demand decreased. We know that attempts at illegal migration increase rapidly in the summer months when there are calm conditions so perhaps the reverse applies now. The new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has made a statement admitting that the Tories ‘got it all wrong’ on immigration and one suspects that she was forewarned as to what today’s figures might reveal. I am not at all sure that Badenoch exactly spells out why and how the Tories got it all wrong on immigration but I suspect that she means that concentrating all of the public attention and political energies on illegal migration meant that the Tories had taken their eye off the ball when it came to legal migration. This same official release of migration data reveals that the Home Office spent a record £5.38bn over the last year on asylum – more than a third higher than the previous year. Figures just released showed spending on asylum rose by £1.43bn in the 2023/24 financial year to £5.38bn – 36% higher than in 2022/24 when £3.95bn was spent. The latest figure, covering the Conservatives’ final year in government, is the highest amount since comparable data began in 2010/11.

The critical vote on the Assisted Dying bill will be held on Friday and the latest suggestions are that it will receive a small Commons majority. But I still have a shrewd feeling that even a narrow vote in the Commons will be insufficient to persuade the House of Lords as presently constituted. But a factor that seems to inform the debate is not the usual Left-Right divide in British politics but rather those who have had recent experience of the death of a family member or loved one and wish to see a dignified end. One powerful expression that is doing the rounds that the Bill is not designed to shorten lives but to shorten deaths i.e. the dying process. David Cameron, ex PM, has experienced the death of a young child in his family (although the legislation does not apply to children) and had recently changed from an ‘anti’ to a ‘pro’ position and it may well be that his intervention, at this stage in the debate, may help some MPs to come to a final decision.

Meg and I must have been more tired than we realised yesterday as we practically both overslept this morning and it was a bit of a rush around to get ourselves ready before the carers arrived. This morning our trusty domestic help turned up switching her days this week as she has a very busy week in her normal place of work and was trying to ease the pressure a little. The day started off gloomy and raining but after breakfast we make a trip down the hill to pick up our newspaper and give ourselves some lungfuls of fresh air. As it was quite a fine day, we made a venture down our local High Street, purchasing a soft toy for Meg in our Local Salvation Army charity shop. Nothing else really took our fancy so we made our way home to coincide with the lunchtime call of the carers. Both they and myself have rather horrendous problems just getting into and out of our access road because a new gas main is being installed on the distributor road which we have to utilise to get onto the main Kidderminster Road. The contractors are just at the point where they are digging a trench immediately opposite our drive and basically all traffic on the road is closed in both directions.So to take the car out of the road, and even to get past the vehicles that block the road, we have to look pitifully at the contractors

We are still experimenting with ‘Alexa’ and have tried giving it a variety of commands. If you try to ask Alexa about Donald Trump however, you do not get any real answers. As a joke, I asked Alexa ‘Tell me about Donald Trump’s sexual peccadillos’ followed by ‘Tell me about Donald Trump’s convictions’ to which you only get the bland answer that Alexa cannot help with that particular query or does not understand the question. But since the 1970s, at least 26 women have publicly accused Donald Trump, of rape, kissing, and groping without consent; looking under women’s skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants but Trump has denied all of the allegations.He has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media and has made lewd comments, disparaged women’s physical appearance, and referred to them using derogatory epithets.But only a cursory scan of the web reveals an article (courtesy of ‘The Daily Beast’) which is entitled ‘A Handy Guide to (Nearly?) (Maybe?) All the Sex Scandals in Trump’s New Cabinet’ so there is a wealth of information out there. Intrigue I did a little bit of digging and discovered that Alexa uses the ‘Bing’ search engine which, if you question it directly, spills all of the dirt on Donald Trump without hesitation. But there are nuances to this question that do not pull in one direction. Some users have tried to ask Alexa why they should have voted for Donald Trump only to be informed that Alexa does not engage in political debate or endorse a particular candidate. But when asked a similar question of Kamala Harris, Alexa will reply that she is a ‘woman of colour fighting for racial justice’ When challenged about all of this, Amazon replied that it was an ‘error’ that is being quickly fixed but clearly there are algorithms at work that give very inconsistent answers to these questions.

For lunch, I was conscious that I needed to eat up some bits and pieces before my shopping day on a Thursday. I had some prepared cauliflower cheese which I had purchased from Aldi and was apparently some days out of date but I opened and microwaved it and it was fine. To give us a bit more protein, I had some fragments of beef left over from the weekend joint so I fried an onion to which added the meat fragments and then I made this a bit more exciting with some fruity sauce and a spoonful of Bovril. The end result was pretty taste so I may feel inclined to repeat this little bit of experimental cooking. After lunch, I FaceTimed our son to check on his progress after his recent spell in hospital and it appears that he is making some reasonable progress which is a source of great relief to me. Then I thought I would have a quick look at the films available on Amazon Prime and selected the first which was a sort of biopic of the famous dancer, Isadora Duncan. I was not really concentrating on the film which was playing in the background as I was intent to do a quick sort of the newspapers before the bulk of them could be binned ready for the bin collection in the morning. But the film was one of those disappointing ones where you have invested a certain amount of time in it thinking that it might improve before you realise that you would have been better off watching something else. By an Amazon delivery in the late afternoon, I received a copy of the Chris van Tulleken’s book ‘Ultra-Processed People’ which I now see is a No 1 Sunday Times bestseller and was first published last year by Penguin in 2024. It seems to be my kind of book because at first glance, it appears to be incredibly well researched with some 53 pages of references and nearly 400 pages long. Watching the documentary by van Tulleken was enough to stimulate me to buy the book but now I will have to find the time to actually read it, probably in small chunks every night after Meg has been put to bed.

When the two young carers arrived for Meg’s teatime call, we had some fascinating conversations about their belief systems. Perhaps as a result of having to meet with a variety of both clients and co-workers they were both of the opinion that they could tell almost within seconds whether they going to feel attuned or not with the people with whom they needed to interact. In the 1960’s, they used to talk a lot of ‘vibes’. When I put this term into Google, I learnt that people who give off good vibes are often described as having a positive energy that makes others feel safe, happy, and relaxed. Some signs that someone has good vibes include a smiling demeanour, open body language, an optimistic outlook, a supportive nature, expressions of gratitude and kindness and empathy. The same source indicated that a person’s energy is a combination of their past, mindset, dominant thoughts, and perception of the world. This energy can be easily felt, or it can manifest subtly and subconsciously. People can sense good or bad vibes through their nervous systems, which can pick up on chemical signals left in a physical space. These signals are based on the emotional state of the person who left them. Now these young people really believed in these principles whereas I must say that I am agnostic about this kind of material at the moment.

This morning, the workers were scheduled to arrive a quarter of an hour earlier than is normal, so we made a fairly early start. I was buoyed up by the news that I had received the evening before that our son had been released from hospital but it was going to be later on in the day that we were to receive a full update of what had been going on. After breakfast, it was the most beautiful day so we gladly trundled down the hill and met up with two of our regular Waitrose gang, which is normal for a Tuesday. I bought some last minute supplies and then we got back in plenty of time for our Tuesday ‘sit’ session. I had decided to cook a rather different Tuesday lunch today and to avoid the fish fingers/fish pie which seems so deficient in actual fish these days. I had looked at the contents of our freezer and located some haddock fillets which were to provide the midday meal.

When Meg was safely tucked up in bed and I had done my round of ‘evening’ jobs, I sat down to watch a stunning documentary on BBC2 presented by Dr Chris van Tulleken, a well known and savyy presenter of medical programs. The program was entitled ‘Irresistible – why we can’t stop eating’ and the thesis was startling in its stark simplicity. This was simply that most of the nation was now addicted to ‘junk’ food or more technically, ‘ultra-processed food’ The program revealed how the large tobacco companies communicated the techniques that they used to get people to be hooked onto their products to the food technologists in large corporations who got to work on the size, shape, taste and even sound of food (think ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ for Rice Crispies) to make us want to consume more and more of their product. Moreover this ultra-processed food is so cheap compared with the natural alternatives so it is no wonder that those on restricted incomes are such heavy consumers of it. To quote from a ‘Times‘ article devoted to the subject in the T2 section ‘We are facing a health catastrophe of obesity and other diseases caused by what we consume..our diet related disease statistics are as bad as the worst in the world. ..the pandemic of diet-related disease – primarily obesity but also lots of other problems including cancers and metabolic disease like type 2 diabetes is driven by the marketing, availability and consumption of industrially prepared and products that are high in energy, salt, sugar and fat’ The program actually has a disturbing, not to mention sinister, ending. There are evidently powerful people in the food industry who would rather like Chris van Tulleken to shut up. One food company offered him £20,000 after the publication of the book ‘Ultra-Processed Food’ on condition that he would not say anything that would damage the reputation of the company – van Tulleken immediately declined the offer. McDonalds explored the idea of him becoming an ambassador and offered to fly him to Chicago to meet board. He said that he would to meet them but to pay his own way and not accept the offer of a free flight. The invitation to meet the board was then withdrawn. This was such a powerful programme that I intend to watch it again and with Meg in the next day or so – and I am sure it will probably affect the way I buy and prepare food in the future (although to be fair, we hardly ever eat what is currently regarded as ultra-processed food).

Normally I would wrap the smoked haddock fillets in some tinfoil and baked in the oven but even though I try to wrap the fish assiduously, the smell still seems to permeate the kitchen. So today, I reverted to a method I used to deploy and that is to poach the fish in milk, also taking the opportunity to make some parsley sauce with the poaching milk. As both the ‘sit’ carer and the normal lunch time carer were here when the food was ready, I decided to dish up the dinner straight away and I served up some little bits of the poached fish in two little side dishes for the carers to try whilst Meg and I ate our main meal of the day. In fact, the result was so pleasing and I really enjoyed the fish cooked in this way so the next time I go shopping, I must remember to replenish my stock of smoked haddock fillets. After lunch, as the ‘sit’ carer was still here, I took the opportunity to visit or off-centre AgeUK shop which I commonly do on a Tuesday and I finished up buying some wood design necklace for Meg and a long sleeved jumper for myself. After the washing up was done, I was keen to have a FaceTime chat with our son released from hospital the previous evening. He managed to give me a full briefing about the things that had been happening to him. As I cold recall my own inpatient experience of some six years ago and was looking after Meg when she was in hospital last May, we had quite a lot of notes to compare. In particular, we remarked to each other than when you are in hospital, you find out who your true friends were. Actually, a lot of Martin’s rail enthusiast friends had contacted him with their best wishes for his recovery and his best friend who actually lives in Malvern had a colleague deputise for him at a meeting in Bristol whilst he himself came to see our son in hospital. Hospitals are the arenas of all kinds of social interactions which is one of the reasons why they are beloved of sociologists who have hospital as a ready source of fieldwork experience. When I was researching health service quality management, I read a long and detailed book by a Scandinavian author which was stuffed full of metrics and indicators but was pretty boring. But actually, the best part of the book came at the very end where the author had sustained an accident to his elbow which necessitated a hospital stay. What emerged as the final chapter was an ethnographic account of quality processes which was as fascinating as the rest of the book was boring. We anticipate seeing our son in a couple of days time whilst he continues his recuperation in the comfort and safety of his own home. I had managed to locate two good sources of information about how best to restore good lung function, one of them from the Leicestershire hospital which is a regional leader in the field. I was pleased to see that our son was receptive to some of this advice and was actually following some of it already.

Although Meg had a somewhat disturbed start to her sleep with a period of some agitation shortly after we put her to bed, I utilised the technique of lying on the camp bed beside her and she was more or less settled after about three quarters of an hour. This morning, though, Meg seemed sleepy but more sanguine and the two workers arrived at their scheduled time of 8.10 but it was practically 9.00am by the time we were ready to breakfast. But it seemed to be a beautiful day and Meg seemed quite keen to get down into town so we made our way to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ cafe where we had tea and toast. En route, we picked up a white cable stitch jumper which may be a little too large for Meg but will certainly prove easier to get on. We also bumped into two people we know well, the first being our Irish friend from down the road and the second being one of my Pilates class mates. We arrived home about five minutes before the carers were due to call for their late morning call and after they had left, I immediately set to work preparing our lunch of beef (from yesterday), a baked potato, broccoli and a tomato/peppers/onion/garlic mixture I was sort of experimenting with. This afternoon, we treated ourselves to a film called ‘Interlude in Prague’ and was the story of an affair that Mozart had with a young soprano with whom he was enamoured whilst his wife was away in a spa in Germany. The plot of the film, which may or may have some historical veracity, depicted various characters and scenarios some of which are represented in the opera ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and others of which subsequently did find expression in ‘Don Giovanni’ which received its premier in Prague to great critical acclaim, something that did not necessarily happen when Mozart was ’employed’ in the archbishopric of Salzberg where he was treated as though he was an ordinary servant. In both of the Mozart operas just mentioned, servants were often portrayed as scheming to get the better of their masters who often abused them and one does not have to delve too deeply into Mozart’s biography to see where all of this came from.

Storm ‘Bert’ has done its worst throughout the country and, fortunately, the West Midlands has escaped its worst ravages. But the people of the Rhondda valley in South Wales, and particularly Pontypridd are having a massive clean up job to do and the news is reporting that in Northampton shire, Billing Aquadome holiday park in Northamptonshire is being evacuated after heavy flooding caused by Storm Bert. Billing Aquadrome flood sirens have sounded and the holiday park is being evacuated by the management with assistance from Northamptonshire Search and Rescue and Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service. This particular park since we lived in the East Midlands has been developed so the site contains a goodly number of holiday homes which, as they are single storey, do not give people the option of retreating upstairs so they all have to wait to be rescued. Here in our own locality the little town of Bewdley has been hit but despite massive flood defences put in place over the years, these never seem to be quite sufficient as flood increase in severity and a ‘1 in a 100 years’ event becomes ‘1 every 10 years’ as the impact of climate change is manifest.

The press have been indicating that this is going to be a critically important week for the private member’s bill, popularly called the ‘assisted dying’ bill. One might have thought that with such a large majority of Labour MPs many of whom may not have the religious convictions of the Tories that might have been quite a large majority in favour of the bill in the Commons. But the Cabinet Members seem to be quite split on the issue and many political commentators are observing that the outcome of the vote to be held on Friday (to approve the principle of the Bill) is very hard to predict. Many MPs have still to make up their minds, some are changing from an anti to a pro position and vice versa and new arguments are being deployed all of the time. Speaking absolutely personally, I think the way the legislation is framed seems quite sensible (six months left to live, two independent doctors to agree the decision as well as a High Court judge) In the broadest of terms, I think it is probably acceptable to legislate in this way and to ensure what as a teenager in a Catholic school I was taught to be a ‘good’ death i.e. peaceable, not in pain, surrounded by relatives, one’s affairs put in order and so on. However, I think that in practice I would feel inclined to vote against the Bill until I received cast iron assurances that the hospice movement was so well funded that no one was denied end-of-life hospice care should it be desired. It is quite possible to conceive of scenarios not where relatives are putting undue pressure, or any kind of pressure, or their loved one to end their life bit rather the person themselves may wish not to be a burden to their relatives and in the absence of good hospice care might think that assisted dying is the least worst option. But to argue against myself, for a moment, it might be that if we were to wait for the hospice movement to be properly funded, we might have to wait for a very long time and the proposed legislation would never be enacted. So that might induce one to vote for the bill. If, though, I was an MP I might vote for the bill knowing (and perhaps even hoping) what the House of Lords would reject the legislation which by the time all of the bishops and other faith leaders have had their say might well be the case. Another consideration to give pause for thought is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ or the ‘slippery slope’ argument. In other words once on the statute book, the legislation might be ‘liberalised’ within about 10 years time as indeed the legislation on abortion proved to be. People are looking at the Canadian situation in which some 3% of all deaths are covered by their ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ legislation and here the medical criteria have been loosened and the social criteria widened so the end of life might be considered just because there is no suitable provision to care for the terminally ill person. At this stage, all we can say is that the ‘antis’ seem to have much more voice than the ‘pros’ but we will have to wait until Friday to see which arguments have actually held the most sway.

Yesterday morning, I was experimenting much more with our newly installed Echo Dot smart speaker, purchased the other day. I have found that if I give Alexa a command such as ‘Alexa, play a selection of the work of Mozart’ then a random selection will be made of the most popular tracks of Mozart, most of which admittedly I have come to know and love over the years. This is excellent for Meg and I in many ways, not least because when Meg is put to bed she can have a selection of Mozart playing indefinitely. I have also discovered that I can send a ‘pause’ and a ‘resume’ instruction to Alexa by a voice command, as well as a volume instruction to get just the volume level we desire. When I read one or two reviews of the Echo Dot smart speaker, most of the reviewers had the more expensive model where the time (and presumably other information) in flashed onto I what suspect is an LED screen hidden behind the mesh but as this nearly doubles the cost I am not unhappy with the cheaper version I have actually purchased. The sound quality of this little speaker is superb for the price but the speaker size has got to be an improvement upon the speakers built into the typical laptop which has been squeezed to make it thinner and thinner and is now an average of about 1 inch over the years with consequences for the size of speaker that can actually be fitted. The latest generation of Echo Dot has pushed up the speaker size from 1.6″ to 1.73″ which according to the reviews I have read makes quite a dramatic difference. And according to some of the blurb I have read, there’s an upward-firing midrange speaker in addition to two side-facing ones, which makes the Echo Studio capable of playing 3D audio codecs like Dolby Atmos. In fact, the speaker automatically ‘upmixes’ your music from standard stereo to better fill your space. I have also discovered that if you particularly want to see which track is being played (as in my selection of Mozart pieces, detailed above) than the app on your mobile phone will give up to date and current information about the track that is actually being played and much more than you get on the rolling display of the typical DAB radio as well. Now that I am so much more familiar with Alexa, I am starting to use it so much more on the Toshiba smart TV which I have in our Music Lounge. Although we have always had access to Alexa in this way, I have typically used YouTube to which I had taken out a subscription which gives the video as well as the audio for any music of our choice. So now I finding that if there is no bit of TV that I particularly want to view at any one time, I have the option to deploy Alexa to play choice selections from Mozart.

After we had breakfasted this morning, we watched the political programs after which we contemplated a walk down the hill. We phoned up our University of Birmingham friend who readily agreed that we meet for our normal Sunday morning coffee. We arranged a time but it took me quite a long time to get Meg ready for the journey if only putting gloves on a demented patient is so difficult. I seem to remember a trick tried with very young children where you put the glove half on yourself and then pull half of it off so to expose the finger holes. I will try this in the morning as an experiment and might have to go onto the internet to buy some mittens to mitigate this situation. We had a very pleasant three quarters of an hour with our friend to whom I quickly explained the nature of Martin’s illness. As is quite usual we had an interesting discussion about some of the moral imperatives surroundings things like inheritance tax. My friend and I quite like these discussions if only because having to think about, articulate and then defend a particular point of view leads one to clarify the exact nature of your own stance on the issue. For example today, we were trying to mediate between the extreme libertarian position (the state has no right to take any of your inheritance) to the more common position (that tax is the price that we pay for living in a civilised society). If the very rich who we try to tax do not like it, then they always go off to another society with ultra low taxes, no social services or health service provision and rampant crime on the streets as the underpaid police are riddled with corruption. We were fortunate that the weather had moderated on the way home so we walked home in quite mild conditions.

Once lunch was over, we watched the second half of ‘The Way’ in which the group of pilgrims approach Santiago de Compostela with various incidents en route. The shots that were played of Santiago were emotional in the extreme for me as it showed the pilgrims ascending the steps to the cathedral (which is something that Meg and I have done many times but on the very last occasion had to help her up the steps) Then, of course, there were exceptionally emotional shots of the inside of the cathedral including the pilgrims putting their hands in the finger holds in the marble below the statue of St James (which is something that Meg and I have done many times before) And, of course, there were shots of the Botafumeiro which is a huge incense burner of immense proportions swung high over the crowds of the congregation along a transept of the cathedral by two teams of about a dozen strong men, the original purpose of which was to fumigate the church from the stench arising from thousands of unwashed pilgrims in mediaeval times. In this day and age, it is a sort of symbolic tourist attraction and takes place at the conclusion of the Pilgrims Mass held each day at about 12.00pm.

Yesterday was a strange day in some ways. The night before, Meg had experienced one of the periods of extreme agitation to which she is prone on occasion and the only way to get her to sleep was to lie on my camp bed and attempt to hold her hand (which is not easy when she has one of these agitated episodes) She had the normal complement of pills half an hour before being put to bed, at least two of which are supposed to have sleep inducing properties but instead we had to witness some verbal aggression directed towards the carers. Fortunately, they understood all of this in dementia patients and coped with it as best they could but I find it a bit difficult to cope with when these incidents occur. Meg seemed to be all right when she first woke up this morning but then her mood suddenly darkened, as though a light switch had been turned off in her head so I wondered what kind of day might be ahead of us. It was a very dark, gloomy, wet and windy day and Meg intimated to me that she had no desire to be pushed down the hill to have coffee in Waitrose and, under the circumstances, I was inclined to agree with her. But once we had breakfasted and got washed up, I settled Meg in her chair to some music and then made a lightning visit in the car to pick up Saturday’s newspaper (which contains all the TV programs for the forthcoming week) When I returned, Meg was fast asleep and stayed asleep for the best part of the morning. When this happens, I do succumb to the adage of ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ and I wonder if all of this is a reaction to the disturbed night that she had last night. But this time when Meg was asleep was handy for me to do some tidying up and to sort through the pile of newspapers to see what can be junked and which ‘nuggets’ are to be saved. I also took the opportunity of a certain amount of ‘play time’ using the Alexa built into the Toshiba we have in our Music Room but have not really explored in very much detail. For example, I have tried the commands of ‘Alexa, play random Mozart’ and ‘Alexa, play soothing music’ I have also been exploring some of the films available to us as part of our subscription to Amazon Prime and think that we might view ‘The Way’ (account of one man’s journey along the Camino de Santiago taking the place of his son who died in the French Pyrenees at the start of the route) which is well worth another watch.

When Meg and I watched QuestionTime recently, it was remarkable to see practically everybody piling into the government over the issue of both rises in inheritance for farmers but also the cuts in the Winter Fuel Allowance.This latter policy is really going to come back and bite the government and one wonders whether in the fullness of time, there will be a backbench revolt. The government announced soon after winning the election in July that only elderly people in receipt of pension credits would receive help of up to £300 this winter, instead of every pensioner as before, with the aim of saving £1.5bn a year. But figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) this week found 100,000 extra pensioners could be in poverty by 2027 because of the decision. As a result of those figures, the cross-party Work and Pensions Committee launched a review on Friday into the challenges and mitigations of pensioner poverty. It will look into how pensioner poverty differs across the UK’s regions and communities, how it affects different groups’ lifespans and to what extent the state pension and other benefits for older people prevent poverty. It was pointed out in the QuestionTime program that the government knows that several categories of pensioners will be left much worse off but their official answer is that up to about 700,000 should claim Pension Credit. As Pension Credit is worth nearly 4,000 per year and 700,000 who should be claiming do not, then the theoretical total cost to the government if all entitled were to claim would be of the order of about ££2.8 billion. So we have the ridiculous situation where the government knows that not many will claim but were they to do so, then the total cost would exceed the amount saved by cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance in the first place. In other words, the government are relying upon claims not being made to make the savings anticipated. The claim form for Pension Credit is long and complicated and older people are having to fill out a 243-question form to access pension credit and winter fuel payments – a task that will be ‘daunting’ for some, charities have said. So the way to ensure that everyone gets the credit is to pay it in the first place as a flat rate increase to pensions and then claw some of it back by taxing more those who do not need it, thus making the effect neutral for the better off pensioners.

With the two young carers who often put Meg to bed at the weekend, we often have a bit of a laugh and a joke with each other. Tonight, we somehow got onto the discussion of party clothes and I was having to explain to them what a kaftan was. These were quite popular in the 1970’s and although they were generally associated with those of a hippy disposition they were quite often worn as casual wear. I had a couple of quite interesting designs, as I remember, and I wore them particularly at the Open University Summer Schools where I was a module leader in the mid 1970’s at Nottingham University. The partying at these summer schools often went on into the wee small hours (and beyond) and I think that many of the OU students wanted to feel that they were ‘proper students’ so there was extensive drinking and then partifying. These were the periods when we had long hot summer evenings which aided the holding of impromptu parties in any case and although you would not turn up with a kaftan during the day, it was a sort of a signal that you were off-duty as it were after 9.00pm. All members of staff had to give some specialist guest lectures on subjects of their own choosing between 8.00pm and 9.00pm so as the Summer Schools started at 9.00am we were working 12 hour days as tutors in any case.

Yesterday started off in the most interesting of ways. The day before, I had been tempted by the Amazon ‘Black Friday’ offers into buying one of the latest generation of ‘smart’ speakers, activated by voice commands, which Amazon were discounting by 50% By the time I took into account the fact that I had not been spending money on coffee and cakes at Waitrose during the bad weather, the speaker was already two thirds paid for and Amazon had even promised same day delivery before 7.00pm (and it was duly delivered) I waited evidently until Meg was in bed to install it and it needed one to download the Alexa app onto one’s phone which I did. But then the app on my phone would not recognise the device but I knew that iPhone 16 had some BlueTooth troubles in this respect. So I downloaded the app onto my old iPhone which I still have in use with a TescoMobile Sim card inside it and it installed perfectly. Last night, I could do only the most limited of trials and I have only tried music so far but from what I have both seen and heard it is a really impressive piece of kit with, to my ears, superb sound quality to boot. In the morning, I experimented a little more and am truly impressed by the quality. The only downside I can see at the moment if that, for example, one asks Alexa to play a Mozart concerto, Amazon will consult its bank of music and play the first in the list, which may only be one movement. So one really knows to know exactly which recording Amazon has in its library to get the full work and the recording that one wants so a certain amount of research using the Amazon Music app is required.

This morning, as is often the case, I was called upon to act as No. 2 to the single care worker but this individual I know well and we work well with each other. I joke with the staff that I dare not get too good at the job of assisting as I feel in danger of being recruited by the care agency itself. Friday is the day when our domestic help calls around and we always keen to welcome her and she helped me get Meg for a visit down the road. We have not been out because of the weather practically the whole of the week so we were keen to get out today if we could. As we set out, the weather was quite sunny and almost pleasant but after we had our coffee in Waitrose and started our journey back up the hill, a huge black cloud appeared so we had a somewhat icily windy and unpleasant journey home. When we got in, I regaled Meg with a cup of soup and our domestic help rushed into the fray with a hot water bottle to help to warm up Meg’s hands. Then I pressed on with our lunch with a supermarket fish pie which we had with ‘Mange Tout’ peas followed by yogurt. As soon as we got cleared up for the afternoon and a telephone call had been made, we got busy watching last night’s ‘Question Time’ where practically half of the discussion was taken up with the vexed question of small family farms having to pay inheritance tax. I did discover, though, something in the course of this debate that I did not know i.e. that many medium to large firms are owned by private equity trusts or large financial conglomerates who do not pay inheritance tax anyway.

The care agency are really badly hit by the cold weather induced sickness at the moment. For example, this morning I was assisting the sole carer and practically the same thing happened with Meg’s lunchtime call, although in this latter case it was the lack of access the to the road serving our access road when a large delivery vehicle was delivering a load of aggregate for the roadworks in the immediate proximity of our house. Then the afternoon call was one of the carers rather than the anticipated two as the other had gone off sick. Even the young lad who called round this afternoon was feeling pretty rough so I dosed him up with some ‘Cold and Flu Relief’ powder and gave him a couple of sachets for later. Exactly the same thing happened yesterday and so I was glad that when I did my weekly shop up at the supermarket, I bought another packet of the medicinal compound, suspecting that we might need a lot of it. So I am in the rather strange situation where, apart from the perpetual tiredness which afflicts me these days for understandable reasons, I am actually helping to care for the carers to provide a tolerable service for Meg. Some of the problem may be a Monday morning problem (sickness built up over the weekend) whilst there is the Friday syndrome (worn down by the demands of the rest of the week) As I suspected when I asked this morning’s care assistant, when staff report in as sick it might not be them but their children who are sick and, of course, children are mutually infecting each other with god knows what all the time they are at school. I think the care agency staff really do struggle in to work where they can and are very conscious that when they do not turn up then they have clients who are potentially disadvantaged as well as adding to their work pressures of their colleagues. But, personally, I am happy to help out where I can and am praying for the spell of milder weather which is due to move over us on Sunday in a day or so’s time. However, to help to alleviate the universal gloom, it has been a case of ‘boys and their toys’ because as the care workers have struggled to get in, I ask them for their favourite track of music and am then have Alexa play it for them. Having said that, they all seem to have had Alexa themselves for years so it is hardly a complete novelty for them. It seems they have often asked for this piece of kit as a birthday or Christmas present and that is how they have managed to afford it on the very low wages endemic in the care industry.

CNN is reporting tonight that the sentencing of Donald Trump after his conviction in a New York court might be delayed indefinitely The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial has adjourned his sentencing, which was set for next week. Judge Juan Merchan also agreed to hold off on issuing his decision on presidential immunity until after he reviews the parties’ filings. Merchan granted Trump’s request to file a motion to dismiss the case, ordering his legal team to submit their papers by December 2, and prosecutors have a week to respond. Trump’s team wanted to have until December 20 to file their paperwork. The judge did not set a new sentencing date or make any further statements about the delay. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, called Mechan’s decision a ‘decisive win’ for the president-elect. So it looks as though the power of delay, a convicted felon in Donald Trump is allowed to get away with no sentence after his election as President-elect. What this says for the rule of law in America needs no further comment.

Today has been an unusual kind of day. When I looked at the weather forecast, it seems that the West Midlands was about the coldest place in the country with an overnight temperature of -5 degrees but Meg and I were warm enough even in our downstairs bedroom. I got up this morning just after 6.00am and prepared for the workers to arrive some time after 8.00am but as so often happens these days, things changed at the last moment. The young Asian carer turned up rather than the scheduled carer but the other one was due to arrive later. In the meantime, I helped the young Asian carer but he was feeling below par so got him a Flue and Cold Relief preparation to make him feel better. I also gave him a supply of several of these sachets so that he could dose himself up later – I think he is intending to take one day off to help him recover from these cold and flue symptoms to minimise the amount of time he has to take off work. I had also prepared quite a large saucepanful of porridge which I was going to offer to the workers the minute they arrived. In the event, this offer was declined so Meg and I had it ourselves. In the meanwhile, the young Asian carer was substituted so that he stay on and do ‘the sit’ whilst I went off to do the normal Thursday shopping. I had already two of the anti-anxiety pills so that Meg would be a bit more stable but they did not appear to work so I had to try something different. We started off with YouTube and some sitar music (as I wanted to remind Meg of how she had gone to see Ravi Shankar perform, if my memory serves me correctly, when she went off with a flatmate to see perform in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1965. This seemed to perk Meg up a bit and then I resurrected a Joan Baez concert available on YouTube and Meg seemed to be enjoying this so I decided to go off and do the shopping. I raced around the shop as fast as I possibly could, thinking that it was quite likely that Meg was having an agitated session. I popped into Morrison’s to pick up a copy of ‘The Times‘ but none were available. Having done the shopping, I called in at Waitrose on the way home and, again, it looked as the newspaper had not printed that day. But when I got home, the young carer informed me that Meg and he had experienced quite a jolly time and there was also a certain amount of singing along with the music. This was a great relief to me so I unpacked the shopping and then started to think about lunch. We dined on the last bit of the roast chicken left over from the weekend and complemented with a roast potato and some broccoli. Having eaten my dinner, though, I actually fell fast asleep and was awakened only by the carers coming into do Meg’s (delayed) lunchtime call, after which I reheated Meg’s dinner in the microwave and fed it to her. This afternoon, after a quick FaceTime call with our son (who is still suffering from his severe bronchitis), I got Meg in front of the TV to watch the second half of ‘Don Giovanni’ which seemed to be proceeding satisfactorily up the point at which the program ‘freezes’ This happens quite a lot with YouTube presentations and I have a theory it is a buffering problem so Meg and I needed to find something else to watch which happened the be the concluding part of the programme on Immigration broadcast on Monday evening.

After Meg is in bed this evening, I hope to bring into use a smart speaker I have just impulsed purchased from Amazon. I was tempted into this purchase because there was a ‘Black Friday’ offer where a good model of Amazon’s own smart speaker was heavily discounted. I worked out that I had saved about two thirds of the cost anyway by not having coffee with Meg in Waitrose over the last few days whilst the weather has been so poor. I will need a certain amount of uninterrupted time to bring this into operation but in the meantime I have been reliant upon falling to sleep with the strains of Brahms ‘A German Requiem’ playing on my old iPhone which still has YouTube access.

What with the Post Office scandal enquiry and the American election, I think we had all rather forgotten about the COVID enquiry which is now taking evidence again. Today it was the turn of Matt Hancock the Health Secretary in the early days of the pandemic who was on our screens practically daily. Mat Hancock had to resign, of course, because he was seen as embracing his new found love (‘bit on the side’)in clear contravention of all of the rules on social distancing. Matt Hancock’s evidence to the COVID enquiry was interesting because there were multiple facets of the decisions he was making at the time that are now worthy of examination. I suspect he knew he would be subject to a fair degree of hostile questioning and therefore probably decided to make a concession early on in his evidence try to allay further lines of criticism. The concession given today was that in the difficult circumstances of how many would be allowed at funerals and what degree of contact could be had between mourners, the ex Secretary of State for Health admitted that the guidance had probably been drawn up too severely. This will be of no comfort to the hundreds if not thousands who lost family members and loved ones during the pandemic and could not give them a proper farewell. I do remember when Meg and I used to walk down the Kidderminster Road every day seeing on more than occasion tearful relatives as an elderly person was bundled into the back of an ambulance as the relatives probably knew they would never see their family member again. Hancock also admitted that the UK came ‘within hours’ of running out of hospital gowns and of the course the supply of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) on fast-track applications handed out to those with known Tory Party links is a national scandal in its own right. I doubt any of the mis-spent monies were ever reclaimed and certainly none of the ‘dodgy’ suppliers were ever prosecuted but that is just one of the many scandals surroundings UK’s response to the pandemic as a whole.

Last night, I did something which I have not done for years and that is to go to bed with a hot water bottle. Normally, one relies upon wives/partners and electric blankets to provide a bit of warmth when you first hit the sheets in the middle of winter but my present sleeping arrangements preclude this. I quickly located our two hot water bottles and had one at my feet when I went to sleep on the camp bed which I have beside the hospital bed occupied by Meg. It made a dramatic difference and I fell asleep with the aid of it in no time at all. Today we had two carers in the morning including the manager who puts himself ‘on shift’ occasionally. The day before there had been an open day at the day centre which the care agency is opening in Redditch and, other things being equal, we would have liked to been there. But the transport arrangements fell over much to the care manager’s annoyance and the weather did not help but nonetheless the open day went ahead but with a somewhat depleted attendance. In theory the mayor and the press were going to turn up to this event but it was a day of some mishaps as the care manager’s partner fell over and broke his hand which necessitated a visit to the hospital. On the advice of the care workers, we decided not to venture out this morning because although the skies had cleared and indeed were blue and sunny at one point, it was exceptionally cold and icy and we all felt that the pavements would have been a too risky to have pushed Meg out in. So we stayed in all the morning but ‘Politics Today’ was screened an hour earlier to make way for Prime Minister’s Questions so we entertained ourself in this way throughout the morning. We lunched on chicken, baked potato and sprouts just finishing before the late morning (now early afternoon) visit from the two care workers. In the afternoon, there was no clear candidate in the film world to be watched so Meg and I put on a performance of Don Giovanni (Mozart) which was a superb production but is somewhat long so we will probably watch it in two halves. The singing and performances were of a very high order and we enjoyed the production which occupied us for most of the afternoon.

There is a report in today’s ‘The Times‘ headlined ‘Life Expectancy in the UK is worst in western Europe’ Now we know that there are a host of factors which underlie life expectancy some of them being genetic. But the greatest cluster of factors are environmental and are composed of factors such as climate, diet, exercise, income distribution, social security benefits, efficiency of the health services and so on. But according to the OECD report, although life expectancy is just 81 years, this puts the UK behind the 81.5 average for the 27 countries of the European Union and last in western Europe. Life expectancy improvements in Britain stagnated in the decade leading up the pandemic and have fallen since. The British data shows the life expectancy. for men at 79 and for women at 83 in the period from 2021 to 2013. This is about six months and three months shorter, respectively, than the ages measured between 2017 and 2019 which were the highest on record. The significance of all of this is that this type of demographic data really does show the cumulative impact of government policy, whichever political party happens to be in power. As if to underline this point dramatically, there is also a report in the same edition of the newspaper that indicates that cutting winter fuel payments is going to push 100,000 into poverty and this fact is acknowledged by government ministers. Official estimates of the decision to strip more than 10 million pensioners of the winter fuel payments have concluded that it will result in about 50,000 older people being in poverty at any one time. To make matters even worse, Labour did not carry out a formal impact assessment of the policy before making the decision. Some Labour MPs are very upset but the risks associated with rebellion are high, such as deselection. Meanwhile Scottish Labour have threatened to restore these payments were they to be returned to power. One does get the feeing that of the £1.5 billion that cutting winter fuel payments is meant to save, by the time various factors have been costed out, the savings might be very much less and (hints of the farmers’ dispute) be not worth the political pain that the policy causes.

There is a report this evening that Mohamed al Fayed may have assaulted 290 women pursuing Harrods compensation over alleged assaults and one suggested figure is 420 individuals who have contacted the ‘Justice for Harrods Survivors’ group regarding allegations against Fayed. If this scale of abuse is confirmed, then this may approach the figure of 500 which is said to be the total number of period abused by Jimmy Saville before his death. When abuse on this scale emerges, then it almost defies imagination that one individual can commit abuse on this scale without significant others being aware at least dimly aware of the scale of it all. In the case of al Fayed, then there must have been security guards who protected his premises from the ingress and exit of young women and therefore they must share a degree of culpability. There are some lawyers who argue that such individuals as security guards could themselves be charged with assisting a rape but of course obtaining proof and then a conviction probably means that these individuals get away with things scot free, as it were. To my knowledge, the police are busy pursuing the cases of those actually assaulted by al Fayed and have not yet turned their attention to his accomplices of which circumstantial evidence that there must be some. The wider question, of course, is how the rich and powerful have the attitude that the force of law is to be applied to the ‘little people’ and they themselves feel free to be immune from the legal processes that seem to apply to the rest of he population.

Suddenly, the world seems a much more dangerous place tonight as there are reports that British made Storm Shadows have been fired at targets within Russia for the first time. I have a terrible feeling that for the sake of one or two missiles, costing about £1 million each that may or may not be shot down and may not cause any damage, the amount of harm that Russia could wreak on the UK (such as by cutting underwater cables) is horrendous. I hope this has been properly modelled and thought about within the British defence establishment but I am personally most unhappy about the steps that the UK has made by following the American policy of the Biden regime in its final days.