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.