The war in Iran my be somewhat nearer some kind of resolution despite some tit-for-tat by both sides recently but these appeared to be measured and not designed to provoke a massive military response. Although America remains the dominant military force in the area, any great show of aggression only invites a counter response and the war continues. It may be that we are edging towards  a settlement but at a snail’s pace and, in the meantime. Israel is rampaging unrestrained throughout the whole of southern Lebanon and seems to keep expanding the areas that it seeks to occupy and/or control. The only certainty that we can take from all of this is to realise that oil prices will continue to be high and it might be years before the price of oil drops to its pre-war levels. Meanwhile, nearing his 80th birthday on 4th June, Donald Trump has undertaken an annual health check and, as we might expect, the White House have issued a statement indicating that the president is in an excellent state of health and that all of his vital signs show normality. But this is evidently at odds with what independent observers note from time to time and the fact that he is said to have said 100% on a recent test of cognitive ability just defies belief. Trump appears to doze off frequently during the long cabinet meetings and, given the level of sycophancy displayed, perhaps one can understand why. Here in the UK, the really hot weather spell with temperatures at or near 34° or 35 ° have thankfully abated and we have a beautiful fine late May sunshine but with the promise of cooler weather to come. Now that I have been accepted as part of the coach party to visit Port Sunlight in mid-July, I though I would do some background reading before our visit. Port Sunlight is an internationally significant model village on the Wirral, England, built in 1888 by William Hesketh Lever for his soap factory workers. It is historically significant for its pioneering fusion of social welfare, town planning, and Arts and Crafts architecture, which helped inspire the global Garden City movement. Conceived by over 30 different architects, the village features no two identical homes, varied English architecture, and no visible house backs. Its low-density housing and integration with 130 acres of parkland served as a radical departure from typical cramped industrial towns. Founder William Lever (later Lord Leverhulme) aimed to uplift his working-class employees by providing sanitary, affordable housing and championing overall health and good hygiene. Nearly every building in the 130-acre site is Grade II listed. It is widely considered one of the best-preserved industrial worker settlements in the UK. All of this sound fascinating and raises the interesting question whether or not we have progressed much as a society in the UK although there are several experiments such as the Garden City movement and the New Towns in the 1960’s were we have tried to create more interesting ways of urban living. At the moment, one tends to hear the same complaint from most towns in the country that housing is being built at breakneck speed in practically every part of the country but the necessary urban infrastructure of roads and community facilities is lagging a fair way behind. I have often wondered whether Bromsgrove will be the first town in the country to be utterly gridlocked as the amount of housing is predicted to rise by about 40% with no discernible commensurate increase in road capacities and the like.  

The day turned out to be quite a full one, what with one thing or another. I made my way into town to collect a newspaper and to buy some wine and pick up a birthday card for our next door neighbours to whose 75th birthday I (and my American friend) had been invited. I had just about completed  my shopping when I received a phone call from my son from our local hospital from which he was being discharged. So I made my way there and got my son home as fast as I could, filling up with cold drinks and ice cream as a treat after his spell inside the hospital (only three days but it seemed like a lifetime to him). Having got him home, my daughter-in-law called around later to whisk him off to their marital home and I went outside and finished off the weeding of the gravel border which has taken some of my attention during the last three days.  This was a pleasing job to get done and  I am going to follow carefully some gardening instructions as best to use salt to effectively ‘deaden’ an area in which nothing is ever intended to be grown. Salt can be corrosive and dangerous if not carefully applied but I have read a couple of extremely informative website based articles which indicates how you can usefully utilise salt to maintain a gravel border and how it can be done in such a way that other plant life is not damaged. I then went and changed into some better clothes and awaited the arrival of my American friend before the party started at 3.0pm and we both had a most excellent time with superb food and drink during the whole of the afternoon.  My American friend turned up and she is really very good at mixing in with a crowd of people that she does not know. As my next-door neighbours have Welsh connections, we were even treated to home made ‘bara brith’ (rich fruit loaf) and some welsh cakes and the family had been busy baking to produce some marvellous garden party ‘eats’ I spent some time chatting with a close friend  of our actual neighbours who I actually met some five years previously (on the occasion of a 70th birthday party) and she remembered meeting Meg which was poignant. We had some fascinating conversations with the other  guests and really enjoyed ourselves but eventually my American friend had to tear herself away to attend her  weekly dance session. After I had seen her car out of tight parking spaces I returned back to the party which carried on until about 8.00 in the evening. My American friend is coming round tomorrow afternoon where we can have some relaxation time with each other and perhaps have some to plan out some activities for ourselves, families and friends over the next few weeks.

Last night was a much cooler and therefore more pleasant night and I managed to get to sleep fairly quickly with the windows a little ajar to get some fresh air inside the house. Last night, I popped outside the house to survey the weeding work I had undertaken, and my neighbour came out for a little chat. We exchanged news about my son’s health  and we agreed some practical arrangements for the car parking arrangements on our two adjacent forecourts before their garden party at the weekend. My neighbour was wondering what I was doing with a measuring tape in my hand but all I was doing was measuring the length of each section of what I now know to call either a ‘Splash strip’ or a ‘Gravel border’.  It’s a man thing to be measuring things the whole time but I like to have an idea in my head of how much I have done and how much remains to be done. The roses this year as a result of the weird climatic conditions are blooming in profusion and I know that I am keeping an eye on a bush of deep red roses in our back garden which are just coming into bloom. This rose bush was donated to my daughter-in-law by her grandmother and therefore has a special significance for her. But it also has one for me because I gathered some roses and put them on Meg’s coffin (when it was replete with a wonderful array of roses) with a final message of love from me before her funeral on 11th June last year which will mark another turning point. Now that the summer is upon us, I am planning some day trips out with U3A (to Port Sunlight) and with family and friends (to Severn Valley Railway) but I am aware that I have a special eye on when the children break up from school and whilst not being averse to young children  at all, I can do without  hordes of badly behaved ones.  Looking at the international scene, I have just a Sky News journalist being berated by an Israeli defence spokesman who claimed that the Sky News was being fooled by radical Jihadist terrorists who embedded their fighters into the middle of ambulances (a claim that the film footage of ambulances being blown up by Israeli rockets refutes) One does have to wonder whether Netanyahu wants a state of continuous and active war with its hostile neighbours and this has got to threaten the long term prospects for any truce or what passes for ‘peace’ in the middle East. Meanwhile, the days of May are slipping away and 1st June which is a Monday is rapidly approaching. I am resolved to try and getting my walking distances improved somewhat because I have been making a lot of use of the car in recent months and it will be much better for my overall health to resume my daily walks. But I do find that my walking distances have diminished now that I do not have Meg to push in a wheelchair because this did act as a huge ‘walker’ for me although I did not realise it fully at the time. After my little incident wit losing and then regaining my front door key recently, I have constructed what might be called a ‘thingamabob’ to keep my supermarket trolley access key from entangled with other keys which is what happened a few days ago.

After I had breakfasted, I took the car into town and picked up a copy of my newspaper from the supermarket as well as  ensuring that I had availed myself of next week’s living money from the ATM. Then I got to the Methodist Centre, just about at the start of the Ukrainian ‘meal event’ which normally takes place on the last Friday of each month. I ordered some Borscht soup and my American friend was doing some of her volunteering behind the counter serving the meals as we ordered them. I was delighted that two of my Catholic friends from down the Kidderminster turned up together with another parishioner friend and they joined me at my table, so this really was a case of ‘wheels within wheels’ The event was pretty well attended and all of the tables that had been laid out were fairly soon occupied. I followed up my soup with a special honey cake which I shared with my American friend and then I needed to leave to go and visit my son who is not well at the moment. When I returned home late in the afternoon, I resumed my weeding activities on the gravel border to our communal roadway and was delighted to get three more ‘sections’ under my belt, in effect doubling the area that I had got cleared.  So now this particular job is about two thirds done before I start on my next venture. My American friend phoned up so that we could mutually discuss the events of the day and she mentioned to me that she would quite like to accompany me on the trip to Port Sunlight in mid July. So I have forwarded on to her, the email I received from the trip organisers so that she can get herself into the system. If accepted,I can show her how the payment system works as I don’t think she has been on one of these trips before but perhaps, like  me, she will catch the bug and realise that these are all good and really cost-effective days out by coach. She also mentioned to me again the Severn Valley railway trip and my son seems quite keen on this so perhaps son, daughter-in-law, American friend and I can make up a cosy foursome in the weeks ahead. Looking at the Sky News broadcasts, there was a very interesting analysis under the headline ‘If US and Iran agree deal, will fuel prices come down?’ Even if all goes according to plan, it does look as though Iran, post war is now much more of a global player than hitherto and taking several factors together, it looks as though the rest of the world is going to have to get used to increased oil prices probably for several years to come. So this is an interesting legacy that Trump has left the world – will the American electorate ever get the chance to punish him for it, one wonders.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by some low rumbling of what turned out to be thunder which gradually became closer and was accompanied by some quite heavy rain. I was not expecting this in the slightest so I leapt out of bed  and had to rapidly close some windows in our bedroom and upstairs landing which had been opened to try to get some cool air into the house. Actually, it was markedly cooler when I went to bed last night so perhaps, I should have not been surprised by the thunder and the rain but it came as a very pleasant surprise. During the evening, I had a fairly long exchange of texts with my University of Winchester friend whose wife seems to be sinking although she seems to be the recipient of some excellent care in the specialist nursing home which my friend visits every day. We keep in constant touch with each other and to give each other some mutual help and support during the illnesses of our respective wives. In the meantime, I am hoping that my application to join the U3A trip out to Port Sunlight has been successful – although it seems a long time in advance, one has to book up for these things almost immediately. At the moment, I am juggling the membership of my three groups (Curry Club which is self explanatory, intermediate Spanish and Classical Music Appreciation) and this is probably enough although I am tempted to join the Philosophy group as well. I have a Ukrainian Day organised under the aegis of the Methodist Centre to which to look forward and they meet once a month with offerings of Ukrainian food (and perhaps even drink) which is a fund-raising effort for that war-torn country. My next-door neighbour is also having a garden party at the weekend to celebrate her birthday. Talking of days out, I am contemplating treating my American friend to several rides up and down the Severn Valley Railway which is on our doorstep but which I have not done for some time now, the last occasion being with Meg, my son and our mutual University of Birmingham friend. On the international scene, one has to wonder whether a peace deal can ever be done whilst an unrestrained Israel is pounding southern Lebanon into to the dust. A terrifying new wave of Israeli strikes has rendered ceasefire worthless. The latest intense wave of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon are terrifying, the Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford reports from Beirut. Up to 300 towns and villages south of the Zahrani River were given evacuation orders – some in the early hours of this morning – that have prompted ‘a mass exodus’ from civilians, she says. ‘They are in effect on-the-ground orders to get out of the area because, in their words, they are declaring the entire area the entire south of Lebanon a combat zone and telling them to leave, or you risk dying and being injured’ Israel and Lebanon agreed a 45-day ceasefire extension that remains in place, having been announced on 17 April. But in effect, on the ground, there is no ceasefire, Crawford says. 

Yesterday morning proved to be quite interesting. I attended my Tai Chi class as I normally do at this time every week but the chance of a coffee in the canteen area was nil as it closed during this (half-term) week. So a bank manager friend and another of our class member who had just retired from a prestigious role at Birmingham University and I went down into town in search of a coffee. I took my two class members into the ‘Gifts of Love’ outlet (a favourite of mine because it is hugs and kisses from the volunteers and the owner who I know quite well by now) here we spent a very interesting hour as we had all lived in Bromsgrove for about 20 years now and we were sharing experiences what had changed (generally for the worse) over the past couple of decades. After that, I collected my car from the Methodist Centre car park and returned home to prepare a ‘lighter’ kind of lunch. With some scraps of ham, I cooked a large ham omelette and then supplemented this with a sort of stir-fry  of onions, peppers, tomatoes and some green beans so the overall dinner turned out to be a lot larger than I intended (and some put by for another  day).  In the course of the afternoon, I received an email telling me that I had a place reserved for me on the Port Sunlight U3A coach trip on 17th July. The booking system is tried and tested – once you have expressed interest, the organiser will then inform you by email whether your application has been accepted and, if so, details of the bank transfer to be made to pay for the trip. That is all there is to it and all you have to do is to remember to turn up on time in the right make. Because the U3A clientele is such a prompt lot, as I remember we all got on the coach for the Derbyshire trip and left before the appointed hour. Although this seems a longer distance, most of the journey will be M6 motorway so I anticipate the travelling time will be about the same.  As the weather has cooled down a little, I have decided to start to do a little bit of weeding of the gravelled strip just adjacent to the kerbstones on our communal driveway. I have had to search the internet to find the special building term for this and  think it is called a ‘splash’ strip, so called as it would catch drips e.g. from an over-hanging gutter, I am going to do one or sections each day, each section being about a metre and a half and today I felt quite pleased with myself because I managed to do about three sections. It is a slow, tedious and painstaking job but there is no real substitute for getting down onto a kneeler and pulling out the creeping weeds by the roots. Then my daughter-in-law and I conferred about the health of my son who has been stricken (as he was this time last year) with a bout of what we think is viral pneumonia so we have been conferring about the best ways in which we can restore him back to health again. The medics are giving us conflicting messages but we are doing what we can to help a ‘patient’ who hates being ill.

Today was one of those ‘one things leads to another’ type days and it was a long time before I actually got myself up and breakfasted. I knew that the U3A (University of the Third Age) were organising an sort of industrial archaeology trip to view the historic listed buildings in Port Sunlight (Wirral) and I am always keen to sign up quickly for these kinds of ventures because they are to places where you might not go as an individual but it makes so much more sense to go as a group, not least because there are always many fellow travellers with whom to chat but also because the expense alone in petrol costs is more than your share of the cost price of the excursion. So as I was signing up for the next trip in July, the organisers had, very sensibly, asked each one of the intending trip members to have with them their ICE (In Case of Emergency) contact cards. I realised that I did not have one prepared for myself but now that I am on my own, as it were, I realised thatI had better organise one for myself. I got onto a website which turned out to be American and the card turned out to be red one on the PDF which when printed out on a black and white printer turned out to be near illegible. I fiddled around without success trying to change the colour of the card in the PDF but eventually gave it up as bad job. I then located a (British) Red Cross template but this required moving text boxes around, choosing appropriate fonts and the like. Eventually I succeeded though and now comes the job of laminating. I do not have a laminator at home but I do have a series of self laminating labels that you stick together to form a composite whole. So I printed off the PDF and had to carefully cut the front and the back of it to the right size so that it would fit the size of the laminating sheets. In all of this, I was eventually successful but it took me so much longer than I thought it would and at least I have the relevant details stored in a saved ICE pdf file so the manufacture of more cards ought to be quite an easy job. Whilst I was at it, I made three of those cards, one for my credit card wallet (into which it just fits), one into my normal money wallet and another to put in the breast pocket of whatever jacket I happen to be wearing at the time. This was a useful job to get done but I had to look up details such as the phone number  of the GP surgery, check the spelling of my routine medications and things like that. As it is a half term week this week and the Methodist Centre is closed, fortunately I had the time to engage in such activities but I am finding these days that even simple activities are always taking me longer than I would have anticipated. Although we are in the middle of a heatwave, we have the very unwelcome news that our energy bills are due to rise 100’s of pounds in July (as a consequence of the Iran war) Energy bills to rise to more than two-year high and average annual energy bills are set to rise by hundreds of pounds from July for a typical dual fuel household. Energy regulator Ofgem has announced a 13% rise in the price cap to £1,862 a year for a typical household, up from the previous cap of £1,641.  That means bills will cost £18 more a month for an average household on a supplier’s standard default tariff.  So now is the time to try to get a better fixed price deal of that is possible. Actually, I have managed to get a deal fixed at an OK price for the next 12 month which comes into effect tomorrow so I should be able to avoid the price rises scheduled for July.

After a slow morning, I did a normal shopping at Aldi but was dismayed when  got home to discover that my normal front door key was missing from my back pocket (but I always carry an emergency spare in a wallet attached to my belt by a chain!)  When I thought about it, I thought that the ‘key’ that I use to access a supermarket trolley had got entangled with a skein of thread and I wonder whether in getting it entangled and put away I dropped my house key without noticing. So I popped the shopping (unpacked) in through the front door and immediately raced back to the spot where I had been parked to see if I could find a dropped key but no such luck. But as a desperate last measure, I popped into Aldi and grabbed hold of one of the assistants to enquire whether a key had been handed in. She and a male colleague disappeared into their office and came out bearing my ‘lost’ key – you can’t imagine the relief that I felt! I am going to devise a little change of procedure to ensure that this can never happen again. Then I unpacked the shopping and made myself a salad type lunch which was easy enough to throw together. I was anxious to get rid of some particularly fast growing thistles that had grown unbated down one side of the house and as tomorrow is the day when the bins have to be pulled to the kerbside to be emptied first thing in the morning, any weeding is best done the day before. So although the weather was quite warm, I made myself undertake this task as the thistles had been an eyesore for quite some time. Now I need to tackle other sections of the narrow gravel sections by the side of or communal roadway (I am never quite sure of the correct building term for this feature of a house or driveway). It is very hard to know what is going in the USA: Iran negotiations at the moment with both sides jockeying for position in the ‘spin’ states. Iranian state TV has shared details from what it says is a draft ‘memorandum of understanding’ with the US – but Washington has branded the report a ‘complete fabrication’ whilst also maintaining that the talks between  the two sides are ‘proceeding nicely’. I suspect that these shenanigans will go on for a few days yet after which a deal may – or may not, emerge.

So it looks as though having ‘survived’ probably the hottest May day on record, we have just endured the hottest May night as well. The upstairs of my house was like a furnace so I took the precaution of falling asleep on the sofa in our lounge which was one of the coolest parts of the house. It is true that I woke up after a couple of hours but by this time my bedroom had cooled down sufficiently for me to spend the rest of the night sleeping upstairs. Whilst we all enjoy a spell of good weather, these temperatures are extreme and I think that most of the population are doing their best to keep hydrated  and to avoid the really excessive temperatures we are currently experiencing. In the evening before last, I had the most pleasant  of surprises which was a text followed by a phone call from one of the quarter of young carers who looked after Meg so well in her declining weeks and days. This quartet (two boys, a fiancée and a young Asian lad) were a very cohesive group and they rally loved both caring for Meg and we all held each other in mutual love and affection. Naturally, they attended Meg’s funeral a year ago and the celebration afterwards and I ensured that they had a special round of applause for their efforts. Now none of us have forgotten each other and the Asian boy was communicating the good news that he had actually proposed to, and been accepted by his partner, to become officially engaged  after they had bought a house together and moved in with each other. He told me that he had actually got down on one knee to propose to his partner in a very traditional way.  The purpose of the phone call was both to inform me of his good news and also the act that he wanted to organise a little ‘get together ‘in my house as soon as work commitments would allow. It would be delightful to throw a little garden party for the four (now five) of them and, as my American friend was still staying with me, I encouraged them to introduce themselves to each other and to explain the nature of our mutual friendship. What is so nice is not to be forgotten about when ‘so much water has flowed under the bridge’ as a year flashes by for us older people but time seems to elongate for these younger people. Both my American friend and I love to be in contact with the younger generation so this will be a wonderful social gathering to which to look forward as soon as it can be arranged. Later in the day I have a routine hospital investigation  later in the afternoon so I am having to ensure that as well as abstaining from food and drink I do engage in anything too stressful during the early part of the day. So I am particularly  pleased to have got the front grassed area mown yesterday morning. Later in this week, I have a couple of festive events to which to look  forward. Once a month, some members of the émigré  Ukrainian community put on a special day of Ukrainian food and cooking at the Methodist Centre. Members of the Ukrainian community will cook their specialities and the rest of the community can come along and enjoy food which is out of the ordinary whilst the funds raise evidently go towards alleviating the suffering of the sick and injured in the Ukrainian conflict. So all of this is going to happen on Friday whilst on the following day, my immediate next-door neighbour is celebrating (outdoors!) her 75th birthday so this will be another nice event to which to look forward. 

The day today was always going to unravel in rather a strange direction as I was not allowed any food before a routine (every three years) gastroscopy procedure. My daughter-in-law took me and my son brought me home from what is not the most pleasant of procedures  although I did avail myself of the available sedation, delivered through  a cannula. I also took along an old iPhone with approx. 200 music tracks recorded on it which I use a de facto MP3 player so at least I had some Mozart to accompany me.The staff were very through and professional in their procedures. The minute I got home and in view of the fact I had not eaten for hours and the weather was still unbearably hot, I treated myself to some ice cream after which  I promptly had a doze and then I cooked myself some scrambled eggs with grated choose, followed by even more ice cream. I rescued the washing which my domestic help had put on the outside line and was now ‘crisp’ after hours in a baking sun and then my American friend and I had a telephone conversation where we exchanged notes on the day. I suppose I ought to explain that what I refer to as my ‘American’ friend is not really American at all as in her youth she lived in both Sutton Coldfield and the later in Staffordshire. But she did them escape to Florida where she worked for decades as well as several other countries and thus ‘American’ friend is just a kind of shorthand description albeit not a very  accurate one. Se is a pronounced ‘Trump hater’ and actually registered to vote. as part of ‘Democrats Abroad’ which is one of the world views that we happen to have in common. As this is a half term week, some of my regular routines are a little disrupted there is no Pilates class and the Methodist Centre is closed but I dare say we will cope somehow. Later on this evening, there is a repeat f some of the Simon Scharma programmes on the ‘History of Britain’ and the repeated episode this evening devotes itself to the impact that the French Revolution had upon British political and social life, so this will be well worth a watch. Although I still have to get my had around some of the latest political news from America, it looks as though some of Trump’s diehard supporters from MAGA are suspecting that whatever Trump negotiates with the Iranians  could be interpreted as a sell-out. In the context of Donald Trump, the slang acronym TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out”. This term was coined by financial commentators and Wall Street traders to mock his negotiation style, which frequently involves announcing aggressive economic tariffs or political threats, only to delay, reduce, or reverse them later. The same could equally be said of his frequent statements and changes in policy announcements with regard to Iran.

Yesterday when I awoke, it was to the most glorious of days and, no doubt, the temperature will climb to about 27° which I think is practically 80 on the Fahrenheit scale. I have a busy morning in prospect this morning because after church (and the necessary coffee and biscuits) I need to hit the road to get my newspaper and wash the car before a friend calls around to collect my old TV. I am going to take along my laptop to the coffee morning because I have taken a photograph of the Lowry print of the Whit Walks and then emailed it to myself so that it displays well on the laptop. Here in the Midlands, they are probably unused to the Whit walks traditions in the Manchester and Lancashire areas but there are a few émigré northerners, like myself, who might remember the tradition. Meanwhile, we must get acclimatised to that most rare British phenomenon which is a heatwave coinciding with a Bank Holiday weekend. There are already some who have tried to make a quick dash to enjoy a continental holiday but the entire new border checking systems could not cope the other day and queues of up to five hours were reported at Dover. All of this would have played so much havoc with the ‘normal’ operation of the border that the French reportedly abandoned the use of the new system to clear the huge backlog. Even when the new technology  works, it relies upon face recognition and other biometric procedures and is slower to process each passenger compared with the previous system. The system, which became fully operational in April, replaces passport stamps with a digital registration to make the EU’s borders more secure, more efficient and stronger against irregular migration, according to the European Commission. Non-EU passengers and some transport providers have raised concerns about the new system — especially in Britain, which left the EU in 2020 under Brexit. On the diplomatic front, it does appear that Iran and the USA are edging every so slightly towards a deal. We do know that Trump is actually quite desperate for a deal but the two sticking points are likely to be the issue of the non-pursuit of nuclear weapons in the first place and control of the Straits of Hormuz in the second place. The nuclear issue can be fudged in several ways but whether Iraq will give up strategic control of the Straits of Hormuz, given their proximity to the Iranian mainland is another matter altogether. In international law the Straits are an international waterway and I do not know what wiggle room there might be for international negotiators to argue around this. Some parts of the relevant UN convention may be a somewhat ‘grey’ area but I am unsure that Iran could try and argue for increased rights given  the recent conflict with the USA. So this may be the absolute stumbling block n the attempt to find a solution.

On the political front, Donald Trump has announced that an Iran-USA peace deal is ‘close’ but, of course, we have no idea what this actually means given the American president’s tendency to dissemble. But it is undoubtedly true that domestic pressures at home such as rising petrol prices at the pumps and the unpopularity of the Iran war in the USA may be impelling Trump to whatever exit he thinks he can maintain. Whatever happens, or fails to happen, Trump will declare a resounding victory in any case and at least a small proportion of his MAGA supporters will believe whatever he says. In the  morning, I went along to church at my normal time but I went along equipped with my iPad. When it came to the coffee and biscuits afterwards in the parochial hall, I showed some of the people  sitting near me that Lowry print showing the Whit walks and explained  how these was a regular part of Christian life in the Manchester and nearby cotton towns since the start of the nineteenth century. The gentleman on my right knew all about these traditions as his home town was Chester whereas the person to my immediate right (we were travel companions to the trip to Derbyshire) knew nothing of the as she was originally from Kent.  In the car park I chatted briefly with a parishioner who was assisting her very elderly and disabled father making the transition form a wheelchair into their car. I sympathised and offered her any help that she might need, explaining that I had ‘walked down the same road’ as I was caring for Meg and making the transition from wheelchair to car until it became impossible. So we did not have a great length of time in which to chat but I think that next week, if we have a bit more time over a coffee, there may be some practical things that I can impart. After we had all dispersed, I went and put some petrol in the car and picked up a copy of my Sunday newspaper. I then gave the car a jet-wash (with lances that you handle yourself) as the car seemed to have acquired a great deal of airborne dust and grit just in the last day or so. Then  got home and made myself a cooked breakfast before I settled down to watch the film of ‘The Railway Children’ – this film originally starred Jenny Agutter but this remade version still starred Jenny Agutter but now playing the part of the mother. The film has just about ended and I made myself a quick ‘fish-on-bread’ meal, after which my son and daughter-in-law called around and we spent a very pleasant afternoon together, but keeping in the cool of the house. Tonight I am going to watch some ‘catch up’ TV – my son had told me about a magnificent series on Channel 4 giving a vivid and in-depth account of the Suez debacle in the mid 1950’s so  am sure this is well worth a watch. The TV news bulletins are full of news of play-offs for promotion and demotion but surely on the luckiest teams of all mist be Hull which had gained promotion by virtue of the fact that although lying sixth in the lower division, they secured a winner in the 95th minute of their play off match and thus secured entrance to the very lucrative Premier division.

Well now we seem to have the cold snap in May behind us and there promises to be something approaching a heatwave as we approach the end of the month. I had forgotten that the TV I installed in the bedroom was a Samsung and as I switched it on last night it must have recognised that there was another ‘Samsung’ on the system newly installed last night and was initially a little confused but soon put itself right. So many of the modern TVs are ‘smart’ these days and installation is largely automatic with credentials picked up from one’s router, mobile phone and so on. The day promises to be a fine one which is just as well as I have a couple of trips planned for today together with my American friend. There has been some interesting commentary on the contemporary electoral scene in the UK, according to Harriet Harman, one time deputy leader of the Labour Party. Sir Keir Starmer’s achievements are being ‘completely blotted out’ by the political instability in the government, Harriet Harman has said. Speaking on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast,  Baroness Harman said despite the government turmoil, ‘the irony is that there are quite a few good things like good growth and inflation figures, improved NHS waiting lists, really astonishing figures on the cuts in small boats and in asylum hotels and the drop in legal migration The good things are just being completely blotted out by the turmoil.’ Baroness Harman said that as well as political instability in the UK, international instability such as the Iran war and Donald Trump’s presidency was also contributing. We also have the situation in which our Foreign Secretary is going to walk into a huge row with out NATO partners over the intended lifting of some of the oil sanctions against Russia. One gets the feeling that this change of policy has not been properly thought through and it might be that for a very small change in the oil price, the Government is walking into a mass of political trouble that will run and run. Perhaps it might be better for the government to quickly think again and reverse its policy against Russia to the ‘status quo ante’ but as things stand we seem to be handing quite a boost to the Russian war economy in their fight against Ukraine. Given the hostile acts by Russia against the UK (spy ships, poisoning on British streets) now seems to be absolutely the wrong time to do anything that appears to reward Russian malevolence but not the first time the Labour Government seems to have adopted an ill-thought through change of policy. One does get the feeling that there needs to be some wise and experienced senior figures with well attuned political antennae who can spot and give due warning about the impact of policy changes but it is evident that the government are desperate to do anything that seems to attack high energy prices and the subsequent impact upon both business and the cost of living. Hence we are having a plethora of government announcements (lower VAT on attractions at leisure venues during the summer, free bus fares for children during the summer) that seem to be eye-catching but in the event cost the government only a smidgeon in actual foregone revenue.

Having collected my newspaper, I then picked up my American friend and we made our way to Harvington Hall, about seven miles distant and famous for the number of priest holes (used, in the time of Elisabeth I,  to hide Catholic priests , then regarded as traitors) all seven of which remained undiscovered. We got to within about 5 minutes of the Hall when the whole of one of the access country lanes was blocked off whilst a gas leak was repaired. We tried to navigate a route around and failed and then resorted to a SatNav by which  means we eventually  discovered a whole new route to the Hall but arrived about 10 minutes late. In the Hall, they were not surprised by our late arrival and my friend and I were taken around together with two more visitors on a tour that was absolutely fascinating for both of us and must have lasted for a couple of hours. After that, we enjoyed a coffee in the grassed area near a beautiful Elizabethan walled garden and then eventually made our way to the hotel where I was being treated to a birthday lunch. The staff here were delightful and the cuisine generally excellent and my friend and I drank a bottle of a local English white wine which  was grown and bottled in the locality of the Hall. Although my dinner was excellent,  my friend had needed to complain about an overcooked burger which was really not at all pleasant, The staff were excellent and the staff cooked a piece of chicken similar to mine which proved excellent. Then my friend and I went on a long walk in the grounds of the hotel where you would imagine that you were lost in the middle of the Worcestershire countryside. Then we called back into the hotel and had a cooling drink before making our way home to my house where we arrived just before 6.00pm. We were fortunately greeted by our next-door neighbour who has very kindly invited us to her 75th birthday party to be held in her garden in a week’s time – needless to say, we were delighted to accept this invitation. My friend stayed in the evening whilst we drank tea and looked at a little TV before making plans to see each other again on the afternoon of the forthcoming Bank Holiday. When we reflected on the events of the day, many of the artefacts associated with Harvington Hall were sort of plundered and used to adorn a much larger stately home called Coughton Court which has some quite extensive connections with the Gunpowder plot. As the latter is a National Trust property of which I am a member, then this looks as though it will be high on our list of other places that we wish to visit in the vicinity and use our National Trusts memberships to the full. We are indeed fortunate that appear quite a lot of interesting places to visit in our area and there are the delights of the Severn Valley Railway to experience and we can probably go on a day before the summer holidays start for the school children when the railway might be very busy.

I received some sad news in my text messages as I had been informed of the death of the wife of one my contacts from dementia a short time ago. I had to think hard who the contact was and then realised that it was someone that we used to meet at a club organised by Age UK for dementia sufferers and their carers, but I have not seen him for probably the best part of two years. Naturally, I sent the contact my condolences, informed him about the fact of Meg’s passing of which he would have been unaware in all probability and then told him how I was making a new life for myself via ‘University of the Third Age’ activities. The day promises to be a quiet one as I am expecting a delivery later on today which entails me having to be in the house for most of the day until the delivery arrives – I was promised a time slot by text last night but it failed to arrive. If the weather improves somewhat, I may be able to get outside and get some weeding and lawn mowing done. According to the BBC weather app, the day today shows a light cloud over most of the country but there is a huge high pressure zone across France which is slowly to going to edge northwards which means that we may be due for a heatwave in a few days time. I wonder if there will be a run on ice cream and soft drinks as we head towards a Bank Holiday over the weekend and next Monday. I must confess not looking forward to any particular relish to Bank Holidays these days as it seems to impact on normal routine activities and one never knows whether the shops are going to be open, closed or restricted to Sunday opening hours.  I know from bitter experience that things like routine medications have to be thought about so that one does not run out over a Bank Holiday weekend. However  a spell of really fine weather means that I will have no excuse for not getting outside and getting some routine gardening activities undertaken. The foreign news seems to be universally depressing so I am giving myself a break for a couple of days although I am always tempted to see the latest speculation over the health of Donald Trump. Yesterday, on my trip out to a National Trust property, chatting to one of the other U3A members I was told that it might be possible for me to take along a companion to a National Trust property as a ‘carer’ and so I have in mind whether to enquire of my American friend whether I might make an application on her behalf to become an official carer for me. To be truthful, although Meg and I had a joint membership in the last year or so of Meg’s life, we did not utilise our membership for probably a couple of years as Meg’s health was declining although  we did employ deploy our membership to gain access to National Trust gardens (but not houses) in the later stages of the COVID epidemic. But as the summer beckons, so does the prospect of many interesting places to visit in the vicinity.

Yesterday was my Tai Chi morning and this went to plan except that I needed to have a lightening cup of tea because I needed to be back inside the house for 11.00am. Some days ago, I had read a selection of ‘Which‘ Best Buys, reproduced by permission in ‘The Times’. They made particular mention of a particular 50″ smart Samsung TV that they reckoned had a picture and a sound quality well in excess of its selling price and given several ‘superior’ models a run for their money. Out of interest, I decided to see if John Lewis were selling this model which they were and they also offered a five year warranty on it as well (a manufacturer’s warranty os typically only 12 months) I think that my existing Panasonic is as least a 12-15 years old and of course the technology has come on in leaps and bounds since then. So I reckoned that my existing TV did not owe me anything and offer like this might sell out very quickly s I made an impulse buy and bought it from John Lewis. Today was the day when they came along to deliver and to install it. John Lewis had offered me a general delivery  time of 11.00am to 5pm but yesterday, I received an email telling my time slot was now 4.00pm-6.00pm. Thinking I had an hour to get the back lawn cut, I was just on my out at 3.00pm when the John Lewis van turned up one hour early. But the old hand and his young apprentice got things set up and running pretty quickly the new Samsung quickly found my internet connection. I managed to get my YouTube account linked in (which is important to me given the amount of classical music videos and liberal American political podcasts that I play) so I am relieved to get things running smoothy. The delivery personnel who installed TVs regularly were full of praise for Samsung (and LG) TVs which they reckoned really led the field these days whereas the Toshiba was regarded as old and clunky and they hardly installed any these days. My previous TV is now in the box in which the new one was delivered and is being passed onto my domestic help where she will fortunately be in the position where her husband and boys can watch the football World Cup on one TV and my domestic help can utilise the other. I managed to get all of sticky labels with model numbers and serial numbers detached from the box and stuck inside my own record book which is very valuable to have these all safely secured. Now the TV was working to my satisfaction, I did go and get the back lawn cut about which I was pleased, needless to say. The garden remains somewhat overgrown but at least I am keeping the lawns tidy and the patio in good condition, although in the fullness of time it will require a professional re-grouting and steam cleaning. When this has been completed,  I will give it an annual ‘maintenance’ professional clean.

When I awoke yesterday morning, it was after one of those nights in which one has rather jumbled dreams. In this case, I seemed to have two dreams that merged into each other and they both involved being in a meeting somewhere on the continent with lots of negotiations over this and that and one of the involved lots of discussion that seemed to take place in an airport somewhere.  When I was fully awake, though, I scanned the sky to see what kind of weather lay in store for the day ahead for our U3A trip to Bakewell in Derbyshire. I turned to the BBC weather app which informed me that it will be breezy with variable cloud and a few further, generally light, showers. So one could have wished for better weather but it looks as though we may avoid the showers if there is a modicum of luck. Some of the news being reported this morning is that the UK is lifting sanctions on Russia’s oil products to attempt to ease the pressure on petrol prices at the pumps. There seems to be a particular irony in all of this in that American  activities in the Iranian conflict has the indirect effect of assisting the Russian economy. Right at the start of the war, the Americans acting on out-of-date intelligence bombed a school killing scores of schoolchildren, most of them girls. The Americans are supposedly conducting an in-depth investigation into this atrocity but now, all of this time later, are really dragging their feet over releasing parts of a report that would pin the blame squarely upon the Americans. Immediately after the event at the start of the war, Donald Trump blamed the Iranians themselves for blowing up their own school with precision-guided missiles thus indicating that he had no idea what was really going on. Meanwhile, we have our own home-grown scandal. A high-speed train line between London and Birmingham will be more expensive, take longer to make and go slower than previously announced. The HS2 project will cost between £87.7bn and £102.7bn (in 2025 prices), with the first train services not starting until at least May 2036 and possibly not until October 2039, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the Commons on Tuesday. The project was said to be the most expensive high-speed rail line in the world, according to researchers at the Transit Costs Project. Part of the problem at least seems to have been the desire to make the high speed the fastest in the world. HS2 trains will run slower than originally planned, in an effort to keep down rising construction costs. The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs on Tuesday that the new maximum speed of HS2 services will be 320km/h, down from the intended 360km/h (224mph).

The news that broke yesterday and reported by Sky News was that police will confirm who is being charged over the Grenfell Tower fire by the 10th anniversary of the disaster The inferno was the UK’s deadliest residential fire since the Second World War. Seventy-two people were killed when the blaze ravaged the north Kensington building on 14 June 2017. At Scotland Yard today, the Metropolitan Police said up to 57 individuals and 20 organisations are so far suspected of criminal offences. One person was arrested and released under investigation, and others have been questioned under caution but not arrested. Potential charges include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud, serious health and safety offences and misconduct in public office. The final charging decisions will be revealed by 14 June 2027 – exactly a decade on from the fire. It may be an urban myth but it is reported that the day after the fire, the shredders in the offices of several organisations (planning departments, architects, building supply companies) were working overtime as several key individuals realised what was going to hit then further down the line and all kinds of potentially incriminating evidence was destroyed. It is always hard to prove liabilities  after a gap of ten years when memories fade, personnel may have retied and so on. Some of the convictions involving 2o organisations may be for Corporate Manslaughter and securing a conviction for Corporate Manslaughter is generally considered very difficult. While the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 made it easier to prosecute large organisations, establishing the offence to a criminal standard involves overcoming several demanding evidential hurdles.

Yesterday was the long anticipated visit to Derbyshire. U3A members are always absolutely on time and, in practice, we were all aboard and set off at two minutes before the appointed time. I had an interesting travelling companion because  we had met in the parish hall attached to our church last Sunday and had quickly established that we were both U3A members and going on the mid-week trip to Derbyshire. I had not fully appreciated what a truly beautiful county Derbyshire happens to be and the weather appeared to be fairly benign to us today.  When we arrived at Bakewell, the coach soon dispersed in search of coffee shops and particularly those that had a copious supply of Bakewell tarts and Bakewell puddings (there is a slight but subtle difference) I enjoyed a coffee and a sausage roll and bought a Bakewell pudding to be enjoyed later by myself and family members. 
Then suitably refreshed we made our way onto Kedleston Hall which was about an hour and a half’s drive away. We arrived there at midday and then had the whole of the afternoon until the Hall itself closed at 4.0pm. Kedleston is all about the power of art and design – and the art of power. Built in the 1760s to designs by the celebrated architect Robert Adam for Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Baron Scarsdale, the house was intended to evoke the grandeur of ancient Rome. In 1916 the house and estate were inherited by George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston and Viceroy of India. Lord Curzon refurbished the ground floor and planned a museum with more than 1,000 objects from across Asia. Many of us went to the tea rooms to refresh ourselves before the visit and in practice I contented myself with a simple ice-cream. We then set off to explore the Hall which was relatively easy to do on one’s own. I availed myself of an informative 3 minute video and then set off on a voyage of exploration. This was quite easy to do because you could follow a circular route through the house, stopping as long as one wanted to explore the features of any of the rooms. Each room was supplied  with information guides which explained the features  of that particular room and there were two or three ‘human’ guides strategically placed in the various rooms who would answer any questions that you might have. In a music room, I was intrigued by what appeared to be double manual harpsichord whilst in the library, my attention was directed to a printed copy of the ‘Domesday book’ although I did not ascertain when a printed copy was made. The house as a whole displayed 18th century opulence and is probably one of the finest tributes to the architect, Robert Adam. After I had taken several pictures of the interior, I made my way to the tea room where I had a cup of tea before we started off on our homeward bound trip at 4.00pm, arriving back in Bromsgrove just before 6.00pm. My son, although not feeling very well, came along and gave me a lift home, which I truly appreciated and once inside the house I was able to bestow him a gift which  had bought for him (a bottle of beer labelled ‘Grumpy Old Sod’ which I think he will enjoy in the fullness of time)