You could almost predict that yesterday was a Bank Holiday in the UK because we awoke to anther day of overcast and cloudy weather – it looks as though it is going to be heavy cloud with 20% chance of rain or drizzle during the morning followed by light cloud and a dry afternoon. It is just as well that the day is going to be devoted to domestic jobs and that I am not planning to go anywhere this Bank Holiday. After I been to church yesterday and visited the garage to pick up my Sunday newspaper, I was in the vicinity of one of those ‘Home and Garden’ type stores and as it seem quiet, I decided to pay it a visit. I actually purchased quite a few things that were not originally on my list but were focused around the activities of keeping my gardening tools sharpened, cleaned and well oiled. I located eventually some ‘Brillo’ pads for which I have a particular fondness as I know that are excellent in removing light rust deposits from gardening tools. Whilst I was in the cleaning and gardening sections, I bought some mixed fibre cleaning cloths, abrasive pads and stainless steel scouring pads. I also succumbed to the temptation of buying some of those gardening gloves that are fabric on one side but rubber based on the other and which are excellent for gripping (and hence removing) weeds and I also saw a deep stainless steel trowel which I would not normally be tempted to buy but this one was ridiculously cheap and Indian-made so that went in my shopping basket as well. There is a point to all of this because if the weather was really fine, I would be inclined to do some ‘proper’ gardening but as the weather is overcast, I may well spend half an hour outside siting on the garden bench getting some fresh air but renovating some of my gardening tools such as lawn edging tools and lawn shears. The Bank Holiday is destined to be a quiet and more domestic days but the rest of the week will be quite busy for me what with one thing or another. The day before, my American friend had come round and enjoyed a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner that I had cooked for us but around this we fitted in a viewing of the most beautiful bits of the Puccini opera of ‘La Bohème’ and then we let YouTube select some other operatic arias for us according to its own algorithms and these we enjoyed, including a fair bit of Pavarotti as you might expect. So I suspect that my friend was exposed to more opera in one day than perhaps in her entire lifetime, but we found the combination of the meal and the operatic offerings enjoyable and relaxing (although not everybody’s cup of tea!) Quite by chance, I discovered in a little visited drawer in the bedroom some items of jewellery that Meg had probably not worn for at least thirty years. Amongst these were some crosses on a chain and some clip-on earrings so I was more than happy to gift these to my friend (as I hardly knew they existed, I had no great emotional attachment to them). I assured my friend that Meg would have been delighted to know that some of her jewellery was being worn and appreciated instead of just being stuck in a drawer for decades.
In the late morning, I went down by car and was relived to get my newspaper as usual, yesterday being a Bank Holiday. On the spur of the moment, I decided to pay a visit to Asda to see if they still did their own brand of WD40 oil which they do not. But they did stock a WD40 substitute called GT86 and they were selling in at three quarters of the price available through Amazon except that they were selling it at full price at the automatic tills So I was forced to complain at the Customer Service who agreed that a lower price was displayed on the shelves and they refunded me the difference. I got home and after a brief rest made myself cut the front greened area which really did need it. As I was cleaning up the mower afterwards and disposing of the spent GT86 spray can, I noticed that this company was advertised as a WD40 company so I wonder if the product, which appears identical, comes off the same production line. But they are often sold next to each other in any case. I had a fish-on-sourdough bread lunch after which I watched a David Attenborough programme on the extinction of the dinosaurs. I did a few outside jobs which included a light pruning of the lavatera outside out back door and which necessitated a lot of chopping up into smaller pieces before disposal in our brown wheelie bin. I applied some teak oil to the wooden handle of the new trowel I bought myself the other day and now I am keeping some of my cleaned up and ready-to-use hand tools in a (new) seed tray which I am keeping indoors out of the rain but readily accessible when the gardening spirit moves me. Flipping through the TV channels, I chanced upon the last five minutes of the black-and-white war film ‘Sink the Bismarck!’ made in 1960. I have seen this film before but what was striking about was the look of sorrow on the faces of the British crew as they saw the Bismarck sink beneath the waves. What a contrast to the triumphalism on the occasion of the sinking of the ‘Belgrano‘ in the Falklands contest or the reactions of the Americans today in Iran. Of course the British sailors were acutely aware that it could have been their own ship that was in danger of being sunk as the war had only ended 15 years previously. In the current Iranian conflict, both sides are claiming that they are in complete control of the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians are claiming to have hit two American warships with missiles which claim the USA is denying completely. I keep being reminded of the dictum that ‘in wartime, the first casualty is truth’ as we are now in the era of claim and counter-claim. With the emergence of AI, each side to a conflict can no doubt generate whatever images it wants to feed to their own home populations.