I awoke yesterday morning after a really good night’s sleep feeling pretty good with myself and with the world. I think that yesterday when my Droitwich friend and I spent some time together despite interruptions like Pilates (for me) and yoga (for her), we spent some quality time together once the day’s work had been done. Between us, we threw together a meal which involved cooking some prawns in a simple white sauce served on a bed of mashed (red) potatoes enhanced by some mustard and cooked together with both mushrooms and onions. But my friend added a small quantity of a couple of spices from the collection that she brought back for me when she visited her family on holiday recently in South Africa and the overall effect was brilliant. We are trying to remember between the two of us how we made the meal so tasty and enjoyable so we can repeat it for another occasion when we cook together. Christmas Eve having dawned, I thought that I would not need to hit the shops today but I have just remembered three or four prosaic little things that I need but I do know that I need to get some more cash out and to fill the car up with petrol as I hate running around on just petrol vapour. When my Droitwich friend was with me yesterday and I was preparing the potato mash, my Asian neighbour popped around with a card and a bottle of wine which was incredibly thoughtful of him. But I sort of introduced my immediate and my ex-neighbour to each other, but they already knew each other from the times when we used to walk down the Kidderminster Road when my Droitwich friend lived there so this was an interesting case of wheels within wheels as they say. I have not done my Pilates exercises for a few days now with the Yorkshire trip and other social activities crowding things out so I am going to have to make sure that I get back on track and do these regularly from now ow, including even Christmas day. I pull out a mat from underneath the bed and perform my exercises to the strains of ClassicFM and they take about 20 minutes or so but I know that the stretches in particular help to keep my spine in good condition. After Meg had died, I had developed a bit of a lean from pushing Meg up and down the hill in her wheelchair but I think I have got myself into a better shape (literally!) after this so I need to ensure that the festive season does not get in the way of my little keep-fit routines. I have not really kept up with the news over the last day or so but I gather that a really big extra tranche of Epstein documents have been released by the (American) Department of Justice but things are looking bad for the former Prince Andrew who looks as though he was much implicated in the Epstein circle than he has previously admitted. The British monarchy have probably been quite timely in stripping the former Prince Andrew of all of his titles and royal accoutrements before further revelations threaten to drag the British monarch into the mire of what is undoubtedly the biggest sex scandal in the world.
So yesterday afternoon, my son and daughter-in-law called around as prearranged and we discussed arrangements for the rest of the day and, indeed, the following day which was Christmas day. My daughter-in-law very kindly agreed to run me to the 5.30 start of the Christmas services which started formally at 6.00pm but was preceded by 30 minutes of carols led by a trio of guitarists. The church was actually packed to the rafters with people standing at the back of the church as it was full to overflowing. After the Christmas Exe service, my daughter-in-law came to pick me up which was especially useful as the car park was completely full and would have made parking of my own car impossible, When we arrived back home.my son had organised for a fish-and-chip supper tp be delivered to the house and this was made even more delicious with the addition of some Marks and Spencers ‘Fish-and-chip shop curry sauce’ After our meal we watched some TV (‘Connect’ for the younger generation, an episode of ‘Rising Damp’ for myself) and then engaged in a long discussion of the music and the university activities in which I was engaged in the 1960’s. I played some of my favourite attacks (Johny Mathis, Joan Baez) which we located easily enough on YouTube and then we had a lengthy discussion about the music and student involvement in the community when I was at university. In particular, I described Rag Week (in which, incidentally, Meg and I first really ‘got together’ and became a couple) when the university held mid-sessional examinations and the university authorities were quite happy for students to go off and engage in Rag Week whilst tutors marked the examination scripts as all teaching was suspended. In 1966, the university students raised £20,000 during Rag Week through the sale of the (very rude) Rag Magazine and lots of collecting tins. This is worth the best part of £½ million updated for inflation which was all spent on local charities in the community. I recounted to my son and daughter-in-law various of my university activities including the sequelae of having a letter published in New Society, our university wide campaign against the massive increase in fees for overseas students and the various forms of protests such as teach-ins against the perceived iniquities of the Vietnam war.
The Epstein case continus to evolve. It is now being reported that over a million documents have now been located and are being made available for download after readction. But this late release of cocuments still does not satisfy the legal requirment to have all relevant documents downloaded by last Friday and the Department of Justice indicates that it may be many more weeks yet until the entire mass of documents is actually downloaded. But some analysts are already pointing tha each document may have references to other relevant documents so the actual total may well be several millions altogether which will take time to locate, even more time to redact where necessary and even longer to analyse so the whole saga may rumble on for months.