Yesterday morning, I slept in a little which is quite unusual for me but the day seemed a little less bright than usual. Also, the day before I had walked down into Bromsgrove as well as attending a one-hour Pilates class and then cutting the front grassed area in the afternoon. So perhaps I was a little more tired with the activities of the day and I must learn to pace myself a little better. We have another spell of really hot weather to which to look forward but I could actually do with it being a little less hot. Most people really enjoy the hot weather but the body’s ability to cope with heat diminishes with age so I have to carefully think about the activities of the day when the weather becomes really hot. I seem to remember about a decade or so ago, France experienced a heatwave during August which is the period when Paris typically empties and anybody who can makes for the coast, or at least the cooler areas. This left behind in Paris a mainly elderly population who could not cope with the heat and the death rate soared. Eventually, the authorities hot upon the expedient of putting elderly people onto trollies and then placing them in the cooling downdraught of the air conditioning systems of the large supermarkets in order to help them to survive. I doubt that we in the UK would do anything as innovative as that but the incident has stuck in my mind, for some reason. Yesterday morning was the normal day for our domestic help to arrive which she did on time, closely followed by my son. We had the obligatory cups of tea and coffee first thing in the morning and a chat to update each other on our various bits of news. Then we collectively decided that the recently acquired Monk’s Bench should be relocated against a longer wall in our hall. This having been done, the new location suits the bench so much better and it now looks so much natural in its new location. We took the much smaller Monk’s Bench inherited from Meg’s parents and it now occupies the space vacated by the much larger bench. I am delighted by the rearrangement of the furniture and now each piece seems to occupy a much more natural position, in keeping with the scale of the surroundings. After we had chatted a lot with our domestic help about her Italian holiday where she had visited both Florence and Pisa. I think both destinations were very crowded in this high holiday season and I made the suggestion that in future she and her husband enjoy the more tranquil atmosphere afforded by some of the small Italian resorts situated alongside Lake Garda (which is so large you could easily imagine that you were actually at the seaside)

I then thought that I would go to visit the Methodist Centre near the centre of Bromsgrove and immediately bumped into the very lively Liverpool-Irish parishioner from my local church who had introduced me to the Methodist centre in the first place. She read of Meg’s death even though she was away in the US at the time and was incredibly sympathetic. I let her have a good read of the ‘Order of Service’ as I carry a spare in my knapsack and then we gossiped about church matters including our change of priest at the start of September. I did not manage to make contact with the interesting group that I met last week but there is a certain randomness in all of this and, after all the other attendees at the centre know each other very well. Then I made my way to Waitrose to collect my daily newspaper before I came home and prepared myself some quiche supplemented by some salad side dishes. I just happened to have this prepared when the boyfriend-girlfriend pair of Meg’s young cadres of carers turned up to pay me a visit. They were intrigued by the upstairs of the house that they had never seen and I was delighted to shoe it to them and abate their curiosity about what the rest pf the house looked like. Obviously, they were familiar with the layout of the downstairs rooms as they had often wheeled Meg from room to room but the upstairs had in the past been left to their imagination. The young people enjoyed their glass of cold cordial which I prepared for them and used the opportunity to be able to charge up their phones which was par for the course. I did not miss the opportunity to tell them again how much I appreciated the love and attention they paid to their Meg in her final days. They told me something that I did not know that as they turned up as practically the first guests at Meg’s wake held in the afternoon of their funeral day. As they sat together at a table, they told me how guest after guest came over to thank them (probably having learnt from the blog how much I appreciated their efforts) and although they did know who the individuals were who thanked them, they were very touched by the experience. After the carers had left, I ate a delayed lunch and then contemplated some afternoon jobs. I cut up and disposed of two enormous brambles that were disgracing some of the back garden and pulled the two bins to the roadside ready for collection early in the morning. I had in mind giving the back lawns a cut today which should have been 15-20 minutes at the most. However, I consulted the weather app on my iPhone which informed me that the hottest part of the day would be between 4.00pm-6.00pm. So, I though discretion would be the better part of valour and decided to keep cool for the afternoon. In the women’s Euro football competition, there is a critical England vs. Holland match which England must win to stay in the competition – as the kick off for this is 5.00pm I will stay in for this. Later in the evening, plucky little Wales who only just qualified to enter the competition are to meet France who overwhelmed England recently so perhaps the result is a foregone conclusion. But sometimes strange upsets can occur in competitions if one team over-estimates their own abilities and some complacency creeps in.

Yesterday, the sun was really bright first thing in the morning and awoke me some time after 5.00am so I did turn over and have more than an extra hour in bed which I am sure that I probably needed before getting up at about 6.30. The day in prospect involves a walk down the hill to have coffee with my ‘Tuesday’ friends and all being well, there will be two different sets of people who I will meet up in different parts of Wetherspoons. Then it is my Pilates day but to walk up and down twice is a little beyond me so I will make the second journey by car, as parking is a little nightmarish in the carpark adjacent to the studio where I do my exercises. Sky News is reporting this morning that videos from the opening tour of Donald Trump’s new detention centre in Florida reveal flooding near electrics, raising concerns that the eight-day construction compromised its readiness, before detainees arrived at the facility. This facility dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ has been thrown together in about eight days and from what I can judge is a series of bunks held within metal cages which are then housed in a tent-like structure. But the part of Florida where the facility is built is prone to sudden squalls of rain and mini-hurricane type weather and concerns are already being expressed about its safety. The intention is to house up to 3,000 detainees before they are departed back to various countries but the video released shows examples of electrical cables already submerged in water and one can only imagine that the potential for injury and loss of life is high, to put it mildly. Of course, Florida is a state which was enthusiastically endorsed Donald Trump’s policies and they have provided the ex-military facility for the new centre to be built. When you see how the Victorians built prisons in the late nineteenth century in Britain it seems almost incredible that the Americans can see fit to erect structures to house humans that might not even pass basic animal welfare legislation. Th ‘ICE’ (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agency is hiring gangs of masked men who pick undocumented migrants off the streets ready for deportation, splitting up families and ignoring the fact that the migrant might have been in the United States for decades and paid their fair share of taxes in the meanwhile. But although not locking people up like this, the UK did its share of seizing and deporting some of the ‘Windrush’ generation of people who because they were listed as children on their parents passports did not have their own documentation and some were deported after decades of life and work in the UK. While the exact number of Windrush deportations is difficult to pinpoint due to incomplete records, at least 83 individuals who arrived before 1973 were wrongly deported, and 63 members of the Windrush generation could have been wrongfully removed or deported since 2002. Additionally, hundreds were sent back to their countries of birth between the 1950s and 1970s under a scheme that may not have involved proper consent. There are also 34 people who were deported as a result of the Windrush scandal who have disappeared and cannot be found.

The morning turned out to be quite a long one. After I had breakfasted I set off to walk down the hill but bumped into my Italian friend who was out in her garden watering. We took the opportunity to sit together on her front bench and we talked over some family matters as well as discussing her move to be near to her daughter in Gloucestershire. All of this must have been thought about for a long time but I think my friend has lived in her (immaculate) house and garden for over 55 years so it must be an enormous wrench to leave it. I told her that I certainly had no plans to move in the next few years and would be quite happy getting the house and garden in order first. When I eventually got to Wetherspoons, I made contact with my trio of old lady friends, one of whom I had not seen for a bit as the hot weather had been a bit. After this chat, I then went to join my friend, Seasoned World Traveller, who inhabits a different part of the pub and uses it almost like an office. We discussed my ideas and his own ideas for a CV which he was compiling and he is going to float over a document for me to peruse later on the day but is not expecting any feedback for several days. By now, it was getting a little late so I needed to walk back up the hill and get myself turned around ready for my Pilates class in the late morning. I went down to my Pilates class by car and this was the normal jolly affair, after which I came home and prepared for myself a mackerel salad as I have some salad bits and bobs left over. Then I watched the news and had a bit of a doze in the early afternoon.

When I judged the afternoon had cooled down a little, I had to motivate myself to get the front grassed area. To be honest, apart from a few wispy bits, it hardly needed a cut as the hot weather and absence of rain have kept it at a very low height. Nonetheless, I cut it today because tomorrow the back lawn definitely needs a cut and I do not want the lawns get out of sequence. I had just finished the front mowing when my friendly Asian neighbour wandered over to ask how I was and after a little chat produced the remnants of a bottle of alcohol-free gin which I must confess given the heat of the day and the fact that I had just completed my outside job, I made into a long drink with ice and tonic water and treated myself to it as soon as I got indoors. I am then looking forward to quite a good night on the TV with a combination of comedy and documentary programmes to which I am looking forward.

Meg told me soon after we first met that at one time she had visited and even played with the children of Sir Frank Worrell who was the first black captain of the West Indies cricket team appointed for the whole of a series. I never quite knew what to make of this story but I did do a little bit of research. In fact, as a young but very talented cricketer, Worrell had played for a small side in the Potteries called Norton between 1956-58 and was appointed captain of the West Indies touring team in 1960. How many children Worrell had is not clear from the record – he certainly had one small child who died very young in the late 40’s but there may have been more. So how it actually all came about, I shall never know but as I first met Meg in 1965 when she was 19 years old it was quite possible that the story that she told me, and which I never bothered to check out at the time, could have been the case. The biography of Worrell indicated what a prodigious talent he turned out to be and his era coincided with that of Gary Sobers who played for the same club for three seasons in the 1960’s helping them to win the League cup on three occasions. As so often happens and particularly in the case of a death of a parent, one wishes that more questions had been asked of the deceased whilst they were alive so that information does not go to the grave with them. But apart from all of this, yesterday was the day when the car needed to be taken into Redditch for its service so I was up bright and early ready for my son to come and pick me up. A fair number of yearsago, we had a Motability car from this garage (a much earlier Mazda 3 in fact) so I know the environs of the garage. Not a great distance away is a large Morrison’s store which used to have a cafeteria attached to it and if this is still the case, then my son and I will visit the store for breakfast and perhaps some shopping whilst the car is being serviced. We have had a little sprinkling of rain overnight but not a really good downpour which is sorely needed and it looks as though another heatwave is on its way to us.

There is a disturbing but not entirely unexpected report in Sky News recently published. An Israeli reservist who served three tours of duty in Gaza has told Sky News in a rare on-camera interview that his unit was often ordered to shoot anyone entering areas soldiers defined as no-go zones, regardless of whether they posed a threat, a practice he says left civilians dead where they fell. ‘We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,’ he said. ‘If they are inside, they arre dangerous you need to kill them. No matter who it is,’ he said. Speaking anonymously, the soldier said troops killed civilians arbitrarily. He described the rules of engagement as unclear, with orders to open fire shifting constantly depending on the commander. All of this is often completely denied by the Israeli limitary who then go on to say that an investigation is in place of which one subsequently hears nothing. It does now look as though Israel and Gaza are edging towards a ceasefire and, hopefully, a cessation of hostilities but when video is shown of Gaza, it appears that hardly a building has been left unscathed and the reconstruction process may take decades and cost untold billions if it ever occurs.
The car was due in for its service today and so my son and I drove together to drop off the car at the garage. Then my son and I treated ourselves to a cooked breakfast inthe local Morrisons supermarket and we each did a little shopping before travelling home. Then after a simple lunch, I walked down for my physiotherapy session. Today I was given a series of massages for my back and whilst the physiotherapist was engaged in his therapy, I asked him about the sports he had played in his youth. He mentioned football, rugby and cricket and then the conversation turned to cricket where he amazed me by naming practically every member of the really successful West Indies teams of the 1970’s. My son gave me a lift home and then we had to await a call from the garage in Redditch to pick up the serviced car. This we did at the end of the afternoon and I got back just in time to watch the second half of the Spain vs. Belgium match. This was entertaining in the extreme as at half time Spain were leading 2:1. It was not too long before Belgium equalised to make it 2;2 and then Spain went ahead and scored a third to restore their lead after only a minute and a half. After that, Spain completely dominated the match and were hardly ever out of the Belgium penalty area and I watched them score two more goals but if it had not been for some near misses it could have been five or six. I stopped watching the match to make myself some tea and may watch the Italy vs. Portugal match later in the evening. Later on, this evening, ClassicFM will be devoting their 9-10 evening slot to a single composer who tonight is going to be Beethoven. So tonight, I will have a diet of football followed by a Beethoven concert before I retire for the evening.

There are broad hints this evening in the political sphere that a wealth tax is rising up the political agenda. A quote from one minister is that ‘those with the broadest shoulders should pay more tax’ and there is certainly a hole in the government finances after the series of ‘U’ turns. A wealth tax if set a quite a low level, would scarcely be noticed by the extremely wealthy but may be easy to evade and difficult to collect.

Yesterday, the day dawned cloudy and gloomy. I had a quick look at what the weather prospects might be and was informed that it was going to be a breezy day with the prospect of thundery showers. This makes the task of wondering what to wear more problematic because if you caught in a real downpour rather than just a slight drizzle you can easily be soaked to the skin. In all the time that I was pushing Meg in her wheelchair up and down the Kidderminster Road, we only got caught like this on one occasion but fortunately the minute we got home coincided with the visit of two carers who were quickly capable of stripping Meg of her rain-soaked clothing and getting her into some warm, dry clothing within a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, I have been turning my mind to a different topic altogether. My friend, the Seasoned World Traveller, with whom I had a conversation in Wetherspoons yesterday has enlisted my help in preparing a current CV in case he wants to move on from his present employment. But the whole jobs market and employment scene have moved on so considerably since I last had to prepare a CV for myself so any advice I might give might be outdated or inappropriate. Nonetheless, my friend has good spreadsheeting skills so I am going to give him the following advice. This is to make a full and comprehensive record of all the employment opportunities he has had in the last forty years. This is never going to be submitted but might be a way off ensuring that things are not forgotten or overlooked. I am also going to suggest that as well as details such as days, employers name and location, he constructs three further columns in the spreadsheet. These will be ‘Things I learned from that particular employment’, ‘Contributions made in that employment’ and finally ‘Reasons for leaving departing’ From this what might be called a ‘superset’ he then extracts what he considers to be a ‘subset’ which is especially relevant and tailored to the demands of the position for which he is applying. In the days when I used to consider applications for jobs that we had on offer, we often got applications that were generic and thrown at any jobs that were going – needless to say these were rejected almost automatically as they displayed a lack of serious effort and intent from the applicant. I am going to suggest two further facets to this process. This is to prepare a one page face sheet which is in fact a selling job – I am reminded of the fact that at Meg’s funeral I was given only 5 minutes (600 words) in which to summarise her life and achievements. My final suggestion is to prepare what I call a ‘discursive’ CV, unlike the usual list of dates and job details, but is an account of those facets of one’s employment experience (or life for that matter) that makes for a really good read. It will be interesting to see how my friend responds to my suggestions when next we meet, probably on Tuesday next.

After breakfast, I was delighted o receive an email from my University of Birmingham friend and we decided to go out to a leisure facility nearby which used to be sand, gravel and brine extraction area but which is now water filled and provides water based leisure facilities such as open air swimming, canoeing, kayaking and similar water-based activities. The attraction from the point of view of my friend and myself is that there is some attractive water to sit nearby and we can have a coffee relatively cheaply from the small cafe overlooking the facility. We spent a happy morning in conversation before my friend took me to collect my Sunday newspaper and then dropped me back at home. Then I went down by car as my Irish friends had very kindly invited me out for lunch and they had prepared a simple but excellent stir-fry for us all. As it happened, my friends had not been able to stay for the amusing anecdotes type speech I gave in the middle of Meg’s wake some eight weeks ago now so I as more than happy to retell the funniest of the stories for their benefit. I returned to a mess that BT and EE have between them created with my broadband connection, one having taken over the other and the two businesses not yet operating as one.

The start of the week looks busy as the car needs to be serviced (already booked in before the transfer of ownership to me) and I have some physiotherapy in the afternoon. As the weather is so threatening, I am a little loathe to start any gardening activities this afternoon but it is one of those days when the sky is constantly threatening but the rain never really seems to come. One has the feeling that a really good downpour would clear the air as well as being good for the garden. But the prolonged dry spell has meant that the grass has hardly grown at all which has meant that I have been spared mowing activities for a week or so now. Perusing the TV schedules, I am appalled about the amount of time devoted to Wimbledon these days – it seems that about 18 hours a day split between BBC1 and BBC2 is the order of the day whereas cricket gets one hour of a summary on BBC4. Of course, royalty regularly attends Wimbledon whilst attendance of royalty at cricket matches is rare. Nonetheless, I feel the attention given to tennis is disproportionate in the extreme this year. In the part of Yorkshire in which I grew up, we played cricket all year round including the winter using chalk marks on a lamp standard as our wicket. I have very few regrets in life but I do have one. If I had stayed on at the school I attended in Bolton, Lancashire whilst my mother as training to be teacher, then I would have been coached by a young West Indian cricketer who had come over to Lancashire to play in one of the Lancashire leagues during the summer (West Indian winter). The young but already famous West Indian cricketer was no other than… Gary Sobers!

As I was up during the night, I could not resist the temptation to discover what I could about the Monk’s Bench which used to belong to my father and was safely delivered to me yesterday in Bromsgrove. The piece is certainly quite large being some 1.45 metres in length (just short of 5′) and the seat forms a cover to a capacious chest as you would expect. The bench has three panels on the back and three on the front, five of them being the same which have the appearance of a ship’s wheel set in a framework and decorated with fern-line plants. But it is the central wood carved panel which arouses the most interest. It shows a couple in medieval garb (I would guess 17th century but it would take a more experienced historical eye to discern the exact period) and of the couple (man and female relative) the man is holding out his hand. Kneeling before him, and also extending her hand to receive what is being offered, is a woman also dressed similarly but in front of what appears to be a simple stone structure which could be a hermitage. There is a clue in the woodcarving because there is a type of rivulet between them which one might suppose is a flaw in the wood but was certainly carved in that way. I wonder whether the wood carver had found this way of expressing a sort of boundary line that was not to be crossed as the hands are extended across it. From my researches, it seems that mediaeval scenes were much beloved by the Victorians, perhaps recreating what they saw as a romanticised past golden era and this was quite a common motif in these monk’s benches. But the predominance of the ship’s wheel motif and the fact that my father had lived not far from the North Sea has made me wonder whether the whole piece might have been constructed from some of the oak remnants of a shipwreck and the bench was one way of commemorating the vessel. This is not entirely fanciful because I did read on the web of one’s monk’s bench constructed from this material. Looking at the superb hinges and examining the minute turnings of the elements of the ship’s wheels (if this is what they are) makes me believe that the whole is of oak, mid-Victorian construction but I realise that decoding the nature of the wood carved panel is calling for a lot of conjecture on my part. I think that when we have visitors to the house of a certain age, I will get them to cast their own critical eye on the piece of furniture and give me their considered opinion. But apart from all of these nocturnal investigations and musings, yesterday the day has started off gloomy and cooler than of late and I must ensure that I get down in time to see my Saturday friends (whom I missed last Tuesday as my X-ray appointment intervened)

In the morning, I walked down the hill and had a few minutes of conversation with my Italian friend. Again, I expressed to her my disappointment that she was selling up her house and leaving the area and I am sure that her mind is well and truly made up. I just repeated to her my regret that a long-standing friend would be leaving but I think the absence of a car these days is leaving her feeling a little isolated, coupled with the fact that her knee is continuing to give her some grief. Once I arrived in Wetherspoons, I eventually saw one of my two Saturday friends (it being still a bit too hot for the other one) We had our normal pleasant chat over breakfast and then I went to join my University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller and we spent some time discussing such wonderful topics such as the state of our backs and the costs of funerals. Although this does not sound the most scintillating of conversations, it is quite important that we share common knowledge with each other. I showed both of my friends the photo that I had of the recently acquired Monk’s bench – one thought it looked absolutely marvellous whilst the other considered it a hideous monstrosity – well, you cannot legislate for people’s tastes. On the way back up the hill which seems quite a long walk without a wheelchair in front of me (paradoxically) I met up with our Irish friend and exchanged bits of news with each other, not least about the new priest who should be taking over at the start of September. I then cooked myself a lunch of quiche, salad and coleslaw and had a little doze before I ventured out to do my 20-minute stint of sweeping up and tidying of the patio at the rear. I expect we shall have some rain in the next day or so and then I may give the patio a special sweeping with an extra stiff long handled brush I have just located.

I attended the church service as I do, on my own these days, but we had no organist and therefore no hymns sung this evening, But at the end of the service, I was pleased to make contact for a few moments with my Irish friend from down the road and we may be seeing each for a little while the next day. When I got home, I cooked myself some scrambled eggs for a ‘high’ tea and watched England being absolutely massacred by India in the day’s play at the Test Match, here is Edgbaston as it happens. India were scoring incredibly freely and got over 600 runs on the board with the new Indian captain scoring over 250 runs in the first innings and then over 150 runs in the second. England having been fielding all day were put into bat and lost three quick wickets so the massacre of England, first with the bat and then with the ball continued. I then started to watch the much-billed match between France and England in the Womens’ European competition. England scored what appeared to be a good goal but it was disallowed because of an offside detected by the VAR in the buildup to the goal. France then scored an easy goal after a quick breakaway and so the score had France in the lead at half time. I cannot actually see the England team beating France and perhaps a draw is as much as they can hope for.

A quite surprising email popped into my Inbox last night from Worcestershire County Council, following the email of complaint that I sent to them complaining about the fact that they were charging for services for Meg 6½ days after she actually died. I have been informed that my complaint has been sent for allocation under the Statutory Complaints Procedure for Adults Social Care and that they will endeavour to get me a response within 35 working days (which is, of course, seven weeks) I must say that I thought that a complaint of this nature could have been deal with by a finance officer taking a simple decision and adjustment but this full bureaucratic procedure seems somewhat like overkill to me. As with other agencies, I shall just have to wait patiently to see what emerges out of the system. Yesterday morning, my son who is incredibly well informed about all things pension related, had a fairly lengthy discussion discussing the small proportion of Meg’s additional state pension that I may have inherited. We both of us are trying to backfill an explanation for the figures provided to us by the DWP and by the Inland revenue which do not quite agree with each other in any case but I think we are both of the view that it is probably wiser to let sleeping dogs lie and accept gratefully anything that appears to be on offer. My son popped around this morning and apart from sorting out the NHS app on my phone and installing the face recognition on it, we also make some adjustments in the car to the driver’s seating position and the Head-Up display that displays current speed and relevant speed limits on the screen in front of you. We adjusted this ]so that it was a little bit lower and a bit less b right thus making it somewhat less obtrusive whilst still remaining completely visible to the driver.

The government attempted a big launch of their new 10-year plans to ‘save’ the NHS although their announcements were completely drowned out by the reports of the death of the young Liverpool footballer, Diogo Jota. Surrounded by NHS staff for his announcement, the prime minister explained that his government will fix the health service by moving care into the community, digitising the NHS, and focusing on sickness prevention. The aim is to shift care away from under-pressure medical facilities and closer to people’s homes, while taking measures to prevent people needing treatment in the first place. One concept that is being advocated is that of the ‘Neighbourhood Health Team’ What is very unclear at this stage is whether this is going to be based upon new buildings (which will be expensive and take time to build) or whether the concept if a virtual/organisational one in which case not a great deal may actually change in the short term. One suspects that a lot of fine words are being written but this is a case where getting hold of the document (or a good summary of the document) may be worthwhile. Considerable play is being made of an expanded NHS app where people may be able to access services such as doctor’s appointments directly. But my own NHS app having seemingly worked correctly in the past is now just displaying a blank screen so I suspect that I may have to reinstall it (and this is not an easy procedure as several layers of protection are built into it and we never did get Meg’s app working before she died)

Before lunch, I thought I had better make a start on clearing up the patio that we have immediately to the rear of the house. I needed to tie up the large spreading ‘lavatera’ shrub which grows quickly with a profusion of flowers but where the stems are quite brittle. I wired together some of the branches to form a sort of screen and keep the flowers clear of the path and then had to remove a couple of shrubs in pots that had not survived the fierce heat of the last few days. Then I succeeded in tidying up some of the leaves, weeds and clutter thar accumulated in a corner of the patio and this should make the rest of the job easier to achieve now the most difficult part has been done. I probably spent more than a half hour doing my gardening allocation for the day but at least the weather has cooled down a bit and strong a strong breeze is blowing. I made myself a mackerel salad lunch and as soon as I had finished this, I got a most welcome call from one of Meg’s cadre of young workers. These young carers developed quite a deep bond of affection for Meg and myself and this was reciprocal so it is always delightful to see any of them when they pop in, often between calls that they might have in Bromsgrove.

I was tempted to go outside and do a bit more patio tidying but I stayed in because I was expecting a delivery at any time after lunch of a large oak chest which is a sort of family heirloom. My father had acquired this at some time and after his death and the clearance of his house, it found its way into my sister’s hall where it has stayed for what I would estimate is about thirty-five years. Now that my sister’s house is having to be sold after my sister has entered residential care, one of my nephews and hs wife have very kindly arranged for the transportation of the said chest where it is adorning my hall at the moment. The two guys who delivered it had hardly any English and could not really understand me when I asked if they had any difficulties with the SatNav in order to reach me. Once they had departed, I texted my nephew’s wife and then gave the whole chest a clean with a special silicone-free wood polish. I then took a snap of it and stitched it into the website that I maintain to keep a record of the furniture I have bought to populate the Music Lounge. Then I transmitted the link to my nephew and is wife so that they could see that the furniture had been safely delivered and now, when I have a moment, I will try to discern its provenance. The carved wooden figures on the back could be either Dutch or mediaeval and the ships’ wheels that adorn some of the panels suggest a maritime connection as well.

Yesterday dawned as one of those beautiful bright and clear days with the prospect of a fine summer day before one. This is my traditional day for a weekly shopping and I am just starting to get a little tired of a diet of salad which I have been preparing for myself in the past few days. No particular commitments beyond he shopping are looming so it is probably a day when I need to turn some attention to the gardening. But one task looms large and that is to give my newly acquired car a wash, Largely as a consequence of all of the building work that is going on all around us, the car is covered with a fine dust and is crying out for a wash. The last vehicle we had was a Honda which was quite an unusual honey or sandy colour which colour went by the marketing name of ‘Sahara Sand’ Now this vehicle had the marvellous advantage that it could remain unwashed for weeks and one really did not notice as the fine dust occasioned by things like building works blended beautifully with the colour of the car. Whilst Meg was so ill, this was actually quite a bonus because I could, and did, forget about the washing of the car for weeks on end but now I have a darker coloured vehicle I need to get used to a regular washing of it. This is no bad thing because it gets me out of the house and gives me some exercise – in any case, I do not feel that a car is really yours until it has been an intimate once over. It is true that I could take the car to a car wash to which I am not averse but I like to do what I can whilst I can.

Some extraordinary happenings are evident in the domestic political front. The media was replete the day before with images of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, visibly in tears whilst she as sitting on the front bench. One suggestion was that she was suffering from a very personal trauma of which we are unaware but, if so, this has coincided with the absolute gutting of the welfare reform bill which Reeves had put forward primarily to save about £5bn. The markets are tumbling as international investors take fright at the sight of the Chancellor evidently not being able to cope and there are even some parts of the Labour party who are arguing that both Starmer and Reeves are doomed and ought to be replaced particularly as they incapable of shaking off from the threat of left wing parties such as the Greens in London and right wing parties such as Reform in he rest of the country. Politics it is often said is a cruel sport and not for the faint-hearted but political commentators are saying that they have never before experienced the sight of a leading government minister visibly in tears whilst occupying the front bench in the Commons. I received two telephone calls this morning, one expected and the other one not so. The first was one of the doctors from our practice wanting to discuss with me the results of a spinal X-ray I had performed the other day. The GP practice had tried to get into contact with me twice yesterday and I was slightly fearful that the X-ray was revealing some unwelcome news and this is why the GP practice was trying to contact me. But the X-ray revealed that although my spine was showing some deterioration this was described as subtle and about the wear and tear that could have been expected. So this will give me encouragement to carry on with my daily walks and to get the most of my physiotherapy appointments. The other telephone call I received was whilst I was doing my weekly shop and was not at all welcome. It was from my long-standing Italian friend who was informing me that she was putting her house up for sale and therefore intended to go and live in a smaller property but in the proximity of her daughter and grandchildren. In a way this was not totally unexpected news because my friend told me that she had been thinking about this for some time. Nonetheless, I had hopes that she would stay for some years more as I had hopes that we could have carried on giving mutual support to each other in the absence of our now departed spouses but the opportunities for this will now be few and far between once my friend has moved away. In a way, this has taught me that I should now take nothing for granted but must take every opportunity to forge new acquaintances and friendships whenever I am able. I am a little torn between going out and making this new life for myself but I am also conscious that there is a lot of work to be done in the garden but also in decluttering the house and bringing the double garage into a semblance of order whilst I am it.

After I had lunched, I received a call from one of the parishioners from our local church who collects for the Missions. In theory, one is meant to ask every visitor to the house to contribute but I just stuff some notes into the box and it gets collected once a month. The Mission lady and I chatted over the fact that we are to get a new and young parish priest at the start of September and we are both looking forward to the prospect if only because the relationships between clergy and parishioners can take some nurturing and in the case of the present incumbent, I think it is fair comment to say that we never gelled. As the new priest is going to be quite young, my parishioner friend and I were joking whether the older female members of he congregation would do their share of mothering and I was wondering whether to invite him round for a meal if only because I think that he spent some time in a seminary in Vallodolid (Spain) so it could be that he has some facility in Spanish. I then phoned my good Italian friend down the road to express my regret that she is leaving the community in which she has lived for the last fifty years to live near her daughter. I can understand this but part of me feels that she might be making a mistake as it not so easy to forge new relationships when you are in your 80’s. Reading between the lines, I think my friend lost confidence in independent living when she gave up her car following an accident which was not her fault but has left her with a slightly damaged knee. Then I set about giving the car a wash which according to my tried and tested system involves wetting the car with a fine stream of water from a long handled watering can, then a brush with a long handled car brush, then a hand wash with a car washing mitten followed by a final rinse off and drying. As the weather was quite warm, I came inside for a cup of tea (and a little doze) before going outside again to clean with windscreen and windows of the car.

A lot of any idle moments that I may have had yesterday was taken up with trying to work out the impact of my state pension following Meg’s death. I had been previously told by a DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) official that one had to wait until a spouse died before ‘the state’ would attempt to work out the subsequent pension implications. These are so complicated and relate to past schemes, now abandoned years ago of which the principal was SERPs (State Earning Related Pension Scheme). The fundamental idea was quite a sound one, but here is an official explanation. The State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) ended in 2002, being replaced by the State Second Pension (S2P). While SERPS operated from 1978 to 2002, it was no longer possible to contribute to it after 2002. Contracting out of SERPS, which involved paying reduced National Insurance contributions in exchange for building up benefits in a private pension, ended on April 5, 2016. In very general terms, a surviving spouse could inherit a proportion (depending upon their spouse’s date of birth) of their spouse’s SERPS. But teachers, local authority workers and NHS were ‘contracted out’ of SERPS as they had their own pension schemes and so it becomes horrendously complicated to ascertain what actual SERPS contribution a ‘contracted out’ individual might have actually paid and therefore what was the quantum (if any) that could potentially be inherited. Now following Meg’s death, my own pension has gone up a smidgeon whilst my teachers’ pension has reduced as I am now paying the tax on the miniscule increase I may or may or may not have inherited from Meg. We have not been given any letters detailing the calculations and probably these are spat out of a computer in any case but I have received a not very helpful letter from the DWP stating ‘we note that your circumstances have changed’ So a lot of yesterday, after a phone call to the DWP, I have been left trying to backfit an explanation to the miniscule increase that I have been awarded. I did have an inclination to write a formal letter to the DWP asking for a detailed breakdown of the figures involved but I am a little cautious in this respect. This is because it is always possible that a mistake had been made in my favour and a further investigation might uncover it and withdraw it. So leaving well alone in the face to figures spat out of the government machine can be a sensible policy. I am very much reminded of my own brother-in-law who has now died but at the time of his retirement got a much larger pension than the one to which he thought was entitled. As the owner/manager of a small business, my brother-in-law would have been no slouch in working out what was due to him and making the necessary calculations but as the actual figure awarded to him exceeded his expectations he just kept quiet about it (so he told me at the time) and I am sure this was a very sensible policy. So, at the end of the day I think I should probably be very grateful for any small amounts of pension received and as I calibrate everything by the price of a bought cup of coffee these days, it could be that Meg’s enduring contributions will sustain me in my Wetherspoon’s expenditure on coffee twice a week. Evidently financial affairs are always regarded as exceptionally private affairs -I am reminded of a ‘Sunday Times’ survey in which couples revealed all kinds of details of their sexual practices in a survey but thought that questions on their earnings were far too intrusive! But one of my Tuesday/Saturday friends had some accountancy expertise and used to work out the payroll for the Holiday Inn down the road when she was at work so I might ask her for an opinion on what might be going on in our case.

Yesterday morning was always going to take on a different pattern as, in the absence of our domestic help on holiday, I decided to go down to the Methodist Centre to which venue I used to take Meg in the days when I could get her into a car and then into a wheelchair to access the centre. We always found the crowd to be very chatty and supportive, particularly when you located yourself on the ‘chatty’ table i.e. willing and able to talk. Eventually, I got into conversation with 3-4 ladies, all widowed I think and one who had lost her husband to Parkinson’s disease about a year ago. We chatted about some local matters and, in particular, the building that seems to be taking place all around us. At the moment, I have to endure huge earth moving vehicles in the field behind the house which used to be used to fatten up lambs and they have just constructed an access road for a huge development shortly to commence in front of us. Bromsgrove is due to build 12,000 new houses increasing the present stock of 40,000 houses by 30% with no commensurate increase in roads or facilities. I suspect that Bromsgrove may be the first town in the country to be completely gridlocked as each house will probably generate an extra 2.5 cars (Mum, Dad and teenage children) but the emphasis is on building houses at all costs and not sustainable communities. So my chats at the Methodist centre took up most of the morning after which I came home and prepared myself yet another salad lunch. My acquaintances in the Methodist centre were telling me about U3A (University of the 3rd Age) and there seem to be some interesting local groups. I have sent off an introductory email to a coffee morning group who meet in a local garden centre and there are a couple of other (exploring the history of local churches and another which appears to be a dining club) that might be worth an explore. And there is no doubt that I probably need to work on my Spanish a little and might join an Adult Education class in the autumn if not before.

So yesterday I survived on what well could have been the hottest day of the year by being sensible. So I did not have a walk in the sun but went by car to collect my newspapers and a few provisions. I deployed a fan which we acquired in the last year or so but rarely need but it came into its own yesterday. As I was doing my routine finances, I had a massive shock when I discovered that my state pension was £750 down this month and I had just received a not very helpful standard letter from the Pensions Agency stating ‘we note that your circumstances have changed’ I did manage to get through to a bereavement section of the Pensions Agency and did manage to speak to a ‘live’ person who thought that the payment into my account was not a normal payment but some arrears, So I experienced a fairly anxious day until I could consult my online banking later in the evening to discover that my ‘normal’ pension had not been affected and was paid in on time as it should have been – I can do without shocks like this. Although the weather was extraordinarily hot yesterday, I managed to do a quick 20 minutes tidying up of the weeds on the patio ad even sneaked out in the (relative) cool of the early evening and did another 15 minutes. I am keen to get my patio into some sort of reasonable state because I would be ashamed to entertain any guests in the garden until it is reduced to a semblance of order but I am gradually getting it right. But with the incredibly hot weather and the absence of rain, the grass does not seem to be growing.

When I was with my relatives in Yorkshire, I wondered out loud to one of my nephews and his wife who are now running the family business what fate had befallen a rather magnificent carved chest which is the one thing that my sister had inherited from my father’s estate. My nephew and his wife are selling the house in which my sister lived for so long and had attempted to sell the chest on eBay but without any takers. When I mentioned that I would rather like it, they were delighted that it could be kept within the family as it were and earmarked it for me. So yesterday, I got a text from my nephews’s wife to say that they were organising for the chest to be transported to me (they are in the transport and haulage business and have useful contacts) so we are organising some dates when I might arrange to be in to accept delivery. That reminds me that whenever I have acquired a new piece of furniture, principally to furnish our Music Lounge, I have posted photographs and details on a little website that I maintain. So, when the new piece arrives, I must give it pride of place, stitch the details into the website and pass on the link. The evening before, ClassicFM were advertised a new program in which between the hours of 9.00pm-10.00pm they are going to devote to the life of a single composer and they stared off with Mozart. They are going to follow this with Clara Schumann of whom I know very little but I might make this a regular part of unwinding each evening before I go to bed.

The day was still going to a hot and humid one so I decided to go down into town by car, not least because I needed to go on to our local community hospital for an X-Ray of my spine. I had requested this at my initial physiotherapy assessment who put it to our doctor who readily agreed. This way, I hope to avoid any nasties being discovered but at the same time the physiotherapist should have access to the X-rays which might help better in working out what exercises to do and therapies to recommend. After that I came home and worked on some emails before I went down for my Pilates session. This was a jolly affair as always but I went down by car and parking was a nightmare after which I came home and made myself another salad lunch which was easy to throw together. I then finished off quite a long and complex email which I sent to a County Councillor and also to a Worcestershire Council financial officer complaining vociferously against what I perceived as the gross inhumanity of being charged for services to Meg when she had been dead for 6½ days. I will leave this for half a day or more to say what response it evokes. Then I went outside and finished off my weeding of the outside patio. It still needs a good vigorous brushing and some more tidying up but at least the basics are now done. During the course of the morning, I send a text message to Meg’s Cheltenham cousins to see if I could pop over and see them for a lunch. They were going to be away for a few days but we will arrange something for when they get back. Cheltenham is less than 40 miles away and quote accessible at the end of the M5. I also go a text from one of Meg’s ex-cadre of carers who has just moved with his partner into a new house so it will be interesting to pay them a visit when they are happy to receive me. I always look at the TV schedules to see if any good films are available and I am amazed about the attention given to Wimbledon. There seems to be a continuous transmission from about 2.00pm until about 8.00 or 9.00pm with only a one hour break for news. In addition, BBC2 has a sizeable chunk of time devoted to Wimbledon and surely this must be overkill as some of us want to watch anything except tennis.

Another political ‘U’ turn on welfare reform is taking place this evening. It looks as though just before the vote, the government have concluded that any changes that were scheduled to be made will now wait after the Timms (ministerial review) which is due to report in a year’s time. It looks as though the government is panicking and thought that it might lose the vote but we shall be able to see within the hour. The bill was eventually passed with a majority of 75 but with all of they controversial elements of the bill removed or ‘kicked into touch’ and with the authority of Keir Starmer as labour Prime Minister very severely reduced.

Yesterday morning, the sun came streaming through the window and I awoke at 5.45. I was in two minds whether to get up and have a cup of tea or turn over and have another half hour in bed but eventually the desire for tea proved to be stronger. I was in two minds whether to venture out to Droitwich today on a little shopping expedition but temperatures of 34C are possible in central and eastern parts of England according to the Met Office. UK temperatures in June have only exceeded this level three times since 1960. So I may just decide to play it really safe and stay indoors all day, apart of course from my statutory 20 minutes per day of gardening. I will probably turn my attention to the rear of the house where the patio needs some attention, not least because moss tends to accumulate on the roof on this side of the house and then roll off onto the patio. I know now that sweat glands function considerably less well as one ages and this is why the elderly are so susceptible when it comes to the very high temperatures we are experiencing. Part of me would have liked Meg to have enjoyed this burst of summer after the pretty terrible winter that we both had to endure. But a little thought experiment occur to me which is this. As Meg’s ability to take on fluids declined so rapidly in recent months, then this hot weather might have been too literally too much and she might have succumbed to the extreme heat with me being powerless apart from utilising a fan to do anything very much about it. So perhaps, as in so many different ways, her death when it did occur on 10th May proved to be extremely timely. Although I did have the Sunday newspapers to keep me occupied the evening before, I was quite happy just to lie in the coolest part of the house and listen to ClassicFM whilst also making sure I had replied to various messages on my phone.

Domestic politics are proving to be as interesting as ever. The BBC are embroiled in a debate whether they should have censured an intemperate outburst on stage condeminng the Israeli army for atrocities committed in Gaza- I always thought that the BBC had a ‘pause’ button built in so that a controller could immediately mute any offensive comments that were in the process of being broadcast. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer had admitted that the proposed welfare reforms went ‘too far’ particularly as so many disabled individuals currently in receipt of PIP would lose a substantial part of it. But the whips have been informing No 10 for months and months about the massive amount of discontent on the back benches but they turned a ‘tin ear’ to these reports and decided to press on with the reforms regardless. But the reading of back bench opinion is exactly what the whipping system is designed to be so the current operation of No 10 seems to demonstrate political ineptitude to an extreme degree. It as though No 10 thought they could suspend the normal operations of the political process and it has been obvious to almost everybody that a climb down or a ‘U’ turn was inevitable.

In the morning, as it was going to be an intensely hot day and there were even ‘amber’ weather alerts broadcast, I decided to go down into town by car. I picked up salad provisions for lunch and my favourite low alcohol beer as well as some cordial and tonic water so it was just as well I did not have to lug these provisions up the hill. Whilst I was in the store, I issued an invitation for one of the staff who I know particularly well (and who supplied me with sandwiches for my Yorkshire trip), together with his partner to come round for lunch in a fortnight’s time. I promised to make them a fish pie and I am sure it will nice to be entertaining again. It gives me an incentive to get the patio put to rights so hat we can eat outside if the weather is good but otherwise, of course, we have the dining room. I waited until past 3.00pm before I ventured out today and limited myself to a very strict 20 minutes – even so, the temperature was 30 degrees in the shade. Tomorrow will be a busy morning and with Pilates at the end of it but I anticipate that the weather might just be a tad cooler than today. The airwaves are rather dominated by Wimbledon at the moment and this is the opening day but I believe that the second test match against India is due to start this Wednesday. I had sent a text message to a friend enquiring whether the Methodist Centre would be open on Wednesday and have confirmed that it will be and in the absence of our domestic help who I trust is enjoying her holiday in Italy, this should give me a good focus of activity for this Wednesday morning.

An intriguing piece of research came to my attention from this week’s Observer. Researchers at MIT had taken a group of students and given them a demanding essay to topic. The first group were allowed to use ChatGBT used by many students and other professionals these days. The second group could use any internet resources they could find but with no Artificial Intelligence assistance whilst the third group had to rely completely upon their own native ability with the assistance of no internet resources of any kind. The students’ brain activities were monitored with the conclusion being reached was that the more AI (Artificial Intelligence) was used, the less engaged were key brain networks such as memory, attention and executive function. The authors conclude with the following sobering quote:’Once men turned their thinking over to machine in the hope this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them’