When I awoke yesterday morning, I wondered what the day was going to bring and still felt pretty tired after the excitement of yesterday. So I thought I would have a quick fifteen minutes on the downstairs sofa before I made my morning cup of tea but this became three quarters of an hour. Our domestic help texted me last night to come a day early this week no doubt to fit in with her new work commitments as she has just changed her role in the residential home in which she works for most of the week. I learned from the Home secretary that she is going to institute an enquiry some forty years after the events at the Orgreave coking plant as part of the miners’ dispute. There was a massive pitched battle between the police and the miners in which it now looks as though the miners were lured into a trap so tat they could be charged by the police on horseback. There were a horrific number of injuries and I was shocked to learn in one of the many documentaries unpicking the events of the day that the BBC edited their own footage so that it appeared that the miners charged the police although the reverse was the case. Many of the police gave perjured evidence several having been instructed to use identical phrases supposedly written into their notebooks but none were convicted. I think that all of the charges against the miners eventually were dismissed but the events at Orgreave have been a running sore and a national scandal. The British seem quite good at holding enquiries decades after the event (‘Bloody Sunday’ in Northern Ireland comes to mind) with the enquiry itself taking an age and then no prosecutions are possible because of the passage of time. I think that this long called-for enquiry into Orgreave will fit into the pattern of all of the rest. Meanwhile, most of the nation will be holding its breath as the England womens football team (aka known as ‘The Lionesses’) play Italy in the semi-final this evening. If England play well, they may prevail but often nerves take over and mistakes are made.. A probable outcome is a draw after extra time followed by penalties where the outcome is always unpredictable. In some ways, I will be glad when the football competition is over and then we can all resume a more normal life.
Later in the morning, I popped down the hill, picked up my newspaper and then made for Wetherspoons where I see (separately) two groups of friends. I saw the Inveterate Hill Walker first and after we had concluded our chat had a few minutes only with Seasoned World Traveller in another part of the pub. Then I came home and prepared myself for going to my Pilates session but by car on this occasion. As I got to the studio, the reception staff reminded me that my Pilates teacher was on holiday this week and I had, indeed forgotten as had one of my class-mates. So I came home and after a rest, heated up some risotto which I had left from last week. Most of the rest of the afternoon was taking up with wrangling with various communication companies. Initially, I got onto BT trying to persuade them to revert the old telephone number that I have had for the past 18 years. I have to wait for a day for the order of equipment which I do not need and which arrived today to be ‘technically closed’ as an order and this has to wait until tomorrow. Then I got onto EE to dispute a £199 cancellation charge for which I do not think I should have been charged – eventually, I got someone to agree with me and the £199 debit charge was cancelled. My experiences with both of these tech companies were very similar. First after a long wait, you get onto someone who goes through ID routines with you and then you are passed onto another person/department which involves more waiting and the most jangly pop music it is possible to imagine. Eventually, about three or four people down the chain, you reach a situation in which the situation is almost, but not completely resolved. As I say, my dealings with these tech companies occupied a fair bit of the afternoon and you feel you are trying to make progress through a ‘cat’s cradle’ of bureaucracy.
By tbis mornings post, the awaited letter arrived from the Teachers’ Pension Agency but even this had some complications. After the death of Meg, I am entitled first to a short-term pension and then to a longer term pension. But these are subject to tax and the letter intimates that I need to get onto the Inland revenue (which I shall tomorrow) or avoid emergency tax codes being applied to the payments. In theory, the Inland revenue should get data from the Teachers’ Pension Agency but the latter are very tardy, having taken some 10 and a half weeks to process Meg’s claim which should have been straightforward. Then, in view of the time scales involved, they have made an interim payment of some 73% of what should be the full amount which they will then claw back at a later date. All of this makes apparently simple things so much complex and the payment day has been altered to towards the end of the month to further complicate calculations. But at the end of the day, I think I am receiving the proportion of Meg’s previous pension to which I am entitled. By a late afternoon delivery, a book arrived that I had ordered from Amazon. This is ‘Remember When’ which is a 300-page hardback detailing how the TV presenter Fiona Phillips coped with the onset and progression of early onset dementia. Although I have read the first few pages to get the flavour of the book, I feel that at the moment I want some light reading on almost any subject except dementia so I may have to wait until I am in the right mood before I tackle the rest of the book. I dare say I will find many portions of the book with which I shall resonate but having lived with this afflicting one’s spouse, there might be better choices of reading matter.