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So the weekend has dawned without a great deal in prospect, although no doubt I shall be busy in the kitchen later on in the day.  I am always resolved to get into town relatively early on Saturday mornings as I have learnt from bitter experience that the Saturday newspapers, replete with supplements, tend to sell out fairly quickly. After the relative exertions of the day before, I think I shall enjoy a bit of quiet piece and relaxation today but I am not really sure what delights the TV may or may not hold for me. Yesterday at the Philosophy group meeting, it was agreed that I should start off the next  discussion in one month’s time and I have already chosen the very generic title of ‘What is Science?’ I am already turning over several approaches in my head and thought I would start off with some of the logical foundations as enunciated by J S Mill in his Five Canons of scientific enquiry before opening a discussion that this is not how science actually gets performed. The Philosophy group are really delightful and there are about 8-9 of us altogether which is just enough to sit around a table and for everyone to contribute equally – although on the face of it, it sounds  rather arid and even boring, it really is fascinating as each of us brings part of our own biography and personality into the discussions and we are very open and supportive of each other. The month of November is upon us and now that the clocks have been put back and we have darker evenings, I think we are turning our thoughts to tunnelling through the weeks ahead. Of course, we have Halloween to negotiate first and the shops are full of the kinds of tat that the kids enjoy and the adults buy to add to the general sense of enjoyment. Being brought up in a small village between the ages of 9-11, Bonfire Night was a great  event and most of the village – approximately 200 souls- used to turn up for it. A local farmer gave us the use of a field for the construction of a huge communal bonfire and as children we seemed to spend  the week or so beforehand contributing to it. On November itself, so far as I remember, most of the village used to turn up the women bearing parkin (a more treacly form of gingerbread) to consume in our hands whilst the men arrived bearing beer. We children  used to race around, delighting in finding the spent sticks of the rockets that were fired off in the firework display and, of course, we all had some sparklers to wave. The village was only about 200 people in total so evidently there were very few children and we all knew each other. The principal form of entertainment in the autumn and winter evenings was the local village hall where the adults used to play badminton whilst we children used to amuse ourselves with goodness knows what until we too were taught how to play badminton by our elders. It was in this village that as a young boy, a cricket bat was put into my hands (as it was for every other young male)  and you were inducted into the game of cricket with no questions being asked or dissent allowed. 

After I had collected my newspaper this morning, I treated myself to a stir-fry of vegetables to serve as a cooked breakfast but I really wanted the opportunity to try out my newly acquired Tefal frying pan. I was a little intrigued to see if I could discover the durability of my new pan, given that I acquired it so cheaply but without the benefit of packaging or instructions – I did give it a conditioning of warmed olive oil before first use. My newly acquired purchase is some 70% heavier than the other 32cm frying pan that I possess, itself being of a reasonable quality and an internet search reveals that lightweight aluminium pans heat up rapidly, but they also experience quick temperature swings. This rapid expansion and contraction can cause the thin base to warp—especially on induction hobs or if rinsed before cooling. Once a pan warps, heat distribution is ruined. Heavy-duty collections use thick-gauge cast aluminium, hard-anodised aluminium, or stainless-steel bases that remain perfectly flat under intense heat. Tefal’s internal laboratory testing indicates these premium, heavy coatings can last 6× to 15× longer than their basic, lightweight counterparts. which I have also learnt may only have a lifespan of a couple of years. I have learnt some fairly basic care tips which always to utilise  plastic or wooden spatulas, not to employ light cooking sprays, to avoid the thermal shock of plunging into cold water and to hand wash such implements instead of entrusting to a dishwasher. On the basis of this, I thought I would prepare some more ‘mirepoix’ to be used as a basic ingredient of soups and vegetable stock so I sautéed a couple of batches of some onions, carrots and celery which, after cooling, is to be frozen. A big pan like this, is particularly good to sautée vegetables because there is plenty of base with which the vegetables can be in contact and of course the heat distribution s generally superior. A treat in the early afternoon was to view a BBC transmission of ‘Sense and Sensibility’. This particular production I had been seen before but it had a stella cast of Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant and I must say that I enjoyed every moment of it. I have learnt this afternoon that the telecoms giant Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) is to axe thousands of jobs as it slashes its cost base amid investor concerns about its ability to service its £22bn debt mountain and is drawing up plans to make a substantial proportion of its 16,000-strong workforce redundant in the coming months. This is coming hard on the top of the news that the future of Poundland is perilous in the extreme and some 12,000 jobs may well be in jeopardy, and the full impact of AI-generated job losses is still to come. One really does wonder from whence the new jobs are likely to come and the threat to global economic activity must be laid firmly at the door at the conflict in the Middle East, which it must be said is a conflict of the USA’s making. The only hope on the horizon is that after the mid-term elections in the USA, there may be pressure from the Congress for the USA to abandon the war quickly (particularly as Donald Trump insists on saying that it will be over in days)

Late in the afternoon the day before yesterday, I decided to make a fairly simple soup of carrot and orange that I read about in the soup maker booklet that came with my soup maker years ago. This seemed a fairly simple recipe and it just so happened that I had a good supply of so-called ‘wonky’ carrots and some left over orange juice. I did prepare the carrots using my recently acquired ‘mandoline’ slicer which cut the carrots into incredibly thin slices which were then parboiled and given a quick blast in the oven, the water in which the carrots had been boiled forming the basis of the subsequent vegetable stock. I made two batches as I generally do and had to increase the volume of the vegetable stock way beyond that demanded of the original recipe. All of that having been said, I was delighted by the result which turned out to be one of the most delicious soups that I have made so given the simplicity in the way in which it was prepared, I shall certainly repeat this little venture. When I make soups and whatever the recipe says, I always start off with a ‘Mirepoix’ base (onions, carrots and celery) which I had prepared and frozen up some days before hand. At the blending stage, I always put in about half a can full of coconut milk as well so I think this helps to ensure success. I had a vested interest in making the soup the day on which I did because I am anticipating some Spanish-speaking friends from my church  (and perhaps even their little girls as it is half term) to call around for a ‘soup’ day and I can now offer them a choice of three of my latest efforts (sweet potato, curried parsnip and now carrot and orange) and if they happen not to like one, they can always try another. I needed to go out into our garage to raid the supply of empty glass bottles that I have washed out and stored in a bygone age and I found that the large glass jars that are used for the sale of coffee prove to be an excellent choice as each holds just about a double portion of soup and they freeze quite easily as well. The television last night yielded an interesting surprise. There was a programme devoted to the construction of ‘The Titanic’ and although I was only passively watching it (as Sudoku was absorbing my attention at the same time), I quickly became fascinated by it. The size and the scale of building ‘The Titanic’ had never been attempted before and not only did specialist wharves and dry docks needed to be constructed but even the cranes used had to be especially designed and built. Moving the engines into their final positions (in pieces) was also an incredibly intricate operate and one could only marvel at the sophistication of the technology deployed at the time. The day promises to be quite a busy one because on the last Friday of each month (and therefore easy to remember) there is a meeting of the U3A Philosophy group and we are to discuss ‘Existentialism’ about which I know precious little. I have volunteered to lead off on a group topic of ‘What is Science’ and this may be the next along in the series. We take along our own coffee in a flask and meet in the training room of one of the local supermarkets, contributing a small token for the hire of the room which the supermarket donates to its current charity. We had a fascinating morning of discussion on the subject of existentialism and we completed the morning by some discussions around the table of the influences upon us that had made us the kind of people that we were. On my out of the supermarket, I passed through the cookware section of the supermarket and could not help but notice a rather superior 32cm Tefal frying pan from one of their more expensive ranges but it was without any packaging and was evidently damaged as there was quite a large dent on one side  as though it had been dropped from a great height and/or crushed but the pan appeared completely serviceable and the cooking surface was not impaired. Two staff happened to be close by so I showed them the damaged pan and wondered if they would be open to offers. They said I could have it for £2 although I suspect the full retail price was in the region of £30 or even more as it was also safe for induction cookers.

I returned home and got some of the soups ready for the afternoon repast and then travelled down to Waitrose to pick up one of my fellow parishioners. We were joined by the youngest member of the group and she had brought along with four 7-8 year old girls, two of them being her own daughters and another two friends who were in the same class at school and were evidently playmates. Once I got the girls sitting around the table, I gave them a meal of carrot and orange soup which I thought they might enjoy but the flavour may have been a little sophisticated for them. We three adults dined on the curried parsnip soup and then the children wanted to go off and play games. This included we three adults and the first game to absorb our attention was a game of the girls’ choosing called ‘Mafia’ in which everybody bar one is given the identity of ‘Innocent’ whilst the remaining person  is the ‘Mafia’ boss. The participant have to circle each other but if an innocent is surreptitiously ouched by the Mafia boss, they have to lie down as dead and so on until the actual identity of the Mafia is revealed once the game comes down to the last two. This game was played twice and then we played a game called ‘Dead Dog’ which I remember from over seventy years ago when my son played the game at children’s birthday parties. It might have been devised by adults because  every participant has to lie absolutely still until a twitch reveals that that person is ‘out’. The game proceeds until we are left with one person who has managed to lie so still that they are not detected. To conclude the games, I then proceeded with a game of ‘Monsters’ which I used to play with my own son in England and god-daughter in Spain. This simple game consisted of my putting a big woolly jumper over my head and then proceeding on all fours with growls and roars until one of the little girls was detected and seized. Children love to be frightened and this game proved to be a tremendous hit and there squeals a-plenty, although it was tiring. After nearly three hours it was time for our visitors to leave but an uproarious time had been had by all – including the adults. 

Normally, the impact of changes announced in the budget appear to be fairly marginal but without appearing too pessimistic, I seem to come out at the wrong end of every change that was announced. For example, let us take the abolition of the standing charge on gas which, on the face of it, is good news.The utility companies will just recalibrate their unit charges so if you consume somewhat more than the average amount of gas, you will probably end up paying more. I think this is happening to me because although I try to not waste gas by turning off the radiators in unused rooms, my gas bill is still to heat a large-ish house and so I suspect that I will end up paying more. In a similar vein, I received a letter announcing  the award of a winter fuel allowance which is to be recovered through the tax system for some of us. Similarly, the relief on rapidly rising gas prices applied to properties in the A-D band ranges only and so on and so forth. It does look as though reliefs in the budget are concentrated on those with low incomes which must be a good thing in total but I am resigned to the fact that from April onwards when new prices on gas will come into effect, I shall have at least a year when my living standard in purely monetary terms will fall. But there is a very old fashioned expression which will be familiar to the older generation but not to the younger which is that you ‘Cut your coat according to the cloth’. which is self explanatory and which is, of course, what millions of us have done for years. The day today will be a quiet one but tomorrow will be very much busier as my son is calling around, my U3A Philosophy group are having a monthly meeting and in the early afternoon I shall be entertaining the newly formed church Spanish speakers little group round for soup of which I now have a copious supply such that I can offer a choice of either sweet potato or curried parsnip and I remembered to buy some rolls that can be warmed in the oven to serve with the soup. As part of my tidying up activities, I have an emergency flashlight – the sort that can be utilised if you have a breakdown when motoring – which has a choice of three modes of either bright, very bright or multi-coloured flashing mode. This I have put in a particular location in the kitchen so that in the event of a total power cut (which did happen to me about a year or so ago), I can immediately put my hands on it. Bu this flashlight has a charging cable which is a bit messy to store neatly but a solution has come to hand. When I see them in stationary stores, there are transparent pencil cases much beloved of some school children but I find them excellent for storing items such as cables because as well as keeping them neat and tidy, it is immediately apparent what the case contains. In the past, I found this invaluable when transporting medications in a suitcase and going through customs when travelling abroad.

After the Tai Chi class, I went with a couple of fellow group members to my favourite ‘Gifts of Love’ charity outlet on the High street for a coffee. We spent a  pleasant half hour or so in each others company before we all went on or various ways. As I was adjacent to various charity shops, I went on a quick whizz around and then in the Cancer Relief shop espied a fleeced waterproof men’s outdoor jacket which looked in much better condition than my old one. It was a ‘large’ size which  is what  need to go over my quite bulky leather jacket and having ensured that the zip worked well, I was delighted to find that it had two large pockets each made especially  safe by being protected by a zip. So  purchased the jacket and will bring it into constant use when the heavens open these days as they will during the rest of the autumn and winter. My chiropodist was due to call around I the early  afternoon so I delayed my lunch of quiche and stir-fried vegetables until after she had gone. I am not tempted to watch ay old film during the afternoons but as it happened, there was a 1954 version of the J B Priestley ‘An Inspector Calls’. I picked up watching this play half way through but the drama intensifies as the play proceeds so I really enjoyed this viewing. I was a little puzzled by the way in which this version of the play ended so I went onto the net to discover that there are indeed different ways in which the directors of productions have brought the play to a conclusion (as I also found out when I viewed the classic ’39 steps’ recently) Upon consulting one of my soup books, I have noticed a recipe for carrot and orange soup and I happen to have bought 1½ kilos of carrots in my weekly shopping and also have some left over concentrated orange  juice so I will make this into my latest venture. When visitors call tomorrow, I hope to have a range of soups to put before them and it will be interesting to see where their preferences lie. As I climbed up the stairs in my house to pay a visit to my bedroom, I idly wondered if there was any connection between stair climbing and the health of one’s heart and/or brain. A search revealed the following. There is strong research evidence shows that regular stair climbing—often considered a vigorous or moderate ‘snack-sized’ exercise—provides significant benefits for heart health and general longevity, while also supporting brain health indirectly through improved cardiovascular and cerebral blood flow. A major research review and meta-analysis published by the American Society of Cardiology (ESC Preventive Cardiology) analysed data from nine studies involving over 480,000 participants (ages 35 to 84) and found that regular stair climbing is associated with a 39% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 24% lower risk of death from any cause. So, I ask myself, why are we encouraging older people to live in bungalows and low rise dwellings? Perhaps we are stuck in a cultural time warp in which the climbing of stairs is judged to be bad for one and I suppose that in the event of extreme old age, infirmity and illness, staircases prove problematic for many. But this can be alleviated by the installation of a stairlift when absolutely necessary – in the case of Meg, we eventually  had a stair lift installed and then promptly had it removed after her demise.

Last night  was quite an interesting one on the TV for myself. Sky Arts had put on a special programme detailing some of the background to ‘The Messiah’ actually first performed in Dublin. The focus of the film was to bring to the attention of the world the role of Susannah Maria Cibber who had been a prominent actress and singer but became embroiled in one of the must lurid sex scandals which the Georgians lost no time in describing in the most excruciating of newspaper articles. Consequently, Cibber was utterly disgraced and became a ‘non-person’ for several years as she was shunned by polite society. But Handel embarked on a massive gamble and chose Susannah Maria Cibber to sing the contralto solos in the historic world premiere. The first performance took place at the New Musick Hall on Fishamble Street in Dublin on April 13, 1742. Cibber was primarily known as a prominent tragic stage actress rather than a trained operatic virtuoso. Despite an allegedly modest vocal range, her deeply emotional and dramatic delivery captivated the audience, especially during the aria ‘He was despised’. Her performance of that aria was so moving that Dr. Patrick Delany, the chancellor of Christ Church Cathedral, famously stood up in the audience and cried out: ‘Woman, for this, be all thy sins forgiven thee!’ She was one of the two primary female soloists alongside the soprano Christina Maria Avoglio, performing backed by 16 men and 16 boy choristers pulled from Dublin’s local cathedrals. This is one of those cases where art and real life coalesce and one can only imagine the emotion that she managed to convey as she sang (of Christ) ‘he was despised’ although the words applied equally to herself. So this was absolutely fascinating. The commentary and performances were provided by Danielle de Niese who some might say is today’s operatic equivalent of Susannah Cibber (not in terms of the sex scandals, though) and she sang with an emotion that might have matched that of the first performance. This programme was followed by the first of the five part dramatisations of the remake of ‘Amadeus’ (the life of Mozart) and all that can be said about it at this stage is that it was very different to the original film version of ‘Amadeus’ which is actually my favourite film. Later on today, we have ‘Budget Day’ so after a visit to the Methodist centre and then some shopping, the analysis of the budget will no doubt dominate the airways as will the long running drama resulting from the inconclusive results of the general election held in Israel. Whether Netanyahu will lose power after so many years is uncertain but negotiations over a new government may well go on for weeks. One particular factor is that the Americans are backing Netanyahu to the hilt and no doubt intervening in all kinds of not very subtle ways in the Israeli election but things might change after we know the result of the mid-term elections in the USA next Tuesday when the Democrats will make some considerable advances.

I swung into my usual mid-week routine by first visiting the Methodist Centre where I had a coffee with a group of old ladies, one of whom I know better than the rest as she is also part of my Tai Chi class later in the week. After coffee, I did my weekly shop at Aldi which I am going to alternate with Sainsbury’s from now on, taking the opportunity to buy a little vertical grater which I am going to use make myself a drink of turmeric, perhaps enhanced by a little ginger as well. After I had lunched, I watched a little of the Budget speech but there was not a great deal about which to get excited. The Chancellor is conscious of rapidly rising gas prices so a response has been to cut the standing charge and to offer some cash relief for those in the Council Tax bands A-D which could give some relief to approximately 80% of the population apart from the already prosperous London and the South East. The rest of the budget is ‘really steady as she goes’ and the two really big items of the budget (welfare spending, defence) are going to have to wait for another year until the really big decisions get taken. You might say this was a case of ‘kicking the can down the road’ once again but this is not uncommon. In the Israeli election, Netanyahu seems to be clinging on by the skin of his teeth and although his party, Likud, have lost ground  he remains short of an absolute majority by some eight seats and his rival by about eleven seats. The big gainers in this election are the Arab based parties who might still emerge as the kingmakers. But Netanyahu seems to be able to cling onto power as his existing bloc with ultra-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties appear to be just short of a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament. However, analysts caution that this is subject to change because the early count was skewed towards areas known to have strong right-wing support. A dramatic deadlock had been widely forecast as Israelis surged to the polls – with turnout reaching more than 77%. In Israel’s fragmented political system, the signs are that Netanyahu’s main rival, the former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, would struggle to command a parliamentary majority without parties led by Israel’s Arab minority. According to partial results, they have equalled or gained on their previous record number of seats. On the campaign trail, most Jewish opposition parties pledged not to work with Arab-majority lists, citing a lack of shared values. However, Israel’s Arab-led parties could emerge as kingmakers if others were prepared to join forces with them. In this election, Arab Israelis – who often identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel and represent one-fifth of the population – appeared to turn out in unprecedented numbers. Eisenkot, on the other hand, would need to convince one of the smaller opposition parties to join his coalition, if he is to secure a majority at this point. The only way that the Opposition leader could lead a minority government is for the Arab parties to agree not to vote against him. and he would still have to persuade some smaller parties to join his bloc. It looks as though Netanyahu may have performed another Houdini trick again i.e. escaping electoral defeat when all appeared lost. Elections and budgets apart, there are a succession of good programmes on TV this evening, including one of the Brian Cox series on the planets, a provocative science-based programme by the well-known science presenter Hannah Fry and a programme of how the Romans overcame the challenge of the Alps.

As it is half term, a slightly different pattern structures the days ahead. So yesterday would normally have been my Pilates class but my instructor is taking a week off with her family whilst they visit Devon and this has entailed a ‘free’ day for me. But as it happens, I have made an arrangement to visit a lady who is part of our parish community but who spends a lot of the day caring for her aged father who had a stroke but who, nonetheless she brings along to the service every Sunday morning. Seeing her manipulate her father into the car whilst the wheelchair got folded and put into the back of her car, I offered some assistance as I know from my own experience how carefully organised these activities have got to be. She was handling these tasks with great aplomb and when we subsequently  met with each whilst having our Sunday morning tea and biscuits, I offered her some of my batches of home-made soup and we made an arrangement to have coffee with each other which I hope might be a little sort of respite for her. So we have arranged to meet in the middle of the day and fortunately Pilates has been cancelled for the week which accommodates this. Yesterday was the morning in which my domestic help (and long term friend) calls around and, no doubt, we will have a good debrief on how the cooking went over the weekend and we can restore the dining room table to its normal set of accoutrements. As the room is irregularly used, I have remembered to turn the radiator valve down to zero as there is no point in heating an unused room. I remember that when I was an adolescent in Leeds and used to meet for a drink with a group of old school friends (about 8 or so in total) the landlady in our chosen pub let us have the exclusive use of a room in the pub and she used to light a fire for us so that the room would be heated when we met in it each Thursday  night. The evening promises to be an interesting one on the TV. Sky Arts are starting to broadcast the remake that has been made of Amadeus (the biopic of Mozart’s adult life) and there will be a series extending over the weeks. Paul Bettany receives praise for a wax-like, committed portrayal of Salieri, while Will Sharpe plays Mozart as a more arrogant, flat genius rather than the vulnerable, manic prodigy captured by Tom Hulce in 1984. On forums and review sites, opinions lean heavily toward the sentiment that the new series is ‘not a patch on the original’, with critics noting that it feels padded, sidesteps the central music, and flattens the metaphysical war between Salieri and God into a simpler rivalry. Opinions are mixed, with some viewers defending the right of a fresh adaptation to exist while others find the script vapid and unnecessary. But when I was checking out on the transmission time for the programme, I noticed that in the hour beforehand  there is going to an hour-long programme devoted to the writing and first performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’, although I know the outlines of the story already. Before I went to bed the evening before yesterday, I stumbled across a YouTube presentation the content of which I found very disturbing. According to this video, modern online (smart) TVs collect extensive data on your viewing habits, device usage, and sometimes ambient audio, though whether it constitutes ‘spying’ depends on how you define the term. Most smart TVs use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR)technology to take continuous screenshots and audio samples of whatever is on your screen—whether from built-in streaming apps, game consoles via HDMI, or external USB drives—to build a digital fingerprint of your viewing habits. Many sets scan your home network to identify nearby Wi-Fi networks, signal strengths, IP addresses, and other connected devices (like phones or smartwatches). Voice-activated remotes and built-in mics listen for wake words or record commands, and some research into specific brand vulnerabilities has shown local caching or continuous background listening concerns. Manufacturers (such as Samsung, LG, Roku, and Vizio) bundle this data with demographics and sell it to data brokers and ad networks to serve personalised ads. All of this I found shocking and it was claimed that modern smart TVs are often sold at cost price or even a slight loss on the manufacturing price so that extra money can be ‘scraped’ from the selling of demographic data to data brokers and ad networks. But the programme did indicate the ways in which this could be turned off although needless to say the commands to do so are buried deep within the settings and it is doubtful that many viewers are aware of this ‘surveilance’in their own homes, let alone how to switch it off. I managed to switch off the controls in my recently acquired Samsung and a similar voice recognition facility within YouTube before I took to my bed for the night.  

This morning, I experienced a pleasant surprise when my son and daughter-in-law unexpectedly called around. My son was donating to me a beautifully warm piece of knitwear made by the  ‘Weird Fish’ firm, of which I already have one item. With the gift from my son, I now have a couple of items from this outlet which means that one is in the wash, I have another ready to wear. After I had lunched on another portion of lamb stew (what a surprise!) I set off to visit my fellow parishioner whose house I have not visited before but is only about a mile and a half from where I live. When I got to the principal access road, there was an enormous traffic jam so I turned the car around and set off by going a different way. Again I was thwarted because this particular road was blocked off in one direction so I had to turn back a second  time and go back to my original route. The traffic had started to clear by this time so I got a phone message to my friend explaining  my delay and managed to reach her only about fifteen minutes later than planned. We spent a pleasant afternoon chatting about things in our past lives (mainly family histories) and then the carers came to administer to my friend’s father so I made the journey back home with no difficulties at all.  One of the important international events happening today are the critical elections being held in Israel. Determining the outcome of Israeli elections is not straightforward, as it is all but impossible for one party to get a majority and coalition talks may take months. In 2020, the formation of an eight-party coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz took some 76 days. That said, we will get an idea of who could form the government around 10pm local time (8pm UK time) when the polls close and broadcaster publish exit polls. The final tally is expected to be revealed by 30 October and official results should be published on 4 November. The Israelis have quite a pure form of PR and every government practically from the creation of the state has been formed from a variety of parties. The small Religious Rights party which has evolved into other forms of small, right wing, stridently Zionist political  factions has nearly always been a part of a ruling coalition. Some political analysts have pointed out these pure forms of PR can give rise to very small parties exerting a great deal of political leverage if they have to be incorporated in a coalition to make a viable government. These elections being the first after the 7th October, 2023 incursion by Hamas are being regarded as extremely critical and the results may presage the type of society that Israelis want their country to become in the years ahead.

So a new week has dawned but when I enquire of ‘Alexa’ (my smart speaker) what the weather holds for me today, I am informed that the temperature could rise as high as 15° which is quite mild for near the end of October.  I am having to get used to the idea that I always need to wear some a raincoat of some description which rather puts an end to the exceptionally dry period that we have had for some months now. The week ahead is the half term break for much of the country so I shall expect a lot of grannies treating their grandchildren to trips around Waitrose and the other supermarkets which seems to be ‘de rigeur’ when the youngsters are left in he hands of the grandparents. I suspect that today is to be devoted to some domestic activities, one being to spend at least half an hour a day on tidying up activities whilst another pressing need is to make some more home-made soup and it is probably going to be parsnip this week. I have just watched a couple of really good chefs showing you exactly how to cut up the vegetables and prepare a ‘mirepoix’ mixture (2 parts onion, 1 part carrots, 1 part celery + some garlic) which is the foundation in classic French cuisine for so many sauces, soups and stews and I will certainly follow this advice first. The part that would not have occurred to me is a gentle sautée for a few minutes before eventually adding water and bringing to the boil/simmer or, alternatively, a quick flash freezing and then storing in  bags in the freezer to be used as required. I gather that the husband of my cousins is very much into cooking probably since COVID days and he was telling me the day before how he scours the supermarkets looking for the more specialised ingredients that he might use. On which subject, I have decided that I might use a couple of supermarkets from now on. I will probably use Aldi once a fortnight for some basic shopping particularly if it turns out to be a ‘light’ week. In the intervening weeks, I will then use the newly opened Sainsbury’s supermarket for a wider range of goods and perhaps some of the more exotic items that one only buys occasionally. Thinking back to the weekend when I entertained Meg’s cousins, I was delighted to be able to share with them some of the interesting reading in which I had engaged in the past year, particularly the books on ‘Social Health’ and ‘The Grieving Brain’ the latter of which they seem to already know about. This same couple also have a passion for both online Sudoku as well as online Scrabble which they seem to play practically every day. I must confess that one my daily jobs are done, I still quite like tackling the ‘Fiendishly difficult’ Sudoku at which I am successful about 70%-80% of the time these days but I do this to a background of ClassicFM if there is nothing much to engage my attention in the evening TV transmissions. In theory, one is supposed to try new challenges and puzzles to open up the neural pathways in the brain but Sudoku is still a favourite but only if it presents a real challenge.

What I hoped to be a quiet and restful day turned out to be quite a busy one. After I had lunched on some of the remains of yesterday’s lamb stew, I pressed ahead with  making the mirepoix mixture to act as a base for my soup making. First I diced the onions, carrots and celery and then sautéed these for about  10 minutes and then divided the mixture into two portions, one for immediate se and the other for freezing. The latter  I spread out on some greaseproof paper on a baking tray and left to cool after which they will be popped into the freezer. Then I parboiled some parsnips cut into thin slices, saved the water in which they boiled to act as a stock for later on and then gave the parsnips a quick microwave roast on the oven setting of the microwave Then I made some parsnip soup in the soup maker in two batches, not forgetting to add the coconut milk, some left over honey and a small amount of  curry powder dissolved in boiling water to add a little  bit of kick to the finished product.  The first batch has turned out OK but a lot of the afternoon has been devoted to cooking with some tidying up in between sessions. I am going  to be glued to the TV all tonight because there promises to be an interesting documentary on Egyptian hieroglyphs on BBC 4 at 8.00 followed by another on Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, who was responsible for the expulsion of much of the entrepreneurial Asian community (who came to the UK, very often to Leicester which to its shame took out adverts asking the Asians to stay away). With the benefit of some decades after these events, it has to be said that with the benefits of Asian entrepreneurism, this has been to UK’s benefit and Uganda’s loss.  Turning out attention to the well-known utterances of Donald Trump, we learn today  that Trump also attacked Norway, calling it a ‘s***house country’ and ‌saying Norwegian immigrants were not welcome in the US ‘because I didn’t get the ​Nobel Prize’. The Nobel committee is based in Oslo. This led to me to wonder malignant narcissists (into which category Trump undoubtedly falls) actually  believe their own propaganda. This is a query that using AI can eveal. Malignant narcissists operate in a complex state of psychological compartmentalisation, meaning they often do and do not believe their own propaganda at the same time. Psychological and behavioural insights outline how this works. As they aware of the lie, deep down, malignant narcissists know the reality of what they have done. They often craft false narratives, rewrite history, or gaslight others deliberately to avoid shame, guilt, and accountability. Their intense anger when confronted happens because the truth threatens to pierce their fragile ego, proving they recognise its validity. Compartmentalisation and Self-Deception are also common. Over time or in the moment, they create separate psychological realities. Through mechanisms like denial, projection, and cognitive distortion, they convince themselves of their own superiority. There is often an ‘internalised fiction’` if a lie or grand narrative is repeated for years, some narcissists genuinely internalise the fabrication as their absolute truth, allowing them to pass it off with complete conviction (even appearing sincere on a lie detector).

Although I do not look forward to the task, the wee small hours of yesterday marked the end of British Summer Time and the adjustment of the various clocks, time-pieces and  some of the electronic equipment in the house. Fortunately, the radios seem to adjust themselves but I still have a total of 15 pieces of equipment to manually alter. But I have got this off to a fairly fine art by now, even including the oven timer which I can never remember how to set. However all of this was done in the middle of the night and I do not feel that I have had the benefit of an extra hour of sleep, except that I am appreciating that it is a tad lighter in the mornings when I get up. But the shock will come this evening when sunset will arrive a few minutes before 5.00pm in the afternoon  and then I know that winter has well and truly arrived.  My two batches of lamb stew seem to have prepared themselves well enough during the day with a long cooking. I needed to remove the sprigs of thyme in each vessel and then today they have to have the addition of some petit pois and some extra gravy browning before a quick reheating. My only cooking doubts are to ensure that the salmon custard starters work out as planned. Some of yesterday, was spent in reorganising a kitchen cupboard to ensure that the kitchen looks a little less cluttered but I discovered a beautiful oval ceramic serving dish I did know that I had so this can be pressed into service today. My plan is to serve out the portions of the lamb stew in the kitchen but then put the freshly cooked sprouting broccoli and some Yorkshire puddings on the dining room table. I even remembered to buy some bottled table water, both still and sparkling to accompany the meal. My reorganisation of a kitchen cupboard even uncovered a pair of water jugs which, again, can be pressed into service. I even managed in the course of the evening to pop outside and to give the back terrace a quick brush down so that the unsightly gobbets of moss dislodged from the roof tiles can be disposed of. We are now entering the last week before we enter the month of November which is a month to which I do not normally look forward.  But we do have the Nations Rugby Competition (basically Northern and Southern hemisphere teams playing each other) and the first of these transmissions is on ITV on Friday 6th November and there should  be free. transmissions on ITV during much of November which should make for entertaining weekends. In the forthcoming week, I have my U3A Philosophy group meeting on Friday morning to be followed, if all my plans work out, by a meeting in my house of the church-centred Spanish speakers’ group and I am offering some home-made soup to get the proceedings under way. So, the run-up to Christmas might prove to be quite busy, particularly as I am already ‘booked in’ to a couple of Christmas type collective meals one organised by my church ad the other from U3A on successive days towards the end of November.

After the service, I went for my usual coffee and biscuits, in the course of which I dangled a one-and-a-half year old on my knee, and not for the first time. I know the mother quite well and she is quite happy to let me entertain her little boy who only a week or so could only walk a few tottering steps and can now walk the length of the church with his mother when she receives communion. I am getting to know more and more people by sight, these days and On Tuesday, I am going to visit a fellow parishioner as she is in the same state in which I found myself a couple of years ago, as she cares for aged father who otherwise would be completely on his own during the day apart from the visits of his carers. When I got home, I set about making the final preparations for the lamb stews and I then prepared the salmon custard starters in their little ranekins. This preparation seemed to go well quite well and I had some of the mixture left over so I cooked an experimental one for myself which  I had as a kind of delayed breakfast. All of this worked out fine and then my two sets of cousins arrived within about two minutes  of each other, so I took them into the music room and I explained how I made this into our Music Room and, as such, hoped to make it a source of comfort and entertainment for Meg in her final year. My cousins were very good in collectively helping me to dish up the various elements of the meal and I was pleased that my timings worked out exactly as planned and I had a good choice of wines, both alcoholic and non alcoholic to offer my guests. We ate in our formal dining room. and it was a wonderful social occasion and the special arrangements I made for my coeliac cousin (only discovered some three yeas ago) worked out perfectly Afterwards my cousins helped me to do the washing up before they had to depart in the late afternoon. One sad thing that  discovered was that the partner of another of Meg’s cousins had died last May but I never got to hear of it and consequently I did not attend the funeral. After the final tidying up had been undertaken, I was just in term the watch the final two episodes of ‘Emma’ which was broadcast on an obscure channel starting late in the afternoon. But next week, they have advertised a showing of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ which I do not know well but might read up on the synopsis before next weekend. I am sure that for the rest of the day, I shall quite a relaxing time having a good read through the Sunday newspapers as well as listening to ClassicFM which always has a soothing selection on Sunday evenings. Actually, with listening to ClassicFM at several times throughout the day, hardly a day passes when a track is not played to which Meg and I had a deep emotional connection of one type or another. After I had put the clocks back an hour last night and was settling down to sleep, the highly appropriate track of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ was played which seemed particularly apposite. Storm Boelo has fortunately largely passed us by here in the Midlands but the North of England and Scotland have endured gusts of 80mph and the usual crop of fallen trees has proved damaging. We shall expect more more rainy weather in the next few days and then various pieces of political news will unwind with the elections in Israel on Tuesday (which promises to be very tight) and our own Budget on Wednesday. We are now entering  the critical 8-9 day period before the American mid-term elections and one wonders what tricks Donald Trump will attempt as he stares reverses for the Republican party in the face.

So after the days of preparation for Sunday’s meal, the ‘cooking day’ as arrived. I am taking the advice of my domestic help who prepared this very same recipe in the last week or so and I am cooking everything in the slow cooker the day beforehand. Having looked at the instructions for my slow cooker, it appears that cooking a meal for five might be rather a stretch so I have decided to embark on a little experiment which is to cook for four in the slow cooker and to cook an additional meal for two using the lowest settings in the microwave oven as a sort of slow cooker. This has a sort of bonus as I can put the completely gluten free option in the small oven  and then at the end of hours of cooking I can actually compare the two cooked meals and see how the two different types of slow cooking compare. This morning  started off with cooking some salmon pieces in tin foil to complement the bought salmon for what I hope is going to be a really tasty starter. Actually, the last time I entertained my cousins I prepared exactly the same starter and it was enjoyed so much, I passed on the recipe.  I have got all of the ingredients and recipe written down in a little hard back book to keep for future reference. The day before, I got some really good news in my emails. By way of background, I ought to mention that  I pay for some webspace by a small, almost family-run little outfit run by a lady of, I think Slavic origins, and based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I have used this little hosting company for at least twenty years and get an almost individualised service when I need it. The email indicated that the hosting company had already applied what I think is called ‘mitigations’ to ensure that PHP installations (in which AI recently discovered a potential weakness in the underlying code), the upshot of which is that the WordPress installation of this blog has been made completely secure. Moreover, the hosting company also applied other security measures as a sort of ‘belt and braces’ to everything in their hosting site. So I sent off a letter expressing extreme gratitude to the owner of the hosting company and I think that this is one of these cases where ‘small is beautiful’ and building up a relationship with one, smaller company, has really paid dividends. It does appear that the revealed vulnerabilities in the PHP which is the engine of many websites has not actually occurred but with AI in the hands of malevolent actors, this might only be a question of time. I must say that the use of AI is making users such as myself rather lazy – instead of looking  things in a manual, armed with the correct model number, an AI generated response can indicate things like cooking times and cooking temperatures in whatever cooking equipment you happen to have. In the morning, although I have woken up a little late, I will probably race down to the shops to pick up a copy of my daily newspaper early in the day as, replete with all kinds of supplements, I find from bitter experience that the weekend editions of newspapers tend to sell out early.

The afternoon turned out to be as gloomy as it was possible to bear. the country is suffering the aftermath of storms sweeping in across the Atlantic. A band of heavy rain has swept in from the west brought by Storm Boelo, with winds strengthening again and gales are expected, particularly in the north and west. Here in Bromsgrove, the temperature is 11° but the weather app on my phone tells me that it feels that 3°, which I can well believe. I am finding this more than a little frustrating because past rainfalls have dislodged some gobbets of moss from the roof tiles and they are sitting on, and potentially disfiguring, the terrace I had especially cleaned a few months ago. Looking at when the rainfall might cease, my weather app tells me that it might moderate by 9.00pm this evening only to resume for at least the first half of next week. Just half an hour of respite from the rain would enable me to give the terrace a good sweeping but as it is, I must keep out a weather eye and seize the moment. Having got all of the lamb stew prepared and slow cooking, the rest of the day is my own so I can devote to some tidying up jobs. But unlike many Saturdays, I allowed myself a good leisurely read  of ‘The Times’ and actually found three quite fascinating articles. The first of these was an article  on taxation and it was looking ahead to next week’s Budget when it appears that the Chancellor will be giving HMRC powers to raid people’s bank accounts directly to claim unpaid tax. What I found to be genuinely amazing was the calculation by HMRC that there is a gap between  what ought to be collected and the amount that ends up in the government coffers to the tune of £60bn which is staggering. HMRC estimates that there are about 4.8 million individuals and companies with debts of below £10k, the average being less than £1,000  but if this can be claimed then the government will be £4bn better off. But legislation will be needed to extend HMRC powers to claim this amount directly through people’s bank accounts without having  going through the lengthy and expensive procedures of court cases to recover the lost revenue. The second article that I read was an economic analysis of some of the causes of the recent riots of young people in Paris and other European cities. But the article provocatively argues ‘blame the grandparents’ for having bent the will of governments in their direction fiscally. The article makes the point that in the UK (and other European societies) welfare systems were designed with the expectancy of 2.5 children per family and a life expectancy of 62 and not 1.25 and 79 respectively. The article also argues that spending on the over 65’s has risen 2.5% in the UK (3% in France) and median incomes, adjusted for inflation has risen by half as much again for the over 64s than for those aged 18-64. In other words, it has paid better to be retired than to be employed. The driver of these changes is the political power of the aged (e.g.in reserving the policy of the ‘triple lock’ over pension increases) as well as debt-financed spending in response to COVID and financial crises. The political left want to blame billionaires who they say are utilising tax avoidance and threatening to leave the country whilst the right blames immigrants whom they would like to deport if they could. Now even if this argument is somewhat over-simplified, the stark facts of demographic changes and the political consequences of past spending plans cannot really be denied. The third article was in the ‘Health’ pages and detailed the ways in which orthopaedic surgeons themselves say we could save our knees as we collectively age and much of the population in their 70’s and 80’s are unlikely to escape the affliction of dodgy knees and/or hips.

One of the unanticipated benefits of my writing a blog like this is that I can use the search facilities and the large composite file to ascertain the dates of what has happened in the past. Whilst doing some tidying up yesterday, I discovered one day’s blog where the events had been quite traumatic so I had printed out this particular record to remind me of when it happened and this was the day when Meg slipped out of her wheelchair onto the pavement (as she was losing all body strength to sit upright) and it took the combined efforts of a passing motorist (who stopped) and another passerby and myself to get Meg back into  the wheelchair so that I could get her home. This led me to wonder if I could remember the date when I started to push Meg in a wheelchair as I realised that a long walk down the hill was beyond her and I managed to find the relevant date of when I recorded our very first wheelchair outing which was 13 August, 2023. Now I pushed her out in the wheelchair practically every single day except the period when she had a lung infection (from which she recovered) and she was too poorly to be taken outside. The last time I pushed Meg outside was exactly one week before she died on 10 May 2025 and find that I had noted in my blog that ‘I am conscious of the fact that this may be the very last time this is feasible.’ which proved to be both accurate and prophetic. I got AI to calculate the amount of time that I had pushed Meg out in her wheelchair and the sum total was 1 year and 9 months or 630 days in total. Looking back on it all, I am not quite sure how I managed it all but perhaps in times of crisis we acquire strengths from unknown sources. In retrospect, there were two complete winters in which we had to brave the elements but perhaps it was an exceptionally fortunate twist of fate that we encountered no snow or exceptionally frosty weather that would have rendered such a journey impossible. I did get one of the carers to take a short video clip of myself pushing Meg along one of our access roads in a fruitless campaign to get a pavement put down because, although I wore a High Visibility Vest, perhaps both Meg and myself were at risk when I pushed her in the wheelchair along a road which serves as a ‘de facto’ ring road along the west of Bromsgrove. Now all of this is just a matter of historical record and I do not intend to dwell upon it in a morbid fashion but I was motivated to find some of the exact details before I meet with Meg’s cousins this weekend for a family meal and now they are lodged in my memory (where they will remain). The one remaining thing that I will mention that the sight of a disabled wife being pushed along the Bromsgrove streets and pavements by a man with an Australian bush hat and an HGV is not particularly common and therefore there were scores of people, unknown to me,  who witnessed these perambulations and have mentioned to me afterwards if we got into conversation that or identities were not known but the sight of the two of us was lodged in their own memories.

Well the day has turned out to be quite a full one. Mid morning, our domestic help called around and laid out the dining room table ready for the Sunday meal and also loaned me some ranekins for the starter course I am going to prepare as well as some perpetual (i.e. electronic) candles which look amazing realistic. Our domestic help, who is a fantastic cook, took me through the stages of preparing the ‘salmon custard’ starter which is quite easy to prepare  but which requires to be finished off in a ‘bain marie’ in the oven. Then I went off to a local coffee bar where last Sunday I had arranged to meet three other parishioners to have a ‘Spanish conversation’ session. We all arrived on-time and had a fascinating time. One of parishioners had been married for about the same length of time as had I whilst I discovered that the two other two ladies were an engineer and an artist respectively. We also had a young daughter who came along and as I went to order the coffees I espied a ginger bread man which I bought for her benefit. Like all children, she seemed to enjoy biting the head of first before devouring the rest. Our conversations roamed over topics in science, painting, mathematics and as well as some things religious. Altogether we must have spent a couple of hours in each other’s company before it was time to part to say goodbye. But first of all we have arranged for us to meet in my house next Friday and I have promised them a choice  of soups to enjoy. After that, we will have some paintings to discuss and there are some interesting things on YouTube which I can show them (perhaps some Jan Baez, a Live Aid concert and much else besides). What was so uplifting about this little meeting of the four of us is that we just ‘seized the moment’ and made the arrangements to meet up with each other. My Spanish seemed to cope quite well under the circumstances but when the ideas became a little  too complex for us to discuss in Spanish, we just reverted to English to complete the story.  I suppose that this helps to underline the point that if one makes the effort to cultivate social relationships, then doors will open up which would not unless you had made the effort. After our meeting and before I went home I popped into the ‘Gifts of Love’ charity shop where I have a weekly cup of coffee to demonstrate to them I was still alive. Then there were some last minute things  that I needed to buy from my local Aldi store after which I went on a wild goose chase for my daily copy of ‘The Times‘ before tracking down a copy in the third outlet that I tried. By now, it was so late in the afternoon that I took a pie that I was going to have for my lunch and decided to make it into my tea instead. In the evening, my little bit of homework is to ensure that I fully understand how I am going to cook the lamb with some accompanying vegetables so that the main dish for Sunday has been prepared the day before and just needs a little  heating up.

Now that the mid-term US elections are less than a fortnight away, I thought I would turn my attention to where the race for the Senate appears to be the tightest, given that the race for the House of Representatives seems all but won by the Democrats and lost by the Republicans. The latter have a narrow majority of four seats in the Senate and will take four seats to ‘flip’ to the Democrats in the election. The campaign has been going so badly for Trump and the Republican party that. although the Senate was said to be on a knife-edge, pundits are now predicting with a 74% probability that the Democrats will gain five seats to make them the majority party in the Senate. By common accord, the states most likely to ‘flip’ are North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Maine and Texas and the Democrats leads in these states is of the order of 4%-5%. American elections are very made regionalised and state-by-state races and the campaign by individual senators is of supreme importance. Texas will be the state that Republicans will particularly hate to lose but their candidate, Paxton, is widely regarded as lazy and ineffectual. He is evidently too frightened to take on his Democratic challenger in a local debate because it is evident that he will lose such an encounter very badly. While Texas historically favours Republicans, Paxton’s campaign has faced strong headwinds due to lingering fallout from his prior scandals and 2023 impeachment trial. A notable segment of moderate and independent voters have broken toward Talarico, making this one of the tightest Texas Senate matchups in modern history as early voting begins. As things stand at the moment, the polls are giving the Democrat challenger a lead of anything from 2%-5% But the polls may lead one into a false sense of security as the Republican voters tend to be ‘uber-loyal’ to their part whereas the Democrats rely upon quite a diverse coalition of individuals to actually come out and vote for them. In the background, there is an overriding fear that as Trump realises that his party are going to lose badly, he may even try to cancel the whole elections which would leave American society in an uproar. It is readily apparent that large numbers of Americans really dislike the president – corruption being the most prominent descriptor followed by perceptions that he is dangerous. Only 28% thought he is effective and 23% that he is honest. A second explanation for the pessimism is the state of the US economy, particularly the impact of inflation on the day-to-day lives of citizens. Altogether 34% of respondents thought that the economy and inflation were the most important issues facing the country. When asked about the president’s handling of inflation, 28% of respondents approved while 67% disapproved. It is important to note that Americans were very much focused on domestic issues when responding to questions about the most important issues facing the country. Only 6% of them thought that foreign policy was the most important issue. Whilst most Americans are of the views that the elections will be conducted fairly, as many as three quarters of them believe that Trump will not accept the result with the most unpredictable of consequences.

After my Tai Chi session in the morning, I stayed in the Methodist Centre and had a cup of coffee with some of the old regulars. One of my regular acquaintances was not present this morning, so I did not step out as we sometimes do to the ‘Gifts of Love’ but stayed in house as it were. So afterwards, I  made a trip to the newly opened Sainsbury’s grocery store to do my weekly shopping and this is my first full weekly shopping in the new store rather than just a browse. As I wanted to get some things for the weekend, including some zero alcohol wine, I was pleased to have a wider choice of products than the range offered by Aldi and I am pleased to see that the Nectar card worked as it should giving me some reasonable discounts into the bargain. Then I came home And after unpacking the shopping made myself a lunch of quiche, Cavolo Nero kale and some sun dried tomatoes. Though I did not feel inclined to be at all energetic, the sun was shining so I made myself cut the back lawn which again, like the front, will probably be the second last cut of the season. I can always remember the last cut of the season when I have to empty the mower of its remaining petrol and oil because I tend to do in on a Friday nearest to November 5th which will be the 6th this year. Tomorrow will be quite an unusual  because our domestic help is going to make a special trip round to the house to lay out the table in the dining room especially well for the weekend. I got a text from Meg’s cousin confirming the arrangements for the weekend, as well. In the late morning, I am going for a coffee in one of the local coffee shops to meet with the two (and possible three) Spanish speakers from church as we had arranged last Sunday. Tomorrow is arranged as a ‘one off’ but if we manage to meet regularly at this time each week, this would be a real bonus. Turning our attention to IT matters, many websites throughout the world have been taken off-line as AI has discovered some vulnerabilities in the underlying PHP code (which, incidentally, is the ‘engine’ for the WordPress applications that facilitates this blog) So far it does not appear that any real damage has been done as AI has identified weakness rather than specific attacks in the underlying code which is now being addressed. The disturbing thing is that AI discovered the vulnerability that was hiding in ‘plain sight’ although these vulnerabilities have been there all along. For the moment, I am sitting tight and waiting to see if my internet provider (who hosts the PHP program) is going to contact me or wherever I need to be more proactive in seeking out aa revised, updated version with the vulnerability issue addressed. However, I have always kept a separate and sort of back-up version of this blog which is just pure text and the simplest of HTML to display it and this is kept on a separate server altogether so that if an unimaginable disaster were to strike, any investment in this blog over the years would  not be wasted.  But the wider issue remains a source of concern because in the hands of a malevolent actor, a rogue AI application  which  brings  down multiple internet sites across the globe is always a possibility.