The evening before yesterday, my efforts to replace my cooker hood bulb was eventually crowned with success and I am delighted to get this functional again. The screw holding the perspex cover in place is replaced with a ‘just about do’ from a collection of screws that I have in the garage. My domestic help’s grandfather, when he was alive, had a large metal tea caddy filled with every size and type of screw that you can imagine and my domestic help very kindly donated the tin to myself which evidently I scour from time to time when I need a screw of a particular size and type. I am helping my Droitwich friend to overcome one of those little fluey type episodes to which we are subject at this time of year so we cooked a very hot spicy soup together which was the only sustenance we needed. Yesterday was one of those ‘crashing out’ days when there was nothing in particular that desperately needed to be done so it is a question of taking it easy on oneself for most of the day. The weather than other people experience is often only of passing interest to me because here in the British Isles we can expect fairly regular succession of storms sweeping in from the Atlantic which means that our weather systems are not usually of a very severe nature. But in North America, the authorities are getting prepared for a huge and prolonged ‘ice storm’. The National Weather Service has warned communities the significant, long-duration winter storm will bring widespread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain from the Southern Rockies to New England – lasting from Friday until Monday, and to prepare for bitterly cold temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills. The storm is expected to bring a crippling ice storm from Texas through parts of the South, potentially around 30cm (12ins) of snow from Oklahoma through Washington DC, New York and Boston. Then a final punch of bitterly cold air could plunge wind chill temperatures to -46C (-50F) in parts of Minnesota and North Dakota. What is happening is that mixture filled air from the Caribbean is meeting with a huge blast of very cold Arctic air progressing south from Canada and the result is the extremely cold temperatures reaching as low as -46° degrees. What I think is worrying the authorities is that whilst some communities in the US experience, and can prepare for, the extent of the ice storm is such that some communities will never have experienced anything approaching this in their life time and therefore several deaths are only to be anticipated. Meanwhile, in the political sphere, the backlash against Donald Trump’s slur upon NATO allies continues. Trump claimed that the Allies had never come to support of America which is completely untrue because after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent conflict in Afghanistan, America’s allies in NATO certainly lent unstinting support. The US Department of Defense says the US lost some 2,460 troops in Afghanistan. In addition, 457 British troops, over 150 Canadian troops, 90 French service personnel, 62 German soldiers and 44 Danish troops were also killed. As the population of the USA is some 55 times of Denmark, then roughly the same ‘per capita’ proportion of Danish troops lost their lives in a war instigated by the USA. Now the interesting question is whether anyone will inform Trump that he was utterly mistaken in his assertions about the Allies not pulling their weight or whether his inner circle either do not wish to know the facts (as it conflicts with their mindset) or that they are so scared of Trump that nobody tells him the truth. After the initial Trump mis-statement there have been plenty of loud voices informing Trump of the true facts but will Trump either listen or even believe them? Anything Trump does not like is compartmentalised and labelled as ‘fake news’ which is a convenient psychological mechanisms for avoiding the truth that one does not wish to hear. Even some of the Catholic cardinals in the USA – a usually very conservative body of clerics – have recently been led to condemn the foreign policy of the current Trump regime as well the shooting(s) in Minneapolis. The story here is even worse to recount than a woman shot dead in her car a week ago whilst trying to make her escape. A video that appears to show the shooting has been posted on X. In the footage, a number of masked federal agents can be seen surrounding a man, who is forced to the floor in a struggle. Several gunshots can be heard before the agents, some of whom can be seen holding pistols, move away from the man, who can be seen lying on his back on the street. Sky News has not independently verified the footage, which appears to have been filmed from behind a window. So in this particular case, the man was overpowered and held on the ground by several ICE agents before being shot. The anger that these incidents are inducing in becoming very palpable and the increasing tensions may yet lead to large scale demonstrations u[pon which the ICE agents will have no hesitation in deploying tear gas.
At about this time of year, one TV spectacle to which I look forward with increasing pleasure is the annual ‘Six Nations’ international Rugby competition. I have no real idea of the relative strengths of the various teams. France and England are predicted to be the two top teams with France being the slight favourite and the Irish coming in as a good third. Scotland, Wales and Italy will probably occupy the bottom half pf the league table but then unexpected results can occur and, unlike football, the final outcome of a game can be decided in the last few minutes of a game (or even seconds in a game if the ultimate victory depends upon a successful conversion kick following a late try) This year’s competition starts on Thursday, February 5th which is in about twelve days time so this competition livens up the dreary weekends of winter. When Meg and I used to have a winter break with Saga holidays in Salobreña in southern Spain, the local Spanish watched in amazement as the Brits gathered around the communal TV to watch the rugby matches and the Welsh would sing their national anthem at the tops of their voices (in Welsh, naturally).