First of all, I would like to issue an apology to regular readers of this blog as it appeared to be’down’ for the best part of the day on Saturday, 13th December, 2025. The problem related to a domain name issue which is now fortunately resolved and I am relieved that all is working correctly. But I am very aware that things can, and do, occasionally go wrong and having put so much investment into these blogs (for more than five and a half years now) I would be loathe to lose the lot. So readers may not know that I have always maintained a parallel ‘back up’ copy of the blog which is written completely in .html (Hyper Text Mark up Language) and maintained on a completely different server and this is always accessible should the first site go down, as it did recently. But readers will need to take a note of the address of this back-up, text based version where you just pick the day that you wished to read from one of a series of tables and the results are practically the same. This address needs to be written down and kept in a safe place so that you can always see this if the ‘main’ site goes down. The address is quite a simple one and it is
http://mch-net.uk
and you can always copy and paste this link into the browser of whatever technology you happen to be using which is typically ‘Safari’ in the case of iPads and iPhones. So that has got the ‘housekeeping’ out of the way and my apologies once again to regular readers. The night before yesterday I went to church as normal for a Saturday morning and gave (and received) a Christmas card from one of the regular parishioners who regularly sits near me in the church. In the morning, I did not have my usual visit from my University of Birmingham friend so I intend to walk down into town and post the remaining cards that I hand deliver and then my Christmas card duties are done for this year with a supply to hand for regular callers to the house and for anybody who sends one to me who had been left off the list. Although I sent a Christmas containing some photos to the mother of my Droitwich friend, what I have read on the web is chilling. From what I read, it reckoned that the card might take 2-4 months to arrive and there was a 50% chance that it would never arrive at all and that I really should have sent it via a Courier service such as DHL and not relied upon the South African postal service at all, which is notoriously unreliable (and bankrupt, by some accounts). So I have a backup plan which is to put the two photos in some of my own webspace where they are accessible once you know the web address which I will give to my friend to forward to her Mum. Actually, I spent a large part of the morning constructing the files to make the website to protect the website. Although there are simple website protection tools, they are easily hacked and therefore the industry standard is to use two files one of which contains the encrypted password and is stored in a different (and not accessible folder) so the user has to know the correct path from the server to this location and you generally need to use another piece of software to help you do this. At the end of the morning, though, I got the website protected in the way that I wanted and am generally quite pleased but it did take me some time to do this.
I set off to walk down the hill and took the opportunity to hand deliver my last four cards on my journey down. I had a coffee in the store and then on my back met a very old lady that Meg and I used to see regularly in our walks in the park – actually, I believe that her husband had worked in the Parks and Highways department and they had a bench with his name on it in the park. This old lady was 90 and very, very frail so I took her arm so that she could walk round to her next doot neighbours and hand deliver her Christmas card to them. Then I walked her back home as I was fearful that although the distance was not great, she could have fallen if not given a friendly arm to assist her. Then when I got home, I rested for a while and then served myself some of the huge chicken stew meal that my Droitwich friend and I had prepared the day before. I started to watch the latest version of ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’ starring Martin Clunes who was excellent in this role. but I only watched about half an hour of the film because my son and daughter-in-law called around and chatting with them took priority over film-watching and dinner-eating. We discussed some aspects of Meg’s final illness and then made sure that we had all of the arrangements for our Christmas meal as we are sharing the preparation between us and I am to be responsible for the starter and some of the sweets. The week ahead is to rather a truncated one. On Tuesday, I shall certainly attend the carol concert to be held in my local church if only because we have the promise of mince pies and a cup of tea immediately after the event in the parish hall and I will seize the opportunity to socialise a bit. Although Wednesday is now my regular shopping day, I shall be leaving to go on my Yorkshire trip on Friday and will be away until the following Monday so I probably need to run down the supplies of food that I do have in stock. Thinking ahead to the week immediately before Christmas, we have a Pilates class on the Tuesday before the ‘big day’ so I need to ensure that I have supplies of damson gin bottled up so that I can do my traditional Santa Claus appearance in the class. I normally wear some of the outfit underneath my normal trousers so that I can undergo a quick change whilst we are having our traditional ‘relaxation’ at the end of the class. Fortunately, the numbers are quite small so I am hopeful that I still have enough damson gin in stock from a couple of years ago. Taking a Christmas present up to my sister can probably wait until I actually get up there as it will so much easier to buy something on the spot in Harrogate. Although I do enjoy seeing part of my Yorkshire family, I shall still be alone in a hotel bedroom for the three nights of my stay and I do appreciate that at Christmas time my wider family are exceptionally busy themselves with a host of other activities which all seem to cluster at about this time.