I awoke yesterday morning to a temperature, according to my smart speaker of -5° which is predicted to rise to a dizzying height of 2° during the course of the day. I think we may have had a slight scattering of snow during the night as well and because of the cold weather various social arrangements are all rather fluid. My son had said he was going to turn up this morning but this visit has been delayed. I am due to take the car into the garage to have a new battery fitted at 2.00pm in the afternoon and I am hoping that the weather has improved somewhat by then. The evening before yesterday, after I had got various domestic duties completed, I settled down to watch a catch-up TV a film broadcast on the BBC called ‘Operation Mincemeat’I had seen this film once before years ago but it was always worth a second viewing. It detailed the greatest deception of WWII in which the British arranged for a dead body loaded with fake papers that looked as though the planned invasion of the continent to end the way would be Greece rather than Sicily. Both the British and the Germans were exceptionally aware of the power of deception and planning of the false identity had to be meticulous. For example, to ensure that Churchill’s signature did not appear to be a forgery, he added his real signature to the documentation. After many twists and turns, the body (of a supposed airman) was launched by submarine where it would float onto a beach in Southern Spain where ‘neutral’ Spain would eventually allow the documentation to be handed over to the Germans. The deception proved to be successful and the Germans redeployed troops away from Sicily and towards Greece – it is estimated that thousands of lives may have been saved as the deception evidently worked. The full story is recounted at great length in Wikipedia and is fascinating as was the subsequent film made of it. Of course there were several ‘human interest’ factors built into the story but the major participants in the story kept quiet about it (a military secret) for decades afterwards. So this was probably the best of viewing for me over the whole of the Christmas period.
Emboldened by his ‘success’ in Venezuela, Trump is now threatening Colombia as well as Cuba and it seems that there are plans to ‘de facto’ annexe Greenland (which is a protectorate of Denmark, a member of Nato) The British are somewhat compromised by all of this as well. Speaking to Sky News, Home Office minister Mike Tapp is asked about the scenario of Donald Trump potentially seizing Greenland. The president has openly coveted the island, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Over the weekend, the Danish Prime Minister again warned the US president against trying to take the Arctic region. In an exchange with Sophy Ridge, Tapp repeatedly declines to warn Trump against taking military action there. First off, the minister says ‘careful diplomatic conversations’ are happening behind the scenes between the US, Europe and the Five Eyes alliance and a ‘running commentary’ will not be given. On Greenland, Tapp then says both the US and Denmark are NATO members and that is the forum for discussions to take place. I find that the way that the UK and other European powers refusing to confront Trump disturbing in the extreme.
Once the weather had warmed up a bit, or to at lest above freezing level, I popped over to see my friend in Droitwich as we had not seen each to speak to since the start of the year and was greeted by a little portion of marinated lamb and some rice. This was just a flying visit as I need to get over to Redditch to get a new battery fitted into the car which I suppose is good to have given the extreme demands made on batteries with the current cold snap. Then I filled the car up with petrol and my son was in the house when I returned from the garage, his visit being delayed from first thing this morning. The house as a whole feels pretty cold so I am putting on extra layers of clothing for the next few days, including one of these winter-type shirts that were being off loaded in a charity shop for £1 the other day but I thought would come in useful. This week starts to see the return of some of my ‘normal’ activities suspended over the Christmas period including Pilates on Tuesday and Tai Chi in Thursday whilst on Wednesday my son and daughter-in-law are scheduled to come around and we are going to tackle the clearing up of one of ‘hobbit holes’ which is what we call the low access doors to the eaves of the house where we store excess things like suitcases and the like. Although I do not like the excessive use of ‘deliver-to-the-door’ facilities like Amazon, I cannot deny the usefulness on occasions. As a case in point, I ordered two hot bottles (for my feet) which were sold as a pair and of those specialist A3 size desk calendars that I keep my desk to record important appointments. Both of these arrived today and the hot water bottles will be pressed into service this evening. Early in our married life when Meg and I acquired out first house with no central heating in the bedroom we made use of one those stone hot water bottles and we both managed to get our feet on it somehow. These stone bottles retained the heat for a long time but were inclined to fall out of bed with a resounding bang in the middle of the night (and I think we had only rugs on our bedroom floor, so it tended to wake us up) I do not recall ever disposing of this stone bottle so I wonder what happen to it? You can still get them on eBay for about £10 plus quite a lot of postage, being so heavy. Looking at my weather app, I see that the night-time temperature is likely to be -6° for the next day rising to 0° after that but the daytime temperatures will hover around 3°-4° for the rest of the week.