After Meg was safely in bed, I treat myself to a bit of TV and last night was the first of the annual series of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures (on science) for young people. This year there is a series of three on the subject of ‘Food’ and the presenter was the doctor and medical journalist, Chris van Tullekan. I have actually bought his latest book ‘Ultra -Processed People’ (on the subject of the ills of the junk food that we eat to which he argues we are addicted ) but I have only the opportunity to dip into it for the first few pages so far. Last night’s lecture was on the subject of the progress of food through the alimentary canal and was very well done with excellent little bits of apparatus and evidently good audience participation. So I shall look forward to the next few nights with pleasure. The other bit of news was just breaking as I flipped over to see the news headlines and this was the headline that ex-President USA president, Jimmy Carter, had died at the age of 100. He achieved far more as an ex-President than he ever did in his one four year term as president and at the age of 100 had survived both a brain tumour and an aggressive form of skin cancer. He acted as a roving emissary once retired as President and did his bit on conflict spots throughout the world. I would imagine that he is regarded after his death with a great deal of affection and respect on both sides of the political divide even in a society as polarised as the contemporary USA. Now immediately after his death, even his presidency is being reassessed. Because of the capture of Americans by the then Iraqi regime and a failed attempt to free them some would say that the American presidency was doomed – America only likes winners and not those defined as losers. But as his biographer has pointed out, he brought a peace treaty to the Middle East and put in train the development of sophisticated weaponry for which Reagan reaped the benefits. Carter’s greatest accomplishment as chief executive was getting the government out of Americans’ lives in myriad ways. His deregulation of home brewing, for example, helped usher in the modern craft beer movement, and that has created jobs at brewpubs in every city and town in the country. Carter’s deregulation of the interstate trucking and freight rail industries injected new competition into cartels that had long operated under government protection. Similar changes to federal rules governing commercial airfare made it cheaper and easier for Americans to travel long distances to see friends and family (which makes it fitting that Carter passed away during the busiest travel season ever). It is even said that Carter was one of the greatest one-term presidents ever.

One of the interesting quirks to this end of year period is the fact that the BBC’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme gives over its platform to a range of different guest editors for this week between Christmas and the New Year and for Monday of this week it was Baroness Floella Benjamin.After being awarded the BAFTA fellowship this year for her contribution to television, Baroness Floella Benjamin OM DBE will focus on the importance of childhood on 30 December. Her guest edit will also look at the impact of children moving away from consuming content from public service broadcasters to unregulated online platforms. Children’s TV legend Baroness Floella Benjamin has said a ‘crisis’ in dedicated programming for youngsters is pushing them to adult material on YouTube ‘detrimental to their wellbeing’. Ten years ago children used to watch two hours of TV on average but the rise of streaming services and video sharing sites like YouTube has seen that figure decrease by 70% in a decade. Baroness Benjamin argues that unless there was a push towards improving offerings for children the knock of effect on their welfare could be seismic. She said: ‘I feel that children’s programs as know them are in crisis because children are migrating to online platforms and watching mainly adult material which for some could be detrimental to their wellbeing.

On Monday morning, we were expecting a couple of workers at 8.00am but nobody turned up on cue. Looking at my phone messages last night, I was informed to expect a single carer this morning but no time slot was mentioned so I imagine that Meg’s getting up will be delayed by an hour. What eventually happened is that I did get two carers but delayed by three quarters of an hour with no explanation and under these circumstances, Meg is always a bit more difficult to get up as she has been awake for hours and needs some breakfast to function adequately. I am going to document these events more fully from now on as I rather let things slide over the Christmas period but I am finding that I am acting as a second carer.

Meg and I went down into town and collected our newspaper before returning and then I made a special lunch of bits and pieces involving onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, apple, sultanas in a kind of stir-fry. Our major treat this afternoon was a viewing of the film shown last night on the life of Maria Callas which was fascinating. There were several very rare clips of film of Callas at her absolute best as well as the documenting, in great detail, how the singer’s career collapsed after a bout (she claimed) of bronchitis. The point about Callas is that you felt that she was not just acting but almost becoming the character she was portraying. Her biography is certainly a complex one and I suppose history will judge her as ‘the diva of all divas’ given her reputation as temperamental and, indeed, tempestuous. Although thought of as being Greek, Maria Callas was actually born in Brooklyn, New York and then taken to Greece as a teenager by her Greek parents. She indicates in her biography that she was very much pushed into opera singing by her mother and by her first husband but she accepted that as ‘her destiny’ There were several interviews of her in French in which she was not only exceptionally fluent but animated as well and I think Paris was her favourite city. One is always somewhat surprised to see good French coming out of the mouths of those born in America. Maria Callas learned to speak French from her personal assistant, Mezzadri, who followed her to Paris.

Yesterday being a Sunday morning, we know that the care workers arrive at 7.00am rather than 8.00am but one of them was 20 minutes late this morning which actually, in view of the personalities involved, I did not really mind. As I was getting ready I was starting to think ahead to the New Year and to New Year resolutions which I do make (generally the same ones) every way. In the meanwhile, I thought I would keep myself going with a ‘Thought for the Day’ which always used to be the province of Radio4 but on a Sunday tends to be religious in nature. So I trawled the web and came up with the following for today: ‘The first step is clearly defining what it is you’re after, because without knowing that, you’ll never get it.'(Halle Berry) which will do for the sake of anything better. Then I started to wonder whether instead of looking at other people’s quotes it might be a better idea to think of your own slogans for the day. One thought that occurred to me which I thought might be useful to me throughout the New Year and beyond is the simple exhortation (to myself, that is) ‘Accumulate less, appreciate more’ so as these thoughts occur to me, I might just jot them down.

After we had got Meg up, washed and breakfasted, it was time for us to make our trip down to Waitrose to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend, which is part of our normal routine for a Sunday morning. We discussed an enormous range of subjects including the experiences that we had at the hands of the Jesuits (who actually introduced Meg and I to each other way back in 1965) and then it was time to make progress up the hill again. We had an especially friendly carer to see to Meg in the middle of the day who had tried to make it to our party but had not quite managed it. As there was quite a lot of time ‘free’ in our session, the carer folded an enormous pile of washing for me, for which I was very grateful. As it happened, we had more than our normal share of washing because yesterday I had twice fallen asleep in cups of tea in my hand spilling it all over myself and so this was two pairs of trousers destined for the washing machine. As I tend to fall asleep regularly under these circumstances, I am resolved never just to have a cup of tea/coffee in my hand but also to put it in a safe place before I invariably nod off. We lunched on ham, sprouts and a baked potato and very tasty it was, too. After lunch, there were several TV programmes that we intended to catch up upon and the first of these was a film devoted to the life and career of Maggie Smith who died recently, giving the BBC a magnificent opportunity to make a biopic of the famous actress. Of her many, many roles, I most vividly remember the way she played ‘Miss Smith’, the vagrant occupying a van at the bottom to Alan Bennett’s drive for 15 years which has been shown twice on TV recently. In the late afternoon, we received a telephone call from one of the young set of Meg’s carers. Her call had been badly scheduled for an hour later than would have been ideal so the couple of young carers had some time spare and unofficially rescheduled Meg’s teatime call which turned out to be a very good thing all in all. This couple of young people have a great sense of humour so we all have a joke and laugh and we encourage Meg to join in if she is not too tired at this stage in the afternoon. As I have mentioned before, I am particularly impressed by the skill set and attitudes of the young carers and it does help the caring transactions run more smoothly. Our University of Birmingham friend this morning and I were saying to each other that we cannot wait until we get back to a more ‘normal’ set of routines which the Christmas festivities have disrupted.

Labour would lose almost 200 seats in ‘highly unstable’ parliament if election held today, a new poll suggests. The poll predicts Labour would come out on top – but with barely a third of the total number of seats – making forming a government difficult. Of course, the Labour government has a massive majority at the moment and could well still come out on top as the governing party. But the electorate are in a volatile mood at the moment. It is fairly evident why the mood of the public wanted the Conservatives out at almost any price but the Labour government was not elected with any real degree of enthusiasm on the part of the electorate. It looks as though swathes of voters in the former ‘red wall’ seats captured by the Conservatives in the last but one election was unhappy with the last Conservative administration and now may be almost equally as unhappy with the present Labour administration. So the support for the Reform (extreme right wing party) is growing and snapping at the heels of the Conservative party being only 5% votes behind them. We do not need to be reminded that Hitler came to power democratically and then swept democracy away (and Trump has hinted that he may not do the same as he promised his voters that they may never ‘need to vote again’ whatever that is supposed to mean) I expect the New Year’s Honours list to be announced shortly. This traditionally was scheduled for 1st January but I think the powers-that-be brought it forward a little so that the lucky recipients could celebrate with family and friends at New Year parties. Some Honours are undoubtedly deserved but those awarded to big donors of political parties reeks of political corruption and threatens to underline the legitimacy of the whole Honours system.

As readers of yesterday’s blog will now know, I have put a link in my page such that interested viewers can click on it to see what all the fuss about ‘Comic Sans MS’ is all about. I do not intend to carry on any more discussions about this font here as the topic already occupies masses of space out there on the web but there is an interesting spin-off to this debate. I have started to wonder how many other artefacts are out there for which the designers had one purpose but for which every day users have another. The world of industrial products is full of examples of products invented for one purpose that ends up with another use (we might cite play-doh (children’s plasticine), superglue, WD40 to mention a few. But there are some objects in widespread use that would not be invented today and I am thinking of the old-fashioned tin opener (the kind that leaves jagged edges) but is still retained in kitchen drawers for other purposes. I use one of these to make a prick in each end of an egg to release the bubble of air before I boil eggs for example. The other two things that I use for other purposes, the first of which are women’s hair bobbles which I buy for about £1 and use in place of conventional elastic bands because they are less fragile. I would also mention the spring-loaded clothes pegs which I actually use to close half opened food packets and I am sure that there are many other well known products that people use for their non-intended purpose. I thought I would ask my Waitrose friends when I see them later on today to see what they come up with (if anything). Two more things occur to me, however. One of them is that the well-known drug Viagra started off as a treatment for high blood pressure and for angina but has since been repurposed with a generally elevating effect. The interesting way in which artefacts have been used in the regulation of the landmark, Big Ben. It is adjusted using pre-decimal pennies, which in turn regulate the clock mechanism. Adding one penny causes the clock to gain two-fifths of a second in 24 hours. Outside pressure like the wind on the clock hands can affect the clock’s accuracy. I doubt that the makers of the currency had any thought that it might be used in this way.

After breakfast, Meg and I walked down the hill to Waitrose and we were delighted to meet up with our three friends for coffee. One of our number had been visited with her family who had passed on a whole series of family photographs so we regaled ourselves with looking how our friend looked from the age of about five onwards. We bought some much needed supplies of milk and then made our way home but the weather conditions were somewhat cold so we were delighted to make ourselves some soup as soon as we got indoors. The carers made their midday call and this was soon accomplished and then I went ahead preparing a meal of beef from Christmas Day, baked potato and some Cavolo Nero kale that needed eating up. Our son phoned up to ask if he and our daughter-in-law could call around this afternoon and obviously we are always pleased to see them. We had a jolly cup of tea and chitchat some IT things (how one appends an electronic signature, specifically). We had started watching ‘Death on the Nile’ for the umpteenth time but then the carers called around for the teatime calls so this needed to be abandoned. The carers were a couple of young people with whom we get on very well and when they have performed their tasks in making Meg comfortable, they always leave Meg in a relaxed and happy state which is always appreciated.

I have a subscription to ‘The Times‘ and I collect my newspaper religiously every day, as part of our daily rituals. Having said that, I find the occasion to read it grows less and less each day but I do always rescue the ‘T2’ section which contains details of the Radio and TV programmes for the day. At the weekend, a special colour magazine is published and this does not contain a great of interest to me personally as it might be a feature of a personality in the news. But at the end of the year, the Magazine devotes most of the issue to the resident Times cartoonist, Peter Brookes. So what is published in this special end-of-year edition of the magazine are the most noteworthy of the cartoons that have been published over the year, usually selecting the 2-3 best from each month. The cartoons are rather special because Peter Brookes, the cartoonist, often pulls to current stories together into one cartoon. If you follow the news assiduously, then it is fairly easy to spot the two conjoined themes but sometimes it is not so easy. So what the cartoonist does is to add a commentary to each of the cartoons in this end-of-year edition which helps the reader to decode the cartoons in question. I always look forward to these cartoons which are both witty and acerbic so it is a magazine that can be read over and over again and each cartoon can be savoured as little details on the cartoon are revealed.

The Sky News political correspondent is making the telling point this weekend that both Keir Starmer and Liz Truss were desperate to pursue a growth agenda – and many of their utterances appear identical to the casual observer. Many of the noises the current government is making on growth and regulation are not so different to the ones that emanated from our shortest ever serving prime minister – a politician most in the Labour Party view as the antithesis of everything this administration stands for. Both prime minister were desperate to secure economic growth to cure the nation’s problems – but in the case of Liz Truss there were unfunded tax cuts which took the City by fright where after all we are at the mercy of ‘the kindness of strangers’ who do not have to invest in the economy if it appears less than sound. The Labour government’s increase in taxes via raising employer’s NI contributions is not helping the growth agenda one iota and hence both prime ministers are prone to making pro-growth statements that do not seem to differ radically from each other.

The two days of Christmas and Boxing Day have left me feeling pretty tired, if not exhausted, so I for one am happy that these two days are over. New Year is another matter because it always feels like a fresh start and the days are getting that little smidgeon longer. So I intended to get to bed early last night but could not resist watching the second half (again) of ‘The Queen’ portraying how Tony Blair exerted his new found authority as the successful winner of a landslide election to get the Queen to leave Balmoral and come back to London to mourn the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. This was so excellently portrayed it was almost hypnotic not to watch again with Helen Mirren playing the queen superbly. Meanwhile I am reserving the newly made edition of ‘Outnumbered’ to be accessed on iPlayer later on in the day.

When I wish to look at the current state of a popular debate, I sometimes stumble across the pages of ‘Quora’ and these I accessed recently to assess the latest received opinion on the use of the ‘Comic Sans MS’ font which is widely available thanks to MicroSoft. Professional graphic designers hate this font for all kinds of technical reasons and feel that its use should either be banned or severely restricted – on the other hand, there are those who (like myself) feel that under the right circumstances, the font serves a legitimate purpose. One has to say that this is a very informal font and its prime use, for example, is to compose invitations to a child’s birthday party written as though by the child rather than the parent. But the font should never be used (as it occasionally is) for serious documents such as any kind of legal work or document for public consumption. There is an interesting twist to the debate, though, that it is said that the font is particularly liked by and useful to dyslexics, perhaps because the characters are drawn in such a way that a ‘b’ and a ‘d’ cannot be confused with each other. There is no hard scientific research to demonstrate that this is in fact the case but from a website designed to give practical advice to dyslexics: (DyslexicHelp), I gleaned the following: ‘So, how does Comic Sans help people with dyslexia? Research has shown that it reduces cognitive load and visual processing issues, which are common challenges for people with dyslexia. The irregular shapes and varying sizes of letters in other fonts can cause confusion and make it difficult to distinguish between letters. Comic Sans, on the other hand, has a more uniform shape and size, which makes it easier to read …In a study conducted by the British Dyslexia Association, participants were found to read faster and more accurately in Comic Sans than in Arial or Times New Roman. This is just one example of how Comic Sans can be a helpful tool for people with dyslexia.’ Once I have found a way to embed the correct code into a WordPress page, I shall attempt to illustrate this for you but I have to find a way to do it first.

Comic demo

This morning, I was happily chugging along getting dressed and preparing for the care workers to turn up at 8.15 when the doorbell rang half an hour earlier with one of the managers and another care assistant. When I expressed my surprise at seeing them, they informed me that the schedules had changed at 11.00pm last night but nobody hd actually informed me (This type of occurrence is rather too common these days) Meg and I breakfasted as normal and then made our way down the hill in not particularly pleasant weather. There we met up with one of our regulars and had a pleasant coffee before I made a purchase of a commodity of which I had run out (sweeteners) and then we got home. It was not too long before the care workers arrived for the lunch time call, and after they had departed I got busy poaching some mackerel fillets in milk (which I do to avoid fishy smells permeating the house) and then using up some sprouts together with a baked potato. One of the best bits of our afternoon TV showing was a by now traditional viewing of ‘The Boy, the Mole, The Fox and the Horse’ which is a delightfully illustrated cartoon film derived from a little book of the same name and first shown (and repeated) last year. After this we watched a little of ‘Jurassic Park’ before the teatime carer called around. This is quite a young, college student carer but we get on very well with her (and she with us) so caring for Meg together is quite a pleasure. In the late afternoon, we noticed that we were about two thirds of the way through Martin Clunes in ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’ which Meg and I watched about a month or so ago. However, we did not recognise some of the dramatic final scenes which were well worth watching so perhaps our earlier viewing had been truncated for whatever reason.

Meanwhile, although Christmas is a sort of closed system for politics, a delicious row has erupted between the leaders of the Conservative and the Reform party. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, has threatened to take legal action against Tory leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologise for accusing him of publishing a ‘fake’ ticker showing Reform UK’s membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives. The Reform UK leader has reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch’s assertion that he was ‘manipulating [his] own supporters’ with a ticker that is ‘coded to tick up automatically’ after it showed the insurgent right-wing party had gone past 131,680 members – the number of eligible Conservative Party members in its leadership election in the autumn. Whatever the truth or falsity of these various assertions, those of us of a non-conservative political persuasion can only take the kind of delight in the discomfiture of right wing parties that he Germans well describe in the word ‘schadenfreude’ for which there is no exact translation apart from ‘a malicious delight in the misfortune of others’

Yesterday was a most remarkable day in many ways – but then Boxing Days are often unusual. The carers were due at 8.00pm and I had actually got up at 5.30 in the morning not wishing to oversleep my normal getting up time of 6.00am. But we waited and waited and nobody turned up and Meg was showing some signs of agitation after the long wait. So I fed her some banana and some yogurt in anticipation of the breakfast I would cook her once the carers had departed. In practice they both turned up at 9.00am as their schedules had been changed but one way or another the agency had neglected to tell me about it. So the two carers did a great job despite last night being a little unsatisfactory and then one of them was scheduled to stay on as Meg’s sit so that I could do some shopping – not that any shopping needed doing on this occasion. So I decided that after breakfast, it would be a good idea that Meg and I and the carer would make a trip down the hill, have a coffee in Waitrose and then return – this way, Meg could get some of the fresh air she had been denied over the last day or so. When we got to the bottom of the hill, we discovered that Waitrose was closed so pressed on to reach the High Street and we made our way for our second favourite cafe being ‘The Lemon Tree‘ But this too was closed so we headed back into one of the few coffee shops open on the High Street that seemed to be teeming as a consequence. It was a bit of a cold and drizzly day and Meg was not feeling at her best so we all had some hot chocolate but would have done if we had not waited so long for it to be prepared. So we requested some ‘take out’ cups and made our way back up the hill again, by which time our ‘sit’ carer needed to depart. Whilst Meg drank her re-heated hot chocolate back in the comfort of our Music Lounge, I popped some of the leftovers from yesterday into the oven for lunch, parboiled some purple sprouting broccoli before this too was destined for the oven and put some of the slices of beef from yesterday into the gravy. As this was cooking, the two carers for Meg’s midday visit arrived and after they had checked Meg over, I took the opportunity to dash out in the car to collect a copy of ‘The Times’ which is published on Boxing Days. One of the carers who was Polish looked absolutely exhausted and she explained that she and eight children had been up until 1.00am in the morning, singing karaoke. She also mentioned that the Poles celebrated Christmas Eve in great style and I know that in Poland and other Eastern European societies there is a tradition of eating a fish such as carp in a huge meal on Christmas Eve. Whether our Polish carer had eaten carp or another fish, I was not able to discern but she mention that she was fed up to the eyeballs with dumplings and red cabbage which, no doubt, is traditional Polish fare. After the carers had departed, Meg and I settled down to watch ‘Paddington’ (i.e. the very first) whilst we were eating our Boxing Day lunch. I have always maintained that Paddington has some elements and themes that appeal to adults whilst probably being lost on a child audience. These include such issues as how British people (especially Londoners) treat newly arrived immigrants, respect for other cultures and so on. As soon as Paddington was concluded, I swapped over channels and viewed the last half or so of the film of ‘Dad’s Army’ which I have seen several times before but is always worth another viewing.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the greatest tsunami that the modern world may ever have known with 230,000 victims in total. The tsunami affected 12 countries along bordering on the Indian ocean with the Aceh Province of Indonesia bearing the brunt of the event. The newsreels have been full of communities visiting the sea and other memorials by laying floral tributes and other forms of commemoration and, of course, we have a lot of video footage of the actual event that the media are not hesitating to show us. Meanwhile, back at home it appears that the Boxing sales are disappointing and the reports seem to indicate a lower footfall than expected. But host of factors are at work here, not least that the amount of real, disposable income is so reduced over the years coupled with the rise of on-line shopping and perhaps an appreciation that the sales are not as genuine as might be thought as returned and rather sub-standard items are especially bought in for the sales which are not as ‘genuine’ as might be though

Last night after Meg was finally put asleep, I scanned the TV channels to see what was worth viewing. Eventually, I settled upon Lehar’s ‘Merry Widow’ which I suppose can be labelled as operetta or light opera rather than the classical repetoire of what is sometimes called ‘grand’ opera. Nonetheless, the singing was of a high order and the costume department, being a Glyndebourne production, must have worked overtime. The singers seemed to be really enjoying themselves which is one index of success I suppose. Whilst the opera was playing in the background, I engaged in a little task I have never actually done systematically before. From our definitive Christmas card list, I marked off those who had sent us a card if only to discern who had not sent us a card this year. As two of then very close friends and one of them our son’s godfather, this is a source of concern to us as I know that neither of the two couples are in the best of health, I am left wondering if either of them have passed away and there is no way that we had been told. One of our best friends in Leicestershire who was a very good neighbour to us died but it was only the non receipt of a Christmas card that alerted us to the fact. Although this might sound a bit macabre, once you reach a certain age you want to know that your contemporaries are still around.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the greatest tsunami that the modern world may ever have known with 230,000 victims in total.Today is the 20th anniversary of the greatest tsunami that the modern world may ever have known with 230,000 victims in total.The tsunami affected 12 countries along bordering on the Indian ocean with the Aceh Province of Indonesia bearing the brunt of the event. The newsreels have been full of communities visiting the sea and other memorials by laying floral tributes and other forms of commemoration and, of course, we have a lot of video footage of the actual event that the media are not hesitating to show us. Meanwhile, back at home it appears that the Boxing sales are disappointing and the reports seem to indicate a lower footfall than expected. But host of factors are at work here, not least that the amount of real, disposable income is so reduced over the years coupled with the rise of on-line shopping and perhaps an appreciation that the sales are not as genuine as might be thought as returned and rather sub-standard items are especially bought in for the sales which are not as ‘genuine’ as might be thought.

Yesterday being Christmas Day, we were still due our full package of four carer visits for the day but instead of the normal starting call of 8.00am this had been retimed to 7.00am which seems very early for us. But there was an organisational reason for this as the care agency had tried to arrange its packages of care in such a way that the Christmas duties were spread around the staff and their work organised into ‘windows’ so that it did not impact too adversely on Christmas activities with their own families. All of this I perfectly understood but was not sorry when the workers arrived (complete with Miggles, the cat of course) about ten minutes late. There is always a certain amount of running around to do and preparations before the carers arrive so I was not sorry for them being late today. Making conversations with the two care workers this morning, I am not sure how we arrived at the topic of my connections with the world of popular culture but I did recount a story from my youth. As a part time job whilst I was a student at Manchester University, I was employed as a barman in a nightclub called ‘Tiffanys’ which was part of the Mecca group. The two girl singers in the resident band we always thought were rather good, as indeed they were, because a few years later they detached themselves and formed the female part of a band called ‘The New Seekers’. This band achieved some fame by coming second in the Eurovision Song Contest and even the story here is quite interesting. The band recorded ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’ in 1971 and it became an enormous hit selling 12 million copies. The success of the song led to the band representing the UK at the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. Monaco could not afford to host the competition after victory in 1971. The song was eventually adopted by Coca Cola with the lyrics ‘I’d like to buy the World a Coke’ and became exceptionally well known and embedded in popular culture. But the lead singer, Eve Graham, has always maintained that the band were completely ripped off by Coca Cola and never received the royalties that they truly deserved. Having explained all of this to the carers, I thought that one of them with several boys ranging in age from 5 to 15 could say that she cared for a person whose husband once knew and worked with singers who became ‘The New Seekers’ The morning followed a predictable Christmas morning pattern with present opening following our normal style breakfast. We then entertained ourselves with repeats of some of the Christmastime animated cartoon, including some Wallace and Gromit. Incidentally, for those of you who assiduously follow all of the credits following these films, I am particularly to be credited as an assistant puppet maker for the animated cartoon ‘A Good Day Out’ and wealso watched the last few minutes of ‘The Snowman’ followed by ‘Mog’s Christmas’. These had just nicely finished when it was time for two of the younger carers to call around for Meg’s lunchtime call. Being Christmas, I gave them each a (very) small drink of a Pellegrino orange flavoured spring water topped up by a little Prosecco and Meg and I actually drank the same combination as well. Christmas lunch followed fairly swiftly because I had cooked our beef in the slow cooker the night before ad prepped some of the vegetables, Then I parboiled the sprouts and carrots and finished them by roasting in the oven, complementing the sprouts with a little bag of chestnuts and finishing off with some Yorkshire pudding. After lunch, we watched the closing stages of ‘Swan Lake’ and eventually turned our attention to the sequel to the Railway Children which I could only watch sporadically because I was busy doing the washing up after lunch (which was not too stressful I am pleased to say) Our carer for the afternoon came along bearing an afternoon gift of some Lindt chocolates which was very thoughtful of him. In many ways, I think that Christmas Day has to be carefully managed as none of the normal rules of living living apply.

The end of the day did not end particularly well for either of us. The schedule for Christmas Day said that the ‘putting to bed’ carer was to be single handed and this particular carer, whilst her heart is in the right place, is inclined to rush and bustle to get the job done which does not bode well. The originally scheduled time was 7.20pm but this was changed at the last moment to 7.00pm but the carer turned up 10 minutes early because she wanted to leave early. Now it is fairly crucial that the workers turn out up at the appointed time and not too early as there are various routines (such as giving Meg her pills the right time before bedtime, the washing materials to be put in place, my bed to be made up) and so on. So Meg was particularly grumpy and truculent in the hands of the carer and I was obliged to use much gentler and more coaxing methods to get Meg to cooperate in getting her undressed and ready for bed. In addition, of course, I had to act as the second carer and our day had already started an hour earlier this morning than it should. So all in all, it was not a very happy end to the day and rather put a dampner on what should have been a happy and relaxing day. On some ways Boxing Day is a more normal day even though part of the holiday season and does not have the same emotional pull as Christmas Day itself. The big department stores used to start their Boxing Day sales on Boxing Day itself and, no doubt, many still do but the patterns of the retail trade are changing fast before our very eyes

Yesterday was evidently Christmas Eve and there was still a certain degree of clearing up to do after our very successful little party for the carers yesterday. The two carers turned up this morning a little late but I really did not mind as I was running a little behind myself. One I had not seen for several months and so there was a certain amount of catching up to do. After we had breakfasted, we were looking forward to seeing our friends down the hill as we generally do each Tuesday and we thought that we try to make it today even on Christmas Eve. When we got there, we did make contact with one of our friends who was especially pleased to see us but not the other two who had warned us that they might be able to make it. After we returned home, we awaited the ‘sit’ call from a carer of whom we are particularly fond – as she is a liberal Muslim, we enjoyed chatting over the kinds of ways that we spend Christmas and the similarities and differences with their parallel celebrations of Eid. She offered to hoover the hall area for me, which offer I gladly accepted as this is the part of the house that has to bear the traffic of the wheelchair itself as well as couple of carers four times a day so regular vacuuming is indeed required. I prepared a lunch in which I poached some mackerel fillets in milk, using the remainder of the milk once the fish had been cooked to make a parsley sauce. This was accompanied by some purple sprouting broccoli and a baked potato and was very enjoyable. As we had so many soft drinks left over from yesterday and the carer had not managed to make the party, I encouraged her to take as many of the spare cans as she needed so that she and her family could enjoy them as a sort of Christmas present tomorrow.

In my ‘computing’ life, I often find that one thing leads to another and so it has proved in the last few days. I found that I could (and did) quite easily install Microsoft’s Outlook on my newly acquired tablet – the only ‘grown up’ software available for the tablet in the opinion of one reviewer. Fortunately, I had links to Outlook on the laptops both in the Main Lounge and also in the Music Lounge so I trying a slightly different way of working (and writing this blog) Outlook can let you use a font called ‘Comic Sans MS’ which is rather like a handwriting script but without the joined up letters. Now there is quite a body of IT professionals who hate this font and think it should be banned or its use officially discouraged as it appears so frivolous and non-serious. But the very first time I saw the font was when the Vice Principal of what was to become the University of Winchester used to use it to write friendly and informative emails to members of staff and it certainly made a favourable impression upon me at the time. I decided to consult the wider internet with the question ‘Am I the only person in the world who likes Comic Sans MS’ and I found an amazing diversity of opinion. There seemed to be quite a number of individuals who thought (like myself) that in its place, Comic Sans MS was suitable for informal documents and anything that, for example, might be used for materials for young school children. I can understand why the computer professionals dislike this font but I think it is ‘horses for courses’ i.e. a formal document should be written in a conventional font but for informal, and one might say trivial, purposes Comic sans MS has its place. Personally, I quite like writing in this font and will continue to use it for drafts and the like but not for other purposes. There seemed to be quite a number of individuals who thought (like myself) that in its place, Comic Sans MS was suitable for informal documents and anything that, for example, might be used for materials for young school children. Personally, I quite like writing in this font and will continue to use it for drafts and the like but not for other purposes.

Christmas Eve afternoons used to follow a traditional pattern in that at 3.00pm the traditional Festival and Carol service is broadcast to the world from King’s College, Cambridge and I generally start to prepare the vegetables for the following day (spouts, parsnips and potatoes generally) But today, I had a mountain of washing up to do, some of it a hangover from yesterday but the rest being from this morning and lunchtime. However, I asked Alexa (the smart speaker system) to play J S Bach’s Christmas music and got a wonderful selection, some of it was drawn from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio as well as old favourites such as the chorale ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’. This last chorale has a particular significance for me. Firstly, it was sung or us at our wedding by a very close friend of mine who I knew in London and who was training to be an opera singer. This was sung from the organ loft and really resonated throughout the church. The second occasion was the morning after I had gained my PhD and I turned on my computer and played a Bach CD and when heard this chorale, I just burst into (happy) tears of relief that I succeeded in gaining my PhD after only 2-3 intensive years of writing. The final occasion was the celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary where a friend of ours who had played the trumpet since his youth (being brought up as a Salvationist where a trumpet was thrust into his hands) played this chorale for us on his trumpet at our celebratory meal. So I found this music a wonderful alternative to my usual fare on a Christmas Eve.

Yesterday was the day of the long anticipated Christmas party but we had to get going a little in the morning before the festivities in the afternoon. After breakfast, we walked down the hill with weather which just a tad less cold than the day before and picked up our copy of ‘The Times‘ Then we started to make our way up the hill and, very fortunately, bumped into our Irish friends when we were just outside their house. For a reason best left to the psychoanalysts, the following image I think would make a memorable Christmas card/cartoon. If I were anything like a decent artist, I would draw Rudolph the reindeer with a lot of Christmas bling wrapped round his nether regions and particularly his testicles singing his heart out. Then I would have Santa on the sled complaining into his mobile phone :’Its no good, I have told Rudolph scores of times that the song is meant to be Jingle BELLS – but you just cannot get the staff these days!’Towards the top of the hill and progressing at a fair rate of knots, I was approached by a gentleman who I very vaguely know by sight and he informed me that he had often witnessed my pushing Meg up the hill. He insisted that he take over and push Meg the last 100-150 yards towards the top of the hill. I then showed him where we live and invited the kind gentleman and his wife to pop in for a Christmas drink any afternoon in the forthcoming festive season. Soon after we got home, the midday carer arrived and as soon as she had departed shortly after 12.00pm, I started to think about the preparations for the party itself.

I decided that I would arrange all of the drinks (some alcoholic) but the vast majority soft drinks – down one side of the kitchen, together with an assortment of glasses, bottle openers and corkscrews. Then all of the food, which was mainly different varieties of mince pies, I arranged on the other side of the kitchen. I had intended to out everything into dishes but in the event, merely opened the boxes so that people could make an informed choice. The youngsters had very kindly clubbed together and brought along a large and tasty cake with some Viennese whirls biscuits and then the system was that having been greeted, the carers could just go and help themselves. This little system seemed to work out fine except that i think I had bought far too much stuff not knowing how many people were going to turn up, how long they were going to stay and how many drinks they intended to consume. I started Meg off with a fairly large glass of fino sherry and then she and I proceeded to drink some prosecco which I suspect that Meg really enjoyed (not having had any alcohol for as long as I can remember)Then we all jollied ourselves, using Alexa on our Toshiba TV to sing some silly Christmas songs as well as more serious ones. I might point out that I had donned a Father Christmas outfit in red flannel on top of my normal clothes and it was enormously hot but I knew it would be like that from previous experiences and I did not feel like removing my normal trousers. I had taken the trouble to obtain some mistletoe (all the way from an apple orchard in Kent as it seemed almost impossible to get locally) This I then split into three, hanging up two portions in our Music Lounge and a further one in the hall. In the event, though, nobody bothered to kiss under the mistletoe so I wondered if this tradition is dying out. The carer who hailed from Cyprus was totally mystified by the whole notion of mistletoe and it evidently only grows in temperate and not in Mediterranean type climates. At one stage we had about eight of the caring staff in attendance including a couple of the managers but we did have to restrain people from talking about work the whole time which I suppose is inevitable. As always happens in every kind of party, there was a natural gravitation towards the kitchen but that after all is where the food and drink was laid out. In the late afternoon, people started to drift away but I think a good time was had by all. I had already prepared some Christmas cards for every one attending and to make sure that there was no discrimination of any kind, each carer received the same card which was a Picaso like ‘Dove of Peace’ and a message of thanks to everyone for their care and attention throughout the year. For my part, I had prepared a little blank booklet with a Christmassy type front cover and then I invited everyone at the party to write a few words in it of whatever they wanted to say. When all of the care workers had left, Meg and I were very touched by reading the messages written inside.

The previous evening, and before I came to bed, I was thinking about the email client that could be installed into the little tablet which is a sort of advance Christmas present. I already had a subscription to Microsoft’s Outlook so I cleared out the junk that accumulates when you do not use an email client very often. I was a bit disturbed to find a couple of emails thanking me for a subscription to some sort of video downloads and thanking me for the last payment made and the next one anticipated. This sent me scurrying towards my online bank statements where I was relieved to discover that no money had left my account. So I sent off an email to the company, indicating that their email client list was scrambled or malfunctioning and could they sort it for me as soon as possible. Later on, I did get an email from the support department indicating that their customer who had a name almost identical with mine but with a different middle name had probably made an error and quoting the incorrect (i.e. my email address) to the company. But at least the mistake has now been rectified and I can breathe a bit more easily. The thing that I rather like about Outlook despite its apparent complexity at first glance was that it was very easy to set up a forwarding service to ensure that any emails received by Outlook were immediately transmitted to my principal email client. Another feature is the provision of five aliases which are incredibly useful if you need to supply an email address to an organisation but are fearful about your principal email address being used for spam or other nefarious purposes.

So Meg and I were woken at 6.00am a little earlier than we would normally like but it was the opportunity to get some jobs done before the carers called around. They were scheduled about an hour later than normal but the agency seemed to be beset with staff problems as people phoned in as sick and this means that the work rotas are subject to a constant churning. Nonetheless, we breakfasted and then received a telephone call from our good University of Birmingham friend and we agreed that we would meet for coffee at about 10.45. The weather was somewhat windy and a little unpleasant but we made quite fast progress down the hill and actually arrived just before our appointed time, as it were. We soon made contact with our friend and I spoke with him excitedly about my latest little venture into IT, about which more anon. We were within a few minutes of leaving when we were approached by someone from our local church who I know fairly well as we were on a Church committee together. I shall call my friend, Fergus for the time being but I was extraordinarily pleased to see him. Fergus is a very devout Catholic and played a very full part in our services, often reading some of the lessons. He is a very chirpy Dubliner who always seems to have a smile on his face and to be enjoying his life to the full. But the last we bumped into each other in the Waitrose carpark, he informed me that he had been diagnosed with an inoperable oesophageal cancer but did not seem particularly perturbed by the fact that he had only been given a month or so to live. I suppose that for a man of his very strong faith, the imminent meeting with one’s Creator is a cause of celebration and joy, not of despair. We exchanged some jokes often of an Irish bent as we are wont to do and then Fergus insisted that our University of Birmingham friend take a photograph ‘for the record’ of Meg, Fergus and myself. This photo was taken on Fergus’s iphone and then we made sure that he had my details in his ‘Contacts’ list and very shortly, we had in our WhatsApp, the photograph itself and a link to some extra funny Irish videoclips. We then had to dash up the hill because we were in danger of not getting home before the next scheduled visit of the carers. The journey up the hill was unpleasant in the extreme and we had a fairly icy blast in her faces with temperatures hovering around freezing. I must say that these are some of the most unpleasant journeys that Meg and I have had to make up the hill but as I went as fast as my limbs would allow and Meg, for her part, bore the really unpleasant conditions with a great deal of fortitude.

In the late morning, I received a telephone call from my son who was due to call around in the early afternoon but in the event had decided in view of the inclement weather (a threat of snow where he lived)to postpone his visit. But then the icy rain cloud was swept away and there was a brief burst of sunshine so my son decided to call around after all. Naturally, I was more than pleased to see him and we discussed the piece of IT kit which I had bought with some Christmas present money (from him) We had a mince pie together and then he needed to depart and he and his wife are no doubt getting some last minute jobs done before they both go off to their favourite hotel in Stratford at which they normally enjoy spending Christmas. So we shall not see him until a few days after Christmas now but I trust that after the pretty horrific year that he and his wife had had, they get some decent rest (as well as pleasant company)

As I have mentioned before, the force of habit means that I tend to buy the ‘Radio Times’ once a year and that is the bumper edition that covers both Christmas and the New Year period. So this year, I forked out nearly £6.00 but was somewhat disappointed with what I got. Over the years, I have been used to a list of films (sometimes as many as 10O)and then one can plan ahead. But this feature was not apparent this year so the utility of the whole was diminished for me. Then quite by chance when I was near the counter in Waitrose my eye fell across a publication called ‘What’s on TV’ and this, too, was dedicated to the listings over the fortnight of the festive period but at a sale price of £1.70 which is less than a third of what I paid for the ‘Radio Times’. On getting it home and perusing its contents, I was very pleasantly surprised. Each day had a four page spread of two pages (i.e. 8 pages in all) with a beautiful colour coding and the day’s best offerings given a highlighting and some special treatment in case you were to miss them. So I ended up being as impressed by the recently discovered periodical as well as being under whelmed by the Radio Times.

Sky News is reporting late on Sunday that Labour are on track for their worst end to the year in opinion polls since the Second World War. Sir Keir Starmer’s party is now averaging just 26.6%, despite winning one of the largest-ever majorities five months ago. Analysis of nearly 1,000 polls across 75 years found Labour are now 1% behind their previous end-of-year low in 2016, when Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure was dogged by an antisemitism row and leadership challenges. The only other years to rival their current low were 1981, when the new SDP-Liberal Alliance upended politics, and after a decade of power in 2009, when the party was reeling from the recession and expenses scandal. Labour are still leading the polls, but are now just 0.5% ahead of the Conservatives – well down on their 19% lead in January. Kemi Badenoch’s party has been practically stagnant for some time. It now sits on 26.1%, barely 2% above when Liz Truss resigned. Perhaps none of this should be a great surprise to us at the end of the year. It was evident during the election campaign that there was no real enthusiasm for the Labour Party but the feeling to get rid of the Conservative party overwhelmed the lack of enthusiasm for the Labour Party. Since taking office, they seem to quite maladroit in their handling of some problem issues and there have already been one or two scandals which encourages the electorate in the belief that ‘they are all the same’.

Today our two carers turned up on time and this always gets us off to a good start in the day. After breakfast, we knew that we were going to journey down the hill, although to be fair the weather seemed a little threatening. Once down in Waitrose, we met up with two of our three friends and had a jolly time as we were looking forward to Christmas with the most of the major tasks such as Christmas shopping behind us. For lunch today, I was not absolutely sure what we were going to have so I raided the freezer and discovered something unlabelled but it appeared to me to be a salmon risotto. Anyway, that got rescued and then heated up and supplemented by some curly kale which in truth was not very nice. We do eat kale but the superb variety which has especially bred (‘Cavolo Nero’)is delicious with a slightly nutty flavour and I actually bought some in my Friday shop. After lunch, we watched quite a bit of an André Rieu concert. I can quite see how classically trained musicians turn their noses up at these kinds of performances with the audience members and performers in flamboyant attire and much dancing in the aisles. But one has to say that if you were actually present in one of these concerts, you would find the atmosphere infectious and would probably end up having a really good time. It might be the judicious use of camera shots but the impression generated is that people really enjoy this kind of concert experience. After this, we started to watch a Wallace & Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit which is evidently a kid’s style of entertainment. I am not sure whether Meg followed all of the twists but in this story but towards the end we were interrupted by the doorbell. It turned out to be the Asian neighbour who lives in the house opposite the greened area in our little community. She had popped across with a Christmas card and a Christmas gift for Meg and myself which was very welcome and left underneath the tree. The neighbour and I exchanged some thoughts about the Christian story both in our religion and also in Hinduism and Islam. Our neighbour told us that one occasion, she decided to read some of the New Testament story. Something that made us both smile was the fact that whereas in the Christian bible we have the story of the magic multiplication of a few loaves and fishes sufficient for the ‘Feeding of the 5000’ a similar story has found its way into the holy writings of some of the Asian religions. But what made us both giggle was the fact that in the Asian stories the loaves and fishes have been replaced by chapatis!

The government is planning to bring back the family doctor by giving GPs an extra £889m to spend time with patients in a bid to end a dispute. Under proposals for the new GP contract for 2025/26, which is being consulted upon now, GPs would be incentivised to ensure patients most in need see the same doctor every time. The government said it will provide an extra £889m on top of the existing GP budget to help slash red tape so doctors can do their jobs. Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said the plan is also to reduce the number of ‘outdated performance targets’ from 76 to 44 so GPs can spend more time with patients. GPs who are members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are currently in a period of ‘collective action’, voted on in August, as they say their annual budget increases over the past five years have fallen well below inflation – making it difficult for doctors to meet the rising costs of operating practices – and driving hundreds of surgeries to close. One would have thought that this government move would be very much in line with the expectations and wishes of patients who have often expressed the desire to see one ‘family doctor’. But I can foresee lots of difficulties in implementing these ideas. The concept of the family doctor probably dates from the 1950’s where doctors worked as single handed practitioners or sometimes in pairs. But today, doctors are often in a group practice with as many as 10 doctors, not to mention ‘physician associates’ If patients were to be given a choice, they would always choose the most experienced and/or the doctor perceived as the most competent and sympathetic and under these circumstances, some doctors would sought after by many of the patients and some not chosen by many (or indeed any) So how is this going to be managed? Allocating patients to a doctor not of their own choosing could well be a recipe for disaster and be another source of dissatisfaction. As a parallel argument, when I was a teacher in higher education, each student was allocated to a tutor who was meant to be their personal tutor and the academic to whom the student would turn if there were problems of a non-academic nature that needed some resolution. But these systems never worked and in practice, students sought out those tutors with whom they felt they could share a confidence and tutors acquiesced in this. A practical problem which could well arise, for example, is that a female student experiencing any gynaecological issues of any kind would probably not feel comfortable talking to a male (particularly unmarried) tutor about this and would seek out a female tutor and one can quite understand why. So returning to the ‘family doctor’ idea, I wonder how this is going to be put into practice and I have the feeling that whatever scheme is introduced will fall some way short of patient expectations.

Now that Christmas is almost upon us, I am very struck by the stress that Christmas can induce (and there is a parallel argument for summer holidays as well) The amount of running around (shopping, gift exchanges, cards, visiting relatives and so on) may be entirely disproportionate to the eventual amount of pleasure derived. I am also very conscious that it is the women of the household to whom the strain and the extra preparations for Christmas is the greatest. Without wishing to sound too curmudgeonly about all of this, whilst we all need a mid winter break, I can understand why the enforced jollity and celebrations over Christmas can prove too much for many. I would exclude families with young children from these strictures because the Santa myth lives on and with good reason.