As we awoke yesterday morning, it was to a further and quite dramatic attack upon Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, by the Iranian-backed Houthis. This is the last thing that Donald Trump might need with only just three weeks to go to the mid-term elections but the indications are that the Americans might join in and support a missile attack against the Iranians and/or Houthi rebels. The airport had been attacked and at least a dozen were killed outright with a further 300 injured, overwhelming the hospitals and medical facilities. No doubt these casualty figures might rise as the rest of Europe and America wakes up in the morning. We know that the war is deeply unpopular but this did not prevent Donald Trump from claiming that the Nobel Peace Prize ought to be awarded to him for having ‘solved’ at least 8 conflicts throughout the world (not that the rest of is have noticed). Instead, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 was awarded to Navi Pillay (South Africa) for her decades-long work prosecuting genocide, war crimes, and fighting apartheid. The night before, I experienced rather an uncomfortable night having received vaccinations in each arm the day before. I expected some soreness and tenderness and my right arm, the recipient of the COVID vaccine, is indeed a lot more sore than the other one. I expected that I would not experience a particularly good night’s sleep and, indeed, feel a little fragile in the morning. Accordingly, I am going to adapt my routines somewhat and after church this morning and the coffee refreshment, I am going to come straight home and ‘coddle’ myself for the day. Normally I have a routine to wash the car but I am not doing this morning but having collected my newspaper from the garage I shall come straight home. I had intended to perhaps go out and make a day’s excursion to see Elgar’s birthplace, recently acquired by the National Trust so this is being given a definite miss this week. The weather has turned pretty cold and miserable and it will take some willpower to turn out and attend church in the morning. I know that I have the two concluding episodes of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ in the late afternoon to which to look forward, As I write this morning, ClassicFM are playing ‘Pelagia’s Song’ from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin which is one of my favourite films, perhaps because the Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz, reminds me in her physical appearance and demeanour of Meg. Lunch is going to be quite a challenge today because my appetite is a little depressed so I might try something quite simple, such as an omelette, that good old stand-by. Now that the party conference season is over, the political programmes will no doubt have other bones upon which to chew, the principal whipping boy at the moment being Zak Polanski who has rather bungled the the Green party’s latest stance centering on Zionism, anti-Semitism and criticism of the current Israeli regime. To try and get a bit better informed in this debate, I have recently discovered the following. Albert Einstein supported a cultural Jewish homeland in Palestine to escape persecution, but he consistently opposed the creation of an exclusive, sovereign Jewish nation-state with borders, an army, and political dominance over Arabs. Einstein believed in a spiritual and cultural home for Jewish people to revive community and to end ‘pariah status,’ not a separate national state. This is all quite interesting but I wonder how widely shared, or even accepted, the views of Einstein happen to be.
Being a creature of habit, I always tend to occupy the same position in a pew when I go to church as do my fellow members of the congregation. This is towards the front of the church and two pews before me, a fellow parishioner does the same. In her case, she is a carer for her father and when she comes she always occupies the same pew where there is a slight ‘niche’ which will accommodate her father’s wheelchair. In the past, I have seen her (very expertly) getting her father from his wheelchair into her car and folding up the wheelchair to put it into the car boot. As I myself knew exactly the routine through which she had to go, I offered some her some assistance on one occasion which, as it happened, she did not need. But she does always attend the coffee and biscuits session in the parish hall after Mass and we have typically just exchanged a few words with each other. Not knowing about her father’s dietary habits, I did make an offer of some excess soup which I am making every weekend because I remember how I used to make Meg and I a cup of hot soup after we had returned from our daily sojourn to town and back in her wheelchair. This weekend, my fellow parishioner was the grateful recipient of the sweet potato soup I made yesterday and to cut a long story short, I hope that we can engage in a short visit to each other’s houses in the future primarily to share information and to see what offers of mutual support we may be able to offer each other as the weeks unfold. When I go out these days, I always wear my UMIST (= University of Manchester Institute of Technology) scarf and this not only attracts attention but is a magnificent conversation opener. Now this scarf was identical to the main University of Manchester but was characterised by an additional and very colourful stripe. I purchased it about a year ago when I thought I had mislaid my main university scarf although it did subsequently turn up. Whether I am entitled to wear a UMIST rather than an ‘Owens College’ scarf is a moot point but I can always argue that when I attended the University of Manchester, UMIST was still officially the Faculty of Technology of the older university. Here is a brief summary of the intertwined relationships. UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) survived as an independent university for 10 years (from 1994 to 2004), or 48 years if measured from when it first gained independent university-college status. In 1955–1956, it received its Royal Charter as the Manchester College of Science and Technology, achieving independent status and separate public funding. In 1966 it was renamed the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), though it still maintained close ties with the Victoria University of Manchester as its Faculty of Technology. In 1994 it gained full university autonomy and its own independent degree-awarding powers but in 2004 was re-absorbed back into its parent university. Now there is a point to all of this story telling because in 2004, the newly expanded university rebranded itself and the traditional scarf which I had originally bought in 1965 (the year before the ‘independence’ of UMIST) is no longer made, sold or even available in some of the specialised web sites that sell university scarves. So I wear my UMIST scarf with some pride and I am often stopped, as was the case yesterday, of an alumni of Manchester University who happened to be at university at exactly the same time period as myself (1965-68).