The evening before yesterday, I went out with some of my good friends and neighbours from down the Kidderminster Road and we frequented the local Thai restaurant which is open on Sunday evenings. It was a beautiful balmy evening and I sought out a Gabicci shirt to wear which was very appropriate smart casual wear for occasions such as this,. I had not worn this shirt for several years and feared that I might have expanded around the middle somewhat so that it might be too tight. But my fears were unjustified and so on it went for the first time in years. I took the car down my neighbours and then we walked the rest of the way into town and had a really enjoyable Thai meal. We none of us had starters or a sweet and after the meal we all repaired to our Irish friends’ house where we all had some coffee and some magnificent cupcakes. So, all in all, we had a really enjoyable evening out but I shall hardly see my Irish friends for some time because that are going off on a two-week (delayed) holiday and then coming home for a day or so before going off to see relatives in Ireland. We discussed with a certain amount of sorrow the circumstances in which complaints had been made to our bishop about our priest as a consequence of which he is being recalled by his missionary order to Kerala in India but after that may be despatched to another part of the globe. That having been said, we are all looking forward to the new young priest who is to take charge of our parish in 2-3 weeks’ time and I am sure there will be a fund of goodwill towards him. As according to his CV he has spent some time in a seminary in  Spain, once I get to know him I am going to invite him round, perhaps with my friends from down the road, and we can have an entertaining meal in our house, now that I have our dining room restored to rights. I think a burst of fine weather is due to visit us for the next few days ahead so I have to ensure that I have plenty of salads and ice-cream available as I do not really feel like a conventional ‘meat and two veg’ meal when the weather is exceptionally hot. With holidays and other people being away, I have a fairly light ‘social’ week this week but I am looking forward to one of the young carers who tended for Meg to drop by during the week. I am trying when I can to have at least one social contact per day now that I am completely on my own but Sundays are usually the trickiest day of the week in this respect as most people are naturally with their own families.  But these when I walk down into town fairly slowly, it is not uncommon for people to see me along and to ask after Meg. After all, as my son wryly observed, there are not many people in Bromsgrove who can be observed with a Korean style leather jacket, a Hi-Viz vest, an Australian style bush hat and a wife in a pushchair swathed in blankets so I know that was ‘noticed’ by quite a lot of people who I knew vaguely by sight (often called ‘nodding acquaintances’) as I made my trips up and down the hill which now seems an era ago. That having been said, I did push Meg for what turned out to be her final trip exactly a week before she did leave us.

In the morning, I made my way down the hill to collect my copy of ‘The Times‘ and also to avail myself of the Waitrose cup of coffee, free to card holders who bring their own mug. On skimming through the newspaper, I read an article to the effect that our practically local saint, John Henry Newman, was being proposed by the Pope as a Doctor of the Church – a very significant honour paying tribute to his intellectual and theological impact. This is the first time an honour such a this has been proposed for an Englishman for more than 1,000 years. So upon my return home, I penned a quick email to the secretary of my church’s Parochial Church Council (of which I was formerly  member but had to resign to care for Meg in her last year of life) I made the observation that I was sure that many, and perhaps less than able, members of our congregation would love to attend what celebrations are bound to take place in the cathedral in central Birmingham or even the Catholic Oratory and perhaps the parish could consider a coach (subsidised by Parish funds) to facilitate this. The secretary replied very quickly and said he would raise the matter at the next meeting which happened to be on Tuesday evening but he himself seemed to endorse my suggestion that ‘something’ needs to be done. Incidentally, he also invited me to consider rejoining the Committee which is something that I need to think about and perhaps take some advice upon.

At mid-day, my son came around and we set about the task that we allocated ourselves for this morning to fill in the forms for an Enduring Power of Attorney (both Property, Health and Social) which I had previously done for Meg and found the process very straightforward. The process went very smoothly and we paid the fee of £82.00 for each document, my son very generously paying for one whilst I paid for the other. When I consulted the internet, I discovered that lawyers charge fantastic fees for this and solicitors can charge up to £1000 with typical charges ranging from £300-£600 per document. So my son and I were very pleased with our morning’s work which was not onerous and now I just need to consult with my neighbour and ask for a confirmatory signature, after which I post off the filled and and signed documents and eventually receive back  from the ‘Office of the Public Guardian’ the full legal documents. The whole process is really so very straightforward and has been made almost ‘idiot proof’ allowing you to come back and complete sections of the form at a later time if necessary but my son and I managed the whole transaction in one go.

The evening before yesterday, I went to church which is now part of my weekly routine and it seemed rather appropriate as it was exactly three months after Meg had passed away. I bumped into my Irish friends and we agreed last minute arrangements for a meal at a local Thai restaurant which we are going to attend this evening as a farewell to our much-loved neighbour, a French widow who is moving away to live near her daughter in Cheshire. I had a fairly early night and thought I would listen to the offerings on ClassicFM and also ClassicFM Calm  which is a parallel station available on my smart speaker which has now been returned to a place in the upstairs bedroom (rather than helping Meg to go to sleep with a selection of Beethoven) I was very pleased to have finally got the selection of commands to get the smart speaker to recognise, and then to play, the part of Brahms’ ‘A German Requiem‘ which is particularly well known and that is ‘How lovely is they dwelling place’ which is always the piece played by ClassicFM on a fairly regular basis. I have found the Alexa smart speaker can be a little picky unless you get the command absolutely correct but I think I have cracked it now. When it finishes, I just ask it to repeat the last track after which I am often asleep. Through the mail the other day, I received a glossy magazine from Manchester University which is distributed to their alumni and whilst giving news of developments at the university is also designed to elicit donations, legacies and perhaps even sponsorships for deserving overseas students. But as Meg and were both Manchester graduates (1965-1968), the magazine was addressed to both of us. So, I needed to use the form inside them to ask them to remove Meg’s name from their database as otherwise it may be a rather painful reminder every time I receive a future issue. Actually, getting one’s name removed from a mailing list can be quite a difficult and prolonged affair and organisations do not seem to comply even when they are notified. The political news is full today of a meeting between Trump and Putin scheduled for next Friday in an obscure part of Alaska within sight of the Russian border in an attempt to resolve the Ukraine issue. British defence experts have already given their view that the Russian team will be stuffed full of experienced and street-wise negotiators whereas the American team may be popularly called ‘cowboys’ with no real experience of foreign affairs and the Russians will probably run rings around them. Incidentally,  the phrase ‘war is the Americans’ way of teaching themselves geography’ is a critique, not a literal statement. It suggests that, for Americans, geographic knowledge is often acquired through military conflicts and interventions, rather than through formal education or a broader understanding of global affairs. This view implies that the nation’s involvement in wars, particularly in distant lands, has forced Americans to learn about unfamiliar regions and their geopolitical complexities. 

In the morning, I walked down quite early to collect my copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ as they apt to go quite quickly on Sunday mornings. On the way down I had varied conversations both with a near neighbour and with a more distant neighbour and then collected my newspaper and treated myself to a coffee. As I was drinking this, I was greeted by one of the senior members (in every sense of the word) of my church’s parochial council  and he had been very instrumental in organising some of the really practical details for  Meg’s funeral (making sure that the funeral car  itself was not blocked from the entrance) and we chatted over things both funeral and also liturgical. One the way back, I decided to make a detour round the park exactly as I did last Sunday and I noticed that when I approached the two benches upon which Meg and I used to sit, they were both empty. I could not resist taking a photo of the empty benches to remind me of old times but decided against asking a young girl who occupied one of the benches to take a photograph of me alone on the other. I did make contact with another park acquaintance but not the same joke-cracking one of last week and we spent a few minutes in conversation about things we had done in our working lives. Then I came home and prepared a fairly large Spanish omelette for myself (onions, tomatoes, peppers, because I dd not want too full a meal as I am going out with friends in the early evening for a valedictory dinner with one of our close neighbours who is moving away. 

Although I had no inclination to do it, I pressed on and got the car washed this afternoon. Even though I am now on a weekly schedule the building works in each side of us whilst they are still at the earth moving stage means that the whole area is covered in a very fine dust which will start at about 8.30am on Monday morning and carry on all week until Friday afternoon, when they tend to knock off for the weekend. Fortunately, I have a fair bit of quite overgrown vegetation in my back garden but I know from actual conversations with neighbours that they are driven to distraction by the constant dust but can only pray for it to come to an end. Talking of ‘praying’ I have come across a prayer, attributed to Saint Teresa de Avila (Meg’s adopted saint) which is not really a prayer but is more of a secular homily about the things you say when you get old. I thought I would take it down to the dinner to read to the assembled company and I am sure that we can identify with at least parts of it. I just got a text late on this afternoon from one of Meg’s carers who wants to pop in and see me together with his new partner. They are just in the process of setting up house together and I wish them both well but I am waiting for the much-promised house-warming party here I am sure I shall make my number again with a lot of the other younger carers after a gap of some three months.

Yesterday when my son called around, he told me a story about Trump that I decided to verify. The story comes from Trump’s biographer in a book published about ten days ago and claims to know the real reason why Trump fell out with Epstein. According to this story, Trump was giving advice to Epstein on the purchase of a property and then with the aid of Russian oligarch money Trump went behind Epstein’s back and secured the property by out-bidding Epstein for it, Later the property was sold back at a huge profit to the same Russian oligarch and the whole deal seems like a money laundering operation. Epstein was furious with Trump and threaten to expose his entire knowledge of, and complicity in, the sex rackets that were Epstein’s stock-in-trade. Trump himself claims that he fell out with Epstein because the latter had poached young female ’employees’ from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Now all of this sounds incredibly murky and so far, the YouTube channels do not seem to have picked up on the story but I suspect that a flurry of lawyers and sworn affidavits are preventing some of the details from emerging. In the meanwhile, it appears that Trump is desperate to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize and for this reason is arranging a meeting in a week’s time between himself and Putin to ‘sort out’ the Ukraine. I am sure that much of the discussion revolves around the Donbas region which is a region in eastern Ukraine, historically and culturally part of Ukraine, but currently a significant portion is occupied by Russia and Russian-backed separatists. While the region is predominantly Russian-speaking and has a history of pro-Russian sentiment, it is not part of Russia. I think that the Ukrainian president could have a formula for handling this problem. As the region thinks of itself as culturally and linguistically a part of Russia why not offer the region a referendum  in which there are two deals on offer. The first would be a massive degree of autonomy and self-determination but still remaining a region with the existing Ukrainian borders. The other possibility is that the region votes to secede and join Russia and the Ukrainians, as good democrats, could respect the result.  I have not seen any solution like this suggested in the media but it might be a way forward. As I write Trump is talking about the ‘swapping’ of territories but as the Ukraine is not occupying any Russian territory to speak of, there is nothing to swap so this is another example of Trump ‘moonshine’ talk. The day started off bright and clear with the prospect of fine weather.  Apart from meeting up with some of my ‘Wetherspoons’ friends it may be that if the spirit moves me I do either some outside gardening or a car washing job. With all of the building work going on around, the car appears perpetually dirty with a fine sprinkling of dust but I am evolving techniques to get the car washed with the minimum of effort these days.

In the morning after breakfast, I walked down into town picking up my newspaper and one or two things from Waitrose before meeting up with my Saturday morning friends in Wetherspoons. We were joined by my University of Birmingham friend who I normally see each Sunday morning but he had sought me out because he is otherwise engaged this week. We had a long and interesting chat and after my friend had left, I moved to a different part of the pub where another of my friends – Seasoned World Traveller – generally takes up residence. We had an interesting chat on health-related issues (what else?) and then I wandered slowly down the High Street where I needed to purchase some cosmetic items which I did from a couple of stores. Then I made my way quite slowly up the hill as it was quite a hot and humid walk after which I had a cold drink and a good rest when I got home. This afternoon, I have a real cultural dilemma because BBC2 were showing the film, Dr. Zhivago which was the favourite film of Meg and I (not least because when Meg wore her Russian style hat, she had a passing resemblance to Geraldine Chapman who played the part of Tonya) As it is three months today since Meg died, I honestly could not bring myself to watch it although we must have seen it a dozen times over the years. We first saw it in a Leicester Square cinema in 1967 just before we got married so we are going back some 58 years. I did allow myself a little peek towards the end of the film, though, and saw one of the most poignant moments in the film. Throughout the film Zhivago is torn between the blonde Lara and the brunette Tonia and is eventually separated by the events of war from them both But whilst on a Moscow tram, Zhivago thinks that he sees one of his lifelong loves, Lara, walking along a Moscow Street. Zhivago struggles to get off the tram but his heart is in a poor condition and whilst racing to catch up with one of the loves of his life, whilst about 100 yards short or less of catching up with Lara, the exertion of his running gives him a massive heart attack from which he died, with Lara walking ahead unaware of the drama unfolding behind her.  If you wanted to be moralistic, you could say that is what happens when middle aged men are having relationships with two women at about the same time and he only got his just desserts. But the relationships with both women were deep and intense and the poignancy remains, for me at least. On a somewhat personal note, Omar Sharif who played the part of Zhivago was a bridge player of international renown and I seem to remember a story that an aunt Dorothy of mine who I only met on or two occasions might have played in a bridge match with him.

Later on in the day, I will attend the Saturday evening church service which is perhaps more than appropriate as it is three months to the day since Meg left us. Our priest is shortly to leave us to return to India and I look forward to his replacement who is a much younger man and currently based in Coventry, although my spies tell me that he has already made a couple of visits to our church to become acquainted with it.

Yesterday, I awoke to quite a bright and cheerful morning having had a pretty decent night’s sleep the night before. I was very pleased to receive in the mail yesterday my renewed Senior Rail Card which discounts rail fares by one third and I always buy the version that has a life of three years because this gives one extraordinarily good value. I am going to bring this into use quite soon as I plan a trip up to Yorkshire to see my sister and the rest of the family on the occasion of her birthday. This is still some three weeks away but the really cheap rail fares tend to get snapped up very quickly unless you buy them some weeks in advance.  The same applies to hotel rooms as well so I probably need to get all of this organised in the next day or so. I got a payment from the Teachers’ Pension Agency which was less than my usual amount but in a paradoxical sense, this may presage good news rather than bad. It could be that I am now paying more tax which might indicate an increased payment elsewhere but I am in the rather frustrating situation of having to wait until the end of the month to finally know what the portion of pension inherited from Meg will turn out to be. I think I will probably have to wait until the September payments are made to ascertain how things are going to be because the short-term payments and the tax considerations should have worked themselves out by then. I do not think that my situation is very unusual because talking with friends and relatives, it seems that these short-term perturbations in finances are quite common after the death of a spouse. In the evening before yesterday, I was in receipt of another welcome text. My very good friend, the French lady who lives down the road, is shortly to move to live near to her daughter in Cheshire which I well understand. But her immediate neighbours on each side who I know very well (the Irish couple and some Church friends) have invited me to join with them for a celebratory ‘send-off’ meal in a local very well-known Thai restaurant where we will have a meal for the six of us on Sunday evening. I must confess I was not aware that the restaurant was open on a Sunday evening but if nowhere is else is open perhaps this is their little ‘niche’ in the market. The ultimate little niche in the market I experienced in the farewell evening that I spent with students in Madrid after I had done my term’s sabbatical over there in the 1980’s. As I remember it, we went from bar to bar and sometimes even visited the same bar twice but I was told that it was now ‘different’ because the second time around the clientele had changed and the style of music changed accordingly. But for the hardened drinkers and party-goers, there was one particular bar that opened at either 3.00am or 4.00am in the morning (I cannot remember which) and the market niche was that the bar opened at just the time that all of the other bars were closing. As I remember it, we formed a sort of swaying queue outside and staggered inside and eventually I made my way home on the Madrid metro. I remember that at that hour in the morning, the metro was so deserted that there was no one available to collect one’s fare – however, I am trying to recollect events of probably more than thirty years ago now.

This morning, after I had breakfasted I popped down into town by car and picked up a copy of the newspaper I then re-parked the car in another car park and went in search of ‘The Donkey Sanctuary’ venue which was opening today. After a certain amount of fishing about, I managed to find the new venue and it just happens to be next door to the ‘Lemon Tree’ cafe which I used to frequent and to which I took Meg on several occasions.  The new venue is a fair bit smaller than their previous one and there is not really the space for a cafe as such but they have a couple of tables at which one can sit and they will make you a tea or a coffee and serve you with a cupcake all in exchange for a donation to the animal charity which is really intended to offset the costs of looking after abandoned horses.  I was remembered from last year and made very welcome – whilst I was there, the mayor came along to perform an official opening. The proprietor also took a selfie of herself and myself together and this was transmitted to my own phone using the WhatsApp app on our phones. The new venture has a little upstairs room in which there are some high quality ‘pre-loved’ items for sale. They did have a couple of antique wooden chairs in which I was not tempted as I probably have too much furniture as it is but a year ago, I would almost certainly have bought them. I did buy a brand-new Kenwood mini-chopper kitchen aid for £2 although it retails at £25 and, although small, it might be ideal for little bits of food preparation for myself. I think I will always go along each Friday from mow on because I can probably have a friendly chat with the people within the store and the charity is probably worthy of support after they were so badly treated and evicted from their store on the High Street last year.

In the afternoon, my son called around an d we had an extended catching up on a range of issues, some concerned with family finances and some concerned with health issues. The interesting thing is that now that as my son has recently retired, some of his life-interests are converging with mine. We are facing similar concerns with a variety of income flows to be balanced against commitments and, of course, we are both trying to keep ourselves fit and healthy. My son swims getting on for 30 lengths every other day and I try to maintain my 20 minutes of Pilates exercises as well as a certain amount of walking up and down into town. There was a fascinating research study reported in ‘The Times’ today. The researchers were trying to discover the secrets of why certain 80+ study participants seem to fare so much better on menory tests than their contemporaries. What was discovered amazed the researchers as it was so unanticipated. One group in the study took care of their diet, exercise and sleep patterns whilst a second group ignored these factors altogether. But the memory scores were remarkably similar and it appears that they had one characteristic in common which is that both groups put a lot of effort into maintaining social relationships and keeping their intellectual interests finely-tuned. So, the intriguing hypothesis has arisen that a critical factor to avoid the onset of dementia and related conditions is to maintain and keep social relationships at the highest possible level.  There is still a lot of evidence that diet, exercise and sleep patterns are important on staving off dementia but the finding about the importance of maintaining social relationships is intriguing.

Late yesterday afternoon, I was engaged in some weeding in our front garden when my next-door neighbour turned up and we finished up having quite a long chat over the garden fence. As well as collecting period juke boxes, my neighbour is incredibly well informed about the genre of singers that we had in the late 1950’s and early 1060’s (when we were both teenagers) So we were reminiscing about singers like Connie Francis (who had a PhD in Mathematics, incidentally), Johnny Mathis and Harry Belafonte. I think that Connie Francis died only recently and was in her 90’s. Harry Belafonte died two years ago but he did achieve the age of 96. Later In the evening, me neighbour called around with some potatoes freshly harvested from his allotment. Having consulted the web, I think that parboiling followed by some frying or roasting with herbs is the best way to enhance their flavour and enjoy theM to the utmost. Actually, when my neighbour called around, I was in the middle of a video call to my sister who is in a residential home in Knaresborough and we took the opportunity to discuss the arrangements we are going to make for some birthday celebrations at the end of the month. She has decided that she does not want a fuss in her residential home but will spend the day at one of her daughters when other family members can drop in as and when they are able. I think this arrangement can work quite well because it gives me a better opportunity to chat with family members and to pass on some articles of Meg’s jewellery. Last night, I was at a bit of a loss what to view on the TV but eventually chose a program on Pompeii and Herculaneum which was fascinating. I have seen programs of a similar type before but the theme of the program were the modern theories as to why some of the victims of the eruption of Vesuvius were found in a strange orientation with their arms outstretched. It had been thought for decades, if not centuries, that the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum may have been smothered to death in volcanic ash. It is now believed, according to the latest application of scientific evidence, that they may have perished as a result of a blast of super-heated air (up to 600 degrees) when the ash column ejected from Vesuvius descended some hours later and they would have died within a second. The outstretched arms are caused by an automatic contraction of the muscles and is known as a ‘pugilistic attitude’ but has been observed by other instances when victims have been caught in the middle of an explosion or huge fireball. I awoke this morning to one of those grey sorts of mornings but as I have not been beset by technical problems as I was yesterday, I may well be able to make a good early start on my shopping which I traditionally do on a Thursday (Fridays even busier and the weekends even more so).

By the morning post, I received the most pleasant surprise which was a refund by way of a cheque from BT. I was not really expecting this refund as initially I was told that it would be credited to my account but a cheque is always very welcome. After I done my routine weekly shopping, I made haste to my bank to get the cheque deposited. My bank has one of those automated ‘do everything’ sorts of machines and I cannot remember the last time I deposited a cheque certainly unaided.  But this worked like clockwork, even showing you an image of the cheque you have just deposited and when I returned home, it was a welcome addition to my balance. I now have my attention turning to the next couple of days ahead to see if the right amount of (my own) Teachers’ Pension will be deposited. In the course of my shopping, I decided to buy some rosemary which is the only herb I did not appear to have in my little herb carousel.  As my neighbour had very kindly supplied me with some of the potatoes that he had grown in his allotment and only harvested that day, I had looked up a good way to enjoy the flavour of potatoes when they are freshly harvested. I followed some advice I had read on the web and scrubbed the potatoes before cutting them into fairly quick slices. I then parboiled them until tender and then sprinkled them quite liberally with some good olive oil (also purchased today) and the rosemary. For the protein part of my meal, I  fried an onion and then added some little cubes of ham, left over from the weekend joint, made a little cup of onion gravy and complemented the whole mixture with some petit-pois. The whole meal was very tasty and I shall repeat the experiment but having made too much for myself in the first instance, I now have the meal sorted out for two days ahead. Tonight I am going to try an experiment of anchovies on rice cakes which I may come to regret but Aldi are not very good in the tinned fish department as I would have preferred sild or brisling. In the early afternoon, I caught up on the BBC i-Player on the episode of ‘Human’ through which I slept last Monday evening although I am sure the narrative of the hour long programme could easily have been done within thirty minutes.

The Russia -Ukraine conflict may be approaching some kind of resolution although I am sure that Putin is playing for time as usual and thinks he is winning he ground war (although the figure of 1 million Russian soldiers has been mentioned but I am sure this is hard to verify) Trump is sanctioning India for buying Russian oil but I am not convinced this will be be enough to bring Putin to heel unless the policy were sustained for several months. And, in the last analysis, the Chinese will always buy up some Russian oil to cone to the assistance of a very old ally. So, we live in a world dominated by geo-politics at the moment and uncertainties face us each and every way that we look.

For a strange reason which I cannot attempt to discern, my Microsoft Outlook account was incredibly difficult to access this morning but I managed it eventually after 30 minutes of going round the houses. These mornings, I tend to wake up at about 5.15 and then I lie quietly in bed listening to the soothing collection of tracks which ClassicFM plays at this time in the morning before I get up to start the day at about 5.50. This morning the weather looks sets fair and I am contemplating making a trip to Droitwich where I want to visit a little jeweller to whom I have been recommended to get a new chain for Meg’s Mexican medallion. She wore this constantly but I want to donate it to a close family member but with constant use the existing chain broke and needs to be replaced. I don’t think that I have been to Droitwich for the past few months so I will go into the cafe that we used to frequent and acquaint them with the sad news of Meg’s passing. Also, I have one or two favourite charity shops and what used to be the old Wilkinson’s store which I think was made into a Poundland superstore if my memory serves me correct. Some of my regular routines are a little out of kilter this morning as it is approaching mid-August and people are away on holiday. For example,  the Methodist centre in town has a wonderful coffee bar and meeting area complete with a ‘chatty table’ but they close down during the month of August so that it can have a spring clean and the regular attenders go on holiday. So I think I will be pleased once this month is out of the way and normal life resumes in the early autumn. The day before when my son and daughter-in-law had called around, they helped me to sort out the interactions between my Teacher’s pension and my tax affairs. I have inherited a portion of Meg’s pension but evidently a dead person cannot be taxed and so the tax accrued to me, But HMRC system seems, although I am not sure, to have reallocated some of Meg’s personal allowance to me without any intervention on my part. I am receiving letters from the Teachers’ Pension Agency in which none of the stated amounts match up at all with the previous information they sent me only a week or so ago and meanwhile the Inland Revenue are sending me communications which are as clear as mud. I think I am going to sit back and do nothing and see what income flows actually occur during the month of August so that I can keep track of things which seem to have been more complicated since Meg’s death three months ago now than they were before. Whilst I was with the family yesterday, we were laughing about the fact that I must have become a familiar sight across Bromsgrove and known to people who did not even know our name. After all, there are not many people with a Korean cow leather jacket sporting a hi-visibility vest and with an Australian style bush hat (minus the corks!) pushing a wife up and down in a wheelchair down to Bromsgrove several times a week. I am stopped on a fairly regular basis by people who now solicitously ask, when they see me on my own, ‘How is your wife?’ only to be a bit shocked when they learn of her death. Eventually, of course, all of this will cease but it is true that friends of friends have observed me in the past and the news actually did spread. 

One of my near neighbours posts a copy of the local newspaper and I generally give it a cursory glance but today, one particular story caught my eye. About a year or so ago now, I must have been pushing Meg up and down the Bromsgrove High Street when we espied a new coffee shop which was actual the finance producing arm of a charity for abandoned horse and other animals. We were about the only people in the shop and we engaged the owner in conversation. The shop had been very carefully and tastefully refitted at a cost of some £30k but as well serving coffee and home-made cake, there were also some selected pieces of furniture and ‘objets d’art’ all available for sale. But we were told a terrible story that the new owners of this store had only been open for about a fortnight when they were given notice to quit because another nearby charity had offered more rent to the developers so the animal charity proprietors were being turfed out. I was horrified by this story and said that I would patronise them again as soon as they found a new shop for their venture and I read in the newspaper that they have, indeed, secured some new premises just off the High Street and they are going to be opening this Friday. So I am certainly going to make a great effort to seek them out and to patronise them regularly as Meg and I had been given a wonderfully warm reception when we took our coffee there a year ago and I am always keen to exgend my range of social contacts.

I did take myself off to Droitwich down the road and succeeded in my principal objective which was to buy a new fine sterling silver chain for Meg’s medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The old broken chain made of Mexican silver was weight and they gave me £5.00 of credit for it to help defray the price of the new chain. But the rest of my visit to Droitwich – the first since Meg’s passing – was rather a bitter-sweet experience, not helped by the fact that of the three shops that I visited, none of them contained any of the items (some  as prosaic as Brillo pads) for which I was looking. So, I came home and cooked myself a meat and two veg type dinner before I do some weeding as it is ‘brown bin collection day’ this week and I need to seize the opportunity to weed when I can. I generally dispose of the tallest and most unsightly weeds at the front of the house on these occasions so the house looks inhabited and visitors do not gvain an unfavourable impression.

As is usual at the start of the week I decide to get to bed at 9.00pm in order to watch the anthropological programme on ‘Humans’ but I inevitably fall asleep after a few minutes. I am also following the Michael Mosley programs on ‘Secrets of the Super Agers’ and did discover that, up to a point, you can think yourself both younger and older than you actually are. If you attempt to have an active social life and take cate of your diet and health, particularly by walking regularly, then you actually do start to look younger and con convince others who do not know you of this fact. The reverse is equally true in that you can think of yourself as older and more frail than you actually are and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, I had often suspected that this might be the case but the fascinating thing about the Michael Mosley approach was that he was always striving to find some hard science behind his observations. What a tragic irony it was that after writing so many excellent books on diet, exercise, life style and the ageing process with the aim of stimulating all of us to lead happier, healthier and longer lives that he himself would die about a year ago by inexplicably making a journey back to his hotel under a full blazing Greek son and succumbing (and dying) from the subsequent heat exhaustion. I still have many of his books on my bookshelves and they evoke a tinge of sadness on each occasion that I look at them. The morning is quite a busy one as I have to fit a routine lumbar x-ray in our local hospital amongst other things. I am also looking forward to a flying visit from one of my nieces who is calling in following a summer camp sojourn in the West Country and, like last year, as her route home lies so near our house she is taking the opportunity for a visit.

On the Sky News website, there is a compilation of the death of every single Palestinian since the start of the conflict with Israel. Sky News claims that they have verified each of the deaths which now stands at over 60,000 the majority being women and children.  The graphics and analysis are of exceptional quality and make for a sobering read but the Israelis insist that they only ever target Hamas fighters. When video clips do get shown of Gaza then the whole society seems to have been reduced to rubble and one has to wonder what there is left to bomb or destroy because it is hard to find a building left standing or undamaged.

This morning, after I picked up my newspaper, I made a fairly quick visit to the local Wetherspoons where I met a couple pf my usual Tuesday morning friends. But I knew that I would have to depart after only a few minutes as I needed to go off to my local community hospital for a routine X-ray of my pelvis. This was all very straightforward and as soon as I returned home and watched a little TV, I thought I go ahead and prepare a risotto lunch. My niece was calling in on her journey home from the West Country and my son and daughter-in-law were calling round to see her so we enjoyed the risotto together whilst my niece and daughter-in-law both teachers, but in the process of either retiring or winding down, swapped notes with other about the retirement process. Then I took my niece to one side and offered he special medal that Meg wore constantly and a depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, given to Meg by our son’s Mexican ‘parents’ when he undertook his scholarship in Mexico nearly 40 years ago. Meg wore this medal every day for years and years and was very special to her but the silver chain upon which it hung had broken with constant use so I am going to get this special silver chain replaced.  My niece was incredibly emotional when I offered her the medal but I said that I would get the chain replaced before I finally offer it to her when we go up to Harrogate in about three weeks’ time. I also discussed with my niece which of her sisters should receive which pieces of Meg’s remaining jewellery as a personal memento. I also had a very special brass cross (religious artefact) which Meg and I had bought for my mother when we were in Rome on holiday decades ago and it had passed back into possession after my mother’s death. Again, my niece was delighted to accept this and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to gradually dispose of some of Meg’s possessions amongst family members who really appreciate them. After my niece had left to continue her long journey back up to Yorkshire, I took the opportunity to ask my son and daughter-in-law about their observations of the last few months of Meg’s life. One perpetual question and is one that I am asking myself is the following : do dementia patients realise that they are dying? The short answer is that we really do not know but we can infer a great deal. As we know that as dementia advances, patients may be aware that all is not quite right. But then their body is shutting down and, as happened with Meg, they are asleep for much of the time. So, the consensus view is that dementia patients do not really have an awareness of what is happening around them as they lack the cognitive processes of a non-demented person. All that I can say is Meg seemed to o a pretty contented death, surrounded by family and friends and with few signs, if any, of any evident distress. This I find comforting, reinforced by the fact that I did as much for Meg as was possible and I think her quality of life, even in the final months, was relatively high surrounded as we were by a lot of music which I knew she had appreciated and enjoyed over her lifetime. We seemed to have a huge helping of Mozart (of course), Beethoven, Bach and composers such as Fauré.  I suspect that Meg really enjoyed and remembered some of the Joan Baez (Mexican-American folk-singer and at one time lover of Bob Dylan) tracks when I played them only a few weeks before Meg left us in May.

Two nice events occurred the evening before yesterday to put me in some good spirits. Firstly, my good Irish friends from down the road have asked me round for a coffee this morning and this is always a welcome event. There are a few things I wish to share with them so this is something to brighten up the start of the week. Secondly, my good friend from the University of Winchester phoned up in the late evening and we spent a long time on the phone to each other as we are wont to do. He visits his wife every day who is in long term residential care in a nursing home and we have often swapped notes and try to be mutually supportive of each other including links to parts of the NHS which might be helpful to us but are hard to locate.

A rather terrible event is unfolding before our eyes which is the famine in Gaza. Video footage has been released of an Israeli hostage who appears skeletal as he has evidently been short of food for a long time. The Israelis are appalled and are pointing to the evident lack of humanity of the Hamas captors but in the meanwhile Gaza’s health ministry has said that six more people have died of starvation or malnutrition in the enclave in the past 24 hours – increasing the total to 175 since the war began, including 93 children. And the health ministry reports that another 80 people died yesterday after Israeli air attack strikes. The whole world appears to be standing by watching this tragedy unfold before our eyes but Israel as the occupying power are telling the world that starvation does not occur routinely but if any instances occur it must be because Hamas are keeping all of the food resources to feed themselves and are starving the rest of the population. 

The day started off as gloomy and somewhat overcast and a storm is expected to sweep across the country later on in the day and will perhaps hit the Midlands in the  afternoon. By then, I will have got my morning walks out of the way but I have a lightweight waterproof now permanently in my rucksack so that I do not get caught in a sudden shower or downburst. I am spending a certain amount of time each morning keeping track of my finances which are now, thankfully, settling down. The last few months have been a bit of a turmoil until the Teachers Pensions Agency got their act sorted out. When you at work, you have one day/date on which salaries get paid in but in retirement things are a little more complicated. I am juggling with the payment dates of my own pension, the remnants of Meg’s pension and my own retirement pension so my spreadsheet has to detail these anticipated in-payments and out-payments quite carefully. I think that things are settling down now but it has been a little complicated with some payments ‘on account’ and then subsequently subtracted, tax taken off here and there and so on. But everything does look quite stable from this point on from which I am grateful. At this time in the morning, I often ‘message ping’ my Droitwich friend as we both seem to be our computers at the same hour in the morning and we sort of check up on each other (which is rather nice, I must say).

In the late morning, I called in to collect a copy of ‘The Times‘ which was in rather a tatty condition as it was the last remaining copy but beggars cannot be choosers. Then I called in at my Irish friends who had invited me in for coffee and we were joined by their next-door neighbour who is the French lady who is shortly to move away from us after her house has been sold. We told each other stories about neighbours that we had known and I regaled our friends about the ‘neighbour’ from hell who we knew from a previous house in another part of the world. I explained how years after we had moved away, we met the husband by accident whilst we were on holiday and he said to us, with the broadest possible smile, that his wife had now died. She made his life hell on earth making him clean every window in the house every day apart from other things and I told several other stories to which our friends listened with a sort of fascinated horror.  Then after I returned home, I made myself a ‘meat and two veg’ meal for the first time in days, after which I promptly fell asleep. I was awakened by the ringing of the doorbell from our domestic help who brought me up-to-date with all of the news about her son who had been injured in an industrial accident at work. I had assembled some books and materials that I hoped would help to occupy him during his period of recovery. Then I texted a friend and started to think about my priorities for the next day or so ahead. Whilst I was having coffee with our friends, the news came through about the narrow England defeat/India victory in the final Test Match which has resulted in the series being drawn. Whilst I would have liked to see England hang on (and I think they lost  by only about 8 runs) in truth the two sides were very equally balanced and a think a draw between the two sides for the series is probably a very fair result.
 
The storm that had swept over the country has fortunately, for us, passed us by and we only experienced the fringes of it. But I think Scotland and the North of England were badly it and a lot of rail services in Scotland were actually cancelled until the storm had passed us by.  The storm was of the type that was quite common in the winter months but quite rare in the summer months but with climate change very much in evidence, we can expect spells of good or bad weather at almost any time these days. Tomorrow might prove to be quite a busy day so I may have an early night to ensure that I awake up refreshed in the morning. 

Yesterday, the weather was rather cloudy, not to say gloomy and I think that a large storm is going to sweep over the country from the Atlantic in the next day or so. Today is a rather different Sunday as some of my usual contacts are busy with other things so after a walk down the hill to collect my Sunday newspaper (if they have sufficient stock which is sometimes a little problematic later in the day), I might busy myself with a tidying job to do. Actually, the day before I found my desk drawer a little difficult to shut because of quite important papers that I store there so I took the opportunity for some spring cleaning and reorganising. Even little things can be difficult to dispose of as I discovered when I found a brand new but unused cheque book with both my own and Meg’s name upon it as we used to share a joint account. So this had to be carefully disposed of via cutting out IDs and getting them shredded and, of course, the shredder had not been emptied for goodness how long so this was another job. As I was having breakfast, there was a long and extended account of the horrific injuries suffered by Palestinians in Gaza where a lot of the victims were children and were supposedly on a safe transit road i.e. declared safe by the Israelis. When the various well researched and documented accounts were put to the Israeli Defence Force, the response nearly always the same to the effect that the IDF took its responsibilities very seriously, that casualties might occur to civilians if they were in a conflict zone (which appears to be the whole of Gaza) and that each incident would be investigated by the competent authorities but, of course, we never hear the result.

After I had breakfasted, I thought I would revert to an earlier pattern fo a Sunday morning so I walked down the hill and then collected my Sunday newspaper. Then and almost on the spur of the moment, I decided to make a detour from the direct way home and, instead, make a journey through the park following the route along which I used to push Meg in her wheelchair. I then espied the park bench upon which Meg and I have sat for literally years (about five in any case) and then sat down on it. I have to say the memory of Meg and I sitting on this bench evoked some of the most powerful emotions of grief I have experienced in the last three months since Meg died. Feeling very sorry for myself, I texted my vey good ex-University of Winchester friend who responded very quickly with a comforting phone call and we have agreed to have a longer chat this evening. Then I looked sideways and saw on an adjacent bench a gentleman who I know is himself widowed and has the most magnificent and sweet-natured labradoodle dog he calls ‘Alfred the Great’ The thing is that my park friend and I always have a host of jokes to tell each other, some a little male-oriented, but after we had exchanged some joke and stories, my mood lightened somewhat and I struck out for home. On the way back, I was delighted to bump into our French friend who is a widow but moving out of the area shortly to be nearer to her daughter. I can fully appreciate the reasons for all of this but I hate losing close friends I have made over the years like this. Nonetheless, I think it is a week or so before she actually moves but she has been very busy both selling her house and the furniture within it.  We are going to have a farewell get-together before she goes and I would not be surprised, knowing our friend like I do, that she throws a ‘farewell to you all’ party in her house before she actually does leave. Then I busied myself making some lunch where I actually cheated a little. I took one large carrot and one half of a potato which I them cut into bite size chunks and then boiled until tender. I then added one of these thicker ‘beef and vegetable’ soups to create a sort of instant stew. My mother-in-law used to call this ‘lobby’ and the internet source does call this ‘Staffordshire lobby’ which is basically a beef stew, traditionally eaten by poorly paid potters in the region, using cheaper cuts of meat along with root vegetables and pearl barley.

These days, I find that I have to keep an eye on the weather so that I can find the most appropriate day for lawn-cutting, general gardening or car washing activities. The old-fashioned gardening books tat I consulted extensively when I was growing a lot of vegetables often started off a chapter with ‘Choose a fine day..’ as though one could.  I am trying to keep my newly acquired car in good condition but my efforts, as well f those of my neighbours, is hampered by the extensive building wok that seems to be going all around us. Before the building proper starts, there seems to be an enormous amount of landscaping, earth moving and drain-laying activities and consequently a fine dust seems to be distributed quite liberally on all of the neighbouring houses, gardens and of course cars. The builders themselves are using a sort of spray mechanism to attempt to alleviate the nuisance caused by the dust problems but this seems to be a drop in the ocean for all the good that it does. As a treat for myself if I do decide to wash the car, I will treat myself to a special program on Sky Arts on the famous tenor, Andrea Bocelli undertaking pilgrimage type journeys and singing appropriate contributions en route. I suspect this is a repeat of a programme I saw some time ago but the programme transmitted on Sky Arts is two hours long so I should be able to find something to enjoy (whilst reading the Sunday newspapers at the same time). There is also ‘Today at the Test’ but I fear that England will certainly be outplayed and will lose the final test but draw the series as a whole.

The evening before yesterday as it was the start of a new month, I spent a certain amount of team doing some financial updating only to discover that I could not get through to my bank account details via the usual credentials on the website. So I was just reconciling myself to hours on the phone when I thought I would try things again in the morning when everything worked just the way it should. I reckon the creaky old system could not cope with updates just after midnight, end of the month and so on. As I was wide awake trying to access my system and not quite in the mood for sleep, I did stay up late and finished off reading the Fiona Phillips book (‘Remember When’) which is an account of her life with Alzheimers. Now I know that the experience of every sufferer is unique but I was struck by the different ways in which news was communicated. In the case of Fiona Phillips because of her public profile no doubt she had the news conveyed to her by a top neurosurgeon personally and after things like lumbar puncture tests. But in the case of Meg, she was initially given an assessment of ‘Mild Cognitive Impairment’ and only much later was the diagnosis of Alzheimers given in the most round-about way and via an undated letter. The Phillips family seemed, according to the book, obsessing about things whereas Meg and I just got on with it and I think with our Music Lounge and then trips out in the wheelchair made a much better fist of it by just ‘getting on with life’ Looking back, I still feel Meg’s quality of life was pretty high compared with fellow sufferers but we did have some rough times when Meg was falling constantly (up to 3-4 times a day) whereas Martin Frizzel (Fiona Phillips husband) seemed to manage to get out to work and go out for a coffee whereas the occasions on which I could leave Meg were limited to a few minutes each week whilst I dashed out to do the shopping as fast as I could leaving her with carers and Meg experiencing the consequent separation anxiety. Nonetheless, some of my friends would like to read the book now that I have finished it but I may re-read some of the critical final chapters as I think it covers events up to March, 2025 (and Meg died on May 10th, 2025). This I actually did do later in the day but I was matching up what was happening to Fiona Phillips with what was happening to Meg at the same time. In the Fiona Philipps case, she was still managing to communicate and even going off on holiday to Italy whereas this had been way beyond Meg for a long time. This led me to consult this blog for the first time that I felt that I needed to utilise a wheelchair (which I had just purchased) and the actual date turned out to be a Sunday, 13th August which is, of course nearly two years ago now. In many ways, the sufferers and carers of dementia patients just have to ‘get on with it’ and Martin Frizzel, the husband of Fiona Phillips, declaims in the book how little is done for dementia patients compared with, for example, cancer patients. He also points out that even the diagnostic pen-and-paper tests for the diagnosis are still the same as 50 years ago. But dementia is more likely to strike as one gets older with the risk, according to the Alzheimer’s Society being about 1 in 4 for general population rising to about 1 in 6 for the over 80’s. Coupled with the fact that a history of migraines can increase the risk for women about six times  plus a history of higher blood pressure in her early 70’s  and the fact that women seem more disposed to develop Alzheimer’s than men then the odds were well and truly stacked against Meg probably many years ago.

Yesterday afternoon, I was hoping that my Droitwich friend might call round but she was feeling under the weather so texted me late in the afternoon to say we might meet later in the weekend. I went to church and got into conversation with an elderly Irish parishioner who I know pretty well. His brother had just died (at a ripe old age, I think) and he had just attended his funeral in Manchester. I mentioned to him that Meg and I had got married in the ‘Holy Name’ church in Oxford Road, Manchester and my parishioner friend told me he had often worshipped in that church in the past. When we got married, the church had bee cleaned up and years of accumulated grime had revealed some glorious coloured stonework but it has probably got all grimy again by now. When I came home and saw a magnificent performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the Proms. We used to play the finale to this in the school orchestra when  I attended Thornleigh College, Bolton in the 1950’s but the actual performance at the Proms was played at a much faster pace than we could achieve and I was only aged about 14 at the time. Then I watched a delayed ‘Today at the Test’  where India undoubtedly had the upper hand and will probably go on to win this final Test at the Oval to draw the series, which is probably a fair overall result.

I recently renewed my Senior Person’s Railcard which gives me a third off fares – at £80.00 for three years, I feel this is actually very good value for money because it is possible to reclaim the cost after only about 1-2 journeys. Of course, I am thinking ahead to my trip up to Yorkshire to see my sister for her birthday at the end of the month. When I renewed my card I was informed that it would take about ten days to deliver but I got an email the other day to say that it is actually on its way. In theory, the ticket inspector ought to examine this every time your ticket is checked but I found that in practice if you evidently look over 65 they actually do not bother very often but you do get the occasional ‘jobs-worth’ who does. You can order a version that just lodges on the ‘Wallet’ app of your phone but I actually do prefer a bit of plastic if ever my phone was mislaid and I can always take a photo of it.