Late in the evening before yesterday, I took various thoughts, anecdotes and incidents from Meg’s life and wove them into a kind of narrative which I hope to relay to all of our guests during Meg’s funeral tea on Wednesday. These themes often link naturally and I have tried to give some precedence to these stories that most will not have heard before but, in any case, are certainly worthy of a re-telling. Although it is quite a daunting task to sum up someone’s life in a few minutes, I hope that my re-telling of some of these stories will bring a smile to the face. I have had a flood of sympathy cards during the last few days but on Wednesday afternoon itself, I intend to have a little book available in which people can write a few words of their memories of Meg. I will ask everyone to include their current email address so that I can reply to each one individually. In the last few years, Meg lost both a cousin and an uncle and we have both lost life long friends and were not able to attend their funerals but have been sent an ‘Order of Service’ from those events which we could not attend. So I am having a good supply of our own ‘Order of Service’ booklets printed so that, likewise, I can send a copy to our friends and acquaintances many of whom are on holiday at this particular time. My son called around fairly early in the morning and we discussed what needed to be done today. In particular, it was important that we make a journey over the hotel to transport the bottles of Cava (in three varieties) that had already been purchased. The young receptionist had no idea how to deal with us but, fortunately, one of the managers was in the vicinity and he evidently had some idea what was going on. He relieved us of the bottles of champagne and informed us that it would be cooled ready for serving out on Wednesday. I had taken the precaution of preparing special tag to go around the neck of each bottle conveying our name, the event it was destined for and, most importantly conveying the information that corkage had already been paid on each bottle. After this task was accomplished, my son had to leave but I popped down the road in the car to pick up our daily newspaper.

The other major ‘happening’ of the day was that it was the day that the Motability car needed to be returned. In theory, one is allowed two weeks of grace before the car is handed back but I had successfully extended this by one week and then by a further week so altogether I have had four weeks of grace. But the day had to come when the car had to go and it is a source of regret that Motability would not let me buy it. Apparently, they used to do this until about a year ago and then had a change of policy which is a pity as I have enjoyed driving this hybrid very much. Being a bit higher off the road than the normal car, I also found it easier to get Meg into and out of it but all of that is history now. Having waited in for most of the day, the representative even made a phone call saying he would be another two hours yet but he turned up at about 5.30 in the afternoon and I handed the car over having checked completely that there was nothing at all left inside. In the meanwhile, I have stored various boot liners in the garage which may, or may not, fit the car I hope to acquire when the dust settles. In the middle of the afternoon, the Eucharistic minister called around as she said that we would to make the final arrangements for the funeral on Wednesday. I had delayed giving the final seal of approval to the ‘Order of Service’ until my friend had had a look at at it. The copy is supplied to me as a PDF file and having run off the pages, one then has to assemble them into a little booklet to envisage what the finished product is to look like. I had earlier in the day made some mock-ups of how the final booklet will appear and I had got one of these right but a subsequent one incorrectly assembled but I am pretty sure by now that things are as they should be. I received a phone call from the undertakers where I confirmed that we could go ahead with the final print run and we also made sure that the correct music is going to be played both in the church and also in the crematorium. We are now in the count down phase until Wednesday which cannot come soon enough. My friend did communicate to me some not very pleasant news about an illness with which she has been diagnosed but I commiserated and promised her whatever support I could give. After the funeral is all done and dusted and the little trip to Yorkshire is concluded, then I said that I invite her and her husband round for a dinner or a lunch one day. I ascertained that she, like me, is a lover of a good fish pie so this gives me the excuse to make a pie in the fashion that I was accustomed to doing a year or so back and then, hopefully, not only can we have en enjoyable meal together but I can build up a stock of fish pies for subsequent Fridays.

I am delighted that the government have finally seen the light and restored the ‘Winter Fuel Allowance’ for pensioners. Practically all Labour MPs, not to mention councillors in the country, would have had their ears assailed when they out knocking at doors before the recent local elections and they could have been left in no doubt as to the unpopularity of the policy. I do reflect, though, that I had to nurse Meg through a winter which was the coldest for 10 years and I had to struggle hard to keep her warm and comfortable when the government saw fit to withdraw the winter fuel allowance. In the meantime, the cut-of figure for eligibility is being mentioned s £35k but it is not clear whether this is a net or gross income figure but tomorrow’ newspapers may contain this detail.

When I awoke yesterday, it was to be a fine and bright day and so, after two days of unseasonable gloom, it look as though we might be getting back to some summery weather. It is often the case that Sundays can be a slightly difficult time to navigate when you are on your own and social contacts tend always to centre around family members but we shall to see what today brings. One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is the success that I had in repairing one of the classic photos of Meg recently rediscovered. One of them had been part of a larger sheet of photos that had evidently formed a large composite photoshoot of staff members. When I acquired this sheet of photos, some had already been cut out by scissors and according to the operation of Sod’s Law, the one of Meg was the only one to actually have a tear in it. I cut it out and tried to repair it using sellotape on the back of the photo but the jagged edges of the tear still remained, But I had in mind that there might be software that could ‘repair’ scratches on old photographs and if you are skilled in Photoshop, there are tools by which you could effect a repair yourself but it is tricky to say the least. So I did search on the internet and very quickly found a program that claimed to use AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology to identify and repair scratches on old photographs. Sometimes the offending mark can be a crease mark if an old photograph has been bent or folded in any way. I have to say the technology worked liked magic and in no time at all, I had a seemingly perfectly restored picture of Meg (although, of course, the original is still damaged). Needless to say I found this technology very useful as was also another programme that I found to correct a tilt in a photo (which can be occasioned by the scanner lid moving a small photo when the lid is closed)

After I had breakfasted, I watched some of the political programmes broadcast on a Sunday morning and then received a welcome call from my University of Birmingham friend. We decided to meet in the park where we stayed for a little time, surveying the scene from our usual benches. Then we set off to a location which has quite a large man-made lake (I suspect it may have been gravel pits) now devoted to a variety of water sports and complete with a café. But the car park and overflow car park were absolutely teemingly full so we judged that there must be some type of competition or event in progress and we gave this a miss and went for our coffee instead to a local garden centre which neither of us have frequented for about a year or so. Fortunately, there was plenty of space available to us but we were absolutely amazed, after we had bought our coffee and a portion of apple pie to share between us, that the coffee was served to us in cups but without a saucer. When we asked for a saucer, we were informed that they do not ‘do’ saucers and we subsequently learnt that the cafe owner was following the example of Marks and Spencer’s in dispensing with saucers. In view of the fact that saucers have been in common use for two centuries and have proved their worth in that time (prevention of drips, resting place for a spoon) we could not believe that such a cost-cutting measure had been implemented. We had a hearty discussion lasting for an hour or so and then my friend dropped me off at home in his car. I did not feel like cooking at that late hour but made myself a ‘quickie’ lunch of a tin of tuna, blended with some salad cream and 1000 Island dressing and served on half a slice of sourdough bread.

After lunch, I spent some time working out how to add some captions in a horizontal list to provide captions for the photographs of Meg and managed to achieve this and to stitch it in to the latest version of the HTML display code. Then I received a phone from one of my ex-female colleagues from the University of Winchester and we had a lovely chat – I anticipate seeing her on Wednesday in any case and then meeting with her and some other former colleagues for drinks and supper later on in the evening of Wednesday. Thus rather delayed my major task of the day which was to prepare the Motability car that we had as part of Meg’s support package but now has to be handed back. I needed to take out all of the extra mats and boot liners I had fitted and the other bits and pieces that you tend to carry round in the car (CDs, cleaning materials). The car needs to be handed first thing in the morning so this task could not be delayed any more and, of course, one needs to hand over locking nuts, spare keys and manuals as well. I will then be car-less for a week or so which not be incredibly inconvenient as the week following the funeral, I am going to visit Yorkshire but I had already decided to go by train and had already bought the tickets in anticipation. My son and I have entered into an arrangement whereby I will inherit his car but the new car he was buying for himself, originally promised for the first week ion June (which is now), has been delayed for the best part of a month, which could hardly have come at a less convenient time. There are times in my life when I have survived without a car but they tend to have been when I have been undertaking teaching trips abroad for extended periods both in Madrid and in Jakarta. But Madrid has an excellent transport system which I used extensively and taxis hardly at all, whereas in Jakarta I tended to be whisked around by car, principally by the person who acted as an admin assistant to the University. No doubt I will manage again but it will take me a day or so to acclimatise to not having a car on the drive.

Yesterday when I got up, I set to work completing a little computing job which worked out very well. I had written a one page ‘Commentary’ on the classic photos I recently retrieved from a filing cabinet drawer and which I have now scanned and put on their own little website. In time, I may incorporate them into the main site for the time being, I am quite happy that they form their own separate little archive as it were. The ‘Commentary’ link means that when a viewer accesses the website, by clicking on the link they have a one page summary detailing some of the history and the significance of the photos I have just located and they can go ‘Back’ to view the collection. The day started in a cold and gloomy fashion and I have no particular commitments scheduled for today except to pop down and see my friends in Wetherspoons which I actually missed last Tuesday. So after breakfast, I trundled down the hill and met up with my three friends. I also did a quick tour of the venue and bumped into Seasoned World Traveller from my park visiting days. He was feeling a bit under the weather but I gave him an information sheet about the funeral arrangements as I thought he would want to miss a church service but might be able to make the tea party in the afternoon. Then, just as I was leaving, my University of Birmingham friend hove into view and we agreed that we would both go out somewhere tomorrow, perhaps for a pub lunch or somewhere overlooking a bit of water which my friend always finds relaxing. I called in at Waitrose to collect my copy of The Times but they had taken no delivery of it that day- as I was preparing to buy a copy of ‘The I‘ newspaper, one of the friendly partners pushed it into my hand without my having to pay for it. On my way home, I ran into my Italian friend who was on her way to visit another friend so we just had a brief chat and I informed her that I would travelling up to Harrogate for a few days in the week following the funeral. I lunched on a curry + vegetables mixture I had evidently prepared and stored some time ago in the freezer so I thawed it out and had it on some broken up water biscuits (the latter being to cut down on carbs)

In the afternoon, I continued playing about with, and refining, some of the ways in which Meg’s classic photos can be displayed. I remember that I utilised some software written years ago (and not by me) which put each photo into a window and you accessed a series of buttons along the bottom to select the appropriate photo. The first entry needs to be a caption table so there is an explanation of each photo but I thought this system was pretty neat and economical so I adapted it from when I had last used it. This seems to have the occasion when Meg and I had a holiday in Cantabria and was eight years ago – with writing this blog and looking after Meg, I have not had the time or the opportunity to have much ‘playing about’ time to keep my skills current. In both of the rolling displays and this static but user-controlled one, I have written a simple one page background to these important finds but it actually took up most of the afternoon to adapt and enhance the code which I had written eight years go. Now this is done, I can use it for other collections – for example, I might take a lot of photos of my Yorkshire family I have not seen for years. In the late afternoon, I went to church which was a little quieter than I expected this evening. The next time I enter the church, Meg’s coffin will be there and I just hope that I will be able to keep my emotion in check ready to read our the eulogy. All should be well until the valedictory last line or so which has quite an emotional punch to it at the end but I am rehearsing this so that I can do it correctly when the occasion demands.

It now seems extraordinary to me that four weeks has gone by since Meg’s passing and a funeral which is practically five weeks after the event is not ideal. But there is so much to do when someone dies but so far, with the assistance of my son, practically everything has gone smoothly. Although Meg was sleeping so much for the last few weeks when her body was gradually shutting down, I was having carers in four times a day and, in theory, there should have been two on each occasion so the house seemed quite busy. But these days, it is very quiet but I am trying to develop new routines so that I am not tempted to sit around and mope. Getting next Wednesday out of the way will be a big help. I feel it is rather like organising a play that will have a run of one night only but there is no time for rehearsals and, like taking a photograph, you generally only have one opportunity to get everything right. But organising all of the photos and responding to a lot of email and other messages has taken a lot of time so I am actually going o bed pretty tired out these days.

On the other side of the Atlantic, The Trump-Musk row rumbles on. The two men could, of course, patch things up. It wouldn’t be the first time either has said outrageous things on social media that they later shrugged off. But in one way, the damage has already been done. The world has witnessed two of its most powerful people row like teenagers with no evidence of the wisdom, restraint or cool-headedness most would expect of reliable businessmen and heads of state. Given the state of the world right now, what the lurid details of their row says about the two men is more terrifying than titillating. I must admit that I had not realised that SpaceX is so heavily reliant on government contracts from NASA and the US military. But it could be years before a competitor can rival its near-monopoly on space launches.

So when I got up yesterday morning, I set to work by amending the underlying HTML code so that the latest ‘classic’ and recently re-discovered photos of Meg now show in the correct sequence. I have not blended them into the main sequence just yet but have them as a separate little series – they were taken before the days of digital photography and therefore had to be scanned into the computer. They tend to be either official staff photos, in one case torn literally from a noticeboard or to be illustrating staff functions (and hence the group photos) but they are interesting because they show Meg at her best when she was climbing mountains during her Easter vacations and not yet assailed by her back problems. I suspect that most of the photos are the very early 1980’s when Meg would have been in her mid-30’s. After this bit of memorabilia, I ran off my etickets for my journey up to Yorkshire and ensured they were easily accessible on my iPhone as well. After I had breakfasted, I walked down the hill but thought I would pop in on my Irish friends who live down the road. The husband had been having an operation on Wednesday and I have been thinking about him a lot and hoping that all went well. He was discharged the following day and was evidently relieved that the operation that had been hanging over him had been performed and he seemed to be well on the road to recovery. We had a lot to talk about and I was delighted to show him and his wife the resurrected ‘classic’ photos of Meg showing her at her best when she was in her early 30’s and not struck down with ailments. Altogether I stayed about an hour and even let myself indulge in some delicious chocolate biscuits to accompany my coffee. Then it was down to Waitrose to pick up my newspaper and enjoy another coffee before I made for home. Then I cooked lunch ensuring that I used up some bits of meat and vegetables from a few days ago. After lunch, I got busy correcting the latest proof of the ‘Order of Service’ and to my frustration, some of the original errors had been corrected but some others seem to have crept in. So now what I hope is a final set of 4 corrections has been sent in and I hope we can now go to a print run of about 100 (half for the church proceedings and the other half to send to people who are away on holiday). I also ensured that the classic photos of Meg had been cropped (as, having been scanned, there was a lot of redundant white space) and tried to resize two or three of the awkward ones. Then in the late afternoon, I felt it was a good idea to go and get a can of ‘good’ petrol for the mower as, amazingly, I have been running on last year’s supply with no problems. So this has been done and the petrol safely in the garage waiting for the next cut. I sat outside on the garden bench, enjoying a cup of tea and listening to the Radio 4 statistical programme ‘More or Less’ that my University of Birmingham friend had mentioned to me.

I have received a couple of emails to which I shall have to give a considered reply. The first of these was from my very good life long friend in La Coruna (Spain) who, as a single daughter, is having all kinds of problems caring for her aged mother who has a flat in Madrid. My friend is going through he process of talking to social services organisations, both public and private, to arrive at what we would call a ‘package of care’ to try to provide for her mother’s medical and associated issues. The trouble is that Madrid is practically 600km from La Coruna and trying to organise at a distance can be a nightmare. As well as this massive problem, one of her best and oldest friend is terminally ill and she is also overwhelmed with masses of examination scripts to be marked. So my good friend is really feeling under the most tremendous strain and, of course, Meg’s death can only intensify these feelings as well. The other email is from a cousin who is wondering whether or not to turn up for the crematorium part of the proceedings next Wednesday but I will write and reassure her that it is absolutely how she feels about the situation. I now reflect that is four weeks since Meg died and I have never known a month pass so very quickly – but after people die, there is a tremendous amount to get done in any case. I am in the process of organising various appointments to look after my own health and I already have an appointment for an eye test and yet another, after a phone call, for a session of physiotherapy to work on my back a little and straighten it out after months of wheelchair pushing. But I am telling myself that once I get Meg’s funeral behind me, I can start to have some more positive thoughts and plans about the future.

On the political front, it seemed evident to most political commentators that it would not take long for the two ‘alpha males’ of Donald Trump (the world’s most powerful man) and Elon Musk (the worlds’s richest man) to massively fall out with each other. But in a strange way, each needs the other (Trump for the money, Musk to protect his business interests) so will some kind of reconciliation be on the cards? I am not sure that Donald Trump was implicated (as Musk claims ) in the Epstein scandal. However, on the balance of probabilities, I suspect that the Russians have incriminating evidence on Donald Trump after his visit(s) to Moscow. His inability to keep his trousers on and his susceptibility to Russian ‘honeypots’ makes it almost certain that the Russians have some secretly recorded video of sexual liaisons. If things got really bad between Putin and Trump, Putin could always threaten to release the video footage. This is all speculation, of course, but it would explain a lot about the relationships between the two men.

Yesterday started off being a cold and miserable day which felt more like an autumn day than a UK summer. I hope this squally weather will soon blow over but it is one of those when one has to reach for an extra jumper to counteract the chill. As soon as I got up and had my obligatory huge mug of tea there were two important emails for me to consider. The first and most important of these was the latest version of the ‘Order of Service’ which now contains all of the words to the hymns for people to sing. I have yet to give this a really detailed scrutiny but at first glance, it is almost exactly what we want. I have passed the complete document over to our organist/Eucharistic minister and she and I will have the final and definitive say but, of course, time is passing. The second item in my email was an historic photograph of Meg surrounded by colleagues from the Business School at De Montfort University. The point about the photo is that Meg is very much ‘centre stage’ and the highlight of this photo which I am pretty sure is a photo of the Business Studies tutorial team c. 1978-1979. Apart from Meg (and myself in a quasi-fashionable light blue denim suit and a pint of beer!) there are the lead Practical Training tutor, two mathematicians, two economists, a lawyer and a psychologist and a final figure I cannot identify or remember. The point about the photo is that was taken at an event before Meg joined the Public Administration team at the Scraptoft campus and Meg would have been about 34 years of age and before she was assailed by a wave of illnesses which came to characterise her later life. Although Meg became to be identified as part of the Public Administration team, she was actually recruited as part of the Business Studies degree team whose students she placed before switching departments. So the photograph actually illustrates an important part of Meg’s career which rather was overshadowed by what she did later on. I can remember that when Meg first joined the Public Administration team of which I was a member, there was a certain atmosphere at a husband-and-wife team being employed in the same department. But this feeling evaporated very quickly when on an important issue in a departmental meeting which went to a vote, I voted one way and Meg voted the other and I think that the rest of our colleagues breathed a sort of collective sigh of relief that we were going to act as independent professionals and would not let our marital status cloud our professional judgements. This would have been assisted, of course, if Meg had used her. maiden name professionally but this never happened largely because Meg’s first boss thought it not to be a good idea (although it was very common in the civil service at the time).

I went shopping to the bigger Aldi store which we have in town and although this had its moments of sadness (passing by items that I would have bought with Meg in mind but now no longer buy) this I managed to negotiate without too much distress. Upon my return home, I unpacked the shopping and then made a phone call to one of my nephews with whom I have not spoken for years but who was on holiday in Portugal and I have to report that the connection was as clear as a bell and as though we were in the next room. We had a long chat for over half an hour and my nephew, fully aware of things that have happened in my life via this blog, was very sympathetic. I am delighted to say that he will be making the journey down from Yorkshire and I will be delighted to see him after so many years. We chatted about the feasibility of making a trip up to Yorkshire the week after the funeral, made somewhat more difficult as our ‘Motability’ car has to be handed back and if I go to Yorkshire, it will by train and I will have to rely upon taxis left, right and centre. This might not be a bad way to do things in any case but it was good to have another family member’s perspective on my travel plans.

After lunch, I decided to make a little venture into town and I visited the opticians. Here I could officially inform them of Meg’s death and ask that she be removed from both their ‘optician’ and their ‘hearing aid’ databases but I also took the opportunity to book myself an eye test for a couple of weeks time. I bought some cosmetics that I needed and the heavens opened so I had to shelter inside the store, but after this I took myself off to Waitrose where I availed myself of a cappuccino (but did not bump into any one I knew – the clientele shifts throughout the day). As soon as I arrived home, the Eucharistic minister to whom I had given a copy of the latest version of the ‘Order of Service’ and I very carefully compiled a lit of the four latest amendments that were needed and have transmitted these on to the undertaker. If these get incorporated successfully we can go to print and I have requested extra copies so that those who could not make the funeral because of holiday commitments can be mailed a copy. So I think we are at the stage where practically everything that needs to be done in preparation for the funeral has actually been accomplished. Then in the late afternoon, I wondered if I had some classic De Montfort University photos of Meg in the days long before we had digital cameras, I managed to locate about ten photos of Meg largely taken from staff notice boards or official ‘functions’ at the Polytechnic as it then was plus the originals of two classic photos of which hitherto I had only got a paper copy. These twelve photos have not been put on a rolling display on my website to be viewed by al the world. Finally, after a brief confirmatory phone call with one of my Yorkshire nieces, I have gone ahead and booked both a hotel room and also the relevant train tickets for a journey up to see my Yorkshire family in the week (Monday to Friday) following the funeral.

Yesterday turned out to be quite a busy day. It was the day when our domestic help calls around and both she, my son and I always have quite a lot to chat about. After I had breakfasted, I sat down with my son and we made some changes to the first draft of the ‘Order of Service’ which had appeared in my email inbox. We swapped some of the photos around and substituted a new one for one of our original selection. This having been done, we emailed a new photo to the undertakers and set off to deliver a printout which incorporated some of my selections. Beforehand, though, we called in at the ‘Holiday Inn‘ where we are to hold the post funeral tea to deliver a duly signed and dated acceptance form that their system required. Then after the two major errands of the morning, my son and I picked up some provisions and I took the opportunity to exchange some reminiscences of Meg with our domestic help. She is very kindly washing and ironing my white shirt so that I will look my best on the day in a week’s time. Then I cooked myself some chicken breasts which I served on some rice but throwing some of the rice away to keep my carbs down. But I received some unpleasant news via my email as our Eucharistic minister who had compiled the first draft of our Order of Service was dismayed, to put it mildly,that the undertakers had taken liberties with some of the document already supplied them and had not included many of the words to the two hymns which meant, as she pointed out, that the congregation would not know what to sing. So I had to compose a fairly long email to the undertakers requesting that the omitted words be inserted and making one or two other textual alterations. This may involve quite a major amendment so trust the undertakers will get on wit it expeditiously.

After I had lunched, I had a ‘coffee’ date with my University of Birmingham friend and we spent well over an hour in a local coffee bar, indulging in some apple pie [i.e. the least fattening of the alternatives) to accompany our coffee. We always have a lot to chat about and today was no exception and as my friend had experienced bereavement with the death of his wife some eight years ago, he could be, and was, a source of some advice for me. When I returned home, I pulled our grey wheelie bin out to the roadway, ready for collection first thing in the morning. I took the opportunity to knock on the door of a near neighbour who we knew had been training in the past for a role in the Church of England as a licensed lay readers, also known as Licensed Lay Ministers (LLMs). These lay people are trained and licensed by their bishop to serve alongside clergy, supporting people in faith and enabling mission. My neighbour invited me in and we spent an hour and half talking over some of the circumstances of Meg’s passing but also including matters theological as well (and there was quite a degree of unanimity between us). Actually, we have not had the chance of an extended chat for a year or so now but she had seen me pushing Meg up and down the hill in the wheelchair and admired the dedication which had been shown. But she was also of the view that this could not be sustained indefinitely and she gave me some very reassuring words (which I have heard echoed elsewhere) that I had done as much as I possibly could to maintain and even improve Meg’s quality of life in her final months. Like me, she expressed some relief that Meg’s final days had been spent in the comfort and reassurance of her own home and, employed in the Health Service itself, she was convinced that Meg’s final days at home could not have been bettered. Our neighbour reminded me of a fact that I had forgotten that she, Meg and our daughter-in-law used to go for little day trips out, probably for lunch, and Meg had shown her great acts of kindness by bringing back some mementos from Santiago de Compostela which she really appreciated at the time. As a consequence, she had only the happiest memories of Meg as she used to be and this was, of course, so nice to hear. Meanwhile, the political world rumbles on. There is now very considerable disquiet on the Labour benches (and other parts of the House of Commons) that the UK may be complicit in assisting Israeli in what many are saying is at the least an ethnic cleansing of the Gaza strip. Since 2015, the UK has licensed at least £500 million worth of military exports to Israel From October 2023 to May 2024 and the government issued over 100 new licences allowing UK companies to sell arms to Israel. During this same time, Israel killed thousands of civilians in Gaza indiscriminately. Even though the government has suspended a small number of arms licences, there are still hundreds remaining. In addition, the UK provides approximately 15% of the components in the F-35 fighter jets which are used in airstrikes across the occupied Palestinian territory. There is a certain degree of ‘cloak and dagger’ in all of these reports and obtaining a clear picture is not easy. Nonetheless, it does appear to be the case that whilst direct sales of military equipment to Israel are not allowed, there are a number of indirect ways in which weapons and military supplies, including bullets do find their way to Israel. The UK defence and intelligence industry has many links with their Israeli counterparts and the UK government seems loathe to put these links at risk. Nonetheless, what is unfolding before our eyes in Gaza is so horrific that the government may be forced into a position whereby even the indirect supply of military equipment is terminated. Jeremy Corbin, now an independent MP, has introduced a bill into Parliament to ban all sales of military equipment to Israel while the present conflict continues and whilst this bill has no chance of success, one suspects that the amount of support it receives may be a good indication of the current mood of the House of Commons.

Yesterday was my Pilates day but there were some important tasks hat I wanted to fulfil this morning. One was a telephone call to the Teachers’ Pensions Agency and all I needed to ask them was whether the application form to receive a portion of Meg’s Teachers Pension had been received. I had needed to submit this about ten days ago and included with the application form itself was a death certificate and also a marriage certificate. Even though the query was a simple one I needed to supply about half a dozen bits of information about myself and and another half a dozen bout Meg before I could even put a simple query to them. It seems that the system they have is that documents arrive in the post room and are then opened and the contents scanned before the documents are returned to you. This process takes 5-10 working days but the TPA have already had the documents for about eight working days and I do not know how much longer it will take for a simple acknowledgement to arrive but I quoted the Post Office Tracking number to them supplied as part of of the ‘To be signed for’. process. At the end of the day, I think they have received my completed application form but it was not very clear and the official to whom I was speaking had to rely upon other telephone calls and, even so, she could give no indication how long the applications takes to process. The whole point here is that Meg’s pension payments were stopped immediately but it might take weeks (without an income) for the new arrangements to come into effect. I thought it would be a rather messy and inconclusive telephone call and so it proved to be. Then I popped over the road to the ‘Holiday Inn‘ and paid the invoice for Meg’s funeral tea to be held in just over a week’s time – they required payment in full perhaps because of the short notice. Upon returning home, I received two telephone calls, one of them being from one of Meg’s surviving cousins who are going to be brought to the funeral by yet other cousins. A second telephone call was from the doctor who had signed Meg’s death certificate with whom I needed to get onto contact to clear up one or details about Meg’s medical history. She was able to answer some questions about Meg’s history of hypertension that had been troubling me but that line of enquiry has now come to an end, When I reflect upon the waves of different ailments that Meg experienced, I have concluded in my own mind that her pretty aged parents did not pass on a particularly good set of genes by way of inheritance. I rather shocked myself by making a list of the serious health problems which Meg encountered in the second half of her life as well as several operations- as soon as one problem seemed to abate or burn itself out, it was replaced by another in quick succession. Even as she died, she was afflicted by up to eight conditions which she generally bore without much complaint. But in an earlier life, she had been fit enough to get to the top of some of the UK’s highest mountains such as Skiddaw and Helvellyn in the Lake District and Snowdon in Wales. We used to visit the Lakes each Easter and, together with our son, regularly got snowed off a whilst attempting one peak or another.

Finally, I received a very welcome note and little card from an ex De Montfort University colleague – we were both completing our PhD’s together by written papers and were very helpful to each other, as I recall, as we wrote some joint papers. He had heard about Meg’s demise by reading my blog which was fortuitous because he may have retired from the University and I was going to let him receive the news by ordinary mail. He and his wife were to be on holiday on the day of the funeral but he is scheduled to visit St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna where he said that he would light a candle for Meg. I replied that I am sure it would give Meg a great deal of pleasure that a candle was to be lit for her in such a famous cathedral. I must confess that when I have been on holiday in Spain and visited a cathedral (which was quite a common occurrence) I would light candles for recently departed friends and relatives. But one always wanted to light a ‘genuine’ candle and not just insert a coin to have a little row of electronic candles automatically illuminate which is the practice in some churches eager to avoid a fire hazard. When I think about it, the lighting of a candle must almost be a universal across most of the major world religions (but excluding Islam)

Last night, I started to watch the women’s football (England vs Spain) and England had taken the lead with an opportunistic goal against the run of play in the first half. But then I went off to consult some emails and when I resumed watching the match, Spain hd scored two quick goals and, probably deservedly, won the match. I have received back the first proofs of the Order of Service but already there are some slight changes to be made and I need to consult wit my son over the choice of photos because there is one I am not sure about and I think some of the others need to be re-positioned. But all in all, it is quite a good first draft and should be quite easy to ‘tweak’ I have also received an estimate of the total cost of the funeral so now I just want to get it all over and done with. Looking at masses of photographs of Meg whilst I am fine tuning the rolling display does not help me to move on but in just over week now, I should start to enter what I might call my ‘post-Meg’ life (into which I have been thinking myself for some time now)

Yesterday, being the start of the week, I engaged in what is now my new routine of getting up fairly early, writing a little of this blog, doing some exercises, performing my ablutions and then having some breakfast. My son popped around this morning and I was particularly pleased to see him as there were one or two things I wanted to discuss with him. One thing that I showed him was a newspaper article which I had gleaned from the ‘Weekend’ section of Saturday’s ‘Times‘ written by a 61 year old woman who had suffered some spinal problems and decided to turn her life around with a series of diet and life style changes. Her article indicated that she felt fitter now than she did thirty years ago so I thought that there might be lessons to be learned. Having given this article a detailed reading, I think I will put many of its recommendations into effect. One thing of which I am quite conscious is that after pushing Meg around in her wheelchair for so long, I have developed quite a stoop in my own posture (as I leaned forward to propel the wheelchair, particularly up the long hill out of Bromsgrove) I have no doubt that some of the cartilage in my spine is not as elastic as once it was so I have tried to address this by equipping myself with two pairs of shoes, one for indoors and one for outdoors which give my feet much more cushioning. I have also resumed my Pilates classes and I am hoping that these classes plus a modicum of daily exercise will help to straighten my back out somewhat. I also took the opportunity to discuss the hotel prices that I was investigating to plan a visit to my relatives in Yorkshire once we get the funeral out of the way. I may well go the following week and the hotel in which Meg and I used to stay seems to be offering as good a rate as any and an even cheaper rate than the bed and breakfast establishment in which we use to stay and which has now been converted into an ‘apart-hotel’ After breakfast, I walked fairly slowly down the hill to collect my newspaper from Waitrose and also stopped off to have a coffee which is available free to card holders who bring along their own mug. On the way back home, I knocked on the door of my two oldest Catholic friends and I was delighted to see that they had returned from their holiday at Lake Garda, Italy where Meg and I actually spent two pleasant holidays. I think they were very pleased to see me and I was certainly pleased to see them and we exchanged news about Meg’s funeral arrangements and some of the other activities in which I have been engaged recently. I accepted another cup of coffee and they were very solicitous that I should look after myself in this particular period. After I returned home, I seared off some chicken breasts and then baked them in the microwave oven with a mixture of onions, tomatoes and peppers and a jar of sweet and sour sauce. This turned out to be quite big so I only ate one half of it, leaving the remainder for another meal. During the afternoon, I was tempted to watch the Jane Honda/Lee Marvin film of ‘Cat Ballou’ which I first saw in 1965 and thought then it was the amusing film I had ever seen. I don’t think that I would retain that judgement after sixty years but the film had a happy and surprising ending about which I had forgotten. The theme of the film is about a gun slinging rancher who is often hopelessly drunk on whisky but the more he drinks, the better he can shoot. Then in the afternoon, I set about bringing some order to the books that were stored in a large deep shelf which we have on a coffee table in our lounge. This is where we traditionally used to keep brochure and guides to places that we had visited in England – the guide books to foreign cities were housed in another bookcase on our landing. Going through these materials and junking the vast majority of them was quite a painful process because it reminded me of the places that Meg and I had visited together but which I would in all probability visit no more. Still, I managed to throw away a lot of out of date material and to only retain what I thought would still be really useful to me.

Today, the major political event has been the Prime Minister announcing the findings of a Strategic Defence Review in which there will be a policy of rearmament not dissimilar to the 1930’s when we faced the threat of Hitler. But there has been a dramatic development in the war in the Ukraine which illustrates very dramatically the changing nature of modern warfare. The Ukrainians had manage to smuggle several lorries into the proximity of air force bases, some deep inside Russia. Then the coverings of the containers were rolled back, one presumes in response to a radio signal and a total 117 drones were released which managed to destroy about one third of the entire Russian bomber aircraft fleet which were strategic cruise missile carriers. This was a daring and audacious attack which had been planned for about 18 months according to accounts. So when Donald Trump informed the Ukrainian president that he ‘had no cards to play’ in the by now, notorious, dressing down in the Oval Office. Donald Trump underestimate the ingenuity of the Ukrainian military and their desire to defend their homeland at all costs. One used to think of warfare as consisting of boots on the ground supported by long range artillery and tank advances but the relative cheapness of drones means that modern wars will be fought in a very different way. The interesting thing about this attack is that Jo Biden would not have sanctioned it but given the Trump policy of relative disengagement from the Ukrainians, they presumably feel more free to launch attacks deep inside Russia whatever the Americans might think.

Although feeling a little fragile, emotionally, I walked down the hill calling in at my Italian friend whose knee was troubling her more than a little. We made an appointment to have coffee with each other on Wednesday morning when we are both free. After I had picked up my newspaper in Waitrose, I treated myself to a coffee which is free to card holders. As I was drinking my coffee, an acquaintance approached us who knew of Meg’s passing but, as it turned out, knew our ex-neighbours particularly well having baby sat for them in the past and we had a bit of a chat. Then I made my way to our ‘usual’ park bench and although I did not know the group occupying the next bench, I nonetheless got into conversation with the male parent. On my way home, I reflected upon the fact when you are a couple, you form a little ‘bubble’ against the world but when you are single you are much more outward rather than inward looking. For this very reason, the great travel writer Wilfred Thessiger always to travel alone as this way you are forced to problem solve by yourself and to interact with the culture whereas if you in a pair, you are cocooned, as it were, from the rest of the world. After a conventional lunch, I quickly took the opportunity to mow the back lawn. As you might expect, ‘Sod’s Law’ came not operation because there a few spots of rain (which I mowed through) only to be greeted with rays of brilliant late afternoon sunshine the minute I had finished and was cleaning up the mower afterwards. After the obligatory cup of tea, I started to think about a few days away in Yorkshire once the funeral is over in about ten days time. I have in mind to stay away about four days in total and my first port of call was to get a price on the website for the favourite hotel in which Meg and I used to stay which is called ‘The Crown’. The point about this hotel is that I know its systems well, there is a paper shop which sells basic provisions quite nearby and quite a few coffee shops and places where you can have a quick cafe-type meal. I was offered a price of less than £70 a night and then looked around at alternatives, including the B&B in which I used to stay and I do not think this price can be bettered, even including the B&B in which we used to stay and is now converted, since the owner whom we knew well and featured us in his book, sold up an the B&B is now styled an ‘Apart-hotel’ I have not come to a final decision just yet but made a quick call to my niece to make sure that she (and other family members) would not be away for the week after the funeral which is when I intend to go. I spent the rest of the early evening watching a ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ programme which was relatively interesting followed by one of those out-take programmes in which TV bloomers are committed. All in all, I think yesterday was fairly successfully navigated as my first Sunday completely alone.

I am very conscious of the fact that I have to devote energies to looking after my own health which has rather been neglected for about a year and a half now. Saturday’s edition of ‘The Times’ often contains life style articles and a couple ere published that are well worth a detailed view. One was by a woman who in her 60’s sustained a spinal injury which forced a re-evaluation of her life style and we are not just talking about diet here and she reckoned that after committing herself to a regime of life style changes, she was fitter now in her 60’s than she was in her 30’s.I am going to study this article and follow a lot of the advice it contains, but I have already made a start. Pilates classes have resumed on Tuesdays and I have bought some good footwear for both inside and outside the house as I need to compensate for the fact that the cartilage in my spine must inevitably have lost of its compressibility and elasticity and shows that have a degree of ‘bounce’ in them must be a good pace in which to start. I am also cutting down radically on carbs and concentrating on eating protein and eating green vegetables whenever I can.

I have seen and read a couple of things that have given me pause for thought and made me count my blessings. One of these was a report that indicated how often patients with dementia were often subject to processes of neglect in both residential homes and in hospitals and I rejoice in the fact that Meg died at home but, in statistical terms, was only a part of the 8% (1 in 12 dementia patients) who actually die in their own homes. The other program which I forced myself to watch, against my better judgement, was one of a series on the operation of the coroners’ courts entitled ‘Causes of Death’ The episode I watched was that of a dementia patient who was attacked by another dementia patient in a residential home and died shortly afterwards. The question posed by the programme was whether this attack contributed to her death or not? The programme concluded that it did not which I thought was an incredibly convenient solution because suddenly the police, the care home and the NHS were all left ‘off the hook’ and the relatives could be consoled. To my quite informed mind, there were quite a few questions and lines of enquiry that were not pursued and I suspect that all of the agencies concerned, perhaps subconsciously, were working on a mindset which indicated that the cause of death was the disease progression of Alzheimer’s and the attack contributed nothing. But, even if nothing else, this was another bullet that had been dodged and again, for the second time in the space of a few hours, I counted my blessings. As you might expect, I am trying hard to move on and I am pleased that I have just about completed the task of assembling photos of Meg for the websites we have created as these are inevitably a reminder.

Yesterday being a Saturday is the day traditionally when I go down and visit my two friends in Wetherspoons which I did ofter several trips around the car park in Waitrose which was absolutely teeming. After the conversation that I had with my niece the evening before, I received a photo of Meg and my great-niece (i.e. the daughter of the niece) who had come to stay with us at the age of about 14. I did not remember much about this visit except the photo was taken on a train and I suspect that we had taken the opportunity to go into Winchester by train and to show my niece sights such as Winchester Cathedral and the site of Jane Austen’s house. Incidentally, here is a stunningly good piece of biography on Jane Austen which is being repeated on BBC2 and which I shall enjoy watching. After I had taken leave of my Saturday morning friends, I struck out for Asda because they had, in the past, stocked a very nice semi seco Cava and the supervisor that I know there had promised me that she would apply some staff discount for me. But my search for semi seco was fruitless and none of the other supervisors claimed to know of a Gloria although I was only speaking to her a couple of days ago. Perhaps she has left Asda and had some kind of loyalty card to discount goods from there. So then I made for Morrisons as our domestic help has said that I had bought her a very nice semi seco from there some time ago. Morrisons had a fair selection of Cavas although there are acres of space devoted to Prosecco at the moment. As I suspected, Prosecco has seen a significant increase in popularity and sales, and it has arguably become a dominant force in the sparkling wine market, particularly in countries like the UK. While it has not necessarily flooded the market by displacing other sparkling wines entirely, it has become the preferred choice for many consumers. After engaging the attention of a supervisor (eventually) I did buy ten bottles of bubbly for our celebrations. They are split into three types – a Freixenet Vintage Rose 2022, a fairly standard Brut Cava and some semi seco of unknown provenance so I hope that I can cater for everybody’s taste. My intention is that about 3.00 in the afternoon, I am going to recount a few amusing anecdotes from Meg’s life, that we can toast her I some Spanish Cava and that anyone else who wishes to say a few words in appreciation of Meg can take the floor. This has to be timed quite carefully because those who have made long journeys will be naturally anxious to hit the trail back home again. Some people will be staying in the hotel in any case so I can join them later and we can polish off any champagne that happens to remain. I do not know whether this is traditional at funerals or not but it seems to me to be entirely appropriate to give Meg the type of send off she would have preferred. After I cooked myself some lunch, it seemed a little dull and although at first I was disinclined (but then the weather brightened) so I made myself cut the front grassed area so as to keep myself on schedule. These days, after the first cut, I make myself a cup of tea and enjoy that sitting on the bench at the front until I can face doing the second, transverse cut which is always quicker. In the morning, my son and daughter-in-law had very kindly called around and whilst I was out (buying champagne) they finished off the cutting of the high hedge around the biodisk which they had half done a couple of weeks ago and now completed for me.

Having lived in Leicester for twenty six years, I still remain interested in events occurring in the city. Leicester was in the news yesterday, the principal one being that in a quiet street adjacent to De Montfort University there had been an altercation during the night and it appears that a motor vehicle has been used as a ‘weapon of attack’ to settle off an argument. There must be a demonstration effect here after the events in Liverpool recently but I fear that it is a trend that may be spreading. The other story relates to the foundation of the Leicester economy which is the fashion industry. There have been many stories about Leicester’s clothing industry in recent years: grim labour conditions, pay below the minimum wage and ‘dark factories’ serving the fast fashion sector. What is less well known is what happened next ,as in short, the industry has been hollowed out. In the wake of the recurrent scandals over sweatshop conditions in Leicester,the majority of major brands have now abandoned the city, triggering an implosion in production in the place that once boasted that it ‘clothed the world’. And now Leicester faces a further existential double-threat: competition from Chinese companies like Shein and Temu, and the impending arrival of cheap imports from India, following the recent trade deal signed with the UK. Many worry it could spell an end for the city’s fashion business altogether. When we first moved to Leicester in 1971, one of our near neighbours was an ex-Mancunian probation officer and we naturally became friendly with him and his two children (and I think the sweet little pre-pubescent daughter we knew shocked her parents by running off to become an ‘exotic dancer’ on a cruise liner) The story our Mancunian friend told us about the inhabitants of Leicester within weeks of our arrival in the city was that the inhabitants of Leicester ‘were so dedicated to making money and with so little sense of history or culture that if they had been present at the Crucifixion, they would have been offering cut-price nails to the Roman soldiers’ Despite this cruel jibe, Leicester did have a small town mentality and I was told more than once that the principal concert hall in the town, the De Montfort Hall ‘had only cost us £14,000 to build in 1919 and we have not spent a penny on it since’ De Monfort University held its Degree and Diploma ceremonies in this hall but things had to rapidly give way to the wrestling which was scheduled for the day afterwards.