Yesterday we awoke to freezing temperatures yet again and predictions that the day might prove to be the coldest of the present cold snap. The Meteorological Office is predicting that in the North, the temperatures could fall as low as -15° or even -20° tonight but there may be some amelioration by Monday or Tuesday. The news media is dominated with a fascinated horror by the wildfires that are sweeping California, not sparing the homes of the rich and famous. I suppose we are quite used to seeing scenes of devastation involving earthquakes, floods and fire afflicting poor communities but what is so unusual about the current troubles is that it is occurring in the middle of a Northern hemisphere winter and not summer and afflicting affluent communities who must rank amongst some of the more affluent on this planet. In an extraordinary, ‘non interview’ with Sky News, the mayor of Los Angeles had returned from a holiday trip to Ghana and the following interrogation ensued. A Sky News team was on the same plane as the Los Angeles mayor as she landed back in the city yesterday. Karen Bass was returning from a trip to Ghana when our correspondent asked if she felt she owed an apology to LA citizens for being absent. The mayor was speechless and stone-faced and refused to answer the questions regarding an apology for being absent at such a crucial time.

We have a real domestic emergency on our hands with a major leak of water in the house affecting the dining room where water was dripping through the ceiling and the lower part of the hall. Our son has organised an emergency plumber who is due to call between the hours of 8.00 and 10.00 so we just have to sit in the house (without water, central heating) until then. Actually, the whole of the day has been rather dominated by this domestic emergency. My son came and turned off the water and the central heating and arranged for the emergency plumber who skillfully diagnosed the source of a leak in a split pipe which was under pressure. He arrived at about 9.00am and was with us for an hour and a half – we finished up with a hole cut into our dining room ceiling about a metre squared and then my son and domestic help busied themselves with a certain amount of tidying up whilst I looked after Meg. The carpet had to be dried as far as we could and one of the curtains taken down. Once the emergency plumber had departed I had a series of phone calls with our Insurance company. This always seemed to be long and protracted but eventually I got through to the right department after a certain amount of redirection. The upshot of all of this is that a building surveyor should be making contact with us on about Monday to come and assess the damage to the ceiling and, hopefully, to start to effect a repair. This will no doubt be in two stages as first there is the repair and then there is the inevitable redecoration. I can see this going on for about a month altogether and, I must admit, adds to the not very good start to the New Year. Halfway through the morning, I had a phone call from one of Meg’s distant cousins. She had phoned the day before but these days people always seem to put the phone down the minute I get to it.

On the other side of the Atlantic, as well as the terrible news about the forest fires in California, we have witnessed one of the final dramas in the legal case surrounding Donald Trump. He has been handed a no-penalty sentence following his conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. The incoming US president has received an unconditional discharge – meaning he will not face jail time, probation or a fine. Manhattan Judge Juan M Merchan could have jailed him for up to four years. The sentencing in Manhattan comes just 10 days before the 78-year-old is due to be inaugurated as US president for a second time on 20 January. Trump appeared at the hearing by videolink and addressed the court before he was sentenced, telling the judge the case had been a ‘very terrible experience’ for him. He claimed it was handled inappropriately and by someone connected with his political opponents. This means that Trump will be inaugurated as a convicted felon – the first time I believe in US history. But to be declared guilty and then to receive no penalty – not even a nominal fine – points to the way in which the rich and powerful can break the law with impunity. I once read a terrible story about how a British architect did some work for the Trump organisation who were satisfied with the work done but refused to pay him the agreed rate for the job. I think he was paid about a third and then told to sue the Trump corporation for the remainder who knew that the architect did not have the resources to go to court and would have to wait for years for the correct payment.

When I last did a weekly shop, I purchased a copy of ‘What’s on TV’ which is a guide I have just recently discovered and which I think is actually streets ahead the ‘Radio Times’ these days whilst being about a third of the price. In particular, these have a feature detailing forthcoming films and I was delighted to see that two particular offerings will be available to us over the weekend. Firstly, there is going to be the story of Anne Frank at midday on Saturday. Late in the afternoon, there is one of the classic versions of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and this we can delay until the following day and get it on the BBC iPlayer. When Meg and I spent our honeymoon in Amsterdam in 1967, we went round the Anne Frank’s museum but it has been considerably improved since then. But on the two or three occasions we have tried to get in when we have been in Amsterdam, the queues have been enormous. But nowadays the Dutch will have got timed tickets organised as they have for most of their museums nowadays.

Late in the afternoon yesterday, I received a most welcome phone call from my niece in Yorkshire. Like my sister and the rest of the family, they were concerned about Meg’s progress and the fact that in response to a severe chest infection, Meg appeared to be sleeping for so much of the time. But I was very glad to be able to respond to my niece that just during the day, Meg seemed to be responding to the antibiotics and whilst still sleeping quite a lot was now was having periods of wakefulness. She even managed a smile and something approaching a joke with the two young carers who came to minister to her in the afternoon. So there are flashes of the ‘former’ Meg returning and she even called my by my name in the last few hours which is something that has not happened for several days. So having been given news about Meg, I was eager to learn about my niece’s husband who had another hospital episode, albeit a brief one but still involving an 8 hour wait in A&E. So we were happy to exchange family news about the health status of our loved ones and then spent a certain amount of time talking about public sector pensions and specifically the McCloud judgement in the Supreme Court. In a desperate desire to limit the costs of pensions, it has been adjudged that the government acted in a discriminatory fashion by forcing through changes in the pension schemes of many public sector workers (including teachers and the NHS) and has been forced to apply a remedy to this discrimination but the issue is far too complicated to adequately describe at this point. When Meg had her teatime call, she got on well with the two young care workers and reacts to them much better than with some of the older workers. This has led me to speculate whether Meg responds to the most subtle of cues whereby she feels so much more at ease with some care workers rather than others (which speculations I have shared with the carers themselves) Thursday is the day when traditionally I get my weekly shopping done so I am keeping my fingers crossed that Meg will be alright in the morning. We awoke to a temperature of -5° this morning and will just have to tunnel through until Monday when the predicted temperature will rise to the dizzy height of 7°

The news in the morning is the government’s latest attempt to cut down on the illegal boat trade by heavy economic sanctions against those organising the trade. This is being dubbed a bold and innovative mood but the trouble is that those organising the gangs are shadowy figures often based as far away as Kurdistan who are not even aware that their smuggling activities might be illegal. In order to have the slightest chance of success, this calls for a degree of international cooperation and never was there a time when we ought to have the closest of ties with our European allies and neighbours. The same argument applies of course to the current geopolitical situation where Trump still has to be inaugurated and Elon Musk is making his malign influence felt. There are rumours that even at this stage Trump is getting a little weary of the ubiquity of Elon Musk who seems to be in attendance even when phone calls are made to foreign leaders. Some commentators are predicting that eventually there will be a grand falling out between the two but at the moment it just seems like a bromance between the two. On the subject of falling out between allies, the story persists of a meeting of Hitler and Mussolini on a train strategically placed on an appropriate border and by all accounts the two leaders hated each other, despite their alliance. Mussolini, however, had a low regard for Hitler and Nazism, believing them to be uncultured and unsophisticated. In particular, Mussolini had little regard for the German’s racist views which he thought were simplistic and clearly erroneous.

As the outside temperature has been about freezing all day, it necessitated my customary watering can of hot water to remove the frost from the car. I decided to see if there was anything in the supermarket with which I could tempt Meg’s appetite and did indeed buy some chocolate mousse which turned out to be delicious. Aldi seem to be putting on a range of vegetarian meals so I bought a couple of these if ever we needed a meal in a hurry. Once I returned home, it was a case of putting the shopping away (which always seems to take quite a long time) and then pressing ahead to cook our quiche in the oven. I tried a slight innovation today which involved taking the broccoli once it had been steamed in the microwave and then popping it into the oven in a roasting dish with a dressing of roasted garlic mayo to enhance the flavour. This little experiment proved quite successful so I shall certainly repeat it. After lunch, Meg and I were quite intrigued to follow some of the funeral ceremonies for Jimmy Carter who died recently at the age of 100. A notable piece of TV was provided by seeing in one row the five surviving US presidents (Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden) and one has to wonder whether we actually see the like of this ever again. The funeral service was solemn and dignified and, of course, Jimmy Carter himself was a devoted Baptist. Amid a life of change, Carter held fast to his Christian faith and his Baptist identity. He was credited with bringing the term ‘born again’ into common American conversation in the 1976 election. President Carter will be remembered for living out his devout Baptist faith through his pursuit of peace and support for human rights as well as acts of service, such as building homes for Habitat for Humanity. When it came to following Jesus, Carter ‘walked the walk’. After lunch, we treated ourselves to a Simon Sharma programme (‘The Story of Us’) which was a tour through the UK’s cultural and artistic life focusing on the 1950’s and 1960’s. Some of this I slept through but it was a fascinating film well worth another viewing. When the iPlayer finished, we carried on watching a repeat of a tribute to Dame Maggie Smith which was equally fascinating.

We awoke yesterday to a really cold day in prospect with the temperature here in Bromsgrove said to fluctuate between -1° and -5° all day. The news bulletins are dominated by a most bizarre press conference held by Donald Trump the day before. I was sort of half listening to the press conference whilst looking after Meg yesterday but could not quite believe my ears when I heard Trump claim that wind turbines (which he calls windmills) were sending the world’s population of whales mad and wind turbine electricity was the most expensive to produce. The truth is, of course, that solar energy and wind power are now among the most affordable renewable energy sources globally, and experts anticipate these costs to remain low for years to come. But the really scary part of the Trump diatribe was when US president-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out military or economic action to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland – as he said he believes NATO spending should be increased to 5% per member state. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Mr Trump made a series of sweeping claims on what his policies could look like when he takes office on 20 January. He said he believes NATO spending should be increased to 5% per member state, while he also declared US control of Greenland and the Panama Canal as vital to American national security. According to the NATO doctrine, an attack on one member state (Denmark which as sovereignty over Greenland) is an attack on all but what is NATO supposed to do if the attack on a NATO member comes from the United States itself? The West is in a real double bind about how to deal with Trump because it is unclear whether all of this is just bluster and bluff or whether he actually intends to carry out what he promises to do. The president-elect says owning Greenland is vital for US security, but experts say he may also be eyeing other aspects of Greenland such as its trove of natural resources — including rare earth metal — which may become more accessible as climate change melts the territory’s ice. It is unclear in the Trump bluster whether he just wants to ‘buy’ Greenland (an autonomous part of Denmark which is not for sale!) or whether he intends to seize it by military force. In a similar vein, Trump has refused to rule out a military seizure of the Panama canal which at one time he variously claimed was given to Panama by Jimmy Carter and then ‘given’ to the Chinese. Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino firmly refuted US President-elect Donald Trump’s assertion that Chinese soldiers are controlling the Panama Canal, calling the claim ‘nonsense’ And to round off a series of bizarre claims, Trump insulted the Canadians by calling them just the 51st state of the USA.

Yesterday was the day on which our Eucharistic Minister accompanied by our parish priest was due to call around to administer the Last Rites. These used to be called ‘Extreme Unction’ but was retitled to the much more explanatory ‘Sacrament of the Sick and Dying’ and is typically administered to a parishioner close to death – the various accessible limbs are annointed with a holy oil and then communion administered. I always thought I was going to find this process a little traumatic and so it proved but I managed to keep my sobs largely at bay during the administration of the prayers. The parish priest was very sympathetic and kindly but it was a relief to me when the rite had been administered. When this over, I defrosted the car and shot down the hill to pick up the newspaper and then the doctor arrived, as he indicated that he would, towards the end of the morning. To my very great surprise, and even that of the doctor himself when he set foot inside the door, Meg was awake and responded with a smile. The doctor made the normal range of checks and then both he, and I, came to the conclusion that the administered penicillin was having the desired effect and as Meg appeared to have turned the corner as far as this infection was concerned then we should finish the entire course of antibiotic and not trouble the doctor unless things took a turn for the worse. Earlier today I had filled in a webform requesting that a district nurse call around but it was one of the more senior doctors who actually made the call for which I was duly grateful.

When the cold snap is as severe and prolonged as this, it is hard not to have it dominates one thoughts and actions. The temperature is predicted to fall to -16 degrees on Thursday evening and this is surely a blast of pure Arctic air. We may have to wait until next Tuesday for the weather to improve. After we moved into this house some 17 years ago, we seemed to have a succession of snow-laden winters and, as we have to clear our own drive, we invested in an appropriate range of shovels and snow clearing materials. But latterly we have got used to a succession of fairly mild winters so the present spell of bad weather has come as a nasty shock. It is important that Meg and I can get out of the house and see people so it was particularly gratifying that we managed to go to town yesterday and we hope to see our friends again on Saturday as well.

In the House of Commons, yesterday was PMQ (Questions to the Prime Minister). Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, has condemned the abuse directed at safeguarding minister Jess Phillips after Elon Musk’s attacks on her. He had accused the minister of being a ‘rape genocide apologist’ and a ‘witch’, claims Ms Phillips told Sky News were ‘ridiculous’. Ms Badenoch said ‘any abuse directed towards MPs is obviously disgraceful and should not happen’. That having been said, there is an enormous cosying up the Trump and Musk even before they take up their official positions. One has to say of Trump that he was elected more or less fairly and squarely but apparently Elon Musk feels free to take pot shots (mainly at the British Labour government) merely because he is the world’s richest man and owns ‘X’ (ex-Twitter) one of the most influential social media sites.

Yesterday, we awoke at 6.00am to another cold day and wonder what the day has in store for us. The day before had not been a good day for Meg, care-wise, as I had needed to act as a 2nd helper on three our of the last four occasions but this is all being logged from now on. As well as the normal clutch of reasons, some of them are weather related as one car worker had had a minor collision in the ice and snow and had to wait for the RAC to rescue him and another worker refused to answer her phone so wholesale changes to the schedules had to be put into effect first thing in the morning, Like the rest of the world, I suspect, I make myself a cup of tea and then have my routines on my laptop. But without looking for it, I came across this tweet which was quite an amusing start to the day. ‘I used a ‘gentle parenting’ voice to ask my 4yr old daughter to rephrase her whining demand into a question that communicates she needs help and she said ‘Fine. But stop using that nice tone with me” There is the expression, of course, ‘out of the mouths of babes and innocents’ which is appropriate here. I looked up the original phrase which in the King James bible is ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings’ but the exact phrase depends upon the version of the bible deployed. It always surprising how many of the expressions that we might use in everyday discourse emanates either from the Bible or from Shakespeare (although I suspect the use of phrases from these sources is lessening).

After I had breakfasted Meg, the weather looked as though it was set fair and Meg was half awake, so I decided (although it was a 50:50 call) to make a trip down the hill, pick up a newspaper and see our friends in our new venue of Wetherspoons. The weather was generally benign and with clear signs on the way down and whilst in Waitrose I bumped into our regulars who was doing a bit of shopping. Then we repaired to try out Wetherspoons as a little group and we were pleasantly surprised. There is a trite expression of ‘when one door closes, another opens’ and so it was today. Every establishment has its own way of doing things but the Wetherspoons way is to queue at the bar and deliver one’s order whereupon you are given a mug that you fill yourself at the coffee machine. But we were amazed that the prices we paid were about one half to two thirds of what we were accustomed to paying in Waitrose. From 4 September 2024, Wetherspoon is offering a small breakfast for £2.99 or less at over 650 pubs across the UK. The small breakfast includes a fried egg, bacon, a Lincolnshire sausage, baked beans, and a hash brown. For an extra £1.56, you can add a Lavazza coffee or Twinings tea with free refills. So the cost of a a small breakfast (admittedly on a special discount in January) was less the cost of a cup of coffee at Waitrose so we each perused the menu to see what we might order for ourselves when next we meet on Saturday. One offer that I might find a little tempting is that one can order 4 pancakes for a fiver so it might be that we can order this to share between us at a minimal cost. Meg will only have a nibble or so. The automated coffee machines have improved tremendously over the past few years and Meg and I can remember how good was the coffee and hot chocolate from the machines installed in ‘The Crown‘ hotel in Harrogate, the last time we stayed there. Also there is a system of perpetual refills once you have paid for ‘your cup’ as it were but I doubt that many would wish to avail themselves of a quantity in excess of two. So after our jolly little assembly, we all started to make our way homewards or where have you but just as we left ‘The Golden Cross’ hotel. the venue for Wetherspoons in Bromsgrove, it started to spit with rain. As walked up the hill, the weather got more and more unpleasant with an increasing precipitation of a form of icy sleet and we were both pretty wet by the time we got home. Meg bore all of this with a degree of fortitude I am pleased to say but when I am pushing the wheelchair I could not say whether she was awake, half awake or asleep. The minute we got back, the weather changed again and we had a burst of glorious sunshine but the clouds did close in again in the mid afternoon. Meg’s ‘sit’ carer was there for her Tuesday session so between us we got Meg inside, divested of her wet coats and blanket and then made comfortable with a cup of soup and a heavy blanket. All in all despite the bad weather on the way home I think Meg benefited from her little trip out because her body was always warmly wrapped up. I remind myself that before the development of modern drugs, TB used to be treated in ‘isolation’ hospitals, normally on a high ground outside a town where the air was judged to be cooler but fresher. If one could afford it, then there was always a stay in a Swiss sanatorium and in the 1920’s and 1930’s TB sufferers flocked to mountaintop clinics in Swiss resorts such as Davos for the pure mountain air.

For lunch, I poached some mackerel fillets in milk and then a sort of fish kedgeree with the cooked dish added to some mushroom rice and petit pois. I got some of this into Meg but she was so sleepy I was a little worried that she might choke on the food so had to abandon the lunch half way through. This afternoon, I am going to carry on watching the series on life in Britain as the series evolve but I fear that I will be watching it to all intents and purposes practically alone as Meg is completely asleep.

I was woken this morning by Alexa (smart speaker) at 6.00am and immediately get up to make myself a huge mug of tea. I had slept pretty well last night which is just as well because his morning it looks as though we are receiving a further dump of snow and the weather forecast is that it will snow until at least 10.00am this morning. This I was not expecting but I know that the spell of wintry weather is to persist during the whole of the forthcoming week. Last night I spent some time getting my bank account statements up-to-date (I copy them into a ledger) which is a task rather neglected over Christmas. I am trying to put into effect one of my New Year resolutions which is to engage in a spot of tidying up and clearing away clutter for some time during each day and the fact that Meg is sleeping so much, although not good in other ways, is helping me to have a bit of time and space to do this. Meg and I do not have much in prospect this week although my primary ambition is to get enough food and drink into Meg so that she can throw off this bad chest infection from which she appears to be suffering. But she is sleeping well at nights which must be a good thing. I have just viewed a delightfully clear video made by Sky news on ‘The Social Care Crisis Explained’ This told me nothing I did not already know but the video is a model of clarity and good explanation. It shows the timeline stretching from the economist Andrew Dilnot’s proposals to fix the social care system way back in 2011 and then how successive governments of all political persuasions have said they are going to fix the system – but they do not. The really fundamental question is the enormity of the costs involved and in the meanwhile, the Labour government has ‘kicked the can down the road’ until the end of 2028 and beyond. I suspect that one solution may involve a special new tax, earmarked for social care, so that the government can start to extract some of the enormous sums of money involved from an early age – perhaps in their 40’s. All adults in Germany pay into a national long-term care (LTC) social insurance scheme. Contributions are split between the employee and employer, and are based on a set percentage of earnings. The German social care system aims to balance what the state pays for versus what the individual pays. I was not expecting the care staff until 8.45 this morning but I received an urgent phone call telling me that only one carer was available and could I act as a 2nd carer. I agreed because I get on well with the young male Asian carer who is one of our regulars but it meant that getting breakfast was well and truly delayed so it was way past 10.00am when I eventually got Meg breakfasted. I then shot off quickly down the hill to get a newspaper whilst Meg was soundly asleep but it was a gut-wrenching site to see our once familiar cafeteria with all of the tables and chairs removed getting prepared for its reconditioned use. I busied myself with routine little jobs until the lunch time carer – again, completely on her own but Meg need actually much attention in any case. I am going to keep a log of all of the times when I am getting less than the complete service because what should be the occasional lapse is now happening once or twice per day and this needs to be carefully documented before I raise it with the care agency managers themselves.

The intervention by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is continuing to make waves. Although the Prime Minister was announcing a major new initiative in the NHS anticipating that waiting lists might be cut by 50% over a five year period, most reporters at the event wanted to question the PM over the remarks that Musk made about him and also about Jess Phillips. The prime minister, who sounded genuinely angry in denouncing what he described as the ‘poison of the far right’ infecting politics called for a discussion based on ‘facts and truth not on lies’. He repeatedly hit out at the Conservatives’ failure to implement the 20 recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, though Labour have not yet done so either. He insisted they are working at speed to deliver them.

It is an interesting question whether Meg will be well enough to go for a venture our tomorrow. Although after the snow today, it seems quite a lot milder outside tomorrow and the next week the temperature may not rise above 4 degrees. If the weather is reasonably bright and Meg has masses of blankets and warm clothing, then we might be able to make a trip to Wetherspoons, our ‘new’ venue after the sad demise of the cafeteria in Waitrose. On the other hand, Meg might be still very sleepy so we will have to play this one by ear. In the afternoon, we had started watching a programme which seemed relatively interesting about the British countryside and how it evolved but then the doorbell rang and we had a completely surprise visitor. This was a particularly vivacious young female carer who had cared for Meg for several months but then had gone off to university to read veterinary science. I am not sure whether she was on a Foundation Year or something similar but she did not seem to be over burdened by very much class contact but, nonetheless, was achieving good grades. I was delighted to see this young lady because although a little quirky in some ways, she was absolutely excellent with Meg and handled her with a great deal of skill and sensitivity even on the occasions when Meg was a little truculent (which did not occur often). Then her visit overlapped with that of the young male carer and evidently they had a lot to catch up between the two of them.

Yesterday when I awoke the first thing that I did was to look out of the window and even pop my head out of the front door to assess how much snow we have had. The evening before, we had certainly had a fall of snow but it did not look very thick and I suspect that cars would be able to navigate it fairly easily. I was delighted last night to receive a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend who realised that pushing Meg out in her wheelchair in present conditions was not really an option for us and so he said that he would call round to see us at 10.30 in the morning which is of course always more than welcome. Normally the day after the Christmas tree has been cleared away, our hall has a very stark appearance – indeed, it was the absence of light in the corner of the hall that led me a year or so ago to install a very low wattage lamp in the corner to take the place of the lights of the Christmas tree. This is all now reinstalled and I must say I am glad to return the hall to its normal furnishings and a feeling of normality. Last night when I looked around our Music Lounge, I was somewhat overwhelmed by great feelings of sadness when I contemplated that all of the refurnishing that I have put into effect in the last year was all done to benefit Meg in the remaining stages of her illness. But then an inner voice spoke to me and I had a strange conversation with myself along the following lines. My inner voice told me that although I was indeed pushing Meg when I could down the hill for a coffee, this was as much for my own benefit of fresh and exercise as it was for Meg’s. And as for the population of the Music Lounge with selected pieces of furnishing starting off with the captain’s chairs and finishing off with what I call the ‘carers’ sofa’ was absolutely as much for own benefit as for Meg’s. My inner voice told me that whilst Meg had always acquiesced and normally approved of each of our purchases, I was actually indulging myself so I should not delude myself into thinking that it was exclusively done for Meg’s benefit rather than my own. I was forced to agree to my inner voice and in a strange way it helped me gain a better sense of perspective of our current situation and the prospects for the weeks and months ahead. The snow fall that had occurred overnight was no real threat to any of us and it was a simple task to brush it off the car’s windscreen and to make a paid trip down the hill to pick up our copy of the Sunday newspaper from a nearly deserted store. Meg was very fast asleep (as she is nearly all of the time now) and then after I got back and did a few tidying up jobs, our University of Birmingham friend called round, as he phoned to say that he would. Neither of us wanted to pursue personal troubles in any depth so we spent the time discussing educational issues until the carers arrived some time after midday. We managed to get half a beakerful of tepid tea into a very sleepy Meg until it was time for them to go and I started to prepare lunch of chicken thighs, carrot and swede mash and some green beans. To be honest I am scarcely at all hungry and am going to have to force myself to east something approaching a proper meal. But when the meal was completely prepared, then the chicken thighs in the creamy tomato sauce seemed pretty tasty so I ate my half of the meal with some enjoyment. I had very slowly fed Meg with her portion of the meal and although it took a long time, I was determined to get some good food inside her and I was delighted that she actually managed the portion of food that I put before her. Then we had a small portion of yogurt and finished off with a little warmed fruit juice. One way or another this was the most food+ drink I have managed to get Meg to ingest for a day or so now, so I am hopeful that the combination of the food and the medication will help to haul Meg up the slope of recovery so we can resume a more ‘normal’ sort of existence.

A remarkable falling out is occurring on the right of the political spectrum. Elon Musk has said Reform UK needs a ‘new leader’ because Nigel Farage ‘does not have what it takes’. The X owner posted the tweet on Sunday following days of headlines over his comments about the historical grooming scandal that took place across UK towns and cities more than a decade ago. Although Mr Musk is in agreement with Mr Farage and the Conservatives that there should be another national inquiry, a dividing line has emerged between the tech billionaire and the Reform leader over the former’s support for jailed activist Tommy Robinson. Shortly after Musk’s post, Mr Farage said: ‘Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.’ On the Laura Kuennsberg programme this morning, ex Labour Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, was remarking how anyone could take Elon Musk seriously when he is arguing that Labour Minister Jess Phillips should be in gaol and Tommy Robinson (extremist right wing populist)should be freed. The fact that the world’s richest man who is directing the world’s largest social media company in a vitriolic campaign against Labour government leaders should be massive concern to all of us. But even Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative party rump cannot resist the temptation to come in on the side of Musk who is making as direct an intervention into UK politics as it is possible to make.

Before I came to bed, I had long, long video call with my long-standing University of Winchester friend whom I had arranged to call at 9.00pm. We used to Skype but today used the videolink in WhatsApp which activated within seconds and proved to be mega reliable for both of us. Of course we had a lot to communicate with each with the Christmas comings and goings as well as the events of the past two days and altogether we chatted for a couple of hours we had so much to say to each other. But I slept very much better so perhaps the long call had a soporific effect. Today, there are amber weather alerts over much of the country and we are getting ourselves prepared for a huge dump of snow which will start to arrive at about 8.00pm this evening, According to the weather maps we appear to be just within the border between an amber and non amber alert zone so we have a warning of both snow and ice. This primarily affects our carers, of course, and many of them come from Redditch which has a higher elevation than Bromsgrove so may catch more of the really bad weather, The elevation of Bromsgrove is generally between 200 and 300 feet above sea level, while the elevation of Redditch is 430 feet.

On a more technical note, I am now using Microsoft’s Outlook email client much more than previously. This is principally because since I bought my new Amazon tablet, Outlook is made available on that machine so that means that if I save a draft of anything in Outlook, then the same draft is available on either of my two laptops (one in each lounge) or on my main desktop computer as well as the tablet. Moreover, Outlook underlines typos with a little red wavy line which makes them easier to spot and correct. A particularly good feature is that the program automatically saves whatever you are working on every 30 seconds but you can also do a manual save with Ctrl-S. Now many application programs contain what are called undocumented features. These features may be documented somewhere deep in the manuals of the programme if you happen to discover it and some are genuinely undocumented. I discovered that when you load Outlook if you type a ? symbol completely on its own that Outlook loads up a screen of keyboard shortcuts which are incredibly useful and many of them hardly known about. Knowing (from somewhere) that Ctrl-S saves a draft, I wondered if this was documented anyway and this took me into a User forum which is very often the place where undocumented or little known features are shared between users. The most extreme example of this is that very early in my computing career when I had a Commodore 64 and was just getting to grips with one of the first word processing programs made available, I read a tip in a computer magazine to press a particular combination of keys as the word processor program was loading (slowly) from a tape. This accessed musical code which played something like ‘Greensleeves’ but in four part harmony exploiting every possibility of the sound chip built into the C64. There was a machine at the time called an Amiga that had an astoundingly good sound chip against which the C64 chip could not really compete – but to the uninitiated user, one really looked at one’s machine with amazement. I think the programmers call these ‘gang sheets’ and they were sometimes smuggled passed one’s superiors to find its way into a program. Searching online, though, I discovered the following: ‘Outlook was released over 25 years ago at a time when there was fierce competition in the email client space. Over the years, Microsoft stole every good idea from the competition, incorporated customer’s requests, and continually refined the client. This resulted in Outlook becoming the most capable/powerful email client available.’ The same set of posts went to complain that having made a very good program there were several good features in earlier iterations of the program not carried over into updated (improved?) versions of the programs but this is quite common as well.

When Meg seemed well and truly asleep, I judged my moment when to make a quick visit down to Waitrose, which I managed. There I picked up my copy of my daily newspaper and was also fortunate to just bump into two of the Waitrose regulars who were going to have a coffee in the penultimate day of the cafeteria being open. I quickly explained to both of them the scenario with Meg which might have come as a source of sorrow but not a great surprise as they could see Meg deteriorating in the recent past. More importantly, the three of us have decided to transfer our affections to the coffee lounge in a nearby Wetherspoons pub (which atmosphere I must admit I quite enjoy) so all being well we all meet there next Tuesday (and I earnestly hope Meg will be well enough by then for the trip) One of the young staff who typically used to man the cafeteria gave us a couple of vouchers so that Meg and I can have a free coffee and cake on the occasion of the cafeteria’s permanent closure but if was explained that if Meg couldn’t make it but I could, they would find a way of giving us some coffee and cake to consume at home. This is all very sad but perhaps it is a case of one door opening whilst another one closes. The memories of the cafeteria will stay with us forever and a day, though.

Just before Meg and I attempted a spot of lunch, I thought I would make a start on undressing the Christmas tree and putting away the decorations. This task proceeded little more quickly than anticipated so I got the Christmas tree disassembled it and put its box, the baubles and decorations in another container and all of the tinsel and related stuff in a third. Then I transported all of this upstairs ready for a journey into the loft and I cleaned up the floor and put the furniture back to rights. My son had phoned up saying they could call around and whilst I printed off a large document that they needed, my son and his wife got things put away in the loft. So that is all the Christmas things put away and I am mighty pleased to see the back of things but at the cost of a slightly aching back. I did not want to have all of the Christmas decorations hanging around for another week and I imagine many people across the country are taking the opportunity, whilst snowbound, to put their Christmas things away and restore their houses to a degree of normality (although things always look a little stark for a day or so)

Fairly late last night, I got some fairly devastating news by text from one of our Waitrose friends. This is that the cafe in the Waitrose store down at the bottom of the hill was due to close for good next Sunday. This is a considerable blow to myself and Meg as we have been frequenting this particular establishment for at least the last seven years but the decision has apparently been made by Head Office or a regional office and taken out of the hands of the actual branch itself. As I am the cafe’s oldest (i.e. longest attending) customer, I cannot start to explain how good this cafe has been to myself and my friends. As well as our regular meeting place for the last seven years (with the exception of the Covid years), the staff have treated us so kindly, joining in on our regular jokes and pleasantries, showering us with out-of-date flowers rather than them being thrown away, occasional bits of food gratis if they cannot find it on the system and so on. It is true that there are other cafes in the town but they do not have the same ambience and, of course, are not yet the repository of many happy memories for us. I am about to text our ‘inveterate hill walker’ friend to see if there are cafes on the High Street that are accessible to her motorised scooter and where she leads, the rest of us will no doubt follow. The weather is a somewhat complicating factor at the moment because there may be a hard snow starting on Saturday and wiping out Sunday but where there is a will there is a way and the manner in which we have been determined to stay loyal to each other will stand us in good stead for when we transfer our allegiances elsewhere. Whatever happens, though, I am fairly confident that we can find a new meeting place but it does involve a longer walk for myself and exposure to the elements for Meg. It is an open question whether I attempt to get Meg down in the wheelchair tomorrow before the snow arrives because I suspect that she needs to be kept warm to help her chest infection subside. In the morning our domestic help arrived and as well as her normal domestic duties, she is providing a great rock of emotional support for me at this more difficult time. I had rather hoped that she would undress the Christmas tree this morning but I think this may have to wait a day or so and I may have to do it in little bits and pieces over the next day or so.

On the TV this afternoon, there has been a very entertaining black comedy called ‘Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War’ in which one of the residents organises a mass break out from a repressive and exploitative residential home for the aged. Even though I have only seen this film in fragments (as I have been doing some other domestic duties during the afternoon) it seems bleakly apposite to our times. The residential home in which my mother first lodged some decades ago had a Catholic matron who tried and did run the home on very humane principles. But the owners were dissatisfied with the rate of return that they wee getting from the ‘granny farming’ business and going to turn the home over to the care of disturbed adolescents on the grounds that they made much more money out of the Home Office than they did providing residential care for the elderly. On the subject of affordability and costs within this sector, there is some news emanating from government last night which is disturbing in the extreme. This is that the Labour government are planning to delay their reform of the Care Sector by some three years, until the end of 2028. The intention is to provide time for an informed and careful assessment of needs and costs but this is the merest figleaf of an argument as it is completely evident that the can is being kicked fairly and squarely down the road. In ‘The Times‘ today, it is reported that there has been at least three decades of delays and broken promises and governments of every political colour have refused to face up to the costs involved in funding the system. A Department of Health report indicates that 1 in 7 people will face costs of more than £100,000 in funding their own care package. In the meantime, it is pretty self evident that the problems in the NHS will remain acute until the problems of the social care system are fixed. One wonders whether the enormous costs involved will ever find a solution but the eventual solution may well involve some judicious mix of the elements of clawing back some of the capital (bit nit all of it) in people’s homes as well as, perhaps, a more specialised tax to fund the social care system as I believe happens in Germany.

In the mid afternoon, I had a long and very welcome phone chat with our University of Birmingham friend. He has been appraised of the situation regarding Meg’s health and had texted through offering his support. As he himself lost his wife some five or so yeas ago, he can empathise with our situation. It is always wonderful to receive advice and support from our friends and, as we often meet each Sunday in the Waitrose cafeteria, this too was a shock and disappointment to him as well. In view of the bad weather, our friend enquired whether here was anything we needed but actually we are well stocked up with provisions. Later on this evening, I have a WhatsApp chat scheduled with our University of Winchester friend who had replied to an earlier email of mine offering support and friendship. These relationships really do help to sustain me over these difficult periods and I feel that I am in a situation where I can never fully repay the kindness offered.

As I awoke yesterday morning, I went through my normal morning routines on my laptop only to discover a three day heavy snow warning that will cover most of the UK from Saturday until Monday. Although I have not been looking forward to the arrival of snow, at least with sufficient warning, I may well be able to make sure that I have sufficient supplies in the house foodwise and plan whether a journey out of the house with Meg in a wheelchair is feasible or foolhardy. I suspect the answer is the latter but we will have to see what eventually falls out of the sky and how much it settles. A major activity is to get the doctor contacted and hope (pray?) for a home visit so that Meg’s condition can be properly medically assessed. After treating myself non-stop with Cold and Relief powders, I think that my heavy cold/flu is starting to battled back but in the evening, I gave a whole packet of these powders to my young Asian male carer (who calls nearly every day) as he was starting to suffer and I need to keep him on his feet so that he can continue to care for us. This raises the interesting question of not only ‘Who cares for the carers?’ but now ‘Who cares for the carers of the carers’? Today has turned out not as I expected. As soon as our GP’s website opened at 7.30am this morning, I filled in a form requesting an urgent visit by a doctor to assess Meg’s condition but I happened to mention at the start of the message that one of yesterday’s care workers had found Meg ‘unresponsive’ and thought I ought to call either 111 or 999. This word proved to be my undoing, unwittingly, because the person called a ‘Healthcare Navigator’ read the word ‘unresponsive’ and suggested that I immediately call an ambulance. To some healthcare professionals, and perhaps to all, unresponsive equates to unconscious and then all kinds of new protocols swing into play. I tried to get a little breakfast into Meg and got phoned up by a very sympathetic nurse from the group that specialises in Meg’s condition and I explained some of the dilemmas I was having in treating Meg appropriately. I needed to curtail the conversation, though as Meg was left in the care of one of our trusty sitters whilst I went off to do the first proper shopping I have done for two weeks. When I got back, though, I was dismayed to see the message from the surgery suggestion I call an ambulance which was the last place Meg needed to be. The midday sitter came along and helped me to give Meg some soup which I think revived her and gave me some emotional support and comfort as well. I was not in the mood for lunch so had a couple of mince pies enhanced by a hunk of cheese and then fortunately I got another telephone call from the nurse with whom I had spoken in the morning. She was absolutely brilliant but took some of Meg’s symptoms and then negotiated a visit from a doctor which happened mid afternoon. It is a sad fact of life that sometimes the GP’s surgeries respond more to a request from fellow professionals than they do to us, the immediate carers of their patients. But the nurse had said all the right things, persuaded the surgery that going to hospital was not appropriate and got a doctor’s visit scheduled for us. The doctor discovered some rumblings in Meg’s chest indicating perhaps a deep seated chest infection and was going to prescribe some penicillin for her. But her blood pressure and oxygen levels and temperature seemed OK so perhaps the infection that Meg has is not rampaging as it were but is has knocked her sideways for two or three days. The doctor and I spent some time completing the Respect (and DNR) forms so that we are decided that Meg does not want to get carted off to hospital unnecessarily but would prefer any treatment regime to be at home. The doctor reinforced the point which I already knew that often what kills dementia patients is not the dementia itself but an infection which the body’s natural defences cannot cope with and so the patient gets overwhelmed by, and killed by, the infection. In the case of a fracture, for example, a hospital visit would still be indicated but otherwise the ambulance staff would act in accordance with the wishes on the Respect form. I am afraid this made the frailty of Meg and her prospects for the rest of her life come very sharply into relief for me and I must admit to some very emotional moments when I thought things through. But when the carers arrived for Meg’ afternoon call, I talked them through things and they were incredibly sympathetic and supportive, even promising to come out at other times in the day if here was something that they could do to help.

In the late morning, though, I got some much better news from Yorkshire where my niece’s husband had been taken into hospital with a suspected second stroke. But two specialist consultants have concluded that it was probably another neurological condition rather than a stroke although the symptoms can appear very similar. Sp my niece’s husband is now back at home and my niece is feeling pretty relieved. If it had been a second stroke then it would have impacted on her life considerably trying to carry on teaching and caring for a disabled husband at the same time. So I expressed my delight that the news was not anything like as bad as first we feared and we all live to fight another day. At least my sister after her two bouts in hospital is in a residential home and the move into this seems providential and was put into effect just when needed.

Last night as soon as Meg had been put to bed, I did my customary washing up and then went to bed myself at 8.30 as I was feeling pretty rough with this heavy cold/flu from which I am suffering. I slept fitfully for a few hours and then got up to see the New Year in in which I toasted myself and the rest of the world with a few sips of Fino sherry (all I had to hand) before I took to my bed again. I slept fairly fitfully and awoke at about 5.15 at which time I did not want to drift off to sleep again as I needed to get up at 6.00am as the carers were scheduled for 7.00am. When the carers arrived, Meg was pretty unresponsive and I think the carers were very concerned about her. We decided to get Meg up and sitting in her special chair in the Music Lounge where she is warm and comfortable and I find it easier to care for her than if she were actually to stay in bed. I had a quick consultation with my son about the appropriate courses if action – the evident thing, if course is to call a doctor to have Meg checked over but New Year’s Day is a Bank Holiday and our quite large practice does not have an out-of-hours service. The system is to fill in a form on the practice web site but of course, this was not made available and the only advice was to call 111 or to call 999 to get an ambulance. As Meg is so excessively sleepy, it may be that the dementia is advancing inexorably or it may be that the very bad cold/flu I have has also infected Meg but she is not in a position to report any of her symptoms. However, having got Meg into her chair I did manage to get a beakerful of porridge inside her and she showed some signs of coming round very slightly. I did consult the Alzheimer’s Society website to check for end-of-life symptoms because I knew already that excessive sleeping may just be due to the body progressively shutting down. But the website itself indicated that end-of-life symptoms are very difficult to discern and we could be talking about days or even months but looking at the list of items that the society details, I would not be surprised if Meg were to be in this state – not to be overly dramatic about it. I have written an email to the Admiral Nurses (who specialise in Meg’s condition) but they like GP’s practices are not open/available on Bank Holidays.

After I had got some breakfast inside Meg I FaceTimed my sister in Yorkshire who has a couple of spells in hospital (an initial visit followed by a discharge and an almost equally rapid readmission which I fear is all too common these days) I received the bad news that the husband of one of my nieces has had a couple of strokes – one of which seemed comparatively mild and from which it appeared that he was recovering and a second where I still have to receive some up-to-date news as he still in a specialised stroke unit in Leeds. I have tried to get into contact with my niece and no doubt we will talk in the hours ahead but it seems that other parts of our extended family are having their travails. I got a reasonable amount of lunch into Meg (quiche accompanied by some Cavolo Nero kale) but after that Meg seemed to relapse into her by now customary sleep. When I had telephoned my son this morning, he indicated that he and his wife would journey back from Watford to be with Meg this afternoon and they came around at 2.30 and stayed for the major part of the afternoon. Naturally, I am always pleased to see my son and daughter-in-law and we had some pleasant chats about family matters, retirement plans, past colleagues and a lot else besides. Meg was largely asleep during most of their stay and we had a quick family consultation about Meg’s illness and what the short term and medium term prognosis is likely to be.

There is an amazing story about how our commercial world operates breaking today. A consortium of banks and building societies are to be approached by the Post Office which is going to try to raise the £100 million in a fees hike. These fees are payable when banks and building societies use Post Office services (for example low cost banking) and this money will then give existing sun postmasters a better pay deal. No doubt, this is a spin-off from the recent Post Office scandal but I cannot see the big banks playing ball with this proposal. I am a great aficionado of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures but I missed last nights which was the last in the series of three. But my son and daughter-in-law informed me that the last one in the series was the best of all three but I missed it last night as I went to bed early. So after I get Meg to bed this evening, this will be something I will catch up on and apparently the themes are largely those in the book ‘Ultra-Processed People’. On the subject of food, one of my New Year resolutions is to confine myself to only two pieces of chocolate per day. But there is some evidence that the high quality, dark chocolate can actually be quite good for you so like many things in life I suspect that a bit of what you fancy does you good whereas a lot of what you fancy is undoubtedly harmful to you. I have a bit of a dilemma in that I have quite a lot of Christmas food left over (mince pies, stollen, Christmas puddings and so on) but it is all of the high carbohydrate variety too much of which cannot do you good in the long term.