I awoke yesterday morning reflecting upon the fact that September was half gone by now and the months seem to be flying by. I have quite a busy day what with one thing or another so was to keen to make a good start. I have run off the portion of the lyrics of Danny Boy reproduced in yesterday’s blog where the person who has died is calling to her spouse/lover from the grave and is poignant in the extreme. For good or ill, I am trying to commit these eight lines to memory because I find them very beautiful and I find it is my way of coping with grief by not avoiding it but occasionally confronting it. I found the book by the neuroscientist of ‘The Grieving Brain’ easily enough on Amazon and ordered a copy of it although I did manage to find an extended summary of it on the web which I have printed off. The domestic agenda is filled with the forthcoming visit of Donald Trump to these shores. Only a British prime minister can offer what Trump is about to enjoy this week as a result, three days of peerless pomp and ceremony in castles and stately homes hosted by royalty. For an Anglophile who craves the spotlight, the idea was irresistible. Trump beamed with delight as he received the King’s letter, becoming the first elected leader ever to be invited for a second state visit. Some said the prime minister moved too quickly. This was something Trump should have had to have worked for, dangled as a reward for favourable treatment. Instead, the critics said, he got something for nothing and has abused that generosity ever since. The levels of security that are being put in place are unprecedented – the thought of Trump being shot at on UK soil is too terrible to contemplate (but, of course, cannot be ruled out) So we are dolloping out flattery and pomp in equal measure and are anticipating some big USA hi-tech investment to accompany the visit. This is itself can be a very two-edged weapon as ‘The Times’ have been reported that the huge big pharmaceutical companies are withdrawing investment from the UK as our beleaguered NHS cannot afford to pay the sky-high prices for some of the new drugs on offer. Some of these are new cancer treatments but do not offer a ‘cure’ but only to extend a person’s life for a couple of months or so at a cost of tens of thousands of £ per patient. It is true that the UK pays a smaller proportion of its health budget on drugs than comparable European societies but even so, the question has to be asked whether the prolongation of life for a few months is worth the enormous costs involved. It is one of these ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’ questions because it could be that more lives are saved if money within the NHS is not diverted to add to the profits of big US pharmaceutical companies.
Later in the day, I went down by car to attend my Pilates class. This I needed to cut short by a quarter of an hour as I needed to dash off to a U3A (University of the Third Age) large group meeting which was to be held in the afternoon. This large meeting was very well attended with I suspect at least 70 people in attendance and we were being presented with talk about the origins of the Gun Powder plot which lasted for about an hour and a quarter. Right at the end of this discussion, I took to the floor and recounted the story, first aired by Lucy Worsley in a recent BBC2 TV programme about the radicalisation of Guy (Guido) Fawkes. This part of the Gun Powder plot is not known definitively but it is almost a racing certainty that Guy Fawkes may have been radicalised by witnessing the cruel death of Margaret Clitheroe in York who was put to death for harbouring Jesuit priests. The manner of her death was gruesome as she was forced to lie on a sharp stone between two doors which were then piled high with stones to make death as agonising as possible. Upon her death, the local Catholics cut off one of her hands and this is reserved (miraculously?) in the Bar Convent in York. As my sister was attended the Bar Convent school, my mother, sister and I were allowed to view this relic. But over tea at the end of the meeting, although most people rushed away, I managed to have a conversation with some interesting people. For example, a newcomer to the U3A group and myself exchanged telephone numbers so there is always the possibility of meeting up for a coffee or a drink later. I joined the group and now have to decide in which of the about 15 groups I will participate. I am a bit undecided about the local history group but there is a group that visits local churches and places of worship, followed by tea and cakes, a walking group, a local history group, a curry club and so on. I saw that there was a French conversation class but wondered if there might be a Spanish one. The local group organiser prevailed upon me to act as convenor/tutor for such a group but if there is a demand for it (about 3-4 bystanders announced that they would join one) then I might take this on as, after all, ‘in the land of the blind, one one-eyed man is king’
Donald Trump will soon land upon these shores and already we are being treated to the obsequious flattery which seems to surround Trump wherever he goes. He is staying at Windsor castle which, to American eyes, is a real castle and is going to be treated tomorrow to lines of soldiers in traditional dress, a ride in a horse-drawn carriage and a formal white-tie dinner. I have the strong feeling that if there is to be a press conference, it will be so heavily stage managed that a question on the Epstein affair will not pass anyone’s lips. In the meantime, there has been an emergency debate in the Commons on the Mandelson sacking I the light of his affiliations with Epstein and it appears that Starmer himself did not attend the debate (‘running scared’ as critics on all sides of the House will say).