You can always tell that there is no overwhelming news stories when each of the Sunday newspapers chooses a different headline. But the international news seems unremittingly grim in one way or another. In Gaza, despite being practically flattened to the ground children as young as 8 years old are being regarded as suspects should they inadvertently stray near to the Israeli army (IDF – Israel Defence Force) positions, There is also a report than a young Palestinian baby died not from a disease process or injury but just of hypothermia ie, the cold. the Ukrainian situation also does not look very hopeful. The Ukrainian leader, Zelenskyy is due to meet with Donald Trump in his Florida hide away but despite a peace plan being reportedly 90% ready, Putin appears to have made n o concessions of any kind and the Russian leader knows that as long as Trump is in the White Hose, then all he has to do is to sit tight and slowly consolidate the military gains made on the ground. Meanwhile, Kyev is being bombarded with hundreds of Russian drones on a nightly basis and at least a third of the city is without power. But the Ukrainian leader is going to present a plan to Trump which seems eminently sensible (and one, incidentally, which I suggested in this blog some months ago) Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has given details of an updated peace plan offering Russia the potential withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the east and the creation of a demilitarised zone in their place. Detailing the 20-point plan agreed by US and Ukrainian envoys in Florida at the weekend, Zelensky said the Russians would respond on Wednesday once the Americans had spoken to them. Describing the plan as ‘the main framework for ending the war’, he said it proposed security guarantees from the US, Nato and Europeans for a co-ordinated military response if Russia invaded Ukraine again. On the key question of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, Zelensky said a ‘free economic zone’ was a potential option. He told journalists that as Ukraine was against withdrawal, US negotiators were looking to establish a demilitarised zone or a free economic zone. Any area that Ukrainian troops pulled out of would have to be policed by Ukraine, he stressed. A critical point is the offer of a referendum in the Russian speaking Donbas region in the East but this approach has already been rejected by Putin. But from the point of view of the Ukrainians, it could be argued that is a majority of the population on a ‘fair’ referendum want to go off and become part of Russia, then as a good democrats they should let them go.  The fact that Donald Trump would not agree to a referendum speaks volumes about the mindset of an American president who is supposedly upholding the values  of the free and democratic west and it is probably not going to happen. But it would be a way in which the Ukrainians could reconcile themselves to a loss of a region which the Russians have largely, but not completely, captured in the war so far. Meanwhile, on the more domestic front I have issues an invitation to Irish friends down the road to join me for some Christmas festivities in a day or so and so we shall look forward to that and then start to think about taking down all of the Christmas decorations at the end of next week and once New Year has been celebrated. There is one Christmas related task which sound a little calculative but which I still think needs to be done. As part of my ‘mechanisation’ of the Christmas card writing process, I have run off a master list of those to whom I have sent cards this year and I need to remind myself of those from whom I have not received a card in return, In the past, this has sometimes meant severe illness or even worse but I shall not know until I have engaged in the process.

Yesterday had been a somewhat unusual day. There were several domestic jobs such as washing to be attended to n the morning and then I popped down in the car to collect a copy of the newspaper (fortunately, not sol out) and some supplies of sweetener.  When  got home I needed to attack some bird droppings on the cat before they hardened and etched their way into the paintwork. Then the dryer started to give  some messages that ‘something’ needed cleaning and I worked my through the four ‘cleanable’ bits which are the water repository, the large main filter and then two subsequent filters housed i the base of the machine. I managed to sort out the problem but I think i need to make this into a routine on about 1st of each calendar month so that the problem does not build up over time.   My son and daughter-n-law were due to come around at 3.00pm in the afternoon  and  entertained myself until they came with a viewing of the classic film ‘Casablanca’ which is always watching for it is multi-layered, multi-layered towards the end and then ultimately quite exciting and poignant (although my family arrived half way through) Then we had various family matters to discuss but one of them involved the putting to sleep of my daughter-in-law’s mothers dog which was upsetting for all  concerned. My family stayed with me until quite late and then I made some telephone calls as there was nothing to engage my attention for the rest of the evening.

It is too early in the day to judge the success of the talks at the Trump retreat into the future of the Ukraine and, even they have concluded, it is unlikely that a breakthrough will have been achieved. Trump is desperate to add Ukraine to the list of conflicts that he has boasted that he has resolved but the attitude of Putin and Russia is unbending in the extreme. This is the time of year when may programmes are taking a backward over the lives and careers of prominent figures in politics and the arts who are no longer with us. I knew that Robert Redford was tremendously respected as an actor but the tributes pid to him revealed that he was much admired and loved when he turned his creative energies to directing as well. the news has just emerged of the death of Brigitte Bardot who was ‘the’ pin-up girl of the early 1960’s but who devoted her latter years to campaigning for animal welfare (but also lent her weight to some rather nasty right wing politics as well)

Almost inevitably at this time of year, one has got Christmas Day and Boxing Day out of the way and most of the population are enjoying a few days of rest but also reflection. The reflection part of consists of looking forward to the New Year which is now only a few days away and because of the sense of renewal and ‘turning over a new leaf’ one’s thoughts turn to New Year resolutions. It is interesting that many people make New Year resolutions and then these might be sustained for days or weeks and then one reverts to patterns of life and behaviour that the New Year resolutions were meant to avoid. In my own case, I resort to a little acronym where each letter of the word relates to an activity or behaviour pattern and, depressingly, this seems to be the same year after year. The middle aisle of the Aldi supermarket is often stuffed full of ‘keep fit aids’ such as weights and personal training aids and I remember with wry amusement seeing one piece of kit which was adorned with the slogan ‘This is not just for January’ or something similar. Many people start off the New Year with very similar goals and a brief search of the web reveals that the most common resolutions are to exercise more, lose weight, get organised and learn a new skill or hobby. Some of these are negative (things to avoid} and some are more positive (things to do) but I suspect that the secret is to have a series of essentially quite small steps which are eminently achievable. For those addicted to nicotine, for example, the resolution to ‘Stop Smoking’ is probably a huge change in their lifestyle and it is not surprising that many people fail in these endeavours. The advice available to the population on the internet is not only to make ones resolutions a series of quite small steps but also to have some kind of accountability such as a diary in which one can record and perhaps take satisfaction from some successes. It is also important not to let the occasional lapse throw one off track band and not to abandon the whole of the resolution but acknowledge than an occasional ‘wobble’ is quite understandable.

There is a huge dispute going on between USA and Europe which seems difficult to resolve. The row between Europe and Washington about what you can do online just ramped up. On Christmas Eve, the White House imposed visa bans on five public figures in Europe. It is all about what European officials describe as the regulation of online harm and what America’s officials consider censorship. ‘If you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you are unwelcome on American soil,’ said Sarah Rogers, the US under secretary of state for public diplomacy, as the bans were announced. The highest profile figure facing travel restrictions is Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner responsible for regulating social media and a key architect of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a piece of legislation that is very unpopular in the White House. The Trump administration has accused the EU of placing ‘undue’ restrictions on freedom of expression in its efforts to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation. It argues the DSA unfairly targets US companies and cities, who it is not elected to represent. Of course, this reflects the fact that huge organisations that dominate our commercial and online life are American corporations (the Amazons, Google, Twitter or ‘X’) and their power and influence are extremely difficult to regulate or even to curb. Naturally, my sympathies lie with the European side of this debate but even looking forward to a post-Trumpian world, it is hard to see how these differences in world view can be resolved. American power and hegemony are such that the USA refuses to recognise the World Court, will generally not allow the extradition of US citizens to face justice even when crimes have been committed abroad (one particular example being the young British motor cyclist who was killed by the wife an of American military officer who ‘forgot’ on which side of the road to drive when she drove out of an American military base in the UK and, being on the wrong side of the road, killed the young motor cyclist).

There is a great source of pleasure at this time of year and it comes in the form of a collection of cartoons by ‘The Times’ cartoonist, Peter Brookes. He often ties together two events happening at almost the same time into one cartoon but of course one has to be completely up-to-date with all of the current news stories. At the end of the year, some of the most noteworthy cartoons (66 this year) are brought together in a special supplement entitled ‘The Year in Cartoons’ In order to decode and fully understand each cartoon, Peter Brookes supplies a paragraph of information giving he context and other relevant information so that the cartoon can be appreciated to the full. Actually, the supplement takes some time to read as the cartoons have to be studied in some detail (for the interesting little touches and flourishes e.g. Donald Trump’s enormously long red tie which he often used to wear) and can be viewed several times over especially with the accompanying commentary.

Now that Christmas Day and Boxing day are over, normal life resumes as it were and in the evening I shall attend a church service which is part of my normal routine for. a Saturday. Instead of repeats of decades old comedy programmes (such as repeats of Morecombe and Wise) there is going to be a very interesting programme detailing the career of Judi Dench and tracing out some possibly real Shakespearean connections. But at this time of year, there are only a few jewels of programmes that stand out amidst the dross. It used to be the case that either an opera or a ballet is broadcast at this time of year but if that has been the case, I may have blinked and missed it. But I have just managed to secure a couple of tickets for our local Arts Centre where, in about two weeks time, there is going to a live transmission via video link of a production of ‘La Traviata’ from the Royal Opera House. I have been to one of these before and it is a way of enjoying a good operatic production on the cheap as it ere without having to journey to London.

The evening before yesterday i.e. the evening of Christmas Day itself, turned out to be quite eventful. My Droitwich friend had an arrangement to have Christmas lunch with one of her best friends but, in the event, this had turned out to be quite a large party by the time families and friends had intermingled. We had an arrangement that I would pick my friend up from her friend’s house so that the party could proceed apace without fear of any subsequent motoring being involved. Now my SatNav gave me the road but not the number of the house and given that the road is an extraordinarily long one with numbers proceeding I the hundreds I suspected that I might have quite a lot of hunting around to do in the dark to find the correct house. So when the SatNav announced ‘You have arrived at your destination’ I knew that this was probably only an approximation to the truth. So I pulled in at the first block of houses that I saw which formed a little cul-de-sac off the main road and, tentatively, approached the very first house to discern its number so that I could navigate from there. Imagine my amazement when I discovered that this house was the very one for which I was looking – how amazing is that! So my friend stayed with me overnight in one of our spare bedrooms and we are planning a really lazy day crashing out together. We know that the meal is already sort of prepared from the leftovers from yesterday that we can turn into a really delicious stew so that is the midday meal sorted out and we will probably both take a turn in the park to clear our heads and to fall in with Boxing day traditions. Needless to say, I have not really studied the TV offerings today but I do notice from a cursory glance that Paddington 2 is to be broadcast in the ate afternoon so this may be a treat in store. An extraordinary musical incident happened to me this morning. In the kitchen, I asked my smart speaker to play first Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and then Handel’s Messiah. In the latter they were playing ‘For unto us a son is born’ which has proved to be rather emotive in this year of Meg’s passing for both theological and personal reasons. Then I left the kitchen and entered my main lounge where I get things going, one of them being putting on ClassicFM where they were playing – ‘For not us a son is born’ My brain initially tried to sort how the track from the smart speaker could possibly have transferred over to the ClassicFM broadcast at the other end of the house until I realised that this was a complete coincidence (although I think I have experienced something akin to this once before). Having got through Christmas Day and arrived at Boxing Day, I think that several quite relaxing days lie ahead and, in some ways, this is the most enjoyable part of the whole Christmas experience. The weather is particularly cold and bitter this morning so we are having to think carefully about what to wear before we brave the winter cold for a walk in our local park.

Today is meant to be a lazy day of relaxation and so it has turned out to be. In the middle of the day, I turned out to get a copy of my daily newspaper and was pleasantly surprised to find that my local ‘Asda‘ was open. This proved to be fortuitous because I managed to not only obtain a copy of my daily newspaper but also to purchase  two or three items of stationery (including one of those narrow ‘strip’ style of calendars that I use in one or two places around the house) When I got back home, I started to pay attention to the lunch that we were going to have, I started off by frying an onion and then gently frying it before adding  the remains of yesterday’s leftovers. I removed the meat from the remaining portion of lamb and then prepared some carrots and petit pois to provide a more balanced stew. My Droitwich friend provided some finishing touches and we then ate the resulting stew with some slices of freshly cut sourdough bread which we at well buttered.The whole was delicious and we still have a little left over for a future occasion.Then I needed to do a quick replacement of the bulbs in our electric fire which always seem to blow at the slightest provocation such as flicking on the on-off switch too rapidly (I suspect it is a design fault because I keep on having to do this about twice a year) The news takes on a back seat whilst the population as a whole is relaxing and probably getting ready for several days of respite from the Christmas onslaught. On ClassicFM they are playing the theme from ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (Laras’s theme) and this was the film that Meg and I regarded as ‘our film’ and we first saw it in Leicester Square in the mid 1960’s. Although I have watched the film on several occasions and it is re-broadcast fairly frequently, nonetheless I suspect it would be rather too painful for me to view it again in the near future as it would bring back too many painful memories. I always used to use these few days to transfer addresses from last year’s diaries to this years but this habit has fallen into disuse as I no longer need to use a diary in the traditional way. What is perhaps much more important is a large planning whiteboard that I have in our kitchen and upon which you can detail seven weeks of activities at a time. Every so often, it has to be wiped clean and repopulated with dates and one just have to be careful only to use the dry erasable and not the permanent marker pens. But today I was fortunate in obtaining a supply of dry marker pens  because even WH Smiths (as was) does not always stock them and, if it does, at an inflated price. The board really came into its own when my son and daughter-in-law were living in the same house as Meg and I so that we could all,  a glance, be informed of each other’s movements for the days and weeks ahead.  Even though I am the sole occupant of the house, though, it is still incredibly useful to see commitments for weeks ahead.

When I awoke yesterday morning being Christmas Day, ClassicFM had turned itself ‘off’ and Radio4 had taken over and we were treated to a service broadcast from St. Anne’s Cathedral in Leeds. Now despite the fact that our family moved from Harrogate to Leeds in 1963 I did not live in Leeds for a long period because I subsequently ‘escaped’ from my family’s orbit as it were to go off to London for a job at the Central Office of Information.  So my only connections with St. Anne’s cathedral are incredibly slight but I do have one abiding memory. The father of the girl who was my best friend in Leeds was to marry was a chorister at St. Annes and, at his daughter’s wedding and having a fine voice, he sang ‘Panis Angelicus’ and his rendition of it is one of those things that is lodged in my memory. I do get the impression that the broadcasters try hard on Christmas morning to transmit carols which reflect the ‘true’ spirit of Christmas and hence are carols reflecting the gospel story. At times, we also hear mediaeval carols which always have a particular and reflective character to them, a world apart from ‘God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen’ which I think is a carol that I least like to hear. We have woken up this morning to a particularly cold and icy blast which seems to be sweeping across the country. Some people of a particularly hardy disposition will have a traditional swim somewhere on Christmas Day but the weather conditions are so adverse in the morning that many of these events are being postponed. Blustery conditions have already prompted the cancellation of numerous swimming events planned for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Organisers of the Coverack swim in Cornwall said the annual event has been postponed until New Year’s Day to ensure everyone’s safety, while the Start Bay Inn, in Devon, said it was really sad to announce its Boxing Day swim had been cancelled due to rough seas. Elsewhere in the country, temperatures are expected to peak around 7C in the North East of England and 6C in the South East. On Christmas Day, it is traditional for political party leaders to transmit Christmas Day messages and, in the UK, these are generally of a not particularly partisan nature but like to reflect messages of goodwill and hopes for a more prosperous future.  But of course the USA is such a different country under the Trump regime and I was not very surprised when I read of Donald Trump’s message to the country. Donald Trump told children he would not let a ‘bad Santa’ infiltrate the US, as he took part in a long-standing Christmas tradition. Sat by a Christmas tree at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, the president and first lady took calls from youngsters who had dialled into the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), which tracks Santa’s sleigh around the globe every Christmas Eve. When asked by two children, aged four and 10 from Oklahoma, why Santa is being tracked, Mr Trump replied: ‘We want to make sure that he is not infiltrated, that we are not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.’ The notion of a ‘bad’ Santa could only have come from the distorted imagination of the current American president and no doubt will be seized upon by psychoanalysts across the USA as a further sign of Trump’s advancing dementia. Children of a young age (say 2-6) generally have a comprehensive belief in the Santa Claus myth and really do believe that their presents have been left by this itinerant figure but it must be older siblings who eventually spill the beans to their younger brothers and sisters that Santa Claus is not ‘real’. Having said that I have a sort of Christmas cad which I keep in my Christmas card collection and bring out each year as a source of amusement. It shows Rudolph on his mobile whilst the sledge has run into a rock and has broken one of its runners whilst Santa Claus is seen as kicking the ground in frustration. The card reads ‘What can I say? Weather’s crap, sledge is buggered, Fatty’s in a strop – just another Christmas really’ and always brings a smile to the lips each Christmas time.

Being Christmas Day morning, my son and daughter-in-law were with me as it was the first Christmas spent as a family since Meg’s death last May, My daughter-in-law and I are both attending Tai Chi classes so were spent some time with each comparing and contrasting the various moves that we make in our separate classes. Meanwhile, our son started seeing to the lamb shanks that we had decided to have this Christmas as a marked alternative to our normal fare of beef and evidently avoiding turkey altogether. I prepared a starter which was plain and traditional, being gravlax salmon on a slice of buttered brown bread with a few sald accompaniments and garnishes. Then for our main course we had the lamb shanks with some roasted potatoes, carrot and swede mash, honey roasted parsnips and the inevitable sprouts (incluing some novelty purple ones). This was all very tasted and worked absolutely as meticulously planned. For sweet, though, we had a bowl of dessert that has been bought from Aldi but this was actually a massive disappointment as it seemed to be masses of synthetic whipped cream on the top, with a serving of custard and what seemed to be semi liquid jam  filling on the bottom. As the other two elements of the meal had been pretty wonderful, we did not mind to much about the disappointment of the sweet but as advertised as a sherry trifle, it ran near to a contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act. My daughter-in-law had brought along a rather super collection of Christmas crackers that contained within them a series of pub quiz type questions and puzzles such as could be answered by 90%, 50%, 30$ or 10% of the population and we amuse ourselves by working through these as we finished off our meal. The rest of the day was finished off with rather standard Christmas fare on the TV with some classic comedy from dad’s army and the usual collection of one time block buster films like ‘Jaws’ . As always at this time of year, I quite like it when Christmas Day itself is actually over and can start to relax and enjoy the few days after Christmas either doing nothing of another real significance or keeping I touch with old friends though a combination of text calls, emails or telephone calls.

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.

As I awoke yesterday morning, I turned on Classic FM in my downstairs lounge which is of my daily routine little habits. A rendition was played of ‘In the deep midwinter’ which is quite a well known with words I think by Christina Rosetti. However, ClassicFM chose to play a very slow and moving rendition picked out slowly on a classical guitar and I found it utterly transfixing. I have a suspicion that ClassicFM which boasts that it is ‘the home of Christmas music’ is trying to be a tad more sophisticated this year because it seems to be hunting out and playing versions of carols that are played on a solo piano or guitar and as well as adding variation, this makes listening to carols even more enjoyable when it is not the same old version being belted out over and over again. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) have just released figures to show that we are all worse off than we were six years ago. The average person now has £38 less to spend each month after tax than they did at the end of 2024, following three consecutive quarters of falling UK living standards. The government made ‘improving living standards across all every part of the UK’ one of their most high profile targets to achieve before the next election. The previous parliament, between December 2019 and July 2024, was the first in recorded British history to oversee a fall in disposable income in real terms. But disposable income is now £1 lower per month than it was in summer 2019 after adjusting for inflation, according to Monday’s updated figures from the Office for National Statistics, and more than £20 lower than in December 2019. It is no surprise, therefore, that the two major political parties of Labour and the Tories who have been in power during this dismal period and now being spurned by the electorate and this is a marked political shift to the political Right (in the form of the Reform party) and to the left (with the resurgence of the Greens, but no way as pronounced as the shift to the right) So our politics may appear increasingly fractured in the course of the forthcoming year and who knows hat might happen on the other side of the Atlantic. My own little prediction is that Trump will suffer a health episode and some of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans are already throwing their weight behind the Vice President, J D Vance, as the best way of carrying the Trump legacy forward for eight more years after this Presidency comes to an end.

I feel that I will be glad when this particular day is over and particularly the morning when I have to negotiate both Pilates and the Santa Claus visit. But beforehand, I need to decant and prepare some of the damson gin which is Santa’s normal Christmas gift to fellow class members at this time of year so it is going to be quite a busy morning as I still have to do some unpacking and restoration to their rightful place things taken with me for my Yorkshire visit. The morning then turned out to be a very busy one as I realised that I needed to get some bottles of damson gin prepared for my Pilates class. I was very short of bottles but managed to fill five of them , label them up and then wrap them in Christmas paper. Then I went down and had my Pilates class  during the last five minutes of which I crept out into the toilet to change into my full Santa Claus outfit and then back into the classroom to distribute my bottles of gin to everyone. In return, two of my classmates had also prepared some strawberry vodka so I actually took two bottles home with me. My Droitwich friend had just completed her yoga class and then she called around and we spent a happy afternoon and evening with each other, collaborating with each other and cooking a prawn meal together. We are both of us relieved that we have got our various bits of work and other commitments out of the way before Christmas Eve which cannot come soon enough for the both of us. We have slightly different plans this Christmas time as my son and daughter-in-law are coming over on Christmas Eve and we will have some time and a meal together, The next day which is Christmas Day is going to be a great collaborative effort because my son and daughter-in-law will be responsible for cooking the main course (Lamb shanks) whilst I am responsible for both the starters and the sweets which should be relatively straight forward. Last year, I cooked Christmas dinner on my own and it was all a bit of a disaster although the identical meal prepared at New Year went off without a hitch.

There are some interesting details emerging from the latest tranche of Epstein files. It appears that a crucial person identified as ‘A’ is implicated procuring  girls in the whole Epstein enterprise and this ‘A’ may well be the Andrew (ex-Prince Andrew) so the ramifications of all of this seem very serious for the British royal family. Details of this are yet to emerge fully and it may be that it will be several days before we get a fuller picture. Meanwhile there is a bigger domestic political story. In a massive Christmas U-turn by Sir Keir Starmer, the government has announced a huge climbdown on inheritance tax on farmers. The tax relief on family farms handed down between families is to increase from £1m to £2.5m, meaning only farms worth more than £5m will pay. The climbdown, overturning bitterly unpopular proposals in Rachel Reeves’s budget last year, follows a personal intervention by the prime minister. The National Farmers Union (NFU) president Tom Bradshaw revealed the government backed down after he had two ‘very constructive meetings’ with the PM. So after a great deal of political damage, it appears that the government have realised that their initial proposals on the inheritance tax payable on working firms needed more thought and we now have the interesting scenario that after the last election, many of the newly elected Labour MPs in rural constituencies are coming to terms with the realities of the rural economy for the first time. 

For a reason I cannot quite discern, I have the knack of waking up literally one or two minutes before the hour and this facility has not deserted me because I awoke at 5.59 yesterday morning – I allowed myself to stay in bed for an extra half hour before getting up to start my day in which I need to pack up and then get started on my journey home back to Bromsgrove. When I returned back to my hotel bedroom after the Christmas meal with my family, I stumbled into the film ‘Oppenheimer’ the once so-called ‘father of the atomic bomb’ Here I performed my usual trick of watching most of the very long film which was nearly three hours long and, after climbing into bed, falling asleep in the last quarter of an hour. As it was broadcast on BBC I can always get it on catch-up should I feel so inclined. This morning as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror I muttered to my myself as my fair was all uncombed that I looked like the ‘Wild man of Borneo’. This was the caption to an illustration to which I must have been exposed as a young child in the conservative 1950’s and must have ben derived from an implicit racism in the encylopaedias that I may have read which themselves were probably written in the 1930’s but I have not managed as yet to track down the origins of the expression. In the evening before yesteday, I realise that I needed to get the correct QR codes loaded onto my phone ready for my journey during the day. I used the laptop to locate the relevant file from ‘The Trainline’ which contained the QR code for the journey home and then forwarded it again to myself on my email thus ensuring it was the first item to be found in the email and thus accessible easily on my phone and also when I need it. So many people now use this system that to actually see cardboard tickets being produced is quite rare as every man ad his dog seems to be using smart phones these days.Contemplating the next few days before Christmas, I realise there is quite a lot to be done if I do not wish to leave everything to Christmas Eve. So I am minded to go for my Christmas shopping in the late afternoon of Monday after I have returned home. Then I need to ensure that I have some supplies of damson gin, which will need some bottling to be done, ready for my Pilates class on Tuesday and my annual performance as ‘Sant Claus’ for the benefit of my class mate. This involved waiting until the last five minutes of the class when we traditionally have a period of ‘relaxation’ and then creeping out into the nearby toilets so I can perform a quick change before I make my entrance. I might forego the normal little ditty that I used to sing (‘A variation on the Christmas song of ‘I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus’) to which I used to supply my own words) Fortunately, there is the minimum of Christmas presents to be wrapped up this year as my son and I have come to an understanding not to give each other Christmas presents this year) One little tradition which my Yorkshire family has evidently engaged for years is for family members to buy (or more likely make) little cloth creatures which can be animals, birds, angels or what-have-you which are then hung on the tree but preserved as tree decorations from one year to the next. As some of these deoration can be decades old, then they act as a remindder of both the gift donor as well as the gift recipient. Of course, every family has its own little traditions and rituals – one of mine used to make an exceptionally ‘stiff’ dry martini which was drunk in the late morning and meant that the final preparations for Christmas dinner were always performed under the influence of some happy alcohol-induced euphoria. This year, I have been detailed to supply the starters and sweets for the Christmas dinner but my Yorkshire family had prepared a huge sherry-enriched trifle which was highly appreciated.

So now I started my train journey back home. I caught an express train from Harrogate to Leeds but was only allowed about 12 minutes to find the new connection. This involved a long walk along the platform, rapid consultation  of the departures board where it detailed the 11.15 as going to Exeter and then I had a walk, a ride in a lift, a walk along the bridge and down again so I got to my connection with only 3 minutes to spare. I did not have time to examination the list of intermediate stations on the departure board but reasoned that this was the only departure and surely a train. going cross country would have to make a call at Birmingham New Street. But the train manager who was evidently a bit overwhelmed failed to mention Birmingham New Street when she read out a list of visiting stations and it was only when we got to Tamworth that we were informed that Birmingham New Street would be our next port of call. So I was in a state of some anxiety that I was actually on the right train and the train being so crowded, it took way beyond the allocated time to get passengers on and off the train and so we were eventuakly running about 10 minutes. This gave me about three or four minutes to catch the Bromsgrove connection so I made a dash to the platform from which the Bromsgrove usually departs. It was one minute late, I was thirty seconds late but I did catch my allocated drain with 30 seconds to spare. My son and I had made a prior arrangement to pick me up and I was very pleased to see him and he had even brought over a bit of spare food which just needed a quick burst in the microwave. After I had eaten, I visited ny local groceery store and go the ‘Christmas’ shopping done quite quickly and as I was unpacking got a welcome call from my Droitwich friend. She popped over so that we could spend a pleasant evening together which we did and we are both contemplating exercise classes, yoga in the case of my friend and my regular Pilates (plus a quick flash of Santa Claus) for myself.

I had a better night’s sleep than the night before so am left to contemplate the prospects for the day ahead. I am always a bit relieved when the technology available to me works as intended and, after an initial hitch, I got a network established for my laptop and even got the rather temperamental TV tuned to Sky News for the morning’s news. I was rather in two minds whether or not to treat myself to a really good, cooked breakfast in the hotel this morning as I have run out of provisions although there is a very reliable little shop which should open across the road and which I generally use to keep me in supplies. It is always good to connect with members of one’s family at this time of year ad I started off my meetings with them by looking at a collection of photos on my iphone which I have in a ‘Favourites’ section and where I explain the context and significance of each photo. For the family, I then show them some photos of my family which they, or the younger members of the family, might never have seen before. One photo is on of my grandmother taken in about 1910 where the evidently black-and-white photo of the time and my grandmother was photographed in a magnificent bonnet and possible set of clothes and a backdrop which the photographers of the time may have supplied whilst the photo itself has been painted or otherwise colorised. Another intriguing photo is one that a very distant Australian cousin interested in the family history unearthed some years ago and it is showing a photograph of a display stand in an exhibition devoted to ‘Hart Cycle Company’ Some subsequent research reveals that probably a great grandfather established this company in Wolverhampton which shows that, deep down, I actually have some roots in the West Midlands rather than in Yorkshire which is the county in which I was raised  and to which I have always tended to affiliate. No doubt, these photos will come out again today if only for the erudition of the younger members of the family that I will meet today for whom all of this may be a complete revelation. I might just take along this laptop as well because I have a collection of photos which more or less mirror Meg’s life and which younger members of the family may not have seen and these are collected together on one of those professional photo websites. At some later in the day, I will go along to my nieces house in Harrogate for a pleasant pre-Christmas meal but I have some of the morning spare so I am minded to pick up a copy of the Sunday newspaper from the little shop across the road and then to have a leisurely read in the warmth and comfort of the downstairs lounge rather than just staying in my bedroom all of the morning. The weather is a bit too cold and inhospitable for a morning stroll which I did on the occasion of my last visit here. In the event, this is exactly what I did having a leisurely time reading my Sunday newspaper, doing some Soduko and ensuring that the ‘Favourites’ section of my photo collection on the iphone is augmented a little. I have already received a text from niece telling me time she is going to pick me up so I am getting the bits and together that I wish to take along with me.

So my niece came to collect us for the family meal and we were eventually joined by one of niece’s children and her two grandchildren aged about 4 and 2 years old together with her husband, another niece with her long term boyfriend amd a third niece who was preparing for her ‘A’-levels.Together with my niece and her hsuband and my sister and I, we were a party of eleven altogether. We sat down to a meal of honey-glazed gammon, served with roast potatoes, carrots, red cabbage and parsnips together withan a range of pickles. So we had a magnificent pre-Christmas meal after which I showed off both some of the favourites on my own iphone and a website with a collection of photos most of which are arranged in such a way that they form a commentary upon Meg’s life as a whole. Then members of the family had to leave for a long journey back up to Newcastle from whence they had journeyed for the meal and then my sister needed to be transported back to her residential home. This is proving to be quite difficult for my sister but we are living in hopes that after one very successful Christmas get together, there will be the opportunity for even more as the occasion arises. But it is true to say that my sister’s mobility is getting somewghat worse and mirros, to some extent, the same problems that I experienced with Meg when she was alive. I noticed yesterday whilst in Harrogate in the railway station that ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ is being put on by Opera North during most of February so I might grab the opportunity for another trip north to see the opera and my family as well. So I received and made a couple of texts before I was taken home by my niece at the end of  delightful day. I managed to coax the reluctant TV into showing me a compilation programme of Victoria Wood’s favourite pieces which is always worth a watch. I am going to leave the packing up before my journey tomorrow to the early morning after I had got up for the day and then trust that the journey back on a Monday in the middle of the day proves unproblematic.

As we had surmised, some extra photos thate should have shown Donald Trump have been released and then withdrawn. One of them shows Donald Trump surrounded by young women in swim suits but it appears that somewhere in the White House, this has been seen as being problematic and seems to have been withdrawn. The Democrats are immediately crying ‘foul’ and it looks as though this sort of activity will increase over the days and weeks ahead. It seems unlikely that any really incriminating photographs as such will be found but the smoking gun may well lie in the documentation such as notes that are already coming to light indicating that young women need to be procured for eventual ‘work’ 

I thought that I had brought everything away with me that I could possibly need and whilst this was true of what you might call kitchenware equipment, I found that I had forgotten to bring away my computer mouse with me. This is not as calamitous as it sounds because the laptop (a MacBook in my case) has a very good inbuilt trackpad which some experienced users prefer to a mouse. But in my case, I had hardly used the trackpad so there are various things that I literally did not know. So I needed to consult the web to discover how to perform the  equivalent of a right click on a computer mouse and the answer is surprisingly simple if you know how, being a two fingered tap on the trackpad which is fine once you act actually know about it. Similarly the ‘Delete’ function had to be learnt as there is no button actually labelled ‘Delete’ on my MacBook so I had to learn that this is done by a combination of Control+Back Space which, again, works fine once you know about it. So last night took me quite a long time and some experimentation how to put my blog to bed but the time spent alone in my hotel bedroom was not really wasted because I have learnt how to do things without a mouse that I did not know beforehand. I did not sleep particularly well in a strange bed although the room is well designed and perfect for my needs with a good desk upon which I can put the laptop and a suitable plug point nearby, which is not always the case.   In the event, I got up some time before 4.00am and spent some time installing and deleting apps on my laptop  and generally maintaining things before I started to get into a more routine from 6.00am onwards. The news media is full of details of the newly released Epstein files which should have been published in full by last Friday. In practice, the Trump administration has only released the first tranche in which, surprise! surprise! Bill Clinton appears very well represented but Trump is shown only in one photograph although we know from the White House Chief of staff that Trump has been warned that there is some material relating to him which will have to be released eventually. It seems that the White House has a strategy to release anything that shows the Democrats in a bad light and then hope that the public as a whole gets bored so that in a couple of weeks time (just after Christmas?) people will be bored by it all and the damage that might accrue to Trump is correspondingly limited. Having made an early start to the day, though, I will have to ensure that I am all washed, scrubbed and fed and leave the hotel by about 8.30am as I need to walk into town, do some present shopping for my sister and some wine for Sunday and then catch the train to Knaresborough and back again to see my other niece later on in the afternoon. So I need to keep a careful watch on my train times and how long it will take me to access the stations.

I made my way into town but there was a very cold freezing fog as I walked into town. I made my way into Marks and Spencers and bought a bottle of wine for consumption at the meal tomorrow. At my niece’s instigation, I bought a variety of fruit and some Belgian chocolates to provide a composite Christmas present but in the absence of wrapping paper, I had them packed into a seasonal Marks and Spencer bag and gave strict instructions that they were not to be opened until Christmas Day itself. My sister and I talked over some of the grief stricken moments that we had both experienced during the deaths of our respective spouses but we mainly talked over family matters until the time came for lunch. I accompanied my sister to the beautiful dining room where the care home provided me with a lunch of beef stroganoff on rice with side vegetables followed by a jam sponge and custard. I thought that the quality of the food was pretty good for institutional cooking and the whole ambience of the dining room approached restaurant standards.  I am going to see my sister again the following day at one of her nieces so I took the opportunity to depart an hour earlier and  managed to get to the station on time with it only taking about 15 minutes brisk walk to reach the station. I was pleased to get my hotel bedroom but the TV proved to be problematic and I could not get it to find any TV signal. Then I had a marvellous couple of hours with my niece and her husband and very intelligent son after which I returned to my room, informing the young man on reception about the problems I was having with the TV in my room. Fortunately for me, he made the offer to leave the reception desk and to sort out the TV for me but I could not really follow the exact sequences of commands that he performed to get things going again. I have the TV tuned to Sky News where it will be tuned for the rest of my stay here in any case. 

There is still a lot of controversy concerning the release of the latest Epstein files. Firstly, the release so far has only been a partial release despite the fact that legally the whole of the material should have been released. Secondly, the material released so far seems to have been carefully selected so that no criticism of Donald Trump is at all evidenced whereas there is plenty of adverse publicity for the likes of Bill Clinton. But thirdly, it is evident that a huge amount of redaction has taken place some of which is no doubt legally justified but the suspicion remains that much of the redaction is designed to avoid any embarrassment for the current regime in the White House. Over 500 pages of the files have been entirely redacted leaving many independent commentators to suspect that a huge cover up is taking place. When further material is released, it may well be well into the Christmas festivities when it is felt that the attention of the population and the media lies elsewhere.

The evening before yesterday, I had got most of my packing done for my Yorkshire trip but then decided I would make a lightning trip over to Droitwich for a quick half an hour in other’s company before my little trip up North. This I did and we had a quick meal together which my friend threw together and then  returned home ready for a viewing of the Jane Austen ‘Pride and Prejudice’ This version was showing for exactly two hours and I stayed awake for the first one hour and fifty minutes of it before falling asleep just before the classic denouement at the end of the novel, only to wake up later and find myself in the middle of the film which followed it which was a showing of ‘Whisky Galore’ So this was an element of frustration but it has happened before when I have watched films from the comfort of a warm bed. I made sure that I had a couple of alarms set for early the next day so that I should not oversleep as there is always some last minute flying around before a long trip. I am well used to what might be called ‘hotel catering’ culture and I am taking with me some extra things and some things that I know will be useful such as extra waste bin liners for the storage and eventual disposal of any packaging for any little foodstuffs that I might buy from the little shop across the road from the hotel as I tend not to avail myself of the huge breakfasts that the hotel will provide. By sending out a series of texts several days beforehand, I have managed to meet up with some family members over the next few days and, evidently, there will be a lot of family news upon which to catch up. With various friends and acquaintances, I have made the observation that I thought that the dark days of the autumn would prove to be a great travail but instead the weeks seem to have flown by and I can scarcely believe that we are more than half way through December already. At this time of year, I like to ensure that I have calendars of the type that I particularly like I place for the start of the New Year and I do actually have most of these already in place. Before I see my sister on Saturday morning, I shall be able to stroll along some of the pedestrianised streets of Harrogate and perhaps make last minute purchases of things I need before the festive season descends on us with a vengeance.  I generally look forward to train journeys but the Friday in the week before Christmas might prove to be particularly busy and I nearly always have to first locate my seat in the relevant carriage and then turf the inevitable occupant out of it. Having done a similar journey several times before means that at least I have a rough idea of the platforms from which my various connections generally depart and this is always useful.

Having got to Harrogate, I purchased my tickets for my trip to see my sister tomorrow in Knaresborough and then when to a Chinese restaurant that I know very well. There I had the most enormous lunch of fried rice with beef, washed down with some China tea – the son of the restaurant owner is a real ‘foodie’ so we were soon swapping photographs of food dishes that we had on our respective phones. Then I got to the hotel, unpacked and then got some vital supplies such as fresh milk by which time most of the afternoon had gone. I had arranged to meet with one of my nieces in the hotel reception and then we shared a coffee and a drink with each other spending the early evening together. On occasions like this, we always have a lot of family history and family relationships to discuss and, of course, we both have some relevant photos to show to each other best part of two hours in each other’s company. When my niece departed, I almost but not quite got engulfed in a local Christmas part that was being held for members of a local gym but then I needed to get up to my bedroom to finish off this blog and reply to some messages. My niece and I often share detailed discussions about both parents and particularly grandparents where sometimes family ‘secrets’ get revealed but often it is a case of filling parts of a picture most of which we know but there are always details that one of us to get imparted to the other. Before I came up to Yorkshire on this occasion, I brought with me some of the magazines that detail some of the TV programmes so helps to push the solitude of staying alone in a hotel bedroom away somewhat. But I realise that when I meet the younger generations of the family, I must make particular effects to find out about their issues and concerns and not just be seen as a really distant relative who just turns up once or twice a year. Wandering through the streets of Harrogate as I do, I sometimes wonder whether it is at all likely that I will bump into anybody by chance that I could possibly know, given that I spent most of my formative years and did not leave it until 1963. But that was 62 years ago, so the chances of my actually meeting or even recognising anybody that I knew in those days must be vanishingly small. Many members of my family did have periods of working and livings in, for example, the capital London) but in the end they all seemed to gravitate back into the orbit of Yorkshire. So in many ways, I feel like a planet that broke away from the pull of the solar system of the family by working first in London, then in Manchester followed by  of Leicester and finally Winchester  before going to live in Bromsgrove. But I am forcibly reminded that many of the population stay within a few miles of their birth as I am quite forcibly reminded when I visit the Methodist Centre in Bromsgrove as a source of contacts and so many have been brought up within a few miles of where they are currently living. Of course, as generations age, older and widowed members of the family often move to be closer to their families of origin which I suppose makes sense so that they can provide mutual sources of support to each other.