I thought that I had brought everything away with me that I could possibly need and whilst this was true of what you might call kitchenware equipment, I found that I had forgotten to bring away my computer mouse with me. This is not as calamitous as it sounds because the laptop (a MacBook in my case) has a very good inbuilt trackpad which some experienced users prefer to a mouse. But in my case, I had hardly used the trackpad so there are various things that I literally did not know. So I needed to consult the web to discover how to perform the equivalent of a right click on a computer mouse and the answer is surprisingly simple if you know how, being a two fingered tap on the trackpad which is fine once you act actually know about it. Similarly the ‘Delete’ function had to be learnt as there is no button actually labelled ‘Delete’ on my MacBook so I had to learn that this is done by a combination of Control+Back Space which, again, works fine once you know about it. So last night took me quite a long time and some experimentation how to put my blog to bed but the time spent alone in my hotel bedroom was not really wasted because I have learnt how to do things without a mouse that I did not know beforehand. I did not sleep particularly well in a strange bed although the room is well designed and perfect for my needs with a good desk upon which I can put the laptop and a suitable plug point nearby, which is not always the case. In the event, I got up some time before 4.00am and spent some time installing and deleting apps on my laptop and generally maintaining things before I started to get into a more routine from 6.00am onwards. The news media is full of details of the newly released Epstein files which should have been published in full by last Friday. In practice, the Trump administration has only released the first tranche in which, surprise! surprise! Bill Clinton appears very well represented but Trump is shown only in one photograph although we know from the White House Chief of staff that Trump has been warned that there is some material relating to him which will have to be released eventually. It seems that the White House has a strategy to release anything that shows the Democrats in a bad light and then hope that the public as a whole gets bored so that in a couple of weeks time (just after Christmas?) people will be bored by it all and the damage that might accrue to Trump is correspondingly limited. Having made an early start to the day, though, I will have to ensure that I am all washed, scrubbed and fed and leave the hotel by about 8.30am as I need to walk into town, do some present shopping for my sister and some wine for Sunday and then catch the train to Knaresborough and back again to see my other niece later on in the afternoon. So I need to keep a careful watch on my train times and how long it will take me to access the stations.
I made my way into town but there was a very cold freezing fog as I walked into town. I made my way into Marks and Spencers and bought a bottle of wine for consumption at the meal tomorrow. At my niece’s instigation, I bought a variety of fruit and some Belgian chocolates to provide a composite Christmas present but in the absence of wrapping paper, I had them packed into a seasonal Marks and Spencer bag and gave strict instructions that they were not to be opened until Christmas Day itself. My sister and I talked over some of the grief stricken moments that we had both experienced during the deaths of our respective spouses but we mainly talked over family matters until the time came for lunch. I accompanied my sister to the beautiful dining room where the care home provided me with a lunch of beef stroganoff on rice with side vegetables followed by a jam sponge and custard. I thought that the quality of the food was pretty good for institutional cooking and the whole ambience of the dining room approached restaurant standards. I am going to see my sister again the following day at one of her nieces so I took the opportunity to depart an hour earlier and managed to get to the station on time with it only taking about 15 minutes brisk walk to reach the station. I was pleased to get my hotel bedroom but the TV proved to be problematic and I could not get it to find any TV signal. Then I had a marvellous couple of hours with my niece and her husband and very intelligent son after which I returned to my room, informing the young man on reception about the problems I was having with the TV in my room. Fortunately for me, he made the offer to leave the reception desk and to sort out the TV for me but I could not really follow the exact sequences of commands that he performed to get things going again. I have the TV tuned to Sky News where it will be tuned for the rest of my stay here in any case.
There is still a lot of controversy concerning the release of the latest Epstein files. Firstly, the release so far has only been a partial release despite the fact that legally the whole of the material should have been released. Secondly, the material released so far seems to have been carefully selected so that no criticism of Donald Trump is at all evidenced whereas there is plenty of adverse publicity for the likes of Bill Clinton. But thirdly, it is evident that a huge amount of redaction has taken place some of which is no doubt legally justified but the suspicion remains that much of the redaction is designed to avoid any embarrassment for the current regime in the White House. Over 500 pages of the files have been entirely redacted leaving many independent commentators to suspect that a huge cover up is taking place. When further material is released, it may well be well into the Christmas festivities when it is felt that the attention of the population and the media lies elsewhere.