I was hopeful that yesterday morning when I awoke at about 7.30am was to be the last of the ‘cold snap’ But my smart speaker informed me that the temperature outside was -1° but was predicted to rise to about 2°  in the warmest part of the day which at about midday. After that, we should  expect a period of warmer but extremely wet winds rush in from the Atlantic so any last vestiges of snow will be swept away but I imagine that some communities will be badly affected by the ensuing floods. My son and daughter-in-law ere due to come around for lunch and I indicated that  would cook them a meal which would be the first ‘meat and two vegetables’ meal I will have had for several days now.  This morning as I get up and look at the international news, sone extraordinary statements are being made about the future of Greenland, the territory whose foreign relationships are under the jurisdiction of Denmark.  Trump has indicated that he will acquire Greenland ‘one way or another’ although every analyst seems agreed that the USA already has a base there and the ability to bring back into use many other bases that are spread across the land. The Trump argument, certainly specious, is that if America does not ‘acquire’ Greenland then either China or Russia will step in and seize it but America needs Greenland for its own defence. But the real reasons are probably related to the vast store of rare earth minerals that the landmass contains if only they can be exploited (which may be difficult and expensive which is why this has not happened before) But given that Trump is governed by symbolism, I think he is dreaming of a standard map where it looks as though the USA will appear so much bigger if it incorporated Greenland. But the total U.S. Area is approximately 9.8 million sq km (3.8 million sq miles) whereas the Greenland Area is roughly 2.1 million sq km (836,000 sq miles). Thus Greenland is about one-fourth the size of the lower 48 states. but Greenland is roughly 2.5 times bigger than Alaska. The problem with our views of all of this lies in the Mercator projection in which the standard flat maps stretch areas near the poles, making Greenland look similar in size to Africa, when Africa is actually over 14 times larger. So if the USA does ‘acquire’ Greenland, no doubt the USA authorities will continue to display land masses using the Mercator projection. But an extraordinary statement came from the Danish government overnight. After detailing how Denmark had been a loyal member of NATO and friend to the United States over the decades in a whole series of international conflicts, nonetheless the standard instructions given to the Danish army that they shoot any invading forces on sight ‘with no questions asked’ So we have the prospect of heavily armed American troops invading Greenland being shot and returning fire killing whatever lays before them. In the history of colonial America, this will have happened before with the original native peoples as well as Mexico. In the case of Mexico, in the major battles in which Mexico was acquired by force of conquest the Americans lost 50 men but estimates are that the Mexicans lost 1000 which is twenty times as many. Of course such a conflict would be the death of NATO in which the MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideologues would rejoice whilst the Russians and the Chinese would not be able to contain their glee than an important alliance dissolves in front of them.

The planned midday meal with my son and daughter-in-law did not materialise as their car was snowed in and they would have to wait for a thaw to occur before it could be released. In the next 24 hours, there is predicted to be a rise in temperature by 10° and some heavy bouts of rain so this ought to wash away much of the snow and slush. I filled my day with writing some emails to people with whom I wanted be in contact and a big sort out of the newspapers where about a week’s worth of papers needed perusing for interesting articles. At the start of the year, quite a lot of newsprint is devoted to makeovers and the typical subjects at this time of year are finances, diet and exercise. But during the course of the day, I did come across a very interesting piece of video from a British physiotherapist giving some practical advice on how to exercise if one is experiencing any osteoarthritis (which may apply to one of my knees after I was run over by a car decades ago) The physiotherapist was not impressed by the response of most doctors which was ‘fair wear and tear – hare are some pills’. He argued that even cartilage could repair itself over time and all that was needed was a gentle but consistent exercise programme with one or two exercises but performed two or three times daily. This approach may save me a trip to my own doctor so I shall put the recommendations into effect almost as soon as possible.

I do not normally follow domestic football very much (internationals are another matter) but an extraordinary victory was gained by non-League Macclesfield over Crystal Palace who won the FA Cup last May. The difference if league table positions between  the two sides was 117 places which is itself a new record. Every year in the FA Cup there are the so-called ‘giant killers’ where a smaller club knocks out a much larger and more prestigious one but this particular victory seems to have rewritten the record books. What is not often appreciated is the little ‘giant killers’ will almost certainly be knocked out in the next round but they will receive a big boost in gate money and TV fees when they play more prestigious opponents in the next round and this one time boost an help to stabilise the club’s finances which,  in the lower divisions,  are often precarious. Formerly known as Macclesfield Town, the Cheshire club was wound up in 2020 with debts of more than £500,000 and reformed as Macclesfield FC the same year, playing in the North West Counties Football League (NWCFL) Premier Division. The shock scoreline has echoes of other famous upsets by non-league teams in the world-famous tournament, such as Hereford’s 2-1 win over Newcastle in 1972 and Blyth Spartans’ 3-2 victory over Stoke City six years later.

The evening before last before I went to bed, we were evidently waiting for the huge storm to do its worst. Before I went to bed at 10.00pm I looked out and saw that the car had about 1″ of snow on its windscreen which I removed with a little long handled brush which I just happen to have to hand. This morning, the snow was not as bad as was predicted and I also removed the additional 1″ of snow that had fallen overnight and I can tell from the distribution of snow on our lawns that things could have been a lot worse. I exchanged text messages with my son and with my Droitwich friend to ascertain what snow conditions were like. My Droitwich friend had hardly had any snow at all whilst her friend who lives in Bromsgrove and nearer to Birmingham had received much heavier snow falls. As it is the GCSE ‘mocks’ for the boys in their family starting today, then getting into school was quite important but my friend’s boys had managed to make it into school whilst some of their classmates (and presumably fellow examinees) had not. In the morning, I intend to get fully kitted up and will then walk into town but only if things seem relatively safe. I shall deploy a trekking pole as well to have 2-3 points of contact with the ground. In the evening before yesterday, I had received a welcome invitation which was to join a coach party organised to go around Jodrell Bank radio telescope in Cheshire in late March, organised as an outing for U3A (University of the Third Age) to which I belong. I replied as soon as I could to the email and was delighted to learn that I was into the system and so I organised the payment of the outing fee via bank transfer to endure that I had a place. After Meg and I had completed our finals at Manchester University, one of her social policy tutors organised a garden party to which our son, then still quite a new-born babe, went along and was the centre of attention. The tutor’s house was practically in the shadow of the radio telescope which obviously dominates the landscape but that is the nearest that we have been to it. Evidently if there are other trips as interesting as this one, I shall continue to sign up for them immediately and as well as the trip itself being inherently interesting, you are also in the company of like-minded people. As well as the radio telescope itself, there are lots of other things included and the outing particulars tells me that ‘we will be able to browse various interactive Science Exhibitions, take a stroll through the Arboretum and take a break and/or refreshments in the on-site café. Leaving Jodrell Bank we travel on to visit the historic market town of Nantwich which is famed for its many medieval timber-framed buildings, Roman salt production and more recently its many independent shops. The nearby canal offers the opportunity for gentle strolls along its banks.’ So all in all, this sounds a wonderful day out and as the date happens to be the date of my son’s birthday, one I am not likely to forget.

I planned to walk down into the town today and this was surprisingly easy as the pavements had been walked on and the snow turned to slush whilst the roads were absolutely clear. I picked up my newspaper and had my customary coffee but did not bump into anyone with whom to chat – I see that the house where Clive the trumpeter used to live with his family has been sold and the family moved to the other end of town. I called in on my Italian friend but she was so poorly we could only have a few snatched words through a (closed) downstairs window.  In fact, on the way back from town I was nearly run over when I was crossing a side road that runs off the Kidderminster Road. I am always particularly  careful on crossing roads and the vast majority of motorists are generally considerate when they see me half across the road but this one was not.

My attention has been absorbed and for understandable reasons about the aftermath of the 37 year old (white) mother of three shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis yesterday. One way or another, there seems to be massive amounts of footage of this incident and the New York Times as well as other media have pored over the footage frame by frame.  From this it is evident that Trump, Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have not only rushed to judgement but are evidently lying through their teeth about what happened. It is evident to the vast majority of observers that the victim was trying to escape the clutches of the ICE agents and was in no way trying to run them over as the video footage makes abundantly clear. In fact, the whole collection of video footage could be shown as a training exercise for all law enforcement officers as an example of how NOT to deal with a situation like this. One near neighbour has observed with a great deal of acumen that ‘it is more legitimate for a motorist to panic and to attempt to flee than it is legitimate  for an ICE agent to fire three shots through an open side window of a car and kill the driver’ In the fullness of time, we may see prosecutions but the polarised situation in the USA means that he FBI are solely responsible for any investigations, including of course the body-cams of the ICE agents (which I predict will ‘disappear’) One legal expert has also hypothesised  that an ICE agent who got into his car and then drove away was interfering with a crime scene and this was an offence in itself. I have a feeling that this is going to run and run.

An interesting sign of the times is reported on Sky News. Weight-loss jabs has forced Greggs to change their menu. Greggs chief Roisin Currie says the rise of weight-loss jabs has hit the baker’s bottom line. There is ‘no doubt’ that appetite-suppressing drugs mean customers are looking for smaller portions, healthier options and fibre, she says. Protein has also become the focus of a ‘broader health trend’, so smaller portions and protein-rich products will be rolled out to meet demand, the company previously said. In another sign of changing diets, Tesco’s fresh food sales rose by 6.6% in the 19 weeks to January compared with a year earlier – and the supermarket sold 250,000 bottles of alcohol-free prosecco.

I awoke pretty tired yesterday after the exertions of the day before but I am pleased to have the weekly shopping done and out of the way. But the world is waking up to the fact that Donald Trump is determined to get his hands on Greenland, if only for the self-aggrandisement of bring able to paint a map of America which is much bigger in terms of land mass than it is now. The US president knows no European nation would seriously try to stop him by force because they would lose. He is also probably gambling that Washington could get away with an Arctic land grab, as the rest of NATO needs the US more than he needs them. Of course, diplomatic charm offensives or backroom deals may yet prevail, but the uncomfortable truth when it comes to Trump’s calculations is that he has a point. Decades of over-reliance by most NATO nations on American fighting power, weapons, and technology mean the ability of the transatlantic alliance to defend itself without the US (let alone counter a threat from Washington) has become dangerously compromised. So we are living in a world that predates WWII in which military powers such as Hitler’s Germany thought they could overrun and annexe any adjacent territory at will. But the world as a whole is unwilling to confront Trump because in the last analysis there is no European force that could match the military might that Trump could bring to bear. The population of Greenland is only about 57,000 being the same size as a medium size town in the UK.

My Tai Chi classes are resuming tis week and it really was ‘touch and go’ whether I turned up to attend it. There were only five of us there this morning instead of the usual dozen and I gather that black ice had deterred  some people from attending. After a break of at least a fortnight, I found the session left me with some aching muscles but, in the. event, I forced myself to go. After our session I had a coffee with a chap who is a similar age to myself and who since his wife died  seems to open up the premises and act as a general caretaker most mornings. I was joined by a lady whose company I would not have actively sought as she seems to be one of lifer’s perpetual moaners whatever the topic of conversation turns out to be. She pointed out to be that since she had moved to Bromsgrove from elsewhere in the Midlands, she had found it very difficult to make any new friends and given her constant demeanour of always finding fault with the things and people around her, I was not particularly surprised. I paid a quick visit to Aldi to buy some more of the non-alcoholic wine I bought yesterday and given it was so cheap yesterday (and I suspect they had underpriced it by 80% according to a newspaper review I read of it) I was dismayed but not at all surprised to find that the entire stock had gone. After I returned home, I hunted out some of the risotto I made on New Year’s Day and that is my lunch for today.

The piece of video evidence that has emerged on the liberal social media channels in the US is genuinely shocking. It shows a mother, in Minneapolis aged 37 stopped in her car by agents of ICE (Immigration and Enforcement Control) who, when she reversed her car in a three point turn and tried to escape in her car, was shot three times (once through the windscreen, twice through a side window) The ICE agents refused to let a nearby doctor attend to her to see of she could be saved. The White House have immediately put out a tendentious statement, totally at variance with what the video clip displays saying that the woman had weaponised the car, was trying to injure an ICE agent and then they shot her ‘in self defence’ But the video clip shows an ICE agent attempting to open the door of a slowly moving car before the driver was shot and she had clearly panicked and was effecting a three point turn and then trying to escape. Naturally community tensions are now running very high and, in the opinion of many with a multitude of not well trained ICE agents roaming the streets of big American cities pulling in anybody who appears non-white, this was an accident waiting to happen. But what is so striking is the vicious condemnation of the shot woman and a justification for the killing which looks absolutely spurious when the video clip of the incident is played over and over again. I suppose if the residents of Minneapolis came out in their thousands, they could force the ICE agents off the streets but then a quasi-civil way would be in progress.

At the moment, we are all hunkering down and waiting for the huge storm to hit us later on this evening. According to the weather apps on our phones, we can expect the storm to start at about 8.00 in the evening and then carry on for most of the night. Storm Goretti – the first named storm of the year – hits the UK tonight and is bringing with it a ‘weather bomb’. The phenomenon, also known as explosive cyclogenesis or bomb cyclone, can result in snow and winds strong enough to bring down trees and cause structural damage. The process has been likened to when ice skaters spin faster by drawing their arms in, according to the Met Office. So no doubt we shall have to wait until the morning dawns to see what dump of snowfall we have had. I have just received through my email an invitation to join a group of U3A (University of the Third Age) members on a visit to Jodrell Bank radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in late March. I have filled in an email form for this but have to wait until I discover if I have been lucky enough to secure one of the (no doubt) coveted spaces.I joined the U3A group late last year after Meg’s passing  but this is just the sort of organised trip which it really is too good to miss – we get transported there and back by coach leaving from Bromsgrove bus station to which I can easily walk (if I am fortunate enough to secure a place)

There is an expression that one has to be ‘thankful for small mercies’ and I felt that when I got up this morning and discovered that the weather was actually above freezing at 2° which is some 6° higher than yesterday and predicted to rise by a few degrees during the day. Upon drawing back my bedroom curtain, I could discern a fairly thick blanket of cloud rather than the clear skies that have greeted us in the past few days and so even storm clouds have a gently warming effect. Having  said that, we are very much in the ‘calm before the storm’ period as the first major storm of the winter, codenamed ‘Goretti’, is due to strike Northern France on Thursday and Friday. Storm Goretti is expected to move across the south of the country on Thursday and into Friday, bringing with it rain, snow and strong winds. Heavy snow is likely to develop over higher ground in South Wales later on Thursday, before rain turns to snow more widely across parts of England and Wales overnight. Forecasters say 5 to 10 cm of snow could settle in some areas, with up to 20 cm possible on higher ground. A yellow weather warning for snow, covering large parts of Sheffield, Peterborough, Bath and Worcester, and in much of Wales, will be in place from 6pm on Thursday until midday Friday. So I was somewhat dismayed to see that Worcester is named as a town liable to receive significant snow, particularly as it is only 15 miles away from our house and one can only hope that the protective distance may save us from the worst. The whole of Wales is liable to be impacted by the storm and, as is always the case, it is not so much the actual snow but the accompanying strong winds that can cause snow to drift and certainly makes on feel colder. So this is the first morning for the best part of three weeks that I have not come down the stairs and put the Christmas tree lights on but, in a completely nerdish way, I have consulted the special calendar I have printed off that tells me that we have the whole of an extra 2 minutes of daylight today compared with yesterday. The global situation is still dominated by the news which seems almost incredible that Donald Trump seems to be intent on acquiring the mineral wealth of Greenland by hook or by crook. Sky News reports that President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland ‌is a national security priority ‌of the United States and it is vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important ‌foreign policy goal, ⁠and of course, utilising the ‌US military is always an option at the commander-in-chiefs disposal What I had not fully appreciated until the news broke recently is that the US military already have a strong presence across Greenland. The U.S. has one main military base in Greenland: Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, focused on missile warning and space surveillance under a long-standing defence agreement with Denmark. While there were numerous U.S. installations during the Cold War, most have closed, with Pituffik remaining as the primary permanent installation, supporting about 150 personnel year-round, plus seasonal visitors like the New York Air National Guard. Some analysts are saying that given the huge land mass of Greenland (mainly frozen rock making mineral extraction expensive) Trump’s real motivation is just to add Greenland to the existing maps of the United States as coloured in the ‘Stars and Stripes’ it makes the USA appear much larger than it is always is and this feeds into Trump’s paranoia. If one NATO ally invades another, then some analysts have predicted the end of NATO but a more likely scenario is for NATO to exist but much weakened and with the USA suspended from it (until such time as there might be dramatic political change within the USA itself).

My son and daughter-in-law called around mid morning because we had decided that as threesome we would start to clear out what we affectionately call the ‘hobbit holes’ As the house is constructed as a dormer bungalow, the so-called ‘hobbit holes’ are small doors which give access to the eaves of the house  which we use for storage purposes. We set to work on what we imagined might be the smallest of these but found a multiplicity of things. These ranged from bedding such as duvets and bed linen but all needed for single beds so we had evidently brought them with us from our previous house. We also discovered a lot of packaging we had been saving, Christmas wrapping paper, wet weather gear that we used when climbing in the Lake District such as cagoules, over-trousers and boot socks and miscellaneous bits and pieces such a fan heater (with a broken plastic  foot), a set of steamer pans and all kinds of other things. We quickly junked at anything that looked beyond use and a few items that looked as though they had been mouse-nibbled in the past. Bur anything still in it’s original packaging or capable of current us we made into a separate pile destined for a charity store. We deliberated over how to dispose of two single bed duvets in their boxes but decided to take these to the local tip where they might be added to specialist recovery skip, as we had been led to believe. But the site operative insisted that duvets had to be thrown into ‘irrecoverables destined for landfill’ skip and so with a heavy heart, this was the skip into which  they were thrown. I console myself a little  that the energy that I might use to wash and then dry these duvets might be of a drain on the earth’s resources than would be gained by their recovery. After disposing of a car load of junk, I motored into town and got some  money out of an ATM before I went shopping in my local Aldi. Then I needed to call in at Waitrose  to collect a copy of ‘The Times’ and finally returned home in the dark where one more major task awaited me. As the local authority is using newly designed ‘wheelie bins’ for the disposal pf general, paper and garden waste , the older versions of the bins have to be hauled to the kerbside for collection first thing in the morning This took three trips to the end of our access road and the of course I needed to unpack the shopping. So all in all it has ben a pretty full day and I feel pretty tired at the end of it all.

Yesterday I awoke to a temperature of -5° and this was predicted to rise to just above freezing in the course of the day. A day or so ago, I ordered a couple of hot water bottles and they arrived in the evening and were promptly pressed into use. There is an area at the foot of the bed where the electric blanket does not reach so these hot water bottles proved to be especially welcome. Conscious of the fact that that, as the Scandinavians say, ‘there is not bad weather, only inappropriate clothing’ so I took the opportunity to wear my recently acquired warm winter shirt, a thin jumper as well as a thick jumper and an extra pair of socks (which I just put on when I go out of doors) It looks as though for the rest of this week and probably next week, the cold weather will continue but very slightly less cold than in the last day or so – but the possibility increases of snow across the Midlands although so far it has seemed too cold to snow. The political news seems just as bleak to most observers. Donald Trump has announced that he is very serious about acquiring Greenland but whether he intends to just march in or to formerly annex the territory as the 51st American state is unclear. The new Trump doctrine is that America ‘needs’ Greenland by which is meant access to rare earths and minerals. Greenland possesses vast, largely untapped reserves of rare earths and critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, niobium, and zirconium, making it a significant potential supplier for green energy tech, electronics, and defence, though development faces logistical challenges and political complexities, including debates over mining’s environmental impact. Its geology holds substantial deposits, notably at Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld, attracting international interest as the West seeks alternatives to China for these vital resources. The reaction of the rest of Europe to these latest Trump announcements has been muted and certainly not the outright and forthright condemnation which one would have thought is the natural response. Some analysts are saying that this all spells the end of Nato because an alliance can hardly be said to exist if one partner (USA) just seizes the territory of another. One is tempted to sat that the Europeans are playing a long tactical game and are awaiting the demise of Trump in the form of ill-health or political opposition in the USA itself but this hope may be a vain one as there is likelihood  that any successor to Trump such as J D Vance the Vice-President will happily continue with these Trump policies. Meanwhile, Putin in Russia must be rubbing his hands in glee as he seems to have been given the green light to walk all over Ukraine and the Baltic states and the Chinese will surely choose their moment to fulfil their own territorial ambitions. The Chinese may be waiting for the day when the USA takes over Greenland (if it does) as the attention of the world may be distracted and what a wonderful opportunity to take over Taiwan. Now that we are in the first full week of January, people across the country are taking down their decorations and I am going to seize the opportunity to do the same with the assistance of our domestic help who, hopefully, will battle through in the face of the bad weather.

I was absolutely delighted that with the assistance of my domestic help, I now have all of the Christmas decorations taken down. Normally, the house appears incredibly bare for the first few hours or day or so after  decorations are down but a lot less so on this particular occasion – perhaps the couple of captain’s chairs that I have facing each other and together with the wonderful family chest-cum-heirloom which cane from my father’s house (via my sister) have restored a feeling of normality to our hall. All of the decorations are neatly bundled up and although I removed them from the loft on my own, putting them back is a little trickier so I will reply upon my son’s assistance to do that in the morning. I did go to the Pilates session in the middle of the day and there are five of us regulars who have attending this class for years together. But next week will be a rather sad occasion because one of our number has sold her house and is now going down to Christchurch to live near to her married daughter, all of which I quite understand and so next week will be the last occasion that we shall see her- no doubt hugs (and perhaps some tears) all round. As it was quite late and I had to make extra journeys both for bread and also to hunt out a not-sold-out copy of ‘The Times‘ I just had a quickie type lunch spreading a pate and some soft spreadable choose on two slices of my recently purchased sourdough bread. Sourdough’s special qualities come from its slow, natural fermentation using wild yeast and bacteria (a starter), giving it a unique tangy flavour, chewy texture, and making it often easier to digest, potentially gentler on blood sugar, and more nutritious by breaking down compounds like phytic acid to improve mineral absorption. Tonight, I am going to have some vegetable soup which my domestic help very thoughtfully cooked for me to save me cooking when I got home late from Pilates (which was so thoughtful of her)

I always see what is going to be on the TV to be viewed after I have had my tea and this evening is one of those occasions where there is a clash of really good programmes. There are repeats of two episodes of ‘Yes Minister’ which doubtless I have seen before but the pleasure of watching them over and over again never diminishes. Then there is a very good food programme on Channel 4. giving is the low-down on the junk food to avoid which looks interesting. There is also going to be documentary programme giving the real facts behind ‘Operation Mincemeat’ which was viewed a couple of nights ago. As this programme is transmitted at 9.00pm and I want to get into good habits of not being too late to be, I may well ensure that I am all tucked warm in bed with electric blankets and, possibly, hot water bottles so that I can watch this in bed and it does really matter if I doze off in the middle of it. 

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.

As it was so very cold yesterday morning, I allowed myself the luxury of staying warm in bed for an extra hour. I knew that my University of Birmingham friend was away and had no social engagements for the day so I indulged myself somewhat. When I did get up, my smart speaker informed me that the temperature was -2° but the highest we could expect throughout the day was a high of 3° but a low of -5° during the course of the day. Conditions will become less cold through the upcoming week but temperatures will most likely stay below the January average, and further snow showers are expected in places. The second half of January should be a bit milder with temperatures near or a little above average overall. This would mean more rain than snow but occasional wintriness will still be possible. At the moment, it appears to be a little too cold to snow but we might expect some later in the week. The weather charts show that that the cold snap is affecting Scotland and the east of the country but here in the Midlands, it appears that we might be spared some of the worst excesses of the cold. Even going to church the evening before entailed a de-icing of the car which I have not experienced before at this time of year. After I returned from church, there was one of those really good end-of-year programmes which was the Earth viewed from space throughout 2025 and, as you would expect, some of the shots were astounding. I spent some time in the evening before yesterday fiddling about trying (and failing) to get the Tesco Mobile PAYG app working on the phone which used to be Meg’s but upon which the credit from my ancient Nokia has successfully been transferred so I did not lose this when TescoMobile switched off their 2G/3G last Wednesday.

I am absolutely appalled by the new world order which is developing once the Americans have resurrected the ‘Monroe’ Doctrine which dates from the C19th and which can be summarised as letting America do what it likes in its own ‘back yard’ i.e. Latin America and the Caribbean and the USA will not interfere with other people’s affairs. So now emboldened by all of this, Trump may now invade or interfere with other adjacent countries and I would think that the Chinese must now thinking that there is nothing to stop them (following the American example) invading and annexing Taiwan which they regard as ‘theirs’.The seizure of Nicolas Maduro takes the world into new territory. Geopolitics is about to become weirder and potentially a lot more dangerous. America’s president has justified seizing the leader of a sovereign nation by drawing on the US foreign policy of the 1830s – and he says the US will now be running Venezuela for the foreseeable future. The liberal American media which I view on YouTube are convinced that Trump is now seriously demented, falling asleep and slurring his words and all of this, probably true, is making the world an incredibly dangerous place as there appears to be no opposition, even within the military to more madcap adventures.

With getting up a little later than normal, I was further delayed when in the middle of my Pilates exercises by my Italian friend from down the road. I had pushed a little card through her door to enquire if she needed any medications whilst feeling under the weather with cold-like symptoms. We had quite a long chat about this and that and if she is feeling better by next Sunday, then I may well take her in the car to the later Sunday morning service at our local church. We are both hoping that the parish hall might be open for tea and biscuits where we can meet up with fellow parishioners with whom we may have lost contact. Instead of walking down the hill, I decide to go by car as otherwise I might not have been eating lunch until, about 2.30 or 3.00 and there were some cleaning jobs that  wished to do whilst the last of the natural daylight. It was a gloomy afternoon but the clouds parted for a few minutes which was helpful to me in my cleaning activities but they soon rolled back again.  Down at Waitrose, I availed myself of a cup of coffee and chatted to one of the staff that I knew quite well as, with two other members of staff, she had actually attended Meg’s funeral last May. In our brief snatches of conversation, it emerged that she had joint UK-Australian citizenship and had spent some of her early life there. She had also had employment in the diplomatic service for some years before she was married and I told her that I had desperately wanted to get employment in the diplomatic service but was offered a position in the Central Office of Information instead. I have noticed before that the ‘partners’ (as John Lewis, owners of Waitrose, staff are called) have often had quite interesting jobs before they joined the Waitrose staff. 

The massive implications of the US invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Maduro (no shining angel himself, but that is not the point) I think it is now fully appreciated that since WWII we have a ‘rules-based’ international order in which it is regarded as completely illegitimate for strong nations to invade and take over weaker ones – as the Nazis did in Poland, for example. But now that Trump has revoked the post WWII consensus, it opens the door for Putin to be expansionary in Europe and the small Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania must be quaking in their boots) and, even now, the Chinese might be licking their lips at the opportunity to ‘take back’ Taiwan. Although many people are blaming Trump, some more informed analysts are arguing that we always have mad men in our midst like Trump but the real failure in the American constitution is the failure of the Congress or the Supreme Court to halt such plainly unconstitutional actions. I think an estimated 40 Venezuelan troops might have been killed (or is it murdered as war has not yet been declared by Congress) although I think that the President can take action under the ‘War Powers Act’ but any military intervention such as this need Congressional approval within 60 days.

The day before yesterday, I received a pleasant surprise through the post. This was the ‘Health and Welfare’ component of the Lasting Power of Attorney documents which now come in two parts, the first being ‘Property and Financial Affairs’. We had already got these in place for Meg before she died and I did not really use the documents although the local authority. for whatever reason, needed a copy forwarding to them for their records. The website that guides through the process is really very straightforward and my son and I went through the process in the Autumn. One document was straightforward but in another we had got some of the dates in the wrong sequence and parts of it had to be resubmitted. But this has now gone through the system and is duly registered and recorded. I had always imagined that these legal documents had to be seen by a judge or a court but I am mistaken in this belief. But it does take a process of weeks after submission for the documents to be finally validated and returned to you. In my own case, it is straightforward insofar as my son or daughter-in-law are now the nominated persons and I am relieved that this is now in place. If you leave it until it is ‘too late’ i.e. following an accident or admission to a residential home, then without an LPA, relatives are involved in a long, complex and expensive procedure so it is much better to have these things in place way before they are actually needed. Now that the New Year has arrived, I probably need to turn my attention to updating my will (which is 18 years old and things have happened in the meantime) and, in about a month. my son and I are going to make a trip into Worcester to pay off the remainder of the small mortgage I took out when my son and daughter-in-law moved out of this house. My family and I are starting some of the ‘decluttering’ process because being a dormer bungalow there are several small access points to the eaves which we have fondly called ‘hobbitt holes’ and these have been used for storage of little used items such as old suitcases. So we are going to do about one of these a week and then the material that is found can either be thrown away or a few precious items retained. My Tai Chi teacher has written to us indicating that classes are due to resume in the forthcoming week as will my Pilates and I just want to return to a routine of normality as it were.

A shocking political story is being exposed by the Liberal Democrats this morning. Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of diverting £3 billion of NHS funding a year to appease Donald Trump. Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said taxpayers’ money was being ‘rerouted at the request of Donald Trump’ from frontline NHS services ‘into the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies’. At the beginning of December, the UK agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines by 2035 to stop the US imposing trade tariffs on pharmaceutical products. The deal involves an increase in the baseline threshold used to assess whether medicines can be offered by the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will increase the threshold by 25%: from £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000. The government says this means NICE will be able to approve innovative medicines that deliver significant health improvements but might have previously been declined on cost-effectiveness grounds. It has suggested the deal will cost around £1bn a year by 2029. Others, including the Lancet medical journal, have said the cost to the NHS will be £3bn. Exact costs will depend on how many medicines are approved under the new system.

The news media was agog this morning with the (probably, quite illegal) invasion of Venezuela by the United States and the capture of the Venezuelan president who has taken aboard a US warship and will then be taken (and tried and probably imprisoned) in the United States. This story will unfold throughout the day so more of this when details emerge but it delayed me walking down into town. As well as the evident flouting of international law, I am rather dismayed by the reaction of Keir Starmer and other European leaders who refuse to issue a word of criticism of Trump in all of these nefarious activities. Starmer is saying ‘we must wait for the full facts to emerge’ whereas the facts are already known and spattered across the media in that the US have invaded another country, captured its president and is then transporting him to the US. If this is s not an act of war, then  I not know what is but the US constitution reserves the right to wage war on the approval of Congress which has not been sought. The MAGA  crowd are being somewhat silent because whilst they might admire the a ‘strong’ president and the use of the military to pursue America’s aims, Trump came to power on the premise of stopping all wars and certainly not starting one. If Trump had any hopes of attaining a peace prize, then these hopes must surely by now have evaporated like a snowball in June. On my way out, I bumped into my next door neighbour and we will will have a little Christmas drink together, probably in his house as his wife has only just had a hip operation. I walked into town, wrapping up very well against the cold and aware that it may well get even colder over the next day or so. In Waitrose, I spent a leisurely amount of time slowly reading the weekend pages of ‘The Times’ which contained many features best described as ‘makeover’ in terms of diet, exercise, lifestyle, and finances. One particular feature was of great interest as it was written by an Asian doctor who is going to present a special programme next Thursday evening but the major import of which seems to be that there are all kinds of things we can do to improve our health, fitness and well-being by approaches which dispense with all drugs and medications. This sounds an innovative approach and I shall study the article in the newspaper with great care. When I got home, I cooked myself a gammon steak and supplemented by this with an onion/tomato/sprout type of fry-up mainly to use some of the stocks of items left over from the Christmas period. Later in the evening, church beckons but it is not very pleasant going out when the weather is as cold as this. Mu University of Birmingham friend is away for the weekend so I am having to amuse myself for a few days. I will probably make a start removing some of he Christmas decorations but I only fancy doing this in the light.

The start of a New Year is always one of good intentions, not to mention resolutions, as it is evident that we metaphorically and literally turn over a new page when we dispense with the last year and start with the next.  Personally, I am not immune from these influences and do enjoy the occasional inspirational quote when I come across one, which I did a day or so ago. My Droitwich friend supplied me with a quote (which she, herself, was going to find useful) and it ran along the lines ‘Don’t let your happiness lie in other people’s hands’ and is an apparently very well known aphorism which is deployed to help people to sustain their own emotional health and well-being. A bit of research on Google revealed quite a number of accounts about the relevance of this particular quote and I somehow feel that I will not forget it in a hurry. Sometimes, I am reminded of the bitter comment by the French philosopher Satre that ‘Hell is other people’ which one can feel quite often after a bad day at the office, but I have read a quote before which I rather like that ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.’ – Soren Kierkegaard. On New Year’s Day evening, I did rather indulge in the long and drawn-out serialisation of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in which all six episodes were broadcast – I wonder which of the words attributed to the characters in the book they left out, if any. Incidentally, I think quite a lot of people know the story that Jane Austen herself accepted a proposal of marriage on one evening and then thought about it overnight and had changed her mind about it. Women in the 18th and early 19th century were almost regarded as chattels and were very much at the disposal of their male relatives who bequeathed and inherited property from each other and hence the constant theme in the Austen novels about marriage as that was the only way that a woman could generally avoid destitution and the ultimate degradation of the work house. Modern day women, of course, have careers and a degree of economic independence and Austen herself was enjoying (unusually, for the time) success as a female author so she probably valued her independence over the married state – particularly if all of her earnings could be expropriated by a future husband.

Sky News is reporting this morning that Rachel Reeves is ‘quietly hammering’ workers with stealth taxes as a result of her budget last year, a think-tank has said. While the chancellor did not increase income tax, national insurance contributions for employees or VAT, avoiding a manifesto breach, her November statement did see her extend a freeze on the first two until 2031. It means people face being dragged into paying higher rates as their wages rise over time. The Treasury has defended the policy as ‘fair and necessary’. It is expected to raise £23bn in 2030-31 to help the government ‘deliver on the country’s priorities’ like cutting NHS waiting lists and debt. Sir Keir Starmer has promised people will ‘feel positive change’ in their pockets this year. According to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), someone earning £50,000 today will be £505 worse off in real terms come 2031 despite their salary being forecast to increase by more than £6,000. On the flip side, pensioners and those on welfare are set to be better off. Thanks to the triple lock guaranteeing increases in line with inflation, earnings or 2.5%, whichever is higher, a pensioner could expect to be at least £306 better off in real terms in 2030-31. If people relying on the state pension are exempted from paying income tax even once the payment crosses the personal allowance threshold, they could be £537 better off. And increases to the standard rate of universal credit will mean someone on unemployment benefits will be £290 better off.

This morning my son called round which is always nice because I was not quite sure that he planned to come round today.  We discussed the problem of the car battery that had failed after only a year’s use and then I started to get ready to take the car into Bromsgrove. We knew it had been very cold during the night and my son’s car (five miles away) had snow on it this morning. I looked for some cold weather gear in a piece of hall furniture called a Monk’s Bench in which we store hats, gloves and scarves. This turned out to be quite a painful experience because I came across a lot of the woolly hats and gloves that Meg used to wear and they were a very vivid reminder of her absence. I suppose I ought to bundle them all up and take them to a charity shop but today was not the day. The Bromsgrove High Street was in a half open, half shut mode – my favourite little cafe where I am greeted each Friday was shut, for example, but I went off to a supermarket and bought the minimum of needed supplies as I still have a fridge stuffed full of Christmas food. The supermarket had run out of stocks of ‘The Times‘ and my favourite TV listing programs magazine was not yet on display but I managed to secure a copy of my newspaper at the local garage. Some of the charity shops were open and some shut but I did manage to snaffle up a winter weight shirt (as the weather is so cold) and the charity shop were selling every item of clothing within the store for £1. It was quite late when I got home and I just had a ‘fish-on-bread’ type lunch. not being particularly hungry. In the afternoon, I ran off some ‘free’ calendars for 2026 but I was really looking for one  downloaded years ago which had all of the sunrise/sunset times on it for each day of the year. I did manage to locate a website, though, with sunrise/sunset times centred on Bromsgrove but each individual month needed printing off individually and the cartridge in my laser printer ran out half way through. Now, I need to take my various calendars and make then ‘hangable’ by judicious holes and perhaps string but I might leave this task for another day.

So the evening before yesterday was evidently New Year’s Eve and it turned out to be an evening of pleasant surprises. After a day that had been pretty fraught what with my escapades with the car’s battery and my tribulations in dealing with mobile phone companies, I received some pleasant surprises. My Droitwich friend turned up with her son and we spent the early part of the evening together cooking a meal for the three of us – the other son was away in London adjacent to the ‘London Eye’ eagerly anticipating the end of year celebrations. My friend had specially commissioned a Christmas gift which failed to arrive by Christmas Day but did arrive in time for New Year. It was a glass/acrylic medallion designed to be put on a Christmas tree but could be deployed anywhere. Our friend had surreptitiously taken a photograph of the wedding photograph which displays Meg and I looking at each other on our wedding day in 1967 and this had been incorporated into one side of the medallion. On the other side was the inscription ‘Those we love don’t go away- they walk besides  us every day. Meg and Mike 2025‘ This was the most thoughtful and imaginative gift and it will give me a tremendous amount of pleasure as well as reminding me of the generosity of my friend who had it made for me/us. My friend and her son left my house to conclude their own Christmas Eve celebrations at home and, just as they were departing, I received a phone call from my Italian friend down the road with New Year best wishes. My Italian friend and I made a tentative arrangement to see each over this New Year period but she had the most terrible cold and felt flu-like symptoms coming on so was retreating to her bed without seeing New Year celebrations. I did stay up until the magic hour but did not to be honest see much of the fireworks as I was too busy texting ‘Happy New Year’ greetings on my phone to a range of family and friends. my longest standing Spanish friend texted my greetings for the New Year and I tried to reply to her in Spanish using the words ‘Y para ti tambien!” which means ‘and the same to you as well’ Unfortunately predictive text wrought its worst and I finished up with the terrible greeting ‘And for your tampon’ which I did not stop until it was too late (the predictive text had turned ‘tambien’ into ‘tampon’) I immediately sent a corrective message and I am sure my Spanish friend so well versed in English will understand and be amused by what happened. I did have a vey small liqueur glass of whisky with which to see in the New Year but one of my resolutions is to have a ‘dry’ January which should be not too difficult for me. New Year’s Day will see me renewing contact again with an old friend and I hope that in 2026 I can extend and consolidate my social circle which shows ominous signs of fast diminishing around me.

To start of the New Year, as I intend to carry on, I had arranged to meet a long lost friend in the Webbs Garden Centre down the road as it is easily accessible for those coming from further afield via the M5. As we both arrived, it was pouring with rain but after a coffee and a catch-up, we went our separate ways. On my way home, I picked up a copy of the newspaper and popped in to offer New Year Greetings to my Italian friend from down the road but she was still feeling pretty poorly and even asthmatic and may need to make a doctor’s appointment to get one of those puffer decongestants that asthmatics use to keep their airways clear. I had prepared some risotto earlier in the day so this meant that there was a fairly instant meal awaiting for me after my return. After lunch, I spent a frustrating degree of time trying to watch the Channel4 film ‘Hidden Figures’ about the contribution made by young, female black mathematicians to overcome all kinds of prejudice and the contribute to the space programme in the early 1960’s. To my dismay, this film did not seem available via catch-up for Channel4 but eventually it transpired that the system wanted me either to rent or to buy it, neither of which I was inclined to do. Then I had a long conversation with my Droitwich friend as we are both, in our own ways, looking forward to some order and consistency in our day-to-day lives, the patterns of which have been disrupted by the Christmas festivities. 

A major question overhanging the recent political scene is the nature of the Trans-Atlantic alliance. European allies worry that the Trump administration will push for a quick and easy peace in the Ukraine war, which as a result will not prove a lasting one. One pressing question for the year ahead is can European leaders find a way of living with an unreliable partner in Washington who does not share their values, whatever they claim to the contrary, or is some kind of deeper split increasingly inevitable? There is an ebb-and-flow in the nature of this relationship but an impending issue with Ukraine may well bring the issue to the fore once again.

I looked rather too late at the TV schedules to discover that ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was being broadcast during the whole of the afternoon in six episodes starting quite early in the afternoon and going on until 9.00pm this evening. However, most of the real action and drama of the novel comes in the second half of the book so I was not unhappy to start viewing from episode 4 (of 6) onwards. Later on, there is comedy in abundance with a review the life of Dave Allen (the celebrated Irish comedian) as well as an episode of ‘Outnumbered’ which I have always found excruciatingly funny. My TV viewing is quite likely to be interrupted by telephone and/or video calls at this time of year which is always a good thing, of course, and certainly takes priority over a TV programme. Tomorrow of course, is a ‘back to work’ day for some whilst others are squeezing the last bit of vacation out of the festive season before back to work with a vengeance on Monday next week.