The highlight of the evening before yesterday was the Women’s Rugby Match in the World Cup in which the relative newcomers to the competition, Spain, were pitted against the World Cup holders, the New Zealanders (known as the ‘Black Ferns’) There was no way in which the Spanish could ever hope to win this match and you have thought they would have been completely outplayed. Although they lost by a thumping margin, the Spanish nonetheless played their hearts out and competed as though their lives depended on it. They did force the Black Ferns into a series of errors after which the Spanish were awarded a penalty kick and this helped to keep them in the game. In the dying seconds of the game and after a lot of sustained pressure, the Spanish actually scored a try to wild celebrations in the crowd. You would have thought that after a mis-match like this, the game would lack entertainment value but actually some pretty good rugby was played on both sides. Afterwards the Spanish coach summed up the game thus: ‘We are really happy with the performance. We know New Zealand are a really good team. We came here trying to get the girls in Spain to be inspired by us. So, we are really happy with the way we played. I think we have some things to work on. But I think we have confidence to work and face the Ireland game with passion.’ This is undoubtedly true and it is probably the case that the Spanish team can learn quite a lot from playing such high-quality opposition.
I awoke yesterday to a day in which the sky appeared a kind of murky grey-yellow but apparently there is going to be one last burst of sunshine before the remnants of a storm, and perhaps some rain, sweep over us the following day. As Monday is a Bank Holiday but unlike the Bank Holidays at Christmas and Easter, tThere is always a degree of uncertainty as to whether the food stores will be open and whether or not newspapers are published and available. This week is always to seem a little strange as my Pilates class is cancelled because my trainer is away on a quick break and all of my family and friends are away as well. But my chiropodist is due to call round at some time today (she does not adhere to Bank Holidays) and then I have to work out how to spend the day. The front of the house probably needs some weeding to get done but it is difficult to look forward to this task with a great deal of enthusiasm. The one bonus from the really hot dry spell that we have endured during the summer is that the grass in the absence of rain has not grown at all and is now a yellowy-brown which reminds one of the conditions of the lawns in the long hot summer in 1975 which was, of course, half a century ago now but still remembered.
I walked down into town this morning and picked up my copy of the newspaper, before availing myself of the free coffee made available to Waitrose cardholders, I knew that I needed to get back by 11.00am because my planning board indicated to me that the chiropodist was due to call around at this morning which indeed she did. We shared various bits of news with each other and she needed to update her records as she is becoming a completely independent practitioner. After she had left and before the heat of the day got too intense, I thought I would go outside and do a spot of weeding. I confined myself to only doing a task like this for about half an hour at a time as the last thing I need at the moment is a bad back and gardening can wreak havoc with you unless confined to really small doses. Then I indulged in one those programmes readily available on YouTube that discuss Donald Trump and his increasingly bizarre actions. The source I looked at illustrated with numerous clips what they interpreted as increasing signs of Trump’s dementia. Consulting the web further, I also found the following. Some psychiatrists and reporters have speculated that Trump may have mental health impairments, such as dementia (which runs in his family) or narcissistic personality disorder. Such claims have prompted discussion about ethics and applicability of the Goldwater rule which prohibits mental health professionals from publicly diagnosing or discussing the diagnosis of public figures without their consent and direct examination. However, if you put a search term into Google such as ‘Does Trump have dementia?’ you will find several eminent psychiatrists who argue that this is, in fact, the case and the media have largely chosen to ignore the all too evident signs.
I finished the afternoon by doing another half hour of weeding to make the front of the house look a little respectable. The roots of the weeds seemed to be a lot deeper than on other occasions and I am speculating whether the long hot summer has encouraged the weed rootstock grow longer and longer in search of water. But this is one task well accomplished on an otherwise unremarkable Bank Holiday. Later on in the day, my son gave me a video call which was very welcome and helped to bring some social contact into the day. The domestic political agenda seems to be dominated by the ‘hotel accommodation for asylum seekers’ row which is causing a reaction (and a counter reaction) across the country. The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has been setting out his party’s new plans to address illegal migration in an interview with a newspaper with a set of policies, and a use of language, which would surely have been seen as extreme just a few years ago. These include mass deportations, prison camps and quitting the Refugee Convention and the UN Convention on Torture. Only last autumn the Reform leader repeatedly shied away from the concept of ‘mass deportations’, describing the idea as ‘a political impossibility’ but now he has embraced Trump-style immigration rhetoric. The whole problem concerning asylum seekers plays into the hands of right-wing politicians who found that they themselves could do precious little when they were in power. The Labour government is trying to speed up the process of processing the claims of asylum seekers but the backlog is so huge that dramatic results will certainly not be seen overnight.