It does seem amazing to me that we are now in the second half pf the month of April and the time seems to be flying by, but when you go away on holiday, great chunks are taken out of your normal routine. I awoke yesterday to what I think is going to be a very buy day with several things on the planning calendar and I am actually looking forward to the end of the week and the weekend so that I can catch up with myself. My American friend has suffered from some swollen ankles after hours of enforced inactivity on our coach trip (although we did stop every couple of hours) and is seeking some medical assistance to put her back on the straight and narrow. After my successful presentation of Mozart arias, I have already sketched out in my mind what the next in my mini-series of presentations is going to be and the next along will feature eight different instruments for which Mozart composed (violin, viola, clarinet, basset horn, French horn, flute and harp, organ, piano) but I have only discovered that Mozart composed anything for the organ. Meanwhile, there is a live Royal Opera House feed of ‘The Magic Flute’ next Tuesday so I may make up my mind whether to go along and, if so, who to ask to accompany me? In the Middle East, it looks as though Lebanon and Israel are talking to each other for the first time in decades and if this conflict approaches anything like a resolution it may be a further twist to help along the main Iran-USA talks when they commence again over the weekend. In the meanwhile, and particularly after Trump allowed himself to be portrayed as a healing Jesus Christ (subsequently hastily withdrawn), then speculation continues to mount over Trump’s state of mind/heath. As one convinced MAGA supporter put it very pithily ‘Jesus Christ is my Saviour, Donald Trump is my President’ In my own mind, I am firmly of the view that a medical emergency of some kind will put a premature end to Trump’s presidency and of this the Vice President, J D Vance is very well aware. At home, there is sort of good news for the economy but no real cause for rejoicing. The UK economy grew far more than expected in the month before war in Iran began, latest official figures show. The three months to February saw 0.5% growth in gross domestic product (GDP), the standard measure of an economy’s value and everything it produces, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. Revised figures, also published on Thursday, said there was no growth in the three months to December. However, what is coming down the line is worrying in the extreme. It looks as though the Middle East war is going to affect the UK economy disproportionately and it is not just the rise in petrol prices but food shortages that are in prospect. A key shortage will be in carbon dioxide (CO2) which apparently is very heavily used in food preparation and packing to keep ingredients ‘fresh’ I read that predicted carbon dioxide shortages are expected to cause significant disruptions across the food, beverage, and manufacturing industries in 2026, particularly in the UK and North America, due to a fragile supply chain reliant on by-products of fertiliser production.
During the early morning, I attended my Tai Chi class and I had already made myself do a 20 minute session of Pilates stretches after I awoke this morning. After the Tai Chi class, I had a strict 30 minutes with some of the regulars in the Methodist Centre and then had to make a rapid departure to receive my COVID spring booster. Quite unlike other COVID injections I have had, I got a slight itching immediately after the injection but the experienced nurse gave me a check over to check I was experiencing no adverse reactions after which I went home to prepare for my Spanish conversation class. We had agreed that we would tell three little stories about ourselves, two of them true and the third untrue and the other class members through their questioning had to come to an opinion which story which was true and which false. I wrote out my stories in English and then did an automatic Google translate so that some of the more obscure terminology I knew how to translate. The whole little experiment turned out to be quite entertaining and I think nearly all of us adopted a similar strategy. This was to take a seemingly far-fetched story which sounded false and make this one of our true stories whilst a more mundane story was falsified a little. Altogether, this took well over an hour to complete and then we had some coffee. I had raided my bookshelves and taken along a series of ‘Teach Yourself Spanish’ books in case any of my fellow class members wanted to have use of one. In the course of our discussions in English over coffee, it seems that most of us are quite interested in global international affairs and world politics so we agreed, as a group, that we would devote some of the next session we are scheduled to have in a fortnight’s time to some discussion of some social and political issues (in Spanish). The minute I got home, my chiropodist arrived so I managed to get this activity dovetailed into a busy day. Then I cooked myself a quiche and Primo cabbage type dinner and prepared for a restful evening and perhaps, even, an early night. My North American friend was not in the best pf health following our trip home the other day and it is probably the case that both of us should have taken along some compression stockings to avoid the risk of DVTs. The next day is certainly going to be more peaceful but I have the weekly shopping to do and, naturally, the lawns are growing apace as they always do at this time of year. On the basis of some information gleaned from the internet, I have bought myself a second slipover because I managed to find one at a good price that was 61% cashmeer and wool, 20% cotton and the rest a mixture of fibres. I ordered a large size (as advice on the website suggested) and so now I have a couple of garments to wear against each other) one to wear whilst the other is in the wash)
During the early morning, I attended my Tai Chi class and I had already made myself do a 20 minute session of Pilates stretches after I awoke this morning. After the Tai Chi class, I had a strict 30 minutes with some of the regulars in the Methodist Centre and then had to make a rapid departure to receive my COVID spring booster. Quite unlike other COVID injections I have had, I got a slight itching immediately after the injection but the experienced nurse gave me a check over to check I was experiencing no adverse reactions after which I went home to prepare for my Spanish conversation class. We had agreed that we would tell three little stories about ourselves, two of them true and the third untrue and the other class members through their questioning had to come to an opinion which story which was true and which false. I wrote out my stories in English and then did an automatic Google translate so that some of the more obscure terminology I knew how to translate. The whole little experiment turned out to be quite entertaining and I think nearly all of us adopted a similar strategy. This was to take a seemingly far-fetched story which sounded false and make this one of our true stories whilst a more mundane story was falsified a little. Altogether, this took well over an hour to complete and then we had some coffee. I had raided my bookshelves and taken along a series of ‘Teach Yourself Spanish’ books in case any of my fellow class members wanted to have use of one. In the course of our discussions in English over coffee, it seems that most of us are quite interested in global international affairs and world politics so we agreed, as a group, that we would devote some of the next session we are scheduled to have in a fortnight’s time to some discussion of some social and political issues (in Spanish). The minute I got home, my chiropodist arrived so I managed to get this activity dovetailed into a busy day. Then I cooked myself a quiche and Primo cabbage type dinner and prepared for a restful evening and perhaps, even, an early night. My North American friend was not in the best pf health following our trip home the other day and it is probably the case that both of us should have taken along some compression stockings to avoid the risk of DVTs. The next day is certainly going to be more peaceful but I have the weekly shopping to do and, naturally, the lawns are growing apace as they always do at this time of year. On the basis of some information gleaned from the internet, I have bought myself a second slipover because I managed to find one at a good price that was 61% cashmeer and wool, 20% cotton and the rest a mixture of fibres. I ordered a large size (as advice on the website suggested) and so now I have a couple of garments to wear against each other) one to wear whilst the other is in the wash)