So Easter day has dawned at last and I will be very pleased to join in the general celebratory atmosphere which most church goers will experience on Easter Day. I am going to take along with me my Italian friend as it happens to be the anniversary of the death of her husband and hence a very important date in her own personal calendar. Last night, I watched a documentary on the life of Mozart which the YouTube algorithm had suggested for me and this particular programme detailed the significant events in practically every year of Mozart’s very short life (he died at the age of 35, just a month before his 36th birthday). I also made myself watch a series of three linked but very good programmes on the diagnosis and care of dementia. This, too, was particularly informative and filled in one or two gaps in my own knowledge. It contained the revelation of has caring for dementia patients can be so damaging to the lives of the carers themselves. It is common for these carers to have increased levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, for extended periods of time. Cortisol is the primary stress hormone, produced by the adrenal glands to manage the body’s response to stress, fear, or danger. It increases glucose in the bloodstream, alters metabolism, and affects immune function. While essential, chronic high levels can lead to fatigue, weight gain, anxiety, and high blood pressure. In the course of the evening, I also completed putting together the Italian and English translations of the libretti to accompany my little website of Mozart arias. In at least one case, the translations were so ‘flowery’ that I was forced back onto the web to find a more sympathetic translation of the original but I am pleased that this particular task is now completed. Before I finally took to my bed, I have a deep clean of the trainers which I purchased yesterday as well as doing some research on the brand I had purchased. The company making them was a Leicester-based company and they seem to have established a good reputation for both the style and the comfort of their footwear. I had tried these on in the shop and they seemed a good fit. Actually, when I got them home, I discovered that the European size of 41 equates to 7½ which is my exact shoe size so it appears that they will be a perfect fit. No doubt, they can have a good trial when I go on holiday next Friday up to Scotland and I would not be surprised if a goodly proportion of the other holiday makers were not wearing similar foot apparel as well. Now that Lent is well and truly over, I can indulge in the pleasures forsaken during Lent (following George Best these are booze, fast cars, loose women and, in addition in my case cake and chocolate) My son and daughter-in-law very kindly bought me an Easter Egg so this is a treat for later on in the day.
I went to the Easter Day service in the morning, taking along with me my Italian friend as he happened to be the anniversary of her late husband’s death and she particularly wanted to attend the church on today of all days. The church was absolutely packed to the rafters and possibly so full some members of the congregation were left standing at the rear of the church. Afterwards, I took my Italian friend home and she gave me some delicious Italian coffee and biscuits. I had taken along my iPad and managed to show my friend two things. The first of these was the rolling displays of the 67 photos illustrating aspects of Meg’s life to a musical accompaniment. The second pf these was a video filmed on a mobile phone which showed Meg giving some reminiscences of our married life on the occasion of the 50th wedding celebrations which we have for the benefit of our Yorkshire family. This piece of video is very precious as it shows Meg before the ravishes of dementia came to manifest itself and it illustrates Meg at her fluent best and speaking for some 10-15 minutes evidently without any kinds of notes or aide-memoire. My Italian friend and I would have preferred to have spent longer with each other but my iPad was running of battery power and my friend was in danger of running late when she was due to see her sister who lives not too far away and we both had to leave. I got my weekly living money out of an ATM but then failed in my quest to get a copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ Both the major supermarkets were closed all day and evidently copies of this newspaper had vanished from the stores of my local garage and One Stop shop much earlier n the day. I got home rather late and got out a risotto from the freezer (which I did not particularly enjoy as it happens) I have a bit of a dilemma with my TV viewing in the evening. There is going to be a biopic of the life of Alan Turing, the famous British mathematician whose breakthroughs led to the breaking of the Enigma code and, some say, shortened WWII by some two years. But as it does not start until 10.00 I may have to postpone watching it and get it on ‘catchup’ some time tomorrow. News filtered through in the course in the afternoon that the remaining US pilot has been located and rescued, although badly wounded as a result of use of the ejector seat. This does pay tribute to the efficacy of American search and rescue operations but it is possible that a very high price has been paid. Donald Trump has praised American forces following the rescue of the F-15 pilot, but questions about exactly what happened remain. The US leader said no US troops had died in the operation, but did not say if anything had happened to aircraft. Iran has claimed that two American C-130 transport aircraft and two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down. Iranian media have released images and video of what they say is a crash site around 45km (28 miles) south of the Iranian city of Isfahan. Although without Sunday newspapers, the afternoon is unwinding in a pleasant way because ClassicFM always use this particular weekend to play the top 300 musical tracks as voted for ClassicFM listeners. This means that as one listens to the tracks, each one is guaranteed to be as popular as, or even a smidgeon more popular than the track that precedes it. So there is a slow but quite exciting build up in this year’s Number 1 track will be played towards the end of the evening on Bank Holiday Monday.