A new week is upon us and it looks as though the very cold snap of arctic air that the country has experienced in the last few days might be gradually giving way to some more springlike weather later on during the week. The finer and warmer weather cannot come soon enough as far as I am concerned so that I can get on with some outdoor tidying up in the garden, not to mention the start of the grass cutting season delayed whilst the weather has been so cold. I always like learning new things or tips for everyday living and, this morning whilst I was browsing the news, I came across the following tips from a florist who had been in the business for decades.  Some of her advice I had been following but here it is in full. Generally, if a flower is fully open, it will not last long, but there is no way of knowing for sure how long they will last. There are so many varieties with different vase lives. There are exceptions, of course, to this rule of thumb with hardy varieties such as chrysanthemum. The best way to make flowers last longer is to cut the stems diagonally, place in cool, fresh water, top up the water daily and replace the water every two to three days or so, re-cutting the stems and removing any stems that are past their best. Also, place the flowers out of direct sunlight and away from radiators; the cooler the spot, the better.  We no longer advocate flower food. Our experiments over the years show no improvement in vase life – the steps above are much more important. To cut the stems, you should use a sharp florist scissors or a sharp knife or anything that avoids crushing them. Now most of this advice is sensible except that it would not have occurred to me to keep changing the water and I must admit I have always added the plant food that bought bunches of flowers tend to contain. As the month of April starts to unwind, all kinds of financial consequences will flow at the start of the new financial year. On the positive side, some of our pensions may increase slightly in monetary terms and there may be a slight and very temporary reduction is gas prices. On the other hand, many other utility and other subscriptions tend to rise with the new financial years and it typically happens that any slight apparent increase in one’s income is swiftly wiped out by increases in other bills. For example, my local county Council of Worcestershire is in a dire financial state and has been given special permission by the government  to raise the local rates of 9% which is almost double the average increase of 4.9%, The irony locally is that Worcestershire is led by the Reform party which has found that the statutory responsibility of funding social care for the elderly population as led to unavoidable increases. Rather cynically, central government lets local authorities shoulder the costs and the political opprobrium of rate increases although the funding of care for older people should be a national responsibility even if administered locally.

I was a little late into town this morning but I decided to kill two birds with one stone and pick up my newspaper whilst getting some freshly drawn petrol for the petrol mower. I always buy the highest  grade of fuel (97 RON) hat I can for the mower because I wish to avoid the ethanol in  the more ‘standard’ fuels  which can be as high as 10%. Ethanol can absorb water from the atmosphere and this can to starting and running problems in petrol mowers, so I buy the highest quality fuel I can and also add a special fuel mixture designed to counteract the hygroscopic properties of ethanol if present. Having bought my fuel I returned home and had a quick salad lunch and then surveyed the prospect for the afternoon. The sun came out and although it was a little chilly outside, I decided to give the grass the first cut of the season. This involves some prepping of the mower (oiling the sponge air filter, getting the requisite amount of new oil into the machine, adjusting the blade height for the first cut of the season) However, all of my careful preparations were not in vain as I was absolutely amazed that the mower started at the first pull of the starting cord. In my eight years of mowing with this machine, I don’t recall this ever happening before. After a cut of the green area in front of the houses (approx. 450 square yards), I gave myself a bit of a break and lower the blades one notch to near normal and give a transverse cut i.e. at 90° to the previous one. These days I do not cut the back lawn on the same day as the front lawn in  order to save my energies but that can wait a day or so. It always gives me a great deal of satisfaction to get the first cut of the year under my belt but this is a weekly task from now on and I generally time the first cut around the occasion of my sons birthday but have stayed my hand a little this year as the last few days have been so cold.

I belong to an obscure little organisation called ‘The National Conference of University Professors’ but why most people join this organisation is the for the sale of a meal once a year in the House of Lords generally held in May time. So, the thought crossed my mind but by the time I had taken myself and a companion, paid for the quite expensive lunch, organised train journeys and tax rides across London I calculated that I would not see much change out of £400. Now my very aged iPad is about 8½ years old so I am thinking about replacing it and I suspect that the iPad will give me a lot more pleasure than a day drip to London so this may win out in the end. But I need to work out whether to go for the nearly universal standard 11″ model variant which many commentators is seen as hitting the ‘sweet spot’ between functionality and portability or the 13″ variant. But as both son and daughter-in-law have their own iPad I will take further advice on this.

It is the time of year for the clocks to be put forward by one hour as we enter British Summer Time. Although I went to bed at about 10.30 the evening before, I awoke just after midnight and went to alter all of the house clocks starting in the kitchen. Thos all seemed to go very smoothly on this occasion with no hitches. There are some clocks (like radios) that should have reset themselves automatically and had not at the appointed hour but they had updated themselves when I got up early in the morning. I was quite pleased to learn that I had not been using the correct technique to close down the open aps on my iPad but on consulting the web and running off a document, I have discovered that I should swipe my finger from the bottom of the screen but pause it in the centre for half a second, at which all of the then open tabs will appear as thumbnails and can then be swiped up to be closed completely. My daughter-in-law taught me some of this yesterday but the ‘pause  in the middle of the screen’ was a new technique as far as I was concerned. Although it does not receive much publicity in the UK, the weekend is marked by masses of anti-Trump demonstrations, popularly called ‘No Kings’ (ever since Trump let an image of himself to be propagated across his own media outlets wearing a crown. Tens of thousands of anti-Trump protesters have been attending ‘No Kings’ rallies on Saturday across the US. More than 3,200 events ‌were planned in all 50 states, and organisers hoped it would be the biggest single-day protest in US history. There were rallies in cities including Washington DC, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as further afield in London and Paris, where people demonstrated against the Iran war. Organisers expected nine million people would take part in America this time, after the first two rounds of rallies last June and October attracted five million and seven million respectively. Whether this popular protest will have any real effect is too early to say but when the occasional non-scheduled election does take place, the Democrats seem able to scoop it up. Speaker Mike Johnson is now able to afford just two defections on any party-line vote if all members are present — and in an election year, they seldom are. In the coming weeks, his situation is expected to become worse, whittling down the margin to a single vote. It is the continuation of a dynamic that has plagued House Republicans since President Trump took office in 2025 –  a majority so small that it gives outsize power to any one member who wants to buck the party and it makes governing difficult, if not impossible. Over the course of the weekend, whilst I am out doing my Sunday morning activities, my son and daughter-in-law are packing up their things and leaving the family house in which they have been staying whilst their kitchen was refurbished. I am sure it will give them a lot of pleasure and I know that that some of the available space as been planned to the inch to ensure that certain things will fit where they should. The colour scheme is delightfully subtle and, of course things such as concealed lighting and new splash-backs will make the new kitchen a pleasure in which to prepare meals.

After I had attended the church service in the morning, it was Palm Sunday so as is traditional, we all received a piece of palm folded into the shape of a cross. There was to be no after-service tea and biscuits in the parish hall so whilst in the car I got some funds out of a local ATM, gave the car its ration of petrol, picked up a newspaper and came home to have myself a small cooked breakfast. I knew I would probably go out to a small village near Bromsgrove called Tardebigge where the horses charity were holding their annual Spring fair (or is it ‘fayre’) in the community hall. I went onto the internet to check the exact postcode of the Community hall and was glad I did so as the website informed us that SatNav would give the wrong directions so they gave an alternative set of clear instructions to reach the venue. So in practice by following the instructions this Community Hall had wonderfully ample car parking space and I arrived some 20 minutes after proceedings had opened. I was warmly greeted by the proprietor and the two volunteers with whom I had had coffee the preceding Friday so I as made to feel really welcome. I indulged in some coffee and home made cake and then did a tour of the stalls eventually purchasing several items that I knew would make suitable birthday presents in the future. On one of the stalls, a volunteer had brought along some home-grown plants so after consultation with my daughter-in-law, I purchased a ‘spider’ plant for her. The fair was offering baked potatoes with a variety of fillings so eventually I was persuaded to buy one of these, stuffed with a mixture of coleslaw, baked beans and cottage cheese. This was so huge and filling that  could not actually finish all of it  but in the course of eating this and wandering around the other stalls, I engaged in quite a of conversations with the proprietor and three of the volunteers who I know quite well by now. They were a really friendly and welcoming crowd of people and I was glad that I made the effort to attend and to socialise.  When  got home, there was no need to have any lunch but the whole house felt pretty chilly and I sat and watched the edition of ‘Question Time‘ from last Thursday night. Later in the afternoon there is a good film to be shown on Film 4 which  has been shown quite recently but which I have missed but now is my opportunity to make sure  can view it uninterrupted. I have missed all of the politics programmes that are normally shown earlier on Sunday mornings but no doubt, both of these can be viewed later if the spirit moves me. And I have my copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ which typically offers some in depth analysis of the week’s news.

The evening before last, I received a pleasant surprise as I has received an email from the trip organiser for U3A to organise a trip to Kedleston Hall and Bakewell in Derbyshire for an amazingly reasonable £20. However one did need an up-to-date National Trust membership to go around the Hall and I went scurrying to my wallet to discover two out-of-date cards and then an up-to-date one. This must have renewed automatically and is one of those occasions when one is glad to have automatic renewal. One emerging problem is that Meg had her own National Trust card and I have not got round yet to informing them of Meg’s demise so I have made a reminder to myself to phone them up on Monday morning to get Meg’s subscription cancelled. I find these trips are quite important to me nowadays and going by coach takes out all of the trouble of navigation and it means there is a coach full of people with whom to interact. The trip is in late May and the system is that you first have to apply to get on the trip[ and, when accepted, go ahead and pay for it. But the Jodrell Bank excursion a few days ago went without a hitch so now there is another excursion to which to look forward. I spent more time than is good for me messing about with audio things for the following reason. Thinking ahead to my little musical presentation in about two weeks time, I wondered whether I might enhance the sound of the speaker in my iPad which are tiny but do quite a good job considering their size. I had in my possession a standalone Bluetooth speaker so I needed to find the right cable for this, charge it up, print off the manual again (fortunately saved and in my ‘manuals’ folder on my desktop) Now I knew I also had a pair of quite powerful little speakers which I had linked year ago onto an old IBM laptop but evidently they need a power supply. This can be provided on a portable basis by a portable power source such as a Power Bank and one of these I had purchased some time ago. I know this worked well with my speakers in the past but I had to work out how to get it charged it up again which meant quite a lot of experimentation with cables of various sizes, some of which looked as though they might fit. Eventually I found one and I have the Power Bank charging up (slowly) but I know it will give me a couple of hours at the very least which will be enough to power the speakers. Whenever I get a new charging cable, I must get into the habit of labelling it up well so it can be matched up exactly – fortunately, the model I had bought in the past gives an electronic display of power actually charged which  seems at first sight to be incredibly useful but I know from what other users have said that these displayed charge levels are often very approximate and often malfunction. But at the end of the morning, I have got the kit more or less assembled together that I know will work and it has given the results that I think I will need in the future. But playing an iPad in large sonorous kitchen with sound that can reflect  off hard surfaces gives a very different result to that found in a living room with a lot of (sound absorbing) soft furnishings.

My son and daughter-in-law left our family home to go and give their own flat a good clean after the installation of their new kitchen and to get some of their pots, pans, crockery and kitchenware into their new resting places. Whilst they were doing this, I picked up a copy of the newspaper and popped into Wetherspoons where I knew that my long standing acquaintance, World  Seasoned Traveller, was occupied having his coffee and consulting his iPhone for photographs. We had a few words and then I proceeded along the High Street popping into the occasional charity shop. Actually I did find a glass butter dish which I wanted to buy (for the storage of cheese) and then happened  across two dog walkers that Meg and I would often see in the park. This couple I know pretty well and the lady hails from Pula in Yugoslavia which I have actually visited on holiday decades ago. I had a quick ‘fish on read’ type lunch and then my son and daughter-in-law turned up, pretty tired after their cleaning activities  and then we are going to be preparing a meal together this evening. My daughter-in-law very slowly and patiently helped me to sort how to make my music website which relies upon links to Youtube will play videoclips without the interruptions of adverts.  I already have a subscription to YouTube but I was not aware how should I access the premium edition of YouTube and then ‘pin’ it so that I could access further links advert free. Some of my problems arose from the fact that one runs tabs in a browser on a desktop but apps in a browser window on an iPad and although the operating systems are similar, they work in subtly different ways. But my daughter-in-law has now pushed me further along a learning curve for which I am very grateful and it means that when I come do my presentations, they should now be advert free. It has been a beautiful afternoon with only a little of a cold breeze but instead of doing outside jobs, I have been dosing myself up with flu and cold remedy to stave off an imminent cold. We are now approaching the start of British Summer Time at which at some ungodly hour in the morning, I need to go round and put all of the clocks forward one hour. Some are easy and some I always have to think about such as how to adjust the clock on our oven which seems to have a mind of its own. I think the time is approaching when we may have a debate about whether we need (DST = Daylight Savings Time) at all. There is now a school of thought that we should put forward our clocks by two hours at this time of year and then stick at that with no further clock changes at all. As so often in these matters, it is a case of the balance of advantages vs. disadvantages but there are times for long established rituals to have had their day and not in tune with modern living conditions.

My next door neighbours have both been in the wars a little as one of them has had a knee replacement and his wife a replaced hip. Consequently, we never quite got round to our Christmas-time get together but our neighbours put together quite a lavish little tea party, which, as it happened, almost coincided to the day with my son’s birthday. So the day before it was excellent to finally have a get-together and I know that my son and daughter-on-law really appreciated this gesture. The installation of the new kitchen in my son and daughter-in-law’s flat seems to be proceeding on schedule and may well be finished by the very end of the week. Meanwhile, though, there is quite a big ‘cleaning up’ job to be done because as units were cut to size and adapted, there was a certain amount of saw-induced fine particles which will have settled everywhere. The one redeeming feature of all of this is that the flat is not very large which means that ultimately the amount of cleaning to be done is limited and will come to a finite end.  I remember from decades ago when Meg and I had our house extended in Leicestershire some forty yeas ago now, Meg and I would come home tired from work and would immediately have to set about cleaning surfaces before we could even start to think about preparing our evening meal. Meanwhile, I am watching the liberal American news podcasts and  in particular, one channel which gives a lot of attention to the health of Donald Trump. According to this podcast, the health of Donald Trump is visibly declining before  our very  eyes. In the last week, we have seen clips of video in which Trump is constantly falling asleep whilst in Cabinet. His frequent outbursts against ‘criminal’ judges (i.e. any judge, anywhere in the US who does not issue a judgment  which backs up the Trump view of the world is immediately labelled ‘criminal’  and that includes some of his nominees on the Supreme Court) There are also signs of some neurological damage to one of his hands and experienced observers seem to be concurring in their view that Trump is exhibiting all of the classic symptoms of a neurological condition such as  dementia. In the Iranian war, he has extended his latest deadline to the Iranians to accept his ‘peace plan’ (unconditional surrender) for a whole ten days which, as it happens, very conveniently excludes the Easter period including  Easter Sunday. This means that Trump can retreat to Mar a Lago over the Easter period  whilst the bombing continues but there is no political process such as negotiating a peace to interrupt the Easter vacation period. After quite a busy last couple of days, I am quite looking forward to some peaceful relaxation over the next day or so and we have the distribution of palms on ‘Palm Sunday’ to which to look forward in my next attendance at church. The weather is unseasonably cold with an arctic blast sweeping over all of the country but we can expect a slow improvement over the next few days. We shall have to wait until next Wednesday until we actually see a burst of anything like spring sunshine.

After we had breakfasted,  made a journey into town picking up some supplies from Waitrose and then popping in, as I normally do at the end of the week, into my ‘Gifts of Love’ horse sanctuary outlet. There I consoled  the proprietor, who I know quite well, on the death of her dearly beloved dog and she has spent most of the week getting over this sad event. One of the regular volunteers was assisting in the shop this morning  and then another of the volunteers came by. Evidently, they all know each quite well so t was not long before the proprietor, two volunteers and myself were sitting around a table having coffee and biscuits and cracking lots of jokes (i.e. not like your normal coffee establishment) This Sunday was going to the their Spring Fair which  is primarily  a money raising event held in the community hall of a nearby village. There were going to be lots of stalls with some selling a wide variety of (home prepared) foodstuffs. I was told that there would be a wide variety of age ranges amongst the volunteers and lots of interesting people with whom to chat so they invited me along  to participate n the activities as I am a long standing patron of their café and have already met with some of their volunteers. I feel well inclined to go along – although tempting to say that a ‘horse sanctuary’ is not necessarily my cup of tea, the opportunity to meet with and to  chat with a lot of the participants and guests is not to be turned down lightly so I will probably go along.

After  we had lunched, my son got a text to say that he fitting of his kitchen was all but complete. So we all decided to go over and have a look at things – my son and daughter-in-law were delighted with the finished product and the fitter/joiner had taken a great deal of care not only with the fitting but occasionally with little adaptations that have to be made as well as more specialist cupboards built from scratch. The joiner had even brought his own wife along so that she could a womanly ‘deep cleaning’ touch to the newly installed units before  the kitchen as a whole was due for a hand-over.  So, the amount of cleaning to be done is now much less than thought and tomorrow my son and his wife can return to their newly enhanced flat and start to re-populate the kitchen with all of normal kitchen pottery, silverware and cooking containers. Last night, I started to watch ‘Question Time’ on the TV but fell asleep towards the end of it.  I shall probably  watch it again on catch-up and then may have an early night before  an early start tomorrow, as I am fighting off a sore throat and cold/’flu symptoms which may have been passed on by fellow family members. So far I have been able to resist these predations of winter but I may have been caught at the very end.  I tend to always carry a supply of flu and cold relief capsules and powders so that I can dose myself up before the symptoms intensify.

A very interesting judgement in a US court emerged late yesterday. The tech giants, Google and Meta were found liable for a woman’s social media addiction in a landmark lawsuit. A jury in Los Angeles found Instagram, which is owned by Meta, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, were responsible for harm caused to the 20-year-old – awarding her $6m in damages. Meta and Google both said they disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal. But it is been seen as a bellwether decision that will inform hundreds more cases against social media companies for creating addictive algorithms. This case has enormous implications for the way in which the social media companies operate and accumulate vast wealth and the judgement strikes at the heart of their algorithms. But it is fascinating that a US jury has found the use of social media to be addictive and potentially harmful to the mental health  of millions of teenagers. Of course, the big tech companies have the ability and the funds to appeal over and over again and no doubt any legal cases may drag on the years. But there are potentially thousands of similar court cases waiting in the pipeline and we may be seeing just the start to a big fight back the power of the large tech giants. Regulatory legislation is being debated in our own House of Commons and Australia has banned the use of mobile phones for under 16’s which is interesting in its own right. To underline this point, the combined market capitalisation of top tech firms—led by Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft—exceeds $12 trillion, a figure higher than the total GDP of every country except the United States and China. I think this is a case where no individual country can take on the might of the huge giants but one hopes that the combined resources of the EU, including for the purpose of this argument the UK, might be able to exert some influence. The day promised to be an exceptionally busy one today as the shopping will have to be fitted in somewhere and there is Tai Chi, an introductory conversational Spanish U3A course and an audiology appointment to be fitted in somewhere. Days occur like this sometimes when there is a cluster of appointments to be managed somehow. In the Iran war, we now have a very bizarre prospect unfolding. The Iranian foreign minister has been spared after Pakistan warns US no one would be left for talks. Israel has taken Iran’s foreign minister off its list of assassination targets after an intervention by Pakistan, a Pakistani official told Reuters. Abbas Araqchi ‌and parliamentary speaker ​Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf were on the hit-list until Pakistan asked Washington not to kill them, who in turn requested Israel to  ‘back off’, the official said. Araqchi has become an increasingly prominent Iranian political figure since the start of the war and the killing of several top Iranian officials. So we now have the situation in which the assassination of top Iranian officials has been halted so that there are sufficiently political important people remaining with whom to negotiate. As Trump is blowing so hot and cold, it is unclear whether we are on the verge of a peace deal or not as Trump continues to issue blood curdling threats if the Iranians do not agree to his own ‘peace plan'(unconditional surrender) but it is not for nothing that Trump has earned the label ‘Taco’ which is a shorthand for the expression that ‘Trump always chickens out’

Later in the morning, I attended my normal Tai Chi class, although I did miss last week’s session. When the class was over, I indulged in my normal coffee and teacake with some of the regulars before I needed to leave to get my weekly shopping done. Fortunately, it was quite a light week this week about which I was pleased if only because I could quickly get things put away and then a quick lunch prepared. This afternoon was to be the first in our Conversational Spanish and was to be held in a local village community centre. Fortunately, I was able to locate this fairly easily using the SatNav and as I had arrived about 15 minutes early, I assisted the convenor in putting out some tables and chairs so that we could have a good round table discussion. As well as myself there were four other members  in the group. One of these was a teacher of French and Spanish who had been teaching the subjects in schools for about 30 years so she was light years ahead of the rest of us. Then there were two other female members of the group who were very much at a basic level but were trying very hard to understand and to keep up, Finally, there was a quietly spoken physicist whose level of Spanish was about the same as mine. I know my own grammatical constructions leaves quite a lot to be desired not ever having been formally taught the language but the conversation flowed easily enough as the occasion demanded. I had the feeling, tough, that my accent and intonation might have been a tad better than that of the school teacher but it is very early days yet. This time around, we were mainly introducing ourselves but next time we are going to have a more thematic chat about holiday experiences in Spain. The village hall we were in was a bit cavernous and one of the heaters had failed so we rather huddled in our coats but we may try and find a venue, preferably for free, which is a bit more conducive to the needs and budgets of a small group (as we need to raise the cost pf the hire of the hall between us at each session) It could well be that we finish up around the table in the refreshment area of one of our local garden centres where we know there is plenty of parking and it is easy to find. After this meeting had finished, I needed to find my way cross-country for a routine audiology check in our local district hospital and this was fairly routine with nothing much to report. Nonetheless, I was very glad to get this busy day behind me and the U3A groups are small then it is important that the group manages to develop and sustain its own momentum so that everybody will be encouraged to continue to participate. Evidently, even if one or two members drop out then the group may not be able to sustain itself so I suppose it is important that each group member tries to give advice, support, assistance and encouragement to each other.

Yesterday was actually my son’s birthday – of course, parents remember  the birthday vividly of their first born (and in my case, only) son. All those years, I actually helped to deliver him as they were short-staffed that night in the maternity hospital – plus ça change! As I remember it, he was born at about 5.23 on a Monday morning. I remember walking back from the hospital, feeling elated and we drank to the new born baby’s heath in the flat I was sharing with my university friends with NHS Orange juice and gin. In those days, new delivered mothers and mothers about to give birth were supplied with excellent orange juice but upon some investigation find that this  practice did not survive for very long after my son’s birth. NHS welfare orange juice was officially withdrawn for young babies on 31st December 1971.The supply of this concentrated, sweetened orange juice, which had been provided to children under five since 1941 to combat vitamin C deficiency, was replaced by synthetic vitamin drops and tablets. All that I can remember was that it tasted very good and the Spring morning and the daffodils in full bloom. Meg was discharged from hospital very quickly as in those days she was regarded as an older mother (at the age of 21!) as most mothers were then aged about 16. Both my son and I got up promptly at 6.00am because I needed to up in plenty of time before my trip out for the day to Jodrell Bank and he needed to motor over to his flat to open up for the kitchen fitters who are making very good progress with the installation of his new kitchen and may be finished in a few days time. An interesting snippet of news from the USA emerged yesterday morning to brighten at least some of our day. The Democrats have won a Florida special election, flipping a state legislative district that is home to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Emily Gregory, a first-time candidate, beat Republican Jon Maples, who had been endorsed by Mr Trump. Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, declared: ‘If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what is possible this November.’ That refers to the upcoming midterms, when the Democrats will be looking to inflict major damage upon the Trump presidency with potential wins in the House of Representatives and Senate. Actually, it is only one of a series of electoral defeats inflicted on Donald Trump but flipping the constituency in which Trump has his stately pile must be especially sweet for the local Democrats. Trump’s hold on reality seems to be more and more challenged these days as he recently tweeted that a CNN poll indicated that he now received 100% support  from the electorate, but the most recent opinion poll from CNN put Trump with an approval rating of 37% and a disapproval rating of 60% If this is sustained until the Autumn mid-term elections in November, then it spells the end of Republican control of the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate as well.

Yesterday was the day of my trip to Jodrell bank so I walked down into town to pick up a copy of my daily newspaper and then made my way to the bus station. The coach arrived fairly promptly and as we set off, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my travelling companion in the seat next to me was the person ho I had met in the Musical Appreciation Group who had worked at the National Lending Library in Yorkshire but some eight years after me. We carried on exploring our joint experiences of working both before and leaving university and the journey to Jodrell Bank flew by in no time at all and we arrived just after 11.00am. The weather was pretty cold upon our arrival and we were given a map which  showed which of the various sites we could visit for free and which we needed to pay £5 per site to visit. I think that some of us, including myself, were expecting some kind of guided tour but instead we were rather left to our devices. By this  stage and after an early start, many of us headed for the coffee shop to regale ourselves before we sampled some of the (free) exhibition sites and films. We left the site at 2.00pm (although originally scheduled for 1.00pm) and then made our way to Nantwich which was about three quarters of an hour away. Here it is was bitterly cold and many of made for a nearby parish church which  was more like a small scale cathedral and reminded me very much, probably because of its use of a local red sandstone, as a sort of miniature Chester cathedral. We admired some of the misericordias (half seats in the choir stalls used probably by choristers inn the past so they could half stand, half sit during long church services) On a local recommendation many of us made for a highly recommended local book store which  also incorporated refreshment facilities. As it as so bitterly cold outside and I had had only one sandwich for lunch. I treated myself to a bowl of soup and a roll which was delicious and many of the party ended up in this particular locale. Then at 4.00pm we started the journey back to Bromsgrove where we arrived just after 6.30 I chatted to the same travelling companion all the way back and again we had an entertaining talk. What was interesting when I asked around several of the other visit members and when I responded to some of the questions that I was asked, it appeared that many of them of they had been widowed then it was a period some 15-10 years ago and not recently. To that extent, I was regarded as a relative newcomer to the group but everybody with whom I spoke seemed very friendly and not at all stand offish. I was a little dismayed that I had taken a little travelling case with me but my coffee flash had leaked into it. When I got it home, turned it inside out and then gave it a good cleaning, it fell to bits in my hands but then I calculated that it was about thirty thee yeas old so perhaps it was not a wonder that the seams had rotted away.

When I awoke yesterday morning, it was to be of those days when, as you look out of the bedroom window, the sky appears to a mixture of grey and a light murky yellow. The day promises to be quite a fine one in the morning once the cloud has burned off but we are to expect increasingly cloudy conditions into the afternoon. Whilst  was preparing my early cup of morning cup of tea, I decided to see what my forthcoming musical presentation would sound like if played on my ancient iPad. To my surprise, it came out as quite an acceptable sound and, despite the occasional advert as we are relying upon YouTube, and a combination of the videoclips accompanying the arias I have chosen and the music itself will give me the overall effect I am trying to achieve. Of course, I will be making the point that my love of Mozart operas is not only a treat for the ears but a visual as well as an emotional journey as each entry is played. I have to admit that playing my iPad in my kitchen gives a slightly different effect as there are plenty of hard surfaces from which the sound can rebound, rather than the soft furnishings of a living room, but nonetheless playing the presentation over to myself reminds me of what I intend to say about each item on the agenda.

Quite a shocking and unusual accident is being reported upon as I write as a plane flying from Montreal in Canada has crashed into a fire truck in La Guardia airport in New York. As the nose of the plan struck the fire truck, the nose of the plane reared into the air and both the pilot and the co-pilot have been killed outright whereas all of the passengers appear to be safe although some are injured. This is one of the most unusual types of aeroplane accidents that I can ever remember as it is often the case that passengers who suffer most badly in an air crash and not the pilots. No doubt many more details will emerge but it appears that the firetruck was responding to a separate incident at the time. One would have thought that a firetruck is more than capable of getting out of the way of a large plane rather than the other way around but we will have to see what emerges. According to the news breaking last night, The American ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is planning to enter every airport in the United States and arrest those they deem to be illegal immigrants almost the minute they step off the plane. There is already  an agency within the US charged with the tasks of ensuring security and it is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) which is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has authority over the security of transportation systems within and connecting to the United States. However, the Trump administration has transformed ICE into a practically private army which roams around  American cities to do Trump’s bidding and, of course, it was ICE agents that killed two American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis before the local population rose up and effectively demanded that their city be left alone. What is so frightening about the personnel recruited  to ICE is that they are very heavily armed, are masked to avoid identification, do not appear to have any IDs evident to the outside world  and appear to have been recruited in great quantities from a much increased  budget. Congress is deadlocked  over the issue of the deployment of these ICE agents as the Democrats are trying  to block the funding stream that has allowed so many to be recruited and deployed but Trump’s private army appears to be not an inaccurate description.  To British eyes, this seems absolutely horrifying but the Trump administration and ‘modus operandi’ are actually quite admired on the far right of British politics and one wonders if Reform were to win the next election whether this American import will be replicated on the streets of Britain. I think the time has past when we can say to ourselves that ‘it will never happen here’ as the world appears to be evolving in such dangerous directions. 

After a light salad lunch, my son, daughter-in-law and I continued our investigation into my grandmothers (and hence my mother’s) origins but we have precious little to go on. Part of the problem  is that we not have birth certificates or even town of birth to go on ad there happen to be quite a lot of ‘Alice Maud Ward’s around in the 1890’s. But we have a 1911 census form entry which  we know is genuine as it matches up with some of my grandmother’s writing in a book of poems given to my mother when she was 15 years old. We are currently working on one line of enquiry where it was possible that my grandmother was ‘passed around’ the family because  we have located a record where she may have been living with her grandfather in the Hull area at the time of the 1890 census at the age of 10-11 but I need to contact  my sister to see if she has the slightest fragment of information that might help us in or searches. As with all historical records, it is possible that errors were made at the time the data was collected – we have found a record, for example, where my mother’s name may have been entered incorrectly as’Maria’ rather than Marie and then corrected later as the final type written  ‘e’ does not align with the rest of the name. My son and I very carefully removed a picture of a sailing ship from its frame to see if we could find a provenance or a date but nothing was yielded up so we taped it all up again. In the late afternoon, I thought  I really needed to get on and carry on with 30-40 minutes of patio clearance (scraping moss from between the slabs) so I now have about one half of this job completed. My son and daughter-in-law invested in a good home-produced outdoor reared chicken so this will be the first of many meals that the bird will provide for us in the next few days.

My routine has changed somewhat at the weekends as I now attend  my local church for the 8.30am service, if only because there is the attraction of meeting fellow parishioners in the parish hall afterwards for tea and biscuits. This provides me with the opportunity of meeting with other age groups which I relish and afterwards, I go along and fill the car up with petrol, pick up a newspaper and then call in at my local supermarket where I can utilise their ATM machine as well as purchasing any last minute supplies. Then when I returned home, my son, daughter-in-law and myself started attacking the huge pile of family photographs we had released from some of the storage space in the house. In past decades, one took a roll of film along to a local chemist for development or even sent them away but we approached the task by throwing away any scenes of landscapes that we could not recognise or seem to have any significance for us. But any photos with family members featuring in them we tended to keep but labelling them up and then trying to add a date and, if possible, a location to help explain the context of the photo. Some of the photos detailed Meg and myself astride a summit on some Lake District mountain and my son himself features in many of them. I think that the earliest photo dates from the time that we introduced our son to fell by walking up Skiddaw (about the 3rd or 4th highest mountain in the area) but we ourselves were staying in a little family run hotel on the slopes of Skiddaw in any case. After we had a light lunch, we fell into talking about family  history and we started  to research some details  of my family history on my grandmother’s side of the family. This proving to be quite problematic as we have so little to go on. But we have one or two fixed points and knowing that she died in 1960 aged 81 we can ascertain a birth date. I also have on my computer an image of the copy of the relevant entry made by my grandmother on the 1911 census but this is relatively little to go on. But my grandmother’s two Christian names were very common at the time as was her maiden name and we do not know some basic details such as the town I which she was living or even her marriage date or the first name of my maternal grandfather. My son and daughter-in-law have subscriptions to ancestry.com website to help them in their searches. To try and make sense of some of the very  limited information that we have we are working on the theory that my grandmother may have been adopted at the age of 2 as we can find details of somebody with the same (but fairly common first name and surname) living with another family in the Hull area and this family may have had a child baptised at the same time as, eerily enough, both this family and my grandmother appear next to each other on the register of christenings suggesting that there was a ‘job lot’ of christenings and the families  may have been entwined somehow. This task is like fitting together pieces of a huge jigsaw and it possible that we are making all kinds of false assumptions but we may all be wrong. 

The war in Iran is taking on some new and interesting dimensions. Trump has told the Iranians that if the Straits pf Hormuz are not reopened then the SA and Israel  will attempt to wipe out Iranian power plants. By way of retaliation, the Iranians are saying  that if Americans attack power plants, then Iran will do the same including the power plats of any of the allies. A certain amount of this is just posturing almost for the sake of it but it is always possible in these ‘tit-for-tat’ situations that one side or the other will make a bad miscalculation and the entire conflict spirals to a deeper and much more serious level. The week ahead is going to prove to a particularly interesting one as I have two new social activities in prospect. The most noteworthy one is a trip to the Jodrell Bank telescope where I am signed up for a trip and a tour of the facilities next Wednesday. This is a U3A trip and the coach picks me up from Bromsgrove Bus station just after 9.00am and then we are whisked up the M6 to the plains of Cheshire. In the afternoon we are going to tour the historic parts of Nantwich so it promises to be a great day out. The following day is going to be the initial meeting of the conversational Spanish group and we have been asked to say a little something about ourselves, including our hobbies and interests to get the ball rolling. What will be fascinating to learn is how good/bad/rusty all of us turn out to be. Those who have studied Spanish at school may well have a higher standard of grammatical accuracy to bring to the part whereas I shall just burble along in my self-taught kind of way. We are going to have a colder spell of weather in the next few days because the grass mowing season is upon us but this will have to wait until the end of the week. Of the various groups that I have joined, the one that has proved to be the most popular is the ‘Curry Club’ I think that this group already has well over 30 members and at least two thirds of them have already signed up for a meal in an excellent restaurant in the Droitwich area.  As I have only recently signed up I have not managed to get into the party for the next eating occasion but at least I am in the system for the next time around. After I have experienced the various groups to which I have signed up, I will be able to make a decision  as to which of these I shall continue with but in the meanwhile there is a house to maintain and a garden to get licked into shape. It is also my son’s birthday later in the week but I believe that his wife is taking him out for a special meal in Birmingham when I am out on my trip in any case. I have looked at the longer term weather forecast for the few days ahead and whilst the weather is going to be quite seasonably warm in the early part of the week, it will drift down towards  the end of the week which is just when I wanted the weather to be fine for my gardening activities.

It is unequivocally spring like when I awoke yesterday morning to a clear blue sky and a temperature that will eventually rise to about 13° which is not quite as warm as a few days ago. This weekend is  one of the weekends in which the Methodist Centre holds a general ‘get together’ for those who are on their own. The format is generally a coffee occasion for the entire group which can number as many as about 60-70 of us and this is then followed by a talk, film or presentation given by someone who local links in the area e.g. a local historian. The talks are not always a great deal of interest to be fair but it is a good opportunity for acquaintances to meet up with each other and to make new contacts. I anticipate that my trans-Atlantic friend with whom I had coffee during the week will attend and I think that one of the people attending will also be part of the coach holiday I am to undertake in April. Yesterday, I put some finishing touches to the presentation I am going to make to the recently formed Classical Music Appreciation group which is in about three weeks time and ran through some of the video clips I had assembled with my daughter-in-law. She made the observation that each of the clips was on various aspects of love (youthful, sorrowful, anticipatory) and I suppose  she was correct in her observations which gives me another angle or discussion point when I come to make my contribution. At the moment, I know everything that I intend to say about each piece but it is all in my head and not written down but this is fine. Of course we do not know at this stage how the dynamics of the group will develop and when we all share our musical experiences with each other it will be in a very different way but I am hopeful that we can both share and also learn from each other as the meetings go by. But we have only had an introductory meeting so far so it is early days yet. It is interesting that our group is about 12 members strong but the Curry Club membership is already bursting at the seams and it seems that the next meeting of this will be of the order of two dozen of us (half a restaurant full?) in an Indian restaurant which  has a very good reputation locally. The other group which I have joined but not yet attended is Conversational Spanish and this again should prove to be interesting when we eventually convene and share our (fumbling, no doubt) experiences with each other. It now appears that the UK is being sucked, step by step, into the Iran conflict as news has emerged that as a country we are now going to allow the Americans to use British bases as a springboard or staging post for their own operations. I feel that the cautious approach of our own Prime Minister has been judicious so far but we may now be entering a phase when we are seen as an active ally of the United States and therefore our military assets will be regarded as legitimate targets to attack. It will be interesting to assess the mood of the House of Commons when the government approach will be subject to a critical scrutiny and assessment. For example, the shadow of the Iraq intervention by Tony Blair when ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were found to be non-existent but just rhetoric has not been forgotten, or forgiven, by a large swathe of Labour MPs. 

The talk given at the Methodist Centre today  featured a presentation of photographs on the theme of ‘Island Hopping by Camper Van’ The couple  who presented it had evidently been very keen coastal path walkers in their younger days and their photos featured the remote islands and headlands off the west coast of Ireland, Crete and some of the more remote and inaccessible Greek islands and finally the Orkneys and Shetland Isles. The illustrated talk turned out to be a little more interesting than I thought it might be and I had visited some of the Orkneys in a round Britain cruise decades before. One of the audience is coming on the coach trip to Scotland and she very kindly had brought along with her a history of the hotel and its environs for me to read before the holiday starts in early April. After I returned home, I made myself a salad lunch and was delighted to see that my daughter-in-law had busied herself with some much needed weeding and hedge cutting at he front of the house. After lunch and as the weather was fine, I decided to make a start on the moss and weeds that had made rather a mess of our patio at the rear of the house.  I had neglected doing this routine gardening whilst Meg had been so ill and was gradually fading away and I do not regret for a moment spending  as much time as I could by her side. As it was, even getting the lawns cut proved to be quite a difficult logistical exercise the summer before last. So although I have no regrets, the day of reckoning is approaching and I have made a start on the quite massive garden maintenance task in front of me. In the afternoon, I split my activities into two sessions of work and got the moss and large weeds removed. Now I am starting on the longer task of removing the finer weeds and moss between  each of the paving stones and this I will continue by doing at lest 30 minutes a day until the task is completed. Then the patio will need a good re-grouting followed by a specialist cleaning, but I will take advice on which way round I ought to organise these activities. In any case, lawn mowing will start next week so I need to get supplies of lawn mower oil and fresh petrol organised. Once the lawn mowing season starts, it becomes a once-a -eek job because the very act of cutting the grass releases a hormone which encourages further growth and of course we have the longer days, some Spring sun and the inevitable April showers to assist rapid growth. 

Two particular facets of the horrible conflict in the Middle East are becoming apparent to us this morning. The first of these is the absolute scale of the devastation that is being wrought upon the economies of states in the area by attacking oil and gas pressing facilities, one by-product of which is that the cost of has supplies in the UK has already doubled since the start of the conflict. Defining oil and as reprocessing, the life blood of the Middle East as military facilities, liable to be open to enemy attack is opening a Pandora’s box and both the Israelis and the Iran have just crossed this threshold, to the extent that even Donald Trump is expressing at some alarm at this development. The second nature of the conflict is that Israel now feels no restraining hand of the USA as has been customary over the decades. Netanyahu has stated he was going to ignore the Americans anyway. In the past few decades, the Americans have always let the Israelis know that America could cut off Israel at the knees immediately by withholding all military supplies and economic aid but the Israelis have evidently judged that with the present turmoil in the American polity they can do whatever they want without restraint. The Economist recently published a long analysis detailing just how unrestrained Israel is becoming. This new, hegemonic Israel is the product in part of the lingering trauma of October 7th. Before the massacre Israel sought to avoid all-out conflict, contenting itself with periodic strikes against its foes, to assassinate threatening leaders or destroy sophisticated weapons. When it went to war, as it did several times against Hamas, it kept the wars short. The goal was to deter and weaken its adversaries, not to obliterate them.In hindsight, many Israeli generals and spies see that policy as naive. They are no longer willing to tolerate threats on their borders—even hypothetical ones. Syria’s new rulers have been clear that they want a peaceful relationship with their neighbour (and after a decade of civil war, they are in no position to fight the Middle East’s strongest army). That has not stopped Israel from seizing even more Syrian territory, to protect the land it seized in 1967. For Israel’s hard right, though, the goal is not merely to protect the country but to expand it. They have dreamed for years of rebuilding Jewish settlements in Gaza, which were evacuated in 2005, and annexing the West Bank. Some fantasise about a ‘Greater Israel’ that stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. They are a minority in Israel, but they are an increasingly powerful one. Mr Netanyahu may not share their yearning for a biblical kingdom, but he needs their support for his earthly goals. He wants to stay in power, and that requires keeping his extremist allies on side. There is another development as well concerning the health of Donald Trump. Although technically, psychiatrists are breaking their codes of ethics by diagnosing at a distance, there now seems to be growing consensus that Trump is suffering from a malignant narcissism which accounts for much of is behaviour. Added to this, details are started  to emerge of Trump’s evident dementia as it has become public knowledge that he has had more than one ‘annual’ check on his health status and this has included both an MRI scan and also cognitive tests which are almost certainly conducted as Trump’s medical team can see the signs of Trump’s dementia worsening almost by the day. My feeling is that is a combination of the oil price rise on the one hand and Trump’s health status that will occasion his downfall well before the conclusion of a second term.

Later on in the morning, I made a journey down into town by car and then introduced my son and daughter-in-law to the delights of the ‘Gifts of Love’ outlet which sells artefacts and supplies coffee and cake to raise funds for a local horse sanctuary. After this we wandered back slowly upon the High Street buying one or two things for the collective lunch. After a home-made soup, it was such a nice afternoon that I spent a certain amount of time reading the newspaper whilst also chatting with my daughter-in-law who was simultaneously  enjoying  the sunshine. Whilst outside, we bumped into our next-door neighbour who I have not seen for some time now but the three of us have been invited round for tea and cake later on in the week and we seem to have quite a lot to catch upon. Earlier in the afternoon, I had thought of an additional aria that I wished to stitch into my presentation so I located a suitable clip of video on YouTube. We prepared our evening meal together and then settled down to watch some comedy that my family thought I  might quite like.

There is a suggestion that Israel my be breaching international law by using white phosphorous in Southern Lebanon. Since October 2023, Sky News has interviewed dozens of residents of southern Lebanon who say they have seen white phosphorus being sprayed on their crops, farmland and houses. A video verified by Sky News, shows an IDF operation in southern Lebanon. Amael Kotlarsk, a weapons expert at defence intelligence company Janes, told Sky News that the substance is white phosphorus. The chemical is used by militaries to create smokescreens or for illumination, as above, but can also start fires, damage crops and cause severe burns. Its indiscriminate use in populated areas is illegal under international law. The evidence for this latest allegation is not 100% proved but there is enough circumstantial evidence that white phosphorous may well be implicated in the war. The people of Lebanon must be used to frequent Israeli invasions by now and Israeli Force Force (IDF) has rolled into much of Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is widely considered to be better armed, funded, and trained than the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). With significant Iranian support, Hezbollah functions as a ‘state within a state’  with an arsenal of over 150,000 rockets, surpassing the conventional capacity of the official national military, making it the dominant armed force in Lebanon. A total defeat of Hezbollah is unlikely and then it is best thought of as a smart ‘de facto’ government of Lebanon.