As indicated in the blog yesterday, I treated myself to the second in the series by Alice Roberts about that ways in which we, as humans, have evolved. The episode last night was succinctly entitled ‘Guts’ and I always find these programmes both fascinating and instructive. As you might imagine, the programme last night focused on the fact that once the phenomenon of fire could be generated and cultivated, we then, as a species, started the cooking of our food. What I learnt from last night’s episode was that if you were eat something in the raw such as a carrot then it would take a certain amount of time for the body to digest and thus release the calories. Cooked food generally releases calories more quickly and allows the body to absorb more energy than the same food in its raw state. The total potential energy does not increase, but cooking makes the calories more accessible to your digestive system. This is one of humanity’s most significant evolutionary advantages, enabling our ancestors to thrive on fewer resources and develop larger brains. Apart from cooking, the mastery over fire evidently conveys other evolutionary advantages such as providing warmth helping to ward off disease as well as protection from natural predators such as wild animals. There is something exceptionally primitive but quite understandable about the way in which we as humans will enjoy a huddle over a camp fire. This something often experienced when perhaps as children we went camping and the evening was often spent around a fire and even to this day, we still will tend to have a fire as the focal point in our living space. To illustrate this point, I have an electric fire in our main lounge and it has the facility, which I often deploy, to have a flickering, camp-like flame effect even when the heating elements are kept switched off. There is a massive psychological effect at work here as well, because the flame alone makes one feel both warmer and better even in the absence of heat and you even feel warmer when fire light is lit. The ability to release more calories from our food in this way meant that that the whole business of ‘hunter gathering’ could evolve into more specialised roles such as men being involved in hunting and women involved in what we would call the domestic roles of food preparation and childcare. Alice Roberts visited one of the least developed of African societies, perhaps in Kenya, and asked the young women how they chose their mates. Their reply was not surprising but adds a corrective to the theories of mate selection based on physical attraction to which we have become accustomed as we have acquired layers of civilisation. To the question on what made a good mate, the reply that the young women gave was to discount physical appearance but to select upon the basis of whether a potential mate was, or was not, a good hunter.  To attempt to show how this might have relevance, even today, Alice Roberts looked at a group of young men learning in how to skateboard and engaging in more and activities judged as ‘risky’ in order to learn a new and more difficult manoeuvre. When young women were introduced onto the scene as observers, then the young men engaged in riskier and riskier moves (in an attempt to impress) which led Roberts to conclude that risk-taking (as evidenced in earlier hunting) had become hardwired into the evolution of the male brain, Evidently, I am looking forward to the last in the series entitled ‘Brains’ and it is not often appreciated fact that our brains are the greatest consumer of calories of any other organ in the body. Turning now to domestic matters, I sent off an email to the parishioner who cared so much for Meg in her later months and used to call around regularly. She herself is experiencing a bout of illness and I was anxious to call around and see her, if this was at all possible. I was delighted to receive an email yesterday to the effect that not only was she available to visitors but she thought that the weekend, and particularly Sunday when I am often bereft of social contact, was  a really good time to call around so I am delighted that we are able to reestablish contact and share a lot of news with each other at the weekend.
 
In the morning, I engage in my regular weekly routine of attending the Methodist Centre and after supplying myself with coffee and cake I sit myself at the ‘chatty table’. Some people sit at this table before they dash off to a ‘Balance and Strength’ class held next door and the table can empty whilst others sit at it once their previous class is over. This happened to me again today and I reflect (not morbidly) upon the fact that practically all of the occupants of the room are women and many of them are widowed but I am perhaps the only widower in the whole room (but then we know from national statistics, that for people in my age range, widowers are outnumbered by a ratio of well over 4:1) But a couple joined me on the table and after we had exchanged some of the usual pleasantries they asked me about Meg- so they must have been part of the quite large group of people who had observed me pushing Meg to many places, including the  Methodist Centre, in her wheelchair. So naturally, I told them about the fact of Meg’s death and the fact that she had died at home surrounded by family and friends and enjoyed what some religious would call ‘a good death’ After they left, I also took my leave as I felt disinclined to break into the large circle of widows sitting at an adjacent table all of whom seem to have known each other for years, I popped into Waitrose and picked up my newspaper, before having a ‘free’ coffee and then making for home. I had already foraged throughout the deep-freeze and found some deep frozen barbecued chicken legs which I put in the microwave oven and then supplemented with carrots and peas.

Before lunch, I decided to contact the Borough Council to request an extra green bin as the Council are changing their design but have replaced my green bin with a newly designed one. I had to fill in the relevant information on the web and was instructed not to try to speak them about this on the phone as it might overwhelm this system!  But I did get a reply to the effect that my request had been successfully submitted and I might expect an extra green bin within the next 20 days. I have tried a parallel procedure to get my one brown bin supplemented by a second but without any success so far.

The evening before yesterday, I treated myself to viewing the first of a series of three programmes made and presented by the anatomist and biological anthropologist, Alice Roberts. In the first of her programmes entitled ‘Bones’ she detailed how perhaps as a result of climate change, some chimps evolved from living in the jungle to living in woodland becoming bi-pedal (standing erect and walking on two feet) and we can illustrate this by the study of skulls from the fossil record which show how the skull gradually became more erect held in place by crucial ligaments. But I learnt two things from this first programme which I suspect is knowledge not widely shared. Dr. Alice Roberts mused who the large muscle in our buttocks the ‘gluteus maximus’) is the size that it is because it would appear to be ‘over-engineered’ in biological terms for the simple act of standing and walking. But it really comes into own in the act of running giving that extra punch to the leg muscles. Combined with the fact that we lost body hair and could thus sweat freely, the combined effect was that we could outrun practically every other animal on the planet and this gave our ancestors a crucial evolutionary advantage. Even though other animals could run faster in the short term, humans could eventually outrun them as the muscles of most animals locked up with lactic acid and they became heat exhausted. Hence eventually humans could track animals and feast on their meat which large amounts of protein no doubt, as subsequent programmes will show, was crucial for sunseqent brain size and development. In fact, there are ‘man versus horses’ organised to demonstrate this biological fact. The annual race, over 21 miles (34 km), has runners competing against riders on horseback through a mix of road, trail and mountainous terrain. The race, which is a shorter distance than an official marathon road race, takes place in the Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells every June. The first woman to run the race was Ann King in 1981. In 1982, the route of the course was amended slightly to give a more even match between the competitors. The course is slightly shorter than a traditional marathon at a reported 22 miles, but over rougher terrain. In 1985, cyclists were allowed to compete too – and that year, U.S. ladies’ champion cyclist Jacquie Phelan narrowly lost to the first horse. In 1989, British cyclist Tim Gould beat the first horse by three minutes – the first time that a horse was beaten by a human in the race. The second thing I learned from the programme was the critical advantage bestowed on humans in their evolutionary journey by not only the opposable thumb but also its strength and versatility. So chimps given an apple will hold it in both hands as they lack the grasping ability which humans now possess as a result of their evolutionary history. Now this means from the time of ‘homo habilis’ onwards, man evolved not only to make tools but also to use them in a way that animals cannot. The ability to use tools in this dextrous way evidently helps to kickstart us on our evolutionary journey which no doubt is still continuing as I constantly marvel at how the younger generation write texts on their mobile phones by using their thumbs alone. So, I have learnt a lot from last night’s programme, and I have the remaining two available to me on the BBC iPlayer for the days ahead.

First thing in the morning, I attended at the doctor’s surgery for a 9.00am appointment.  In order to see a doctor face-to-face one has to make an appointment on a website the day before and then receive a telephone call to assess whether you actually need to see a doctor at all. Finally, when you do see a doctor, it was, in my case, with a physician associate (= cut-price semi-qualified medical practitioner) who I have admittedly seen before. The outcome in my case was no diagnosis but a reference onwards to two other clinics and one can only reflect how incredibly hard it is in these post-COVID days to actually see and get treated by a doctor I returned home by car and had my customary chat with our domestic help at whose urging I set forth to walk to the coffee bar to meet with my ‘Tuesday’ coffee-drinking partners. But in the event, they were not there so I turned around and immediately walked back up the hill but  did find hat after a walk of over couple of miles, there and back and with no coffee sit-down in the middle,  was pretty exhausted when I did reach home again. After a rest, I went down by car and had my usual Pilates class after which I returned home and made myself a mackerel risotto.

In the USA, there is something called a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) which is a lawsuit filed to intimidate and silence critics of powerful individuals or organizations, such as corporations or government bodies. These suits are often meritless, and their goal is to burden the defendant with the high cost and time of litigation, not to win the case itself. By bankrupting or exhausting opponents, SLAPPs can have a chilling effect on free speech and public participation. But in the last day or so, we have the extraordinary situation of the tables being turned against the Trump coterie. Author Michael Wolff has sued first lady Melania Trump, charging that she threatened a $1 billion legal action against him to stop him from reporting and writing about her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.  ‘Mrs. Trump’s claims are made for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff’s free exercise of speech,’ said the suit, which was filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. The filing includes as an attachment a letter Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent to Wolff, the author of ‘Fire and Fury,’ last week demanding that he retract and apologize for public comments he has made linking his client to Epstein, the notorious sex offender, and that he make ‘a monetary proposal to Mrs. Trump to ameliorate the harm that you have caused.’ Trump has been aggressive in pushing back against what her lawyers describe as false reports linking to her Epstein, and her office said in a statement Wednesday that she ‘is proud to continue standing up to those who spread malicious and defamatory falsehoods as they desperately try to get undeserved attention and money from their unlawful conduct’ The letter from Brito cited comments Wolff had made to The Daily Beast this year in a story headlined ‘Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal:’ as well as comments he made on a Daily Beast podcast. Now nobody is in a position to predict how this will play out as very few cases actually get to court. But in legal theory it is possible that Wolff may be able to subpoena the president to appear as a witness which, of course he will not. What happens then is anybody’s guess but there could be further legal sanctions against Donald Trump if he fails to appear as a witness.

Yesterday, I awoke after quite a decent night’s sleep to a day that although cold and a little windy seemed reasonably bright and so I thought would provide no challenges for a walk down into town in the morning. The evening before, I had hunted around on the TV schedules and eventually saw the last episode in the paleo-archaeology series entitled ‘Humans’ When the program had ended, the iPlayer automatically started to load a similar programme which I decided not to watch but to save for later. This series is called ‘The Origins of Us’ and Professor Alice Roberts (one of my favourite documentary presenters) is presenting a series of three and in the series, entitled respectively ‘Bones’, ‘Guts’ and finally ‘Brains’ I think these are the kinds of programmes not only that I enjoy but help in the passage of the long dark winter afternoons until Christmas comes and passes and the days start to lengthen again. I was particularly pleased to have got the last weekend negotiated because it just happened that both my son and my three closest friends were all away so I was potentially bereft of any kind of social contact but I made the best of a bad job under the circumstances. There are no particular events this week to which I can look forward but after some of my friends have returned from their various social activities I can have a consultation with them and start to think about making some bookings for my Christmas trip to my relatives in Yorkshire. On the domestic political front, the opposition parties have been given a Christmas-present style wrapped gift in the case of the sex offender recently released by mistake from gaol but since recaptured. Although the roots of the problem lie in our under-funded prison service administering gaols awash with drone-supplied drugs, bursting with inmates and chronically understaffed, the government are receiving all of the flack. It is being said that the problem arose under the watch of the present Labour government and just fuels the feeling, rife in the population. that absolutely nothing works in the country any more. The recently revealed fact that the mistaken release was not a one off but there have been over 260 cases of mistaken release over the past year only reinforces the point. Although a huge manhunt was in place for the wrongly released prisoner, even the police did not actually find him but a member of the public telephoned the police to indicate his whereabouts which led to his recapture. To hide their embarrassment, the government are going to deport the individual within a couple of days but an interesting legal question is whether a confused, wrongly released prisoner is actually committing an additional offence? Senior government sources admit that not only was this saga incredibly embarrassing for government, but it also feeds a narrative that Britain is not working and the state cannot fulfil basic functions.

This morning after I had scoured the pile of newspapers for articles that I wished to retain, I walked down the hill to collect my newspaper. As I was passing the home of my Italian friend, I could not fail to notice that the Highways Department were scaling a large tree and lopping off branches. From my vantage point, I could not work out if the work team were just removing large branches that were in danger of fouling some overhead power lines or whether the lopping of off branches was just a precursor to the felling of the whole tree. I knocked on the door to have a word with my friend about what I was just witnessing but she appeared to be in a state of some distress, not related to the problem of the adjacent tree. It was unclear what was causing my friend some distress but I departed leaving her n rather an unhappy state and I could only speculate as to the cause of her problems. When I returned home having had my coffee, I was relieved to see that the tree was largely intact and the highways team had left the area. I made myself some lunch which today was a portion of oven-warmed quiche accompanied by what I can only describe as a melange of vegetables (tomatoes, onions, carrots and green beans) with enough left over for another day. Looking at Sky News after lunch, I noted that Nigel Farage was having a press conference to capitalise upon the government’s discomfiture over the fact that five victims of sexual abuse have withdrawn from the enquiry. He had given one of their number a platform to speak at a ‘Reform’ press conference were she repeated allegations that the victims had been lied to, belittled and their concerns not expressed as directly as they would all have wished. This may or not be true but once witnesses to an enquiry are invited to speak at a press conference organised by a political party, then a toxic atmosphere is being maintained. Nigel Farage has said that later in the day he is going to request of the Speaker of the House of Commons that an enquiry into the ‘grooming’ scandal be conducted by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. Farage is saying that this would be relatively speedy, and as well as being cross-party would have the advantage of compelling with witnesses to attend and to give evidence under oath.

Now that the colder weather is approaching, I am paying particular attention to the quality of footwear if only because wet leaves can be as slippery as ice if you have large leaves made wet by the rain. In the past, two members of my family and one of my students have been laid low by rushing about in the Autumn and slipping on wet leaves, so this is not a hazard lightly to be discounted. I have started wearing some desert-style boots which have Vibram-like soles and a good ankle support and I think that as one gets older, good footwear becomes and more important. On the High street, our domestic help directed me to a charity shop which always seems to stock some good quality men’s shirts. I have bought two of these recently and they are the Marks and Spencer ‘Easy Care’ range which I think means that after a careful wash and drying, they do not really need ironing. The three I have bought recently have all washed and dried excellently and I am getting to the point where some of my shirts with frayed collar and cuffs have to be relegated to gardening level or recycled.

The evening before yesterday was quite a fine but chilly afternoon and I had scheduled that I would get our back lawn cut. This I did but I motivated myself with a good hot cup of drinking chocolate before I eventually ventured outside. This is going to be the second last cut of the season and it would not be desperate if it turned out to be the last one but in two weeks time I anticipate the last cut of the year before the mower gets put to bed for the winter. In the evening, I went to church which is my Saturday early evening routine and our new priest announced a little innovation which I believe is going to be welcome. In theological terms, November 1st is ‘All Souls’ Day in which one particularly remembers those loved ones who have died in the past year. Our new priest was going to produce a special ‘In memoriam’ book which would have its place inside the sanctuary of the church during the whole of November. In addition, as ‘All Souls Day’ falls on a Saturday, he was going to have a special service to be held on the following Monday and the sentiment was expressed that members of the parish community might like to attend on that day to celebrate the life of their departed one. I filled in Meg’s details on a specially provided envelope so that these can be inscribed into the book and, as this is the year’s of Meg’s death, I feel as though I ought to attend this year of all years so that is something in prospect in about a week’s time. You well and truly know that autumn has arrived when the clocks go back and people look forward to an extra hour in bed but I actually spent that extra hour in getting my various clocks and timepieces to show the correct time. In many cases, this is a simple adjustment but I have one or two timepieces where it is especially awkward involving taking off the back and a pendulum in the case of the miniature grandmother clock I have above the desk in our Main Lounge. In the morning, I stared in some disbelief at one of our ‘Pure’ radios which should have updated itself automatically but failed to do so – this was easily remedied by plugging it in and then plugging it back again which forced the system to download the correct time. The car which I acquired from my son during the past year might prove to be a challenge but I was fortunate as the system updated itself automatically without any intervention. Domestically, the hunt continues for the prisoner who was a convicted sex offender destined for deportation but who was accidentally released about three days ago. The man appears to be in a state of utter confusion and hung about outside the prison once released asking on several occasions where he should go in order to be deported! Eventually the prison staff directed him to the train station from which he caught a rain into central London. The hunt continues and he has been spotted on a video in a library in London but was eventually caught after a tip-off by a member of the public. As time progresses, it appears likely that he might never be located because some members of the emigré  Ethiopian community might have ‘rescued’ him  and possibly he is now secure in a house from which he might not emerge for months. One would have thought that the release from prison by mistake was an extraordinarily rare event but this is not the case as apparently some 262 prisoners were wrongly released in the past year. The prison service has been so denuded of staff in government cutbacks that mistakes like this are almost bound to occur. When it comes to HMP Chelmsford – which is where Kebatu was being held – a report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons said the facility faced considerable pressures because of national capacity issues. There is now going to be a massive political debate about the state of our prisons with the opposition parties taking every opportunity to blame the government as the release occurred during their watch but, in truth, the under-funding of our public services has proceeded apace for several years when both Conservatives and Labour have been in power.

I had reconciled myself to a Sunday where I was very much left to my own devices as my son and daughter-in-law were away and my University of Birmingham friend had engagements elsewhere. So I decided that I would visit the parish hall attached to the church at the conclusion of the second service of the morning and so having collected a copy of my Sunday  newspaper I timed my visit to the church just when I judged it was ending. As I generally attend the service on a Saturday evening, I have lost contact with the other two thirds of the parish who attend the two services on Sunday morning and a visit to the social centre might be a good way of reestablishing some contacts. There was only a small group of us who attended for coffee and biscuits  but I sat and spent a pleasant half an hour with so with two other parishioners. One was a widow who had moved up from the South of England about eight years ago whilst the other was a much younger person who hailed from Brazil. I had taken with me some copies of my eulogy for Meg which they accepted and said they would read later at home. At the end of the day, I had contacts with two people for a pleasant conversation and if I had not made the effort, I would not have spoken to anybody all day. Next week, I shall repeat this experiment but might go for the earlier service two hours earlier, particular as the two ladies with whom I had been conversing indicated that they would not be there next week in any case. I augmented some of the remains of yesterday’s meal with some chicken pieces and cooked some carrots and broccoli alongside this before I contemplated how to spend the afternoon which, by now with the hour going back was quite dark and dull. Despite the theme not being the most suitable for someone in my situation, culminating as it does with the death of a beloved partner, I hunted out some recordings of ‘La Bohème’ where I thought I could just play some of the essential bits of the story (the initial meeting between Rodolfo and Mimi where the fall in love, the scene from the Christmas Eve party in the café Momus and the final, extended death scene) If any of the friends who may come to visit me are not familiar with opera, then here are some highlights with which I can entertain them (or bore them to tears, until they beg to leave!).

Now that autumn is well and truly upon us my thoughts are turning to things that need to be done and plans that need to be made. The prospect for this weekend is for the lawns to receive their penultimate cut (the last one I schedule for 5th November which is a date easy to remember) Many people might think that the grass has now effectively stopped growing so what is the point of waiting for another two weeks before the final cut. But I take on board a magnificent tip which  heard from the well-known gardener  and broadcaster, Alan Titchmarsh. After the leaves have fallen and, hopefully, a frost has dried them up somewhat, then a final cut of the lawnmower is particularly useful for the grass. This is because the action of the lawnmower (and particularly a mulching mower of the sort that I have) has the effect of chopping the leaves into much smaller pieces. Then, unseen to all of us, the worms get to work and gradually drag the leaf fragments under the surface off the soil making for an excellent lawn fertiliser so that the lawn can get off to a flying start in the spring. And  I always take care to ‘winterise’ my lawnmower to ensure that all of the petrol in the tank is used up or emptied and, of course, the season’s oil removed. But the other seasonal task is to think ahead to what my Pilates teacher calls the dreaded ‘C’ word by which she means Christmas. At this time of year, many families are thinking about or actively planning a break to coincide with the  Halloween/Bonfire Night celebrations which is the last break just before Christmas. But  I have started to think early about Christmas because whilst the nation’s attention is diverted onto other things, there are things like hotel bedrooms and train tickets that need to be booked. Now these always rise very sharply once Halloween is out of the way but I have started to think about planning the winter trip to my family in Yorkshire whilst the hotel rooms are still available and the cheaper train tickets not all snapped up. I have made some provisional enquiries and the prices are still reasonable but I need to stay my hand for a few days until I have had a chance to consult with relevant others a good time to make my trip and for some funds to flow into my bank account. The hotel and the booking agency that I usually use for booking my Yorkshire trip have a variety of prices but one mid-range price has the option of allowing a cancellation until a few days beforehand and only taking payment in mid-December so this is the most sensible option to cater for unseen contingencies. I have read the following on Sky News with a certain amount of ‘schadenfreude’. More than 2,000 counterfeit weight loss jabs have been confiscated from a factory in Northampton, in what is believed to be the world’s largest seizure. The UK’s medicines regulator and police joined forces to smash the illicit facility, which was manufacturing and distributing unlicensed products. Labels suggested the knock-off pens contained tirzepatide, an ingredient found in Mounjaro. But Eli Lilly, the company behind the real medication, said anyone who bought these jabs on the black market would have no way of knowing what they actually contain. I am always amazed about the gullibility of people who buy drugs off the internet knowing what an ‘unregulated Wild West’ we know the internet to be. But the demand in the UK is enormous as an estimated 1.5 million people in the UK are currently on weight loss drugs, with the majority (over 90%) obtaining them privately. While a growing number are eligible for NHS prescriptions, the current rollout is limited, with plans to cover a smaller number of patients over the next few years.  

Later in the morning, I went down into town parking the car in one of the top of the town carparks and then walked down the High Street to meet a couple of my Saturday morning friends for coffee. We are normally joined by a third friend but she is now in hospital following a chest infection and this may have worsened whilst she has been in hospital, allied to which she may have a foot problem as well. So we are worried about our friend who normally has to get to us in her motorised wheelchair and we are fearful as to what the immediate future holds for her. After I left my friends,  I went into the charity shop which normally has a good range of men’s shirts and bought a couple of Marks and Spencer ‘EasyCare’ shorts which I believe are non-iron and retail for £40 each but I only paid £5 for each of them. They have been popped straight into the wash and when they emerge from the dryer, I will better be able to assess how ‘non-iron’ they will actually prove to be. After I had got the washing going, I made myself some lunch which consisted of throwing some fragments of cubed meat into the remains of a curry and supplementing this with some carrots and beans.

Experts are warning that without fast changes the UK could run out of drinking water in the future. The first seven months of 2025 were the driest since 1976, with reservoirs across England only 56.1% full on average, according to the Environment Agency. Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology from Reading University, told Sky News that she thought that all need to worry about the fact that there is this possibility we could run out. She expressed the view that ‘It is only if we start thinking like that, that we are going to start conserving our water, otherwise we just take it completely for granted. It is all of our fault, we have not been paying attention to what is going on… we need some very fast changes to the way that we are using water and the way that we are storing water in order to stop this being a problem in the future, because our summers are only going to get hotter.’ By 2050, the government says that England could face a shortfall of five billion litres of water every day.

The evening before yesterday was the day upon which the induction of our new parish priest was due to take place. I set off for the church in plenty of time but the church car park was actually being reserved for the numerous fellow clergy who were due to attend so I was directed to park in the adjacent school playground which had been pressed into service as an overflow car park. The service was beautifully constructed and I could not help thinking was put together so much better than the previous one about three yeas ago. It was quite a poignant night for me in the church and I could not help thinking that Meg would have loved every minute of it. Then we came to the function held afterwards in a local pub. Having equipped myself with a pint of John Smiths bitter and then a plateful of food, I originally sat down with a Geordie parishioner who I know quite well and chatted with the people on the same table before I took the opportunity to ‘circulate’ around the room and have chats with some people that I knew. All in all, I had a wonderful evening and I took the opportunity to give one or two selected people who had known Meg a copy of the funeral eulogy which was actually a very good summary of her life and achievements. Towards the end of the evening, I made contact with a priest who was the brother of one of the leading lights of our parish but whose parish is normally in Lancashire except when he has occasionally been called upon to be a ‘relief’ priest in the case of vacations. This priest has an enormously warm and engaging personality and every parishioner who has come into contact with him has felt enriched by the experience. I reminded him that years before we had asked him to perform a blessing over the ‘Virgin of Guadeloupe’ medallion given to Meg by our son’s Mexican family and worn every single day until (and including) the day of her death and now in the safe possession of a niece in Yorkshire. I think the priest was quite touched to be reminded of this and had some wonderful consoling words for me So the function broke up at 11.00pm and I was the last car in the car park and so was relieved not to get locked in but the night held some very special memories for me. A special booklet for the ‘Order of Service’ had been produced and this contained some fascinating facts about the history of the church. For example, I knew that Edward Elgar had visited the church but had not appreciated that he was a frequent visitor and played the organ in the church whenever he visited. I must say that it was quite a heartwarming experience to be felt to be part of a larger community but with the inevitable facts of biology playing out, there were several widows present in the congregation but I think I was the only evident widower. As the night had been so late (for me) and the weather sharply colder this morning, I allowed myself the luxury (necessity?) of staying for an extra hour in bed in the morning. After I had a leisurely breakfast and a good read of yesterday’s newspapers, I set off down the hill by car and then walked along the High Street to my favourite charity shop-cum-cafe to which it is my habit to repair in Friday morning. There I had some coffee and had some delicious moist apple-and-sultana cake. Being a charity, they have some supporters who cook a range of cakes which they then sell in the cafe to assist in their fundraising. After that, I took the opportunity to get some money out of a nearby ATM and returned home. After last night’s feasting, I did not feel particularly hungry but had a meal of mackerel fillets on salad leaves which was more than sufficient for me. It seemed quite a fine bright afternoon so I resolved to do the second last grass cut of the season. This went as planned but the grass seemed pretty thick to me on this occasion and I was fortunate in that I had just finished and was cleaning up the mower, when the skies darkened and it started to spot with rain so I had just completed my task in time.  

I could not believe my eyes when I saw what Donald Trump has been doing to the White House. After denying that he was going to alter the existing structure, the whole of the historic East Wing has been demolished or will be in a day or so.  Trump denied that he was going to do this but has now gone ahead and the destruction, along with some historic trees, is practically complete. As roaring machinery tore down one side of the White House, President Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that he was having the entire East Wing demolished to make way for his 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a striking expansion of a project that is remaking the profile of one of the nation’s most iconic buildings. Mr. Trump was unsentimental as news of the demolition spread. ‘It was never thought of as being much,’ he said of the East Wing, which was home to the first lady’s office and spaces used for ceremonial purposes. ‘It was a very small building.’ The process of tearing down the East Wing was expected to be completed as soon as this weekend, two senior administration officials said, as Mr. Trump moved rapidly to carry out a passion project that he said was necessary to host state dinners and other events. But the previously unannounced decision to demolish the East Wing was at odds with Mr. Trump’s previous statements about the project, and underscored his intention to blast through the sensibilities of many in Washington to continue putting a lasting imprint on the White House. The president also said on Wednesday that the ballroom would cost $300 million, $100 million more than initially estimated. ‘In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,’ Mr. Trump said. He also said — somewhat cryptically — that certain areas are being left. But the two senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans, confirmed that the entire East Wing was being demolished. The West Wing and the White House residence, where the president lives, are not affected by the project, which is the largest renovation to the White House in decades. According to computer-generated impression of what the new ballroom will look like, it will completely dwarf he West Wing in scale and make the whole architecture of the White House completely unbalanced. Now renovations and alterations have been done by past presidents but the size and scale of this latest venture is completely unprecedented. Certain sections of conservative (not MAGA-land ) members of the American public are privately appalled but Trump being a law unto himself has sought no approval or expert view. If I were the next president, I would

I awoke this morning after a little nightmare of the type that makes you feel glad to wake up and realise that it was not real. My dream upon awakening combined two familiar elements in my present and past life. I was on a train and could not find my ticket amidst all of the other out-of-date tickets which I as carrying in my wallet. Then my travelling companion who was a colleague with whom I team taught a course enquired whether I had marked all of the student assignments ready to hand back to the students at the end of our journey – needless to say, he had done his quota but I had not marked mine which only added to my distress. Perhaps it was because I have a busy day in front of me that I had this sort of nightmare but when I do have dreams of this sort, it is nearly always looking frantically (and never finding!) something I had lost and badly needed.

A massive domestic political row is taking place over the ‘grooming gangs’ enquiry which is getting off to the trickiest of starts. All survivors who have resigned from the government’s grooming gangs inquiry panel will consider returning if safeguarding minister Jess Phillips resigns.  The four women who have resigned this week have written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, calling for Ms Phillips to step down and all survivors to be consulted on appointing a senior judge as chair with no major conflicts of interest. Ms Phillips told parliament on Tuesday suggestions the scope of the inquiry was to be expanded from just grooming gangs were ‘categorically untrue’. But leaked consultation documents and texts between the safeguarding minister and survivor Fiona Goddard show the survivors’ concerns that the scope would be expanded were valid. The survivors’ letter says: ‘Being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again. It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained.’ The survivors have demanded the scope of the inquiry remain ‘laser-focused’ on grooming gangs and called for victims to be free to speak to support networks without fear of reprisal. An independent mental health professional should replace the current victim liaison lead, they also wrote. The letter to Ms Mahmood says: “Her [Ms Phillips’] conduct over the last week has shown she is unfit to oversee a process that requires survivors to trust the government. Her departure would signal you are serious about accountability and changing direction. The survivors describe their demands as ‘the absolute bare minimum for survivors to trust that this inquiry will be different from every other process that has let us down’. Now it very difficult to really know what is going on here because I have had, and still have, the highest regard for Jess Phillips, who has devoted practically the whole of her political life to highlighting the lot of abused women and children and for whom these accusations sound completely out of character. It could be that Jess Phillips has been ‘bounced’ by Home Office officials who want the whole affair to quietly go away or its impact to be minimised. Trying to get some background to this story, I eventually found a long account in the (right wing) ‘Spectator’ magazine which appeared, on the surface at least, to have a good handle on what was going on. The article starts off with the reaction of Jess Phillips when she was informing the House of Commons about the government’s view of the whole scandal. If Ms Phillips’s spoken words confirmed her government’s fundamental lack of interest in grappling with the ‘grooming gangs’ scourge, her noiseless irritation upon hearing other MPs speak candidly about those gangs exposed something darker.  If the government cannot see how awful these optics are, how infuriating the sight of huffing ministers will be to the vast majority of Brits, then it must be even more lost than I thought. Finally Phillips responded to Lam. ‘I think it’s a shame that [Lam] only referred to one sort of child-abuse victim’, she said. Because when it comes to this vile crime, there ‘should be no hierarchy’ of victims. What incalculable gall. Jess, that is precisely the point Lam and others are making: that white working-class girls were not only savagely abused by gangs of men but also ruthlessly demoted down the ‘hierarchy of victimhood’ by a political class that cares virtually nothing for them and the Spectator concluded by saying ‘Don’t huff – it’s the truth.’

I was just getting to leave the house to do my Tai Chi class this morning when my Droitwich friend, recently returned from South Africa, phoned to ask she could drop by for a coffee. I knew that I was going to have a tight turn around after Tai Chi to be at home for.my chiropodist’s appointment so I decided to forego Tai Chi for one week so that I could have a snatched coffee with my friend. Afterwards, it was time to go shopping but next week promises to be a fairly light week as I am stocked up on a lot of the usual items and so  decided to whizz around  the local Aldi which might be quicker than the alternative. Once I returned home and unpacked the shopping, I made myself a light lunch and looked forward to my son calling around as he indicated in a text message that he would. We chatted over things domestic, family-related and political before he had to leave. In the evening there is going to be a special church service in which our new parish priest is due to be ‘inducted’ in his new role and afterwards there is to be a social event in a nearby pub to which all of the parish are invited. I imagine that tonight might be teeming so I intend to leave in plenty of time to ensure that I secure a parking place and the social event may prove to be interesting as well. It may be that there are people that I know vaguely by sight and knew Meg and myself as a couple. So I have prepared my little script for when people enquire as to the status of Meg’s health and how the news and circumstances of her death are communicated to the people that I may well meet.

We now know that the inflation rate, published yesterday, has come in at a figure of 3.8% and not hit 4.0% as some had predicted. This fact alone will save the government quite a lot pf money as a whole range of benefits are linked, by law, to the inflation rate for September (published in October) of the previous year. But what the government has gained on the roundabouts, it may have lost on the swings as it were as the retirement pension, subject to the triple lock, will now rise by 4.8% which mirrors the recent growth in incomes. Since the introduction of the triple lock in 2011, the value of the state pension has risen much faster than either average earnings or prices. At £241 per week, a full new state pension is expected to be £30 per week (14%) higher than it would have been under average earnings indexation since 2011. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the triple lock has pushed up spending on the state pension so that it now (2025–26) costs the government £12 billion more per year than the cost would have been if the state pension would have been uprated in line with average earnings since 2011.  On the domestic front, our domestic help called around in the morning as she had attended a funeral on her usual day. We exchanged our usual round of domestic and family-related news with each other as we always do. I was feeling pretty tired in the morning having got up so early to go the airport the day before, so am enjoying a quieter day. I had spent some time the previous evening reminding myself how I could protect a file which had posted onto one of my websites. I know of this fantastic piece of software which encrypts the whole of one’s file with a password and encodes the password repeatedly into the encrypted file, working in an extremely clever way. So the password is not stored anywhere and if you ever forget it and do not have access to the original, then you are stuck for ever.

The conflict in the Ukraine seems to be going nowhere fast, A one stage, it looked as though Trump was losing patience with Putin but Trump blows hot and cold at the drop of a hat and now seems to be swinging firmly behind Russia. Donald Trump has said he did not want a wasted meeting after a plan to have face-to-face talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine were put on hold. The US president indicated that a key sticking point remained Moscow’s refusal to cease fighting along the current front line, in remarks at the White House on Tuesday. Earlier, a White House official had said there were no plan for a Trump-Putin meeting in the immediate future, after Trump said on Thursday that the two would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks. Key differences between US and Russian proposals for peace became increasingly clear this week, appearing to have dashed chances of a summit. To most observers, Putin now seems to be playing Trump and has apparently made no concessions of any kind. The latest madness in which Trump is engaged is to demolish part of the East Wing of the White house in order to make space for a huge ballroom, Mar-a-Lago style (i.e. gaudy and tasteless) In so doing, the Rose Garden established by Jacqueline Kennedy has been paved over in what appears to be an act of pure vandalism. It seems that Trump may be within his rights to do such a thing but nobody has been able to ascertain who will pay the thousands, if not millions, of dollars to carry out the work. Trump is saying that the work will be funded by ‘patriots’ but, like so much else, appears murky in the extreme. Presidents have remodelled parts of the White House in the past but the East wing, by tradition, is regarded as the province of the ‘First Lady’ but it is being said that Melania Trump has spent less than 14 days in the White House since last January and therefore, one supposes, could not care less about what is going on in the East Wing. It seems she spends. a fair amount of time in Trump Tower in New York but, apart from contacting Putin over the state of the kidnapped Ukrainian children seems to keep well out of her husband’s way unless it is absolutely necessary that they be seen together.

In the morning, I was still feeling pretty tired after the really early start of yesterday and so busied myself with a computer task which was to locate the files which tell me the location of each of my ‘domestic’ files within the study. Since I turned the study around last April, this system has worked extremely well for me but I still needed to know the location of my index files. For some reason, the ‘Finder’ app on my Apple Mac does not seem to play ball but with a combination of some inspired guesswork, I managed to find out where my files were. But it took me the best morning of the morning to accomplish this task after a degree of frustration. In the very late morning, I went down by car to pick up my newspaper and then returned home to have a ‘quickie’ but healthy lunch of a tin of tuna on some salad leaves. Today is the day when our domestic rubbish bins go out and fortunately, I remembered, just in time, that I needed to label my bin with my newly acquired wheelie bin number, acquired last week. In the late afternoon, I composed a long text to one of my friends and wanted to correct a word with a typo in it and succeeded in deleting the whole lot of it. On a computer, you can always press ‘Ctrl Z’ to effect an undo of the last action and I have just consulted Google to see what is done on a smart phone. The answer is the equivalent of ‘undo’ while texting is, according to Google, to use a two-finger swipe left on the keyboard to undo recent text or shake your iPhone to bring up the undo typing option. To redo, swipe right on the keyboard with two fingers or shake again. This I must experiment with to make sure the problem does not happen again.

The day before yesterday, I spent some time printing out the two long documents being the ‘Letter from Madrid’ followed by the ‘Letter from Jakarta’ which I had written decades before. On one occasion the printer jammed but I am fairly used to this happening on occasion and I have some techniques for the removal of paper jammed inside. But although it seems to function correctly, a red warning light now seems to be permanently stuck on, for a reason that I cannot discern. It could be that the printer is now some 15 years old and nearing the end of its life and the machine s trying to tell me something but I will press on as long as I can and I still have adequate supplies of toner for it. Yesterday, there was a major internet outage as an Amazon web server located in North America had developed a fault and the problem rapidly escalated with, at one point in the morning, banks, airlines and even HMRC affected by the outage. This had me very concerned because my Droitwich friend was flying back from South Africa after the extended stay she has had with her family and I feared that the South African airport and the airline itself might be caught up in the wash, as it were. My texts did seem to be delayed in being delivered but I was very relieved to be informed that she was on her flight and seemed to have taken off on time. I have been asked to pick her up from the airport which I will willingly do but everything will still be dark at the time she is scheduled to arrive and picking up at Birmingham airport is always a bit nightmarish – still, I am sure that we will manage. I did not sleep particularly well during the night but got up before 5.00am and left the house just before 6.00am as my friend’s flight was scheduled to arrive at 6.40am. The roads to the airport were not particularly busy but I got to the airport in plenty pf time and loitered for a little in the ‘drop of’ lane where I ought not to have been to while away some minutes. Then I entered the premium zone for picking up passengers (£6 for the first 15 minutes), made my way to the entrance/exit of the arrivals hall and then my friend and I pinged texts to each other until we eventually met up and got on our way. By this time, it was starting to get light and the weather was not raining so we went straight to her house in Droitwich to have a welcome cup of coffee and an exchange of all of our news. Then my friend set to work straight away (as so much of her work is done online and at home) and I made my way back to Bromsgrove, eventually making contact with my two ‘Tuesday morning’ coffee friends and we enjoyed a coffee and a toasted teacake together. Whilst I was on the High Street, I took the opportunity to purchase a good quality (‘Van Heusen’) shirt from a charity shop which happened to be just my size. I always examine the collar and cuffs well in shirts that I buy like this and being a good quality make, it even had spare buttons supplied with it, as well as a breast pocket which many shirts do not have these days, perhaps as a cost-cutting measure.  Then I got home, collected my thoughts a little and then went down to do my Pilates session for the week although, in all honesty I was feeling pretty exhausted by this time with having slept so little the night before. After I returned home, I finished off some curry I had in the fridge and then dozed whilst watching some of the liberal American media political websites railing against Trump and the MAGA crowd.

The attention of many financial commentators, as well as pensioners themselves will be fixed on the inflation rate due to be announced tomorrow. Inflation is tipped to come in at its highest level since January last year on Wednesday morning. A 4% figure is expected to be revealed by the Office for National Statistics- up from the current 3.8% rate. Inflation measures the pace of price shifts across different sectors of the economy on a rolling 12-month basis. Those shifts are then used to create a headline figure. The increase in the consumer prices index measure this time, economists say, is likely to have been driven by fuel prices rising last month when they fell sharply during September 2024. Other factors may include rising prices for second-hand cars. The UK state pension is expected to rise by 4.8% from April 2026, driven by average earnings growth. This increase is based on the triple lock mechanism, which uses the highest of CPI inflation, average earnings growth, or 2.5%. As September’s inflation figures are not yet available, the 4.8% average earnings growth figure is the likely basis for the rise. The Average earnings growth (including bonuses) for May to July was revised up to 4.8%. The so-called ‘Triple Lock’ will be used in the calculations. The state pension increases by the highest of three measures: the September CPI inflation figure, average earnings growth (May-July), or 2.5%. A 4.8% increase could take the full new state pension above the income tax personal allowance of £12,570 for the first time, meaning some pensioners may have to pay income tax. Now there are a couple of things that need to be noted about the rise in pensioner incomes over the past decade or so. It is undoubtedly true that the triple lock has helped to improve the lot of pensioners as a group to the point at which the rise in their income has proceeded at a faster rate than the rise of public sector incomes as a whole. But politically, the triple lock is proving to be very hard to either abandon or to modify – the elderly are the biggest source of support for the Tory party so they will always look after their own. Similarly, after the ‘winter fuel’ debacle, the Labour party does not have the elderly in its sights (although expensive cars may be removed from the ‘Blue Badge’ scheme) However, the Labour government could decide to honour the rate of increase for next Spring but to alter the rate for subsequent years by taking, for example, the average of the three measures or only basing their calculations on the second highest figure. I would be amazed if the Labour Party did not attempt a reform like this in their November budget. I suspect that when the definitive economic history of the past decade or so comes to be written, it will be documented that quite large transfers of wealth took place when more affluent pensioners help to draw the sting of university fees or to help their grandchildren with a deposit for their first home.

So, I awake this morning to another really dark and gloomy day. According to the BBC’s weather information, we are due to have a thundery and showery day today with rain persisting all day until about 8.00pm in the evening. So, this means that whatever else I do today, like putting petrol in the car, I shall avoid my daily walk and getting thoroughly soaked but do everything that I need to do by car. As I surveyed the international news yesterday, I was amazed not to say disappointed, at how little attention is being paid in the British media to what is happening in the USA at the moment. There is a huge anti-Trump so-called ‘No Kings’ opposition movement to the creeping authoritarianism which is so much a feature of current USA politics. The term ‘No Kings’ derives from an artificially generally image in which Trump allowed himself to be depicted as a king complete with crown. King George III was the British monarch who lost the American colonies during the American Revolutionary War. He reigned from 1760 to 1820, a period during which the thirteen American colonies declared independence and won their freedom from British rule. So the ‘No Kings’ movement derives its name from the period when the Americans felt themselves to be governed from afar with no democratic rights. The ‘No Kings’ movement had organised anti-Trump rallies across many cities the length and breadth of the United States and the number of demonstrators is in the hundreds of thousands if not millions and is said to be the largest protest in American political history (but not regarded as newsworthy in the UK!) Trump and his supporters have responded by allowing an AI generated image to be broadcast in which Trump, naturally wearing a crown, is flying a fighter aircraft, ‘Top Gun’ style, over the demonstrating crows dropping huge balls of what the BC quaintly calls brown sludge (but it is obviously intended to be turds of excrement) over the crowds labelling them as ‘Hate America’ rallies. The ‘No Kings’ movement are making great efforts to keep the movement completely violence-free so that Trump does not have the excuse of seizing people and whisking them away (which is what the ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are doing to anybody who looks as though they may be an undocumented migrant, even if they are full US citizens) There are serious political commentators who are arguing that the USA is on the verge of a fascist takeover and we must remind ourselves that Hitler came to power democratically before dismantling the opposition to his regime. Meanwhile, in domestic politics, it looks as though our Royal Family are in a huge effort to distance themselves from Prince Andrew practically banishing him from their midst. It now looks as it will be revealed in the Virginia Giuffre posthumous book that Andrew had sex with her on at least three occasions, treating her as some kind of sex slave and maintained contact with Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker who committed suicide in prison long after his previous denials had indicated. So, Prince Andrew is regarded, probably quite rightly, as toxic and the publicity is undermining everything for which the Royal Family stands.

As yesterday was to be quite a ‘light’ day with no particular commitments, I decided to run off the hard copy for some files. One such was easily accessible and was the two page eulogy/summary of Meg’s life and work. I have run off some extra copies of this because on Thursday evening, during the social event which follows the induction of our new parish priest, I am bound to see some parish acquaintances who will probably enquire after Meg. To those who are interested, I can give them this two-page summary which says about as much as one needs to say but I have also appended my business card so that people have my contact details should they need them. The other two documents relate to the periods that I spent abroad, on my own, one undertaking a sabbatical term at the Complutense University of Madrid and the other as a tutor on the De Montfort University MBA programme in Jakarta, Indonesia. At the time, I was in the habit of listening to Alistair Cooke’s ‘Letter from America’ which were weekly talks on American life, history and politics from 1946 – 2004 and which were broadcast each week on Radio 4. Over 58 years, this had quite a following and so when I was in Madrid, and later in Jakarta, I used to pen a few hundred words each night on the happenings of the day and some of my reflections upon them and were then sent home as ‘Carta de Madrid’ (Letter from Madrid) and later ‘Letter from Jakarta’ The ‘Letter from Madrid’ I used to post to Meg each week and she used to photocopy them and put a copy in each person’s pigeon hole (a name given to a set of open boxes in the departmental office where written communications were left for individual members of staff -the physical structure as well as the term ‘pigeon hole’ must now be redundant in this internet age) The reactions from my colleagues was interesting, so Meg told me – some members of staff read them with great interest whilst others threw them unread straight into the waste paper bin. The location of these documents took some hunting for on my computer system because the first was written some thirty-five years ago and the second thirty-one years ago. Initially these documents were hard to locate as I had put them into an archaic folder called ‘blog’ although I must have posted them there some years afterwards. Consulting the web, I discover that the term ‘blog’ was coined by shortening the term ‘weblog,’ which was created by Jorn Barger in 1997 and later, Peter Merhilz created the shorter version ‘blog’ in 1999. What I was writing was not a true blog or internet diary at the time but the folder name must have seemed appropriate to me some time later. Having located these precious files, I then went late into town by car (although the weather had brightened considerably by then), filled the car up with petrol and then had a free coffee in Waitrose before I came home to cook myself a curry lunch.