Yesterday evolved into a wonderful day. After my normal weekend routines, my American friend called around  and then we cooked a special dish of pork ribs with a red-eye sauce that we had purchased together in the Alcester branch of Waitrose that we visited last Friday. Red-eye gravy gets its name from its visual appearance. When black coffee is added to hot ham pan drippings, a layer of golden-red grease floats on top of the darker liquid. In a round bowl or plate, this pool of fat resembles a bloodshot human eye and hence the name. We served this with some purple sprouting broccoli, sprouts and a stir fry mixture I had prepared earlier and it was absolutely delicious with the meat just dropping off the ribs after half an hour in the oven. After this wonderful meal and a bottle of shared Asti Spumante that we have both come to enjoy with our shared Sunday meal we indulged in a little post-prandial snooze (although I took the opportunity to read most of ‘The Sunday Times’) We rounded off the afternoon with a delayed sweet of custard pies accompanied by some strawberry ice cream I had purchased earlier on in the day. But the highlight of our evening was yet to some. We viewed the J B Priestly film of ‘An Inspector Calls’ which lays bare the pretensions and class privileges of a middle class family at the turn of the century, each member of the family in turn having been exposed (by the Inspector) to a role in the death of a young women in a  horrible suicide. This play is gripping in its psychological intensity and always worth a further viewing. After that the iPlayer ran onto the next item which was a dramatisation of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’. This is not everyone’s cup of tea as it is really one long extended ‘sound-fest’ in the day of a small Welsh fishing village. In Dylan Thomas’s famous 1954 radio play ‘Under Milk Wood‘, the fictional Welsh seaside village is named Llareggub—which is famously ‘bugger all’ spelled backwards. This cheeky hidden joke reflects the quirky, earthy, and humorous tone of the town’s eccentric residents. For this production, the BBC had assembled the cream of Welsh literati who contributed little sound clips including Michal Sheen, Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Sîean Philips and many more besides. In fact my friend has asked me to look out the complete cast list so that we can identify more of the characters. There is some vicious black humour contained within the work of which that ticked my fancy was the case of the downtrodden Mr. Pugh who frequently imagines poisoning his nagging wife while reading Lives of the Great Poisoners, a book he hides under a brown-paper cover and pretends to be reading a Theological text. These murderous, often comedic, plots remain purely in his imagination rather than being carried out. So after our wonderful evening’s entertainment, we planned out our week together  as  I have a Curry Club U3A meal out on Tuesday and on Wednesday we have plans to observe the 90% partial eclipse of the sun together (probably on the TV, given the danger of looking directly at the eclipsed sun). Having my February holiday in mind and asking my son if he would schedule taking us to the airport, I noted the following disturbing news item which is the airport parking change that is catching Britons out – and landing them £100 fines. Anyone picking up or dropping off at some UK airports this summer is being urged to avoid a costly mistake. Birmingham, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester and Stansted are among the airports now using automatic number plate recognition to track how long you park for and how much you owe. That means there are no barriers prompting you to pay, so you’ll have to remember to pay online or by phone, with the deadline being midnight the following day in most airports. If you do not pay on time, you’ll get a parking charge that could range from £80 to £100 – though is reduced if paid in 14 days. In the late morning, I walked down into  town to pick up a newspaper and to have a coffee in Waitrose. I ensured that I sought out the shade whenever I could which covered at least half of the journey back 

This afternoon I stumbled across a program on the Sky Mix channel detailing the ways in which customs officials in Australia deal with contraband  entering the country which includes not only drugs but seeds, meat products as well as people attempting to enter Australia on a tourist visa and then seeking work. After due process, may of these infractions resulted in the visas being withdrawn and the miscreant put onto the next flight back to whence they came but apart from drugs, importation of banned substances was typically met with confiscation and a huge fine. In the late afternoon, the sight of some huge brambles in our back garden got too much to bear so I went and cropped the worst offenders but this entailed a lot of chopping of extremely long tendrils into shorter lengths so that they would fit in the wheelie bin (which is now full) There is a bonus to all of this which is a big crop of blackberries amidst all of the prickles  but I will leave this for another day before I attempt to pick a supply. After my walk in the park, I have the European Athletics championships to enjoy and they are actually held in Birmingham this year. There promises to be a host of interesting events between 8.00pm and 10.00pm and the women’s 4 x 400 relay should be exciting and interesting to watch and probably a more exciting watch than the football. An unfortunate record has been set in the wee small hours of the morning as a boat carrying 230 migrants made it across the channel and this easily exceeded the last ‘record’ of 165. It looks as though the people smugglers are changing their tactics and relying upon a smaller number  of crossings but in bigger boats. That having been said, the battle against the small boats is gradually being won as a total of 15,049 people are known to have crossed the Channel illegally on 224 small boats so far this year but as of 9 August, the number of small boat arrivals is down by 42% compared to the same period in 2025. The fine weather we have been experiencing must be working in favour of the small boat crossings because they diminish in the winter months and when the weather is stormy.

Yesterday would have been the 115th birthday of my mother but she did live to the ripe old age of 95. It is interesting that we never forget the date of our mother’s birthday as I suppose we learnt this as a young chid and then never ever forget it. For this reason, software developers might ask you to specify the date of your mother’s birthday as one of a set of questions as a clue to unlocking your password should you forget it. Last night, I went out as usual just before 7.00pm to meet up with my American friend and whilst we were strolling around, my friend swore that she saw a parrot. As it turned out in further conversations with dog walkers, my friend had indeed seen a parrot which we discovered to be a macaw. These birds  can live up the age of 50 or even longer if kept as pets and are very intelligent, even managing a few words of mimicking English speech. As we advanced on our walk we stopped to stare in some wonderment as the macaw was evidently being exercised by its owner and would make a number of soaring circles before coming to alight on the owner’s shoulder. We only know it to be a macaw because some of the other dog walkers had witnessed the same bird exercising and had evidently got some of the inside story. My friend and I always find that at this time of night, apart from the runners and trainers, many people are prepared to stop for a chat (usually on the origins of their dogs which is always a conversation opener) and I remarked to my friend that this would be a good training for the early evening ‘paseo’ which no doubt she and I will undertake when we are holidaying in La Coruña next February. I have informed one Spanish friend but not the other as yet as I only received the final confirmation of our flight details the day before. We have a particular event to which to look forward on Wednesday  and this  an almost total eclipse of the sun, starting at about 6.00pm and as its maximum at about 7.00pm. In Cornwall, some viewers may experience about 96%  of the totality of the eclipse but it will be about 90% elsewhere.  My friend in Northern Spain should experience 100% of the eclipse and we ourselves will not experience another total eclipse of the sun until about 1990 so we had better make the most of it. The media is full of advice concerning not viewing the eclipse except with special eclipse glasses (which Amazon are selling for about £7 for a pack of 2) For most of the population, though, it is either a case of constructing one’s own ‘pin-hole’ camera of of viewing the whole event on the TV which might actually be the safest thing to do. If Wednesday is to be a cloudy day, then this will spoil the effect for millions of us. Apart from the eclipse, I have a ‘Curry Club’ to which to look forward on Tuesday evening and I have SatNaved all of the details as it is to be in a restaurant in a nearby village about a 20 minute drive from Bromsgrove. The enjoyment of these events though is highly dependent upon the table talk of one’s nearest dinner companions so I generally approach these events with some mixed feelings.

My normal Sunday morning was attenuated this week for a couple of reasons. The parochial church hall in which we normally enjoy a cup of tea and a chat was closed for its annual refurbishment so after the service, I shot off to collect my newspaper. But the car washing facility that I normally use each Sunday was closed, no doubt as a sensible precaution in these drought-stricken conditions but the Sunday supermarkets were yet to open by 10.00am. So I came home, made myself a cooked breakfast of poached eggs on rice cakes and then scurried out in the car to pick up some ice cream as I had practically ran out at home. When I retuned, I tuned into the last 40 minutes of the ‘Pilgrimage’ programme which I generally enjoy on a Sunday morning even though I have seen all of them at lest twice before. The formula is nearly always the same as they collect together some minor celebrities and generally manage to put together a Catholic, an Anglican, a non-Conformist, perhaps a Jew and a Muslim and a follower of an Asian religion such as Jain and an agnostic or two. Then the ‘pilgrimage’ is both a physical journey along well known pilgrimage routes (this one being North Wales ending up on Bardsey Island) but also a spiritual/emotional one. The pilgrims chat along the way and nobody tries to convey anyone else but they do mutually  discover what they believe and how it has influenced their lives. Towards the end of this pilgrimage, the pilgrims call in an ancient chapel dedicated to an Anglo Saxon saint dating from the fifth century. There they participate in a local tradition for pilgrims which is to find a smooth stone of which there is a plentiful supply on the nearby beach. Then they dedicate the stone to a loved one or write a message upon it. Then holding their stones, the group is blessed by the minister and then the stones are solemnly added to the pile at the entrance at the ent rance to the church. Each year, the stones are gathered up and returned to the sea where they will be gradually washed away. The symbolism here is immense and it moved many of the pilgrims to tears (including the male Muslim, remembering his mother). Afterwards, a sense of release and fulfilment sweeps over the group and although the weather conditions were such that the crossing to Bardsey island would have been too dangerous, nonetheless the pilgrims all felt that the ‘ceremony of the stones’ was a fitting end to their long journey. After this TV viewing, I have two more treats in store. My American friend and I cook a Sunday lunch together and this is always a good idea because cooking for two means that you can try something a little more adventurous than merely cooking for one. Later, we are going to indulge ourselves in a viewing of J B Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls‘ (incidentally, a favourite amongst amateur dramatic societies) which I know is readily accessible on the BBC iPlayer and will be a highlight of our Sunday evening viewing.

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.

The evening before yesterday, I did my usual turn around the park but was unaccompanied because my normal walking  companion, my American friend was feeling a little wearied after a couple of hours swimming earlier in the day. Being on my own, I decided to measure the distance of a circuit around the artificial lake in the park. I know that a double stride of mine is 5’6″ or 1.67 metres and each circuit of the lake was 500 steps and I did two complete revolutions last night. So this made 1000 steps at 1.67 metres for each step so evidently, I had walked 1670 metres which is 1826 yards and therefore exceeds a mile (= 1760 yards) Actually I was pretty tired when I got home and did not sleep particularly well when I did get to bed later in the evening so perhaps, I had overdone it all a little. In the day, the rail network had suffered a catastrophic power failure leading to delays in traffic across much of the North and the Midlands. Although there was a back up system this took some time to kick in and in the meanwhile schedules were disrupted across a lot of the country. All of this points to a lack of investment in critical infrastructure and just adds to the national malaise that the whole country is suffering a long slow decline after years of adverse events (financial cris, period of austerity, COVID, the recent oil crisis following wars in Ukraine and in Iran). I learn this morning that most teenagers will simply ignore any newly introduced guidelines into the use of social media. Most teens will opt out of government’s planned social media curfew, new polling suggests Most teenagers intend to opt out of the government’s planned social media curfews, according to new polling. Former PM Sir Keir Starmer unveiled plans for a voluntary curfew for 16- and 17-year-olds in his final weeks in office, which would prevent teenagers from accessing social media sites between midnight and 6am by default but could be turned off. The poll by Censuswide found 84.6% of 16-18-year-olds said they would opt out of the proposed curfews. The poll, conducted on behalf of the Online Responsibility Network, found 45.2% of teenagers said they would turn the curfew off to allow them to speak to friends or family, while another 37.2% would turn it off to watch online content. Leanne Proctor, regulatory lead at the Online Responsibility Network, said the research suggests a curfew is ‘unlikely to be enough on its own to prevent online harms’. What seems extraordinary is that any government thinks that making use of the social media voluntary was going to curb its almost complete university on the smart phones of the young. Australia have already legislated for a ban on the use of social media by I believe the under 16s and th majority of Australian youth has found a way round this by deploying VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) the software for which is easily downloadable. So the timid government efforts to curb social media use are likely to prove ineffectual and perhaps no one should be surprised by all of this, I wonder if the government were frightened of losing the teenage vote once they have lowered the voting age but the thought that the government thought they could effect profound social change of this nature by relying upon voluntary action rather than legislation is laughable. So the big tech giants have been appeased once more and the government may have feared a massive social backlash (paradoxically on the social media) were they to have legislated.

So in the morning, my American friend and I went on to a littls day trip to Alcester, a delightful little Georgian own. We managed to park easily and after our morning coffee, we went to visit the precious Anglican church which dates back to mediaeval times but had been remodelled along Georgian lines in the eighteenth century. Then we made a way to our fabourtite hardware shop which sells all kinds of sundries and then through a selection of charity ships (for which the town is famous) until we finished up at the hotel in which we had pre-booked our lunch. We both had a beef lasagne served with salad and it was as delicious as always. We called in at a local Waitrose to purchase a joint for our m=by now customary Sunday lunch and I made enquiries after a member of staff who used to work in the Bromsgrove branch but had transferred a year or ao ago to this one. When we got home, we enjoyed a quiet ice cream in the garden for which we both felt the need as the sun was blazing hot this afternoon. I read this afternoon some good news emanating from the USA. The US appeals court has blocked Donald Trump’s $400m (£297m) White House ballroom. The federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration to stop ‌construction of the ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. The Washington-based US Court of Appeals for the District of ​Columbia Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Last year the non-profit sued ​after the administration tore down the East Wing and began building ‌a 90,000 sq ft (8,360-square-meter) ballroom without authorisation from Congress. Although Trump has been proclaiming this as a ballroom, in practice it was going to be a cluster of facilities including a hospital and a secure and well-guarded ‘bolt hole’  This facility was to be so well  guarded that in the event that Trump lost the next election and buried himself deep within the confines of the new structure  then it might not have been possible to force him to leave.. There are some cynics on the Democratic side who are convinced that this has been part of the Trump plan all along as he will argue (after the event) that he lost the  election because it was improperly conducted. Of course, Donald Trump will try to appeal against this conviction by any means open to him and powers of the presidency are not insubstantial. But the destruction of the whole of the East Wing of the White House and a rather hideous and gaudy replacement for it must surely rankle with many Americans. It also demonstrates that Trump had a complete disregard for the law and any planning process when the proposed ballroom was planned and perhaps he will just completely disregard the law and carry on building his whole monstrosity regardless.

In ‘The Times‘, there was a feature recently in which a variety of diets and approaches to food was compared and contrasted. In the article I was reminded of the mantra of the food author Michael Pollan’s whose famous seven-word mantra—’Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’—is introduced in his books ‘In Defense of Food’ and ‘Food Rules’. It means you should eat real, whole, unprocessed food, keep your portion sizes moderate, and base your meals primarily on vegetables, fruits, and grains. I read this book several years ago and I am sure that it is worth a re-read if I can lay my hands on it again although I am pretty sure that the copy I read belonged to my daughter-in-law. I remember being particularly impressed by his argument that modern margarines are little better than plastic bags processed into slivers and I have never eaten the substance since. But this mantra is easier to say than to put into practice but I was reminded of it because the naturalist Chris Packham has been urging people to avoid both bacon and sausages which, of course are enjoyed as part of the traditional UK breakfast. Then I went shopping recently, I discovered  and indeed bought, those trays of foods which consist of the off-cuts of chicken, pork and beef. Now these products (particularly the ham-based ones) will consist of processed product full of nitrosamines which are not good for you, particularly if there is a history of colonic cancer in the past. Nitrosamines are chemical compounds that can cause cancer over long-term exposure. They form when nitrites react with amines, often during high-heat cooking of cured meats, tobacco use, or via manufacturing flaws in certain medications. You can lower your exposure by changing how you cook, what you eat, and how you manage products . The advice given is to eat cured meats less often, limit bacon, hot dogs, and sausages, avoid high heat for processed meats, do not fry, grill, or char protein-rich foods preserved with nitrites and to choose lower-heat cooking methods instead of frying. One should also eat foods rich in vitamin C or antioxidants with meals to block nitrosamine creation in your stomach. I must admit that I had not realised that frying such foods was so bad for one but my reason for buying such trays of food is to provide myself with a small quantity of protein which I can then add to an omelette, a stir-fry or a curry. Last night as part of my regular routine, I met my American friend in the park where we have a walk and a chat and this is always a very relaxing part of the day, not dissimilar to the Spanish habit of ‘paseo’ and is, of course, made so much more pleasant when one wishes to cool off after the heat of the day. The population of the park at 7.00pm falls into quite predictable patterns of which the most prominent are the dog walkers. This is followed by the joggers and exercisers and there are also a smattering of teenagers on their bikes. Finally, we have the staid older couples who are our to enjoy the evening air (like my friend and I) but if we have a light repast at about 6.00pm then a walk at 7.00pm is a good way to round off the day, both physically and psychologically. Apart from anything else, there are always items from the days news to discuss and I was keen to discuss the exemplars of rampant American racism which I discerned in the film which I watched the day before.

This morning turned out to be quite an entertaining one. I attended my normal Tai Chi class  which  is carrying on as normal throughout the summer months. Afterwards, I walked into town with my banking friend and we went for our normal coffee in our ‘Gifts of Love’ charity outlet and serving in the shop was a volunteer who I did not know. It turned out that she as a native of Alcester, the pretty little Georgian town to which I am going to make a trip tomorrow with my American friend  and she gave us some useful hints as to which coffee shops made the best coffee in town. Then she knew several of the Lancashire towns quite well so we chatted on this subject before alighting on the subject of holiday  destinations and we both happened to know and to enjoy some of the resorts in Devon. After this, I returned home walking along the High Street but picked up a coffee jug which has been mysteriously marked down to 50p and was too good an offer to miss, so I bought this not for myself but as a little present to give away. Tomorrow, when we visit Alcester, one of the ‘must visit’ locations is one of those little hardware shops that is stuffed to the rafters with all kinds of kitchen and hardware products that you never knew you wanted until you step inside the shop. We are booked into a hotel on the High Street where they serve a home made lasagne in pensioner size portions which is full of home made ingredients and absolutely delicious. We have learned on the news this afternoon that  two people have been arrested after a second night of violence in Norfolk saw a female police officer ‘seriously bitten’ and another hit with a rock. Police condemned the attacks directed at officers who responded at about 9.30pm on Wednesday night after a group of demonstrators in a residential road in Thetford were trying to get into a house. Some people inside were dragged from their homes and properties were vandalised, the local MP said. The unrest in the town reportedly followed rumours the properties were being used to house asylum seekers. One resident of the property claimed a group of between 30 and 50 people were trying to get into the house, while others were shouting and stopping a workman from leaving. These kinds of occurrences are happening up and down the country but the undoubted and legitimate concerns that might be raised in a local community are nearly always heightened because unverified information is spread abroad widely (and believed) on social media and there are always right wing activists who can speed to an area and fan the flames. Sometimes, it is pure ignorance that takes hold and I remember well the case of a German born paediatrician who established a private businessIn Portsmouth as a paediatrician and put up a brass plate outside her house/clinic advertising her business. The women and the premises were attacked by a baying mob who did not know the difference between a ‘paediatrician’ and a ‘paedophile’ and this is indicative of the type of misinformation that is often broadcast and amplified by today’s social media.

This morning after I awoke and gazed out of my bedroom window, I noticed it had rained during the night and the tiles on my garden patio were still glistening from the rain. How prolonged was the rainfall I cannot say but it was probably just of the order of a passing shower. I imagine that the ground is so hard baked that any lying surface water would soon evaporate and not reach down into the soil where the vegetation is crying out for water. I consulted the longer range forecast and it dies appear that apart from a few isolated showers, we can expect the low pressure across the north of the country and Scotland to move away and another high pressure area (warm and sunny) will approach is from the South East. for the record, England has recorded its driest July on record, in a series since 1836, with just 6.5mm of rainfall recorded – just 10% of its long-term meteorological average for the month, and less than half of the previous record of 13.4mm set in 1911. One particular story is dominating the political agenda, and it is the early release of some prisoners to ease the overcrowding in our gaols. This may well spell the end of Andy Birnham’s honeymoon period in government and although the Prime Minister is himself taking some holiday, the issue will rumble on. On particular case is being kept in front of the public and this is where a police officer dies as he was dragged along the road by a car he was trying to apprehend, Although the lack of intent meant that that the conviction was for manslaughter rather than for murder, this nicety is rather lost on the public and we now have the bizare spectacle of even a chief police officer threatening to take the government to court in an effort to get the decision in this particular case reversed. There is one way out of this dilemma and this is to perform a ‘U’ turn in government policy and to add the murderers serving police officers to the list (along with rapists and child sex offenders) to the category of prisoners where the early release provisions o not apply. But this is the point at which pure politics start to apply because a ‘U’ turn in policy would make the government appear weak and indecisive and the frequency of ‘U; turns in government policy was one of the reasons why the Burnham government succeeded  the Keir Starmer government in the first place. Last night, I viewed a very convincing video which argued that Argentina was shortly to be banned from the 2030 World Cup competition but of course this would take the immediate Number 1 spot in the news bulletins so I concluded that it must be a sophisticated AI fate. But it remains the case that the FIFA disciplinary will undoubtedly sanction Argentina for two major transgressions (displaying of political slogans and the brawl after the match) but whether they will receive only a cursory slap on the wrist after a gap of some weeks remains to be seen. Incidentally, the facts in this are clear and well caught on video constantly re-run throughout the world so who a disciplinary decision is so long delayed perhaps tells you everything that you need to know about FIFA.

This was my normal shopping day and this was conducted easily enough but I had to hunt around to find a copy of ‘The Times’ which I did on the third  outlet I visited. Once I returned home, I lunched on some quiche  accompanied by some salad and felt a bit better after the eating of it so perhaps my blood sugar level had dropped a litle low. I spent the afternoon a way most unusual for me. Tilm4 were showing a western entitled ‘Siege at Red River’ and I remembered that the name ‘Red River’ had features n a movie clip  had seen as casual  Although the American viewers of the time witnessed the deaths and unthinking American racism. So I viewed all of the film and the movie clip I remembered did not feature in it. But towards the end, hundreds of native Americans were slaughtered when the recently invented Gatling Gun that they had acquired was captured and turned against them. It says something of the sensibilities of conservative American society in 1954 that although audiences were exposed to the killing of hundreds of North American peoples, the final kiss between the female and male characters  which  formed the romantic interest in the film was shielded from viewers eyes by the neck of a horse! Wondering whether I was suffering from false memory syndrome, I did do some Google searching and found the clip of film depicting casual American racism In the 1948 western Red River, the ‘Don Diego’ scene depicts Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) forcefully claiming land north of the river that belongs to a Spanish landowner named Don Diego. When Don Diego’s Mexican wranglers object, Dunson shoots one of them dead and sends the survivor back as a hostile messenger. While the scene portrays ruthless land-grabbing and casual violence typical of frontier expansion, critical discussion of the movie more often points to its depiction of Native Americans later in the film as a product of mid-century Hollywood stereotyping rather than this specific encounter with Don Diego’s men. What is interesting to our eyes, though, is that the shooting of a Mexican emissary in cold blood as they were concluding a conversation would have been regarded as not worthy of comment and even the Wikipedia entry pulls its punches and does not mention the inherent racism. After the film had concluded, I knew it was the day before our green garden waste wheelie bin gets emptied and so I chopped down the remainder of the lava tera bush (which had grown to tree-like proportions) and used a saw to cut it into disposable pieces. For good measure I threw in some of another bush that had died as a product of the heat in the front of the house  but only managed some of this. At the same time, I managed to sweep  a goodly portion of the dead holly leaves that had been shed on the back path into the garde and these, too, went into the wheelie bin. I am aware that there are a lot of other things that needed to be cut back and disposed off but I did not want to overdo it. I managed after several attempts to get through to our favourite eating place in Alcester (pretty little Georgian town with some excellent charity shops) to secure a lunch time booking as my American friend and I are going off to treat ourselves to a little ‘jolly’ at the end of the week.

Every so often you read a story that is genuinely shocking and so it proved the day before yesterday when I was perusing the columns of ‘The Sunday Times’ for press cuttings. The story relates to an entrepreneur in Israel who  was giving access to a piece of land which presumably he owned which overlooked a portion of the Gaza Strip. This individual was hiring out binoculars so that people could gaze upon the devastated landscape in the Gaza Strip to observe first hand the devastation that Israeli military action has undertaken. The latest estimate is that 71,000 people (many women and children) had been killed in the bombardments and the Israelis had moved their ‘yellow line’ so the Israeli defence forces now occupied 60% of the territory of the Gaza strip. What I found shocking was the account that an Israeli citizen had driven forty miles in order to observe first hand the destruction of Gaza and then admitted to his disappointment that there were any buildings left standing at all, rather than the vast majority of them destroyed by missile attacks. The displaced population are now living in rat-infested tents as they do not have any habitable homes left to which to return whilst a ‘cease fire’ is theoretically in operation. Of course the world’s attention has been diverted from these wars in Iran, Ukraine and Gaza and one is reminded of the Roman  tradition of ‘bread and circuses’. ‘Bread and circuses’ (panem et circenses) originates from the Roman Poet Juvenal, who used it in his Satire X around 100 AD. It describes how leaders gained public approval not by good policies, but by giving citizens free grain (bread) and massive entertainment events like chariot races and gladiatorial games (circuses). Roman society was subject to periodic revolts by slaves and the dispossessed and ‘bread and circuses’ was one way to divert public attention from their present day concerns. So I believe that the World Cup served this function as reporting of conflicts were pushed aside. There are some cynics that argue that here in the UK we put on similar shows of pageantry to divert public attention elsewhere when things get tough politically. There is much public disquiet about the ‘early release’ schemes in which some prisoners are being released after only a third or a half of their sentences in order to release capacity in the prison system which is running at about 98%-99% full. During the age of austerity, the building of new prisons took on a very low priority and although new prisons are under construction, they take time and money to build. Andy Burnham has bowed to public pressure and halted the early release scheme for some categories of crime (such as rape and child sex offences) but there are some notorious cases in which early release will sill apply. Victims claim that it is they themselves that are subject to a permanent life sentence as the effects of the crimes persist in their lives whereas offenders may be  released back into the areas in which the crimes were committed within a period of a few years. There is no easy solution to this problem and all that the government can offer is a more stringent tagging regime. Meanwhile, we read that American oil and gas giants raked in massive spring profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments and consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages. The conflict, now in its sixth month, halted most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that previously served as a delivery route for a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas. With global supplies constrained, prices for Brent crude, the international standard, soared from about $70 to above $100 a barrel for much of March, April and May, and at one point reached $126. So oil and gas has been extracted at one price and then sold for a much higher price so this strengthens the case for a windfall tax upon the profits of companies like BP who have similar profited.

Before I attended my weekly Pilates class, my son and daughter-in-law called around and it was lovely to see them after a gap of over a week. After exchanging family news and gossip, my daughter-in-law took on the business of tidying my food shelves and ensuring that I am not hanging onto any out-of-date food. After I returned from my Pilates class, my family had very kindly made a salad out of some mackerel which I provided and other salad ingredients which they had brought along. Then I had a delicious mackerel salad, made all of the nicer for the fact that I had not prepared it myself for a change.  We brought each other up-to-date on family news and then they returned to their own flat whist I had a doze. Looking at current news items, the following caught my eye about living costs in Spain. If a British person wishes to live in Spain on a permanent basis, one has to apply for a non-lucrative visa and demonstrate that you have an income of about £2,500 per month and pay for some health insurance, but after that costs start to fall rapidly. It is 32% lower than in the UK, at almost £400 a month less, making Spain the cheapest nation among 11 top foreign destinations analysed by Overseas Home. It was the fourth cheapest for groceries (22% less than the UK), second cheapest to run a home (-32%), sixth for travel (-21%) and top of the leaderboard when eating out and other leisure activities (-44%). You can enjoy a fantastic menu of the day, three-course lunch with wine for €12 – €15 (£10 – £15) in a local restaurant. A nice dinner for two with wine costs around €60 – €80 (£52 – £69). In the shops, fresh produce is significantly cheaper than in the UK. Property in Spain is considerably more affordable too, with a square metre up to 50% cheaper, according to Blevins Franks. €120,000 (£104,000) gets you a good choice of nice apartments, not obviously on the beach, but in those popular areas of the Costa Blanca or Costa del Sol. If it’s something really nice, then you’ve got to be looking at €200,000 (£173,000). Drive an hour inland from the Costa del Sol and property prices halve. Obviously, people don’t necessarily speak English. I am not tempted but it is starting to make my Spanish holiday booked for next February look attractive. Some British people spend the winter period for extended periods in Spain and one can see the attraction.

I got up pretty late this morning as I knew that I would oversleep my normal getting up time. My American friend and I stayed up late to watch the marvelous rom-com film ‘Shakespeare in Love’ which deployed the whole range of British acting talent and we really enjoyed it but it did not finish until after midnight and hence the lie-in. But I really got some really good news this morning after I had transmitted a text to one of my nieces. At about the same time each year, she attends a large religious religious convention for young people which takes place in the West Country somewhere. She has to make the journey back to Yorkshire which is a very long way but my house is not far short of the M5 so this represents a wonderful opportunity for us to have a quick together although I shall be seeing her in just over three week’s time in the trip to Yorkshire. So hopefully she will be with me/us just before midday so I need to do a certain amount of prep, not to say tidying up, before she calls around. We are at the start of a new week and the weather men tell us that there is going to be one tremendous stab of really hot weather with a movement northwards of some Saharan air  but hopefully this will represent the last day of really hot weather this summer. Politically, there is a fascinating by election to be held in about 10 days time. Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, resigned as an MP in order to fight his Clacton constituency and hopefully, secure a new mandate. But the main political  parties are refusing to stand in what they regard as an electoral ruse so that Farage may escape some parliamentary scrutiny of the funding streams he has enjoyed from millionaires over the past few years. The by election has attracted 34 candidates which is a record for British politics and the candidate list is over three metres long which has created some difficulties for the way in which the election is actually run. Farage’s chief opponent is actually ‘Count BinFace’ who is a joke candidate who has a dustbin for a head. By any of the normal rules of politics, the election ought to be walk over for Farage and the Reform party. But this is not a ‘normal’ by-election and if the Labour, Liberal, Green and a few other supporters vote for Count BinFace then Farage might have quite a fight on his hands. Even if Farage wins but by a small margin, this could be regarded as a type of Pyrrhic victory and strange things can happen in by elections particularly if the turn out is small and held in August which is normally the ‘closed’ season for political activity. So the results of this by election will be keenly awaited and certainly discussed and a recent opinion poll; shows the following. A fifth of voters could back Count Binface over Nigel Farage in the upcoming by-election in the Reform UK leader’s constituency, new polling has suggested. A new survey by Survation for Mandate Research suggests Mr Farage would win 73 per cent of the vote on a low turnout when constituents head to the polls later this month. But his main rival, Count Binface, could sweep up an estimated 20 per cent of the vote. When options are reduced to just the two candidates, Mr Farage’s vote drops to 69 per cent, while support for Count Binface surges to 31 per cent. The poll, seen by The Telegraph, also suggests that Mr Farage would gain 56 per cent support in the next general election, with the Conservatives on 10 per cent and Labour on 8 per cent. But, of course, we shall have to wait and see and a surge of support kin the last few days of the campaign are always possible. Will Labour and Green voters be keener to vote for Count BinFace than Reform supporters are to vote for Farage? Returning to more prosaic issues, my only extra-normal commitment this week is a Spanish U3A group meeting on Thursday for which I need to undertake a modicum of preparation.

Just after midday day, my niece arrived, breaking her journey up to Yorkshire. I was delighted to see her and introduced her to my American friend who I had invited around so that the two could get to know each other. Previously, I had stripped the pieces of meat from the carcase of the duck which provided our main meal yesterday and thus ended up with a rich duck stew.  I had popped a tray of oven=roast vegetables into the microwave oven so basically lunch was prepared and could be eaten at any time. My niece stayed for about an hour and a half and over cups of tea we exchanged family news with each other before she needed to resume her long trip northwards and my American friend and I consumed the ‘duck stew’ lunch (which, incidentally, seemed to taste just as nice if not nicer than yesterday) This afternoon, after a doze, I have several back issues of the newspaper to scan but later on in the early  evening, there will be a trip to the park to undertake our daily constitutional walk.  Yesterday when I went to church I learnt the details of the funeral of a fellow parishioner with whom I enjoyed more than a nodding acquaintance as we served on the Parish Parochial committee before and my American friend agreed to accompany me to this which is just over a fortnight’s time. If any of us needed more proof of Donald Trump’s declining hold on reality, one only has to witness the bizarre AI generated images that Trump is posting of himself on his own ‘Truth Social‘ outlet. President Donald Trump spent a chunk of his weekend posting weird artificial intelligence slop images of himself in various situations ― and it concluded with one of his most baffling pics yet. It depicted himself seated at a table with Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Trump in the image is wearing clothing almost identical to Lincoln’s, and the three are shown signing an upside-down U.S. map. Some of Trump’s weekend images included him gazing at a younger version of himself in the uniform he wore during his time in a private military academy as a teen, as well as one of himself as some kind of Revolutionary War hero. Trump, however, never actually served in the military. Trump was of draft age during the Vietnam War, but received four deferments for college and one for bone spurs in his heels. He later infamously told radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was ‘my personal Vietnam.’ Trump’s other weekend images included one calling Venezuela the ’51st state,’ one of him looming over Greenland ― which he has also wanted to make into a U.S. state ― as well as him as Elvis and him kissing a figurine of Jesus on a cross. Trump’s critics slammed him for obsessively posting AI slop images of himself instead of focusing on the war in Iran, affordability or any other issue far more important to the American people.

I got up early yesterday morning, having set the alarm to 6.00am as I need to leave the house at 8.00am to go to church. Once I was up and a cup of tea in my hand, I reminded myself how to make some remnants of wine and cider vinegar into a wine vinegar by a simple expedient of combining them both.  The point of this is that I need to prepare a traditional orange sauce to accompany the duck that my American friend are going to cook together later in the day and the wine vinegar is an essential ingredient here. I need to purchase some orange  juice which I will do just after church and a little cornflower might not go amiss either. The whole point is that is is quite fun to prepare a meal for two in this way but I doubt many people would go to the effort if they were cooking for themselves alone. The week ahead does not promise to be a very taxing one as apart from Pilates and Tai Chi, I have a Spanish club to which to look forward but there is always some housework and cleaning, somewhat put into abeyance when the weather was unbearably hot. There is a lot of speculation whether Infantino can survive the recent revolt against the proposal to spin off World Cup profits to a private company.  The point is being made forcibly is that member associations may doubt whether the soul and spirit of football are in a better place after his stewardship and there are a whole series of incidents (such as  the awarding of a peace prize to President Trump, the overturning of the American red card, introduction of ‘hydration’ breaks) to be put alongside his latest venture. Many think that his days are numbered but there is no evident successor on the horizon. Here domestically we have the Commonwealth games held in Glasgow but they have scarcely broken the surface of public opinion compared with those held in Birmingham four years ago which featured 72 teams, 4,822 athletes, and 19 sports. The games in Glasgow were very much a scaled down affair after Victoria in Australia pulled out due to unaffordable rising costs and the games themselves have only been broadcast for in the evening, starting at 10.00pm when most people are thinking of going  to bed. So I was amazed to discover that the Games were due to close shortly whereas, in my mind, they had only just  opened. It may be that the days are over when one city alone has the infrastructure and the finances to afford such Games and the whole model of allocating the Commonwealth Games to a city has to be rethought. Even in Birmingham, I seem to remember that the Games spilled out into the wider West Midlands region. Now that the month of August is upon us, we have the prospect of somewhat better weather to which to look forward as well as my mini-holiday in Yorkshire at the end of the month. I was so pleased to have secured train tickets for this journey at a very reasonable price but later on in the week, when there are about three weeks left to go I will probably send an email around all the members of my family to see how many of them I manage to see on my stay giving that the last time was a really fleeting visit last Christmas. My American friend will be accompanying me on this occasion and although she has visited Yorkshire before it was a long time ago and I think Harrogate will be a while new experience for her.

In the late morning, I started preparing the lunch – the duck had been cooking for most of the morning but when it was finished I was going to out a Mediterranean vegetable mix into the oven to roast. I had previously downloaded  a Mary Berry recipe from the internet and my friend and I followed it to the letter. It involved  some orange juice, orange zest, wine vinegar, honey and finally some cornflower to thicken the mixture. When we eventually dished up. the duck, the orange sauce was absolutely stunning so thanks to Mary Berry we had a really enjoyable meal. My friend and I relaxed a little after lunch and over coffee in the garden, I managed to show her various photos from my iPhone collection, including some of my relatives and even the classic photo, discovered by a distant cousin  in Australia, of what was my great grandfather’s business which was a mid-19th century bicycle manufacturer in Wolverhampton. We discovered various other photos including one that was taken off me when I was aged approximately six years old and photographed with my sister in the primary school we both attended in Harrogate in Yorkshire. Having enjoyed the Spanish collection in the Proms the evening before last, my friend and I are going  to indulge in some of the great violin performances  at the Proms over the years as well as a showing of the vary entertaining film of ‘Shakespeare in Love’ Fortunately, neither of us has an early morning the next day so we are going to indulge ourselves in a little late night TV viewing. In terms of global politics, Donald Trump is announcing that a peace deal between Hamas and the Israelis is imminent but other analysts such as Michael Clarke here in the UK are very unsure that anything is actually going to unfold. US President Donald Trump has announced his Board of Peace reached an ‘historic agreement’ that would see Hamas militants put down their weapons and Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza. For a start, the Israelis have yet to make any formal announcement that they have accepted the peace deal and, in any case, have pushed up the proportion of land that they occupy in Gaza from 50% to 60%. Even with a supposed peace deal in place, the Israelis have practically ignored cease fire protocols to date and will probably only respond to the very heaviest of American pressure which the USA seems loathe to exert. Meanwhile, some terrible stories are emerging from the Israeli occupied Wet Bank where pregnant women suffering potential miscarriages are forced to wait in Israeli roadblocks whilst the Israeli soldiers train their weapons upon them.  A solution to the West Bank seems as far off as ever and only the cessation of American political support and stopping the flow of private money to Israel (neither at all likely) would exert enough pressure on the Israeli government to force a change in policy.

Just before I went to bed the day before last, I heard the excellent news that the FIFA president Gianni Infantino has been forced to scrap plans to sell off a stake in the World Cup after a global backlash. I am not a avid football fan but the thought of a game enjoyed by millions being hijacked by an autocrat and rights sold to a commercial enterprise run by one of Trump’s relatives was just repulsive. So it looked as though the strong stance played by the European UEFA paid off and we can breathe again – I wonder if a strong candidate will emerge to replace Infantino? It now looks as though moves instigated by UEFA to displace Infantino are accelerating and if this is the case, then it is a case of not if Infantino goes but just a question of when? As well as this good news, I received yesterday an email from my close friend in Madrid (who came to see Meg just before she died and attended her funeral) and conveyed to all of my recent news, including the fact that my American friend and I are booked up to come to Spain in February of next year. Even before that big holiday, my American friend and I are looking forward to four whole days in Yorkshire at the end of the month to celebrate my sister’s birthday but we shall also have some days out to make a mini-holiday for ourselves. As yesterday was the first day of August, I did not forget to say ‘White Rabbits’ (actually repeated three times) as soon as I awoke. People say ‘white rabbits’ on the first day of each month as a traditional superstition to bring good luck, ensure protection, and ward off negativity but it is very much associated with one’s childhood years. The weekend  promises to be a quiet one for me but my American friend and I will enjoy a weekend meal together which is becoming a little ritual shared between us. We met the day before yesterday and eagerly communicated the news of the day. My friend had just enjoyed a really enervating swim for the first time in years and felt that it eased her musculature whilst I was still excited about the very enjoyable first meeting of the Philosophy group I have just joined, Although rain seems a long way away, the weather has certainly drifted several degrees cooler but as a nation, we are watching with a fascinated horror the progress of the wild fires in Spain and in France and although we still have a large heathland fire in Suffolk it does match the ferocity of the fires seen in Spain. I ask myself the question of what damage is being wrought to European economies and of course the ecological damage might last for a decade even before we start to consider a pattern of extremely hot summers in the years to come. August is always a quiet month in domestic political terms as the politicians as well as the general population think about holidays and the like but the new government appears to have ‘hit the ground running’ with a series of popular measures. But of course everything has to be paid for and I am reminded of the 18th century French sage who observed  that the art of taxation ‘was like extracting feathers from a goose with the least amount of hissing’ Yesterday in our Philosophy group discussion, we were wondering  aloud whether we ought to consider other measures of a nation’s well-being other  than the very crude ‘Gross Domestic Product’ and also wondered aloud whether the pursuit of economic growth was still appropriate for mature industrial economies such as ours. The stark fact remains that as the data from the Office for National Statistics and independent groups like the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirm that UK living standards have experienced historic stagnation. Typical household disposable income has barely grown since the 2008 financial crisis, making it the weakest multi-year period for income growth in generations.

As soon as I had got myself up and dressed this morning, and before I had breakfasted, I made my way into town in order to pick up my supplement-heavy copy of ‘The Times‘ before they all disappeared. After a chat with one of the supermarket staff I know well, I made my way back hone but spotted my Irish friends so I approached them in the car so that we could have a good chat. As soon as other friends return from holiday, we may have a get together for a little summer party. At home, I processed a machine full of washing including the two new shirts I had purchased the other day. I also spent some time carefully washing my University of Manchester scarf which is now 60 years old and I doubt has ever seen the inside of a washing machine. Today I gave it a soak in some tepid water in a bucket and used some washing liquid designed for delicates. Then after a couple of rinses, I dried it in a towel (as internet instructions recommended) and then put it out on the line with all of the other washing. I have learnt, a little too late, that there is a way to prevent clothes from going  ‘crisp’ when air dried. To prevent air-dried clothes from getting stiff, one needs to use less detergent, add white vinegar to the rinse cycle, and shake out each garment vigorously before and after hanging. After two or three hours in the sun, though, I have rescued the woollen scarf from the line and hope to finish off the drying process carefully and slowly within the house. In the late morning, my American friend called around with some of the supplies for the meal which we are going to jointly cook tomorrow. We are treating ourselves to some duck and I have consulted the internet to find the ingredients for a good orange sauce so that we can have ‘duck a l’orange’ and I can get these tomorrow morning after I have attended the church service and washed the car. Later on in the early evening, we are going to have our general constitutional walk in the park when the day has cooled down a little and there is a generally relaxed feeling to the day. This is becoming a routine for us to which we both look forward and slightly resembles the ‘paseo’ in Spain. The paseo is a cherished cultural tradition in Spain where neighbours, couples, and families take a slow, relaxed evening stroll through town streets, plazas, or promenades before a late dinner. It is a time to connect with the community, catch up on news, and enjoy the cooler air after the heat of the day.