Readers will notice that this blog is on ‘Day 2000’ which seems as though it ought to be marked by something special. I will just confine myself to a few observations about the timings when the blog is written. Whatever the date of the blog, its contents generally refer to what has happened on the preceding day and also to the evening before that. About one half it if is written in the morning (when nothing much has happened save for breaking political news) and then it gets concluded in the late afternoon. At that stage, the draft version is ‘saved’ on the WordPress website but not yet published. But the saved draft of the actual preceding day (but today’s entry) is published (by the simple expedient of a mouse click) I have followed the tradition of composing it in ‘Outlook’ where the draft is saved and I can, in theory, access it from either of my laptops in the Main Lounge or the Music Room which system I devised when I was looking after Meg and has the advantage of a grammar and spelling checker. Then I transfer the contents to a text editor (not a word processor) which is specially written for the MacBook and other Apple hardware and then the contents of the file gets some final checking and some simple HTML added. This and other updated files get transferred into a parallel website that I maintain so if the main site is ever lost or hijacked (these things happen!) I automatically have a backup system on a different server and on my own webspace.
Today, it is rumoured that the fate of Angela Raynor, the deputy Prine Minister, will be known when the report from the ethics adviser is presented to the Prime Minister. My own gut feeling is that whilst she might be technically cleared, the whole affair does not pass the ‘sniff test’ and there are some words indicating a degree of carelessness which means that her position is untenable. Yesterday, I turned up for a Tai Chi class and although I was there five minutes before the class, I was the first to arrive. It turned out that of the 6-8 people in the class at least five of us were complete beginners – I suppose we were all waiting for the classes to recommence after the summer break before we started on a new venture. Tai Chi is full of soft, flowing movements and one has to concentrate well on correct breathing nd enter a spirit of mindfulness. In general, I found it OK except that by the end of the 45-minute session, my knees and hips were starting to complain somewhat. This is because in my Pilates exercises, much of the session is conducted on the floor instead of one’s feet and the same applies to the 20 minutes of Pilates exercises that I do every morning in the bedroom. When the session was concluded, I treated myself to a cup of coffee and a slice of home-made lemon drizzle cake and got into conversation with another gentleman of about my age for whom this was also a first session. It transpired that in his occupational life he had worked in a bank and so we got into the predictable old men’s talk about how in our day, things were so much better and now everything was going to the dogs. I hope he persists with the Tai Chi and I think he also attends a ‘Health and Balance’ class the preceding day. If this turns out to be the case, then I may have acquired a soulmate with whom to converse. Because of the inevitable facts of biology, most of the members of these coffee mornings and exercise classes are women who have out-survived their husbands so the topics of conversation are often confined to moaning about the state of the traffic and the inconveniences occasioned by the building work going on all across Bromsgrove at the moment. Whilst not being averse to talking about local things, I do lift my sights to larger national and international issues about which topics I would much prefer to converse, as you might imagine.
I walked down into town this morning and was dismayed to be greeted by 21 Union Flags hoisted at the rate of one per every 57 yards. I had previously consulted the web for some background to all of this (which started in a poor white area of Birmingham called Weoly Castle) and came across a discussion as to what parents should tell their children. To 5-6 year olds, the advice was just to say it was people showing pride in their country whereas to teenagers, it should be possible to explain how the racist and xenophobic far-right had expropriated the flag for their own nefarious purposes and for some people, the display of so many flags ‘in your face’ was both provocative and intimidating, (not to mention non-British as we are not an avid flag waving people like the Americans) I had a coffee with one of my usual Tuesday crowd who was taking advantage of the sun on the outdoor benches, Then proceeding along the High Street, I purchased a gymnastic aid which would help with Pilates exercises and stretches upon which I had had my eye in the Salvation Army shop window and then got some cash out of the ATM in my bank. Then I went along to my usual Friday morning ‘Donkey Care Sanctuary’ cafe where I had a nice chat with the owners and was supplied with coffee and home made cake. By now, I am treated with hugs and kisses when I leave which is rather nice and then I made my way slowly home. I cooked myself a beef curry with onions, peppers, tomatoes, mange-touts, sultanas and apple in the mix – I must say that I found it delicious and have a little left over for another day for a taster dish. For the first time in about a month or even more, I cut the grass which did not look too long but was a bit on the straggly side. I had a few moments of blind panic because it had been so long since I used the mower that I could not find the garage keys to access the mower. Fortunately, in a flash of inspiration I looked at the jar adjacent to my key jar and found that the misplaced keys were nestling at the bottom of a ‘pen’ jar where I must have put them my mistake several weeks ago.