We can tell how dry the UK summer has become when one of the most iconic rivers in the country – the River Wye- has started to run dry. We may become accustomed to this in the future and, in the past, Meg and I have parked our hired car in the dried up bed of a river which runs ‘wet’ during the winter but is used as overflow car parking space in the summer. Meanwhile, we have got some news from the US that being forced to display all of his financial dealings to demonstrate his financial ‘loss’ after his dispute with the BBC, Donald Trump had decided to abandon this part of his claim and to claim just an amount to reflect his ruined reputation. Hence the $10 billion claim against the BBC is already faltering and may in the coming weeks be withdrawn completely. The Americans do not take as many holidays as the Europeans but I imagine that soon there will be a holiday season of sorts during the remainder of August when Congress will not be in session and then, in the Autumn, the battle for the mid-term elections to be held in the first week of November will intensify. These elections will be doubt interesting because any gains that the Democrats make, which is increasingly likely, will be fought with every kind of legal challenge possible by the Republicans and there is every prospect that Donald Trump will become the traditional ‘lame duck’ president for the last two years of his tenure of the White House. I got up a little late this morning, after allowing myself the luxury of a little lie-in but my son is due to call around later which will be a pleasure. The country as a whole is still crying out for rain of which there seems to be little prospect as the spells of warm weather keep following each other. At some stage, surely we will be asked to moderate our use of water across the whole country and I notice that in my the car wash that I use regularly, one of the two units that are available for use is being put out of use so I wonder whether this is a voluntary or a forced restriction. I keep expecting the sale of salad crops to be impacted in the local supermarkets but such is the strength of supply chains, I have not noticed any impact just yet.
As I picked up my newspaper this morning (an early morning chore at the weekends as the papers replete with supplements tend to sell out early) I bumped into an ex-park friend of mine with whom I used to chat when she was exercising her little dog. I discovered that she was actually the mother of a handyman who lives around the cornet from me and who we have employed in the past for little odd jobs around the house and the garden. I raced back home and found my son who I was knew was calling around hard at work chopping back some of the buddleia which had grown enormously in a plot to the front the house. Strangely enough, you often see this plant growing vigorously in abandoned railway sidings and spare land attached to the railway estate and its popular name is the ‘butterfly bush’ for the pollinators that it attracts. After my son and I had exchanged a pleasant hour with each other, I studied the TV listings for intimation of any special programmes that were a ‘must watch’. I found that ‘The Times‘ media pages were giving a star billing to a re-run of the BBC production of J B Priestly’s ‘An Inspector Calls‘ and I quickly checked this would be available to me when we wanted to watch in on the BBC iPlayer. So this psychological drama in which J B Priestley ‘plays’ with time is always an intriguing watch and I never tire of watching. repeat of it. So, this will provide some marvellous evening entertainment for us some time later in the day. We intend to have consume a special dinner of red eye pork ribs. These are pork ribs prepared with a barbecue sauce or rub that incorporates brewed coffee, inspired by traditional Southern ‘red-eye gravy’ which mixes ham drippings and black coffee. The coffee adds a deep, smoky, and slightly bitter complexity that balances out sweet barbecue ingredients like brown sugar, honey, or molasses. Normally August TV viewing is pretty dire as the programme schedulers assume that everybody is away on holiday and there are plenty of daylight hours left to enjoy the day so TV takes on a low priority. But I have noticed that quite decent films are showing with repeats of some of the early Bridget Jones films but these are shown quite late so I am taking a note of it so that I can watch it on catchup in the next day or so. I finally received the confirmation from Expedia (for which I was waiting) that our bookings for the holiday in Spain, flying with Air France for next mid February were now firmly confirmed on their systems. To get to Coruña, though we are having to change both in Charles De Gaulle, Paris and also in Madrid but there is a two hour gap between each flight leaving room for refreshments. Although this sounds a little ‘chewy’, at least the flights are at a reasonable time during the day both there and back and, of course, we do not have to travel to London and then cope with car parking at the other end so I think the double change of leg is a price worth paying. I idly wondered if we would be fed on each leg of the journey but believe that Air France led the way in abolishing ‘free’ in-flight meals for short haul flights so we had better take our own comestibles with us. Finally, I have come across a story which seems to be in the ‘incredible but true’ category. It looks as though the USA may have depleted some of its missile strike capacity quite badly in its conflict with Iran. It is said that the number of Patriot missiles (effective against incoming antiballistic missiles) may have been reduced from 2,600 to 800 and the Tomahawk attack missile may have been reduced from 3,000 to 2,000. It is reported that Trump reacted furiously at Camp David, laying the blame upon his Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth who, in turn, has blamed his deputy and so on down the line. It could well be that nobody has the courage to tell Donald Trump ‘the truth’ and news of weapon depletions just seems to have leaked out. The big political question is whether the US military are nervous about further depletion of their stocks and this may have the effect of actually bringing the conflict in Iran to an end. This is bad news for the Ukrainians as well as the US will not have any ‘spare’ for the defence of Ukraine even it is felt so inclined. Incidentally, the costs per missile are enormous- a single Patriot missile costs roughly $4 million to $7 million, depending on the specific interceptor variant and whether it is a domestic U.S. procurement or an international military export.