Today was a day which was long planned for and anticipated and we hoped that all would turn out for the best. We slept a little later than we had anticipated but nonetheless we got up at 7.30 and I had a wonderfully refreshing shower whilst getting Meg organised with various creams and lotions that she still needs after her little episode of prickly heat. We went down into the breakfast room which is magnificently large and ornate that may well seat hundreds if one were to be having a full scale formal dinner. But breakfast is always quite a relaxed occasion and there were only two or three couples in the dining room when we entered. This hotel used to house the Air Ministry during WWII and they kept it on for several years after the war ended until the early 1950’s. When my mother was alive, I am sure that she had mentioned to me that she worked in this building, requisitioned by the military and one could imagine that the dining room could have been a high operations centre, such as one sometimes sees in black and white films illustrating the second World War. So I started to think to myself that there was a fair probability that my mother had actually worked in the very room where I was having breakfast, probably some eighty years previously. This was quite a thought, actually, and I did feel a slight link between the point where biography and history intersect. I got into conversation with one of the hotel staff about the little tea party we are to hold for my sister tomorrow afternoon and was actually offered a choice of venues. We had a look at several alternatives and it looks as though tomorrow we can have our little tea party in rather an individualised location.

Today was the day when we had organised to see some old friends that we have not seen in the flesh for several years now, although we have been in contact by message and email. We decided to walk up through the town and to have a coffee in a rather specialised little coffee house quite near to the station. This we did and the station proved to be pretty close by. So we organised the purchase of a copy of a newspaper and made it to the station in plenty of time – so much so, that we actually caught a train half an hour earlier than we had intended. The QR codes that had been generated for us when we bought the tickets a few days earlier worked unproblematially. So we arrived in York station with plenty of time to spare but this we did not mind as it gave us plenty of time to find our chosen luncheon venue. We did not know precisely where this was but we knew if was very near the station on one of the approach roads to the station. We consulted a street guide at the entrance to the station concourse and found our chosen lunch venue incredibly easily. We arrived there way before the time we had agreed with our friends but they too arrived early so we were delighted to make contact with each other well before midday. After we had had a wonderful natter, we ordered a light lunch which proved to be excellent under the circumstances – Meg and I ordered a roasted tenderstem broccoli and edamame bean risotto which turned out to be absolutely delicious. But we hardly had any time to contemplate the food as we were excitedly catching up on all of the family news and other domestic news since we last met. Our friends are avid Europeans (having worked in both Germany and Holland and the wife of the couple is actually Dutch in any case) so we spent a certain amount of time discussing politics, national and international. The time actually flew by and soon it was time for us to part. However, we intend to keep on meeting at least once a year. There is going to be the world premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s 87th new play (‘Family album‘) during the month of September in Scarborough so this might be the occasion of another visit ‘up north’ if we and our friends can coordinate our diaries. We walked back to the station and caught a train that was waiting for us in the station. Then, arriving back in Harrogate, we had a very pleasant walk back through the town (largely downhill) and got back to the hotel where evidently we regaled ourselves wih a cup of tea. Then I made a quick call to my sister who had just returned from a little break in the Lake District and we checked out all of our arrangements for our little birthday tea tomorrow afternoon. We will also meet with our niece and her family who are taking tea with us and we trust that the arrangements that we have put in place for tomorrow will work out as smoothly as everything has done today.

So the day of travelling has arrived but I never sleep at all well if I know that I have a long journey the following day. We had an alarm set for 6.15 so we got up, had a cup of tea and then got going with the final bits of packing, a few items of food for the hotel bedroom and some bits and pieces that make life in a hotel bedroom a little less like indoor camping. We managed to set off at just a few minutes after 900 am and then hit our morotorway service station which is almost exactly half way at just before the projected time. Then it was off for Wetherby at which we hoped to arrive at just about midday. We were slightly thwarted in our efforts because having travelled 150 miles trouble free we then ran into a massive traffic jam just north of Leeds. There is a place called Bramham tht was having a ‘horsy’ kind of event, I think, and there were a lot of temporary traffic signs routing the traffic for the Leeds International Musical festival and I think that this might have added to the overall slowdown. We eventually got to Wetherby just after 12.00pm and after a little bit of lurking managed to get a convenient parking spot Then it was inside the ‘Wetherby Whaler’ for our senior’s three course meal which, as always, was delicious and satisfying. After lunch, we sought out a florist that we had spotted when we were here about one month ago and bought something that we had our eye upon. Just round the crner was a coffee and cake shop, independently owned, where we had a cappuchio and a mocha of the highest quality. We got into conversation with a couple from outside Lancaster who were treating themselves to a little visit to Yorkshire. In the past, they had taken some of their dogs along to dog shows, including Crufts on one or two occasions, so we exchanged notes about what we know about dog breeding (which is practically zilch), but since my sister and my mother had both shown dogs in the past, we could make some sort of connection. To be honest, we spent more time talking about how we had coped with the pandemic in our various ways rather than dog breeding as such.

Then we struck off for Harrogate to the hotel in which we were booked. True to their word, they had reserved a space for us (which we had requested in advance) and we were pleased to have this at our disposal. The only downside to our room is that although on the last two occasions the internet connected instantly and flawlessly, this was not true today. I followed the instructions but got an obscure message to the effect that I had joined the network but the network could not access the internet. After several fruitless efforts in which I tried everything I could think off, eventually I started to ‘hotspot’ using my iPhone and this seems to work OK so I will put up with that during the length of our stay. Most of the afternoon was involved in unpacking and getting out little ‘hotel systems’ in place which we deploy to make life more comfortable.

The political news today is almost predicatble. As the Ukraine is trying not to over-celebrate fify years of independence from Russia, Boris Johnson could not resist anoher ‘surprise’ visit to the Ukraine where (surprise! surprise!) he was given an award by the Ukrainian leader. The Tory election campaign is now in its last two year and, enboldened by a thirty point lead over her rival, is now uttering warnings of the type of Prime Minister she is likely to be. In the past few days, she has indicated that she would not appoint an ethics advisor, has indicated that the Environment agency wastes money, that OFWAT over-regulates and so she tacitly suppots the dumping of untreated sewage straight in the seas around the UK and that NKS doctors are overpaid. Of course this is Daily Mail pandering to the right and the extreme right of the conservative party. It is no forgotten that the Conservative party effectively swallowed up UKIP and followed their policies and has become a de facto ‘English National’ party. But there are now indications that a new Truss cabinet will be exclusively drawn from the right of the party whereas, with the exception of Boris Johnson, post war prime ministers, both Labour and Conservative, have tried to ensure that a cabinet does reflect the various ‘wings’ within the party. With an extreme right wing cabinet, the stage is set for confrontations or at least a rumbling war in the majority of the conservative party who did not vote for Liz Truss (the critical figure being that only 32% MPs voted for Truss in the last round of voting by MPs). So upon election, Liz Truss will be faced with the dilemma of instant policy ‘U’-turns or grumbling resentment from the two thirds of the party that did not vote for her.

Today was always going to be a full day as there is quite a lot to pack in before we set off for Yorkshire tomorrow. We knew that as Tuesday is my ‘Pilates’ day, that we first make a preliminary visit to the Waitrose café so that we can meet up with the usual Tuesday crowd. Today, though, was a little out of the ordinary because of the mis-directed birthday cake which arrived yesterday. The firm who supplied it in error said I could either eat it up or throw it away so I chopped it into several rectangular slices and then wrapped each in some greaseproof paper so that I could make a present of this ‘free’ cake to each of the Waitrose regulars. This is the first time I have tried to use greaseproof paper and seal it up with sellotape but it is not an easy task as the sellotape does not easily bind onto greaseproof paper. Still this was highly appeciated and then we set off for the major task of the morning which was to get the car filled with fuel and have the tyre pressure checked over. I had already topped up the washer bottle at home so this was one job less. Then the frustrations started. In the very centre of Bromsgrove, they are engaging in some major road widening schemes and there is almost total gridlock, or at least exceptionally long traffic queues, right through the centre of the town. As soon as I got to my preferred garage, the air machine was announced as being ‘out of order’ so we had to navigate backwards through the town and its traffic jams and then onwards to a supermarket which does have air facilities. This was done more or less but I must confess I am not overfond of the modern air pressure guages where you dial in your preferred air pressure and wait for the device to ‘ding’ once the pressures have equalised. If there is a lot of ambient noise (as there was today) and you are on the ‘car’ side of the machine, the ‘dings’ can prove to be quite difficult to discern. Anyway, I got this done and as the bill came to 1p short of a round total, I asked the personnel manning the till to donate the change to Battersea Dogs’ Home. Then it was a case of getting home and I had about 15 minutes left to get myself organised for my Pilates class. I walked down and had my normal class before I popped into an adjacent Asda store where I needed to buy some long life milk, sandwiches for elevenses for the journey and a bit of fruit to keep us going over the next few days. The it was a case of geting home, having a delayed lunch and then starting the packing for tomorrow. As our little vacation is almost exactly the same in duration as the one we undertook a month ago, I have a pretty clear idea of what clothes to pack and in which order to do it. Apart from a few last minute changes of mind about what outfits to wear, this process ran relatively smoothly leaving only nightclothes and toilet bags to be packed first thing in the morning.

After the saga of the mis-delivered birthday cake for my sister, my heart was beginning to sink when no delivery had turned up by half way through the afternoon. I was reconciled to tramping around Harrogate on Friday morning to see if I could organise something (but without a personalised message) at very short notice. Towards the end of the afternoon, I took a despairing look outside the front door and there it was (albeit put on its side) However, the cake was extremely well packed and I unpacked it with trembling fingers to make sure it was correct this time. It certainly was – and judging by external appearances, just what I ordered. Meg and I had a bit of a taste of the mis-delivered cake for a spot of afternoon tea this afternoon and that tasted fine so I have every expectations of things being OK for Friday next. I have sent off a couple of texts to my sister and my niece to make some last minute arrangements. As I was writing, the doorbell rang and it was some of our friends from down the road with whom we are sharing our wedding anniversary celebrations on Friday, 9th September. They were returning a book (Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnights Children’, actually) and we also had a little ‘prezzie’ of some chocolates to speed us on our way tomorrow. The timing of our friend’s call at the house could not have been better timed as we are due off at the crack of dawn in the morning and we are always pleased to see them. We had a quick update on our friend’s health who has been at the ‘wrong end’ of courses of antibiotics that did not agree with her but we trust that these unfortunate little episodes are coming to their natural conclusion.

As we are due to travel north to Yorkshire on Wednesday, my activities in these two days before we travel are devoted to making sure that ‘all of my ducks are in a row’ before we set off. I have three tasks which I need to perform in the next few days of which one is getting my financial statements prepared and uploaded before we meet the Bank representative on 31st August. Next, the car badly needs an outside and inside valeting so I think I need to get that pulled in today if I can. Finally, I need to make sure that tyre pressure and washer bottle supplies are adequate before we start a long journey. I have an empty cupboard at home and am utilising this to drop into it things that I know I need to make our hotel stay a little more domesticated. After Meg and I had picked up our copy of The Times, we made our way to the park where we had quite a pleasant sojourn. We did not encounter any of our regular park friends but Mondays are always traditionally very quiet days in the park anyway. When we got home, I made sure Meg was well supplied with food and drink before I made a journey down to see our firm of Romanian/Iraqi/Kurdish car washers. I got there seconds after another client so I was given a wait of an hour and a half before it would be ready for me. However, this turned out almost like like ‘manna from heavan’ as it meant that I was free to explore some of the charity shops along the High Street in Bromsgrove. First, I popped into a shop where I could buy some cosmetics for Meg and some toiletries that would be useful for our hotel bedroom. But I was fundamentally focused upon one item of purchase upon which I was intent and that was some extra skirts for Meg. Generally speaking, Meg and I preder to shop for clothes in the charity shops of Alcester, a pretty little Georgian town some miles distant but has a reputation for an excellent range of shops. So my expectations of fine quality clothing in Bromsgrove were not high, but I had plenty of time on my side. I have noticed that the shops seem to be replete with tops of every shape and size but skirts seem to be in short supply, particularly if you avoid the trousers and the discarded mini-skirts that are are generally housed on the same rails. A slightly complicating factor is that my wife used to be a standard 12 but with the ravages of time and the pandemic, the default size for which I now search is a size 14. In my searches through several charity shops, though, I did snap up two items, one of which is a ‘John Lewis’ marque and the other highly original design of multicoloured butterflies of which the label seems to have got detached. I was relieved that when I did transport them home Meg liked the design of both so that will help to extend her range of outfits somewhat.

We had a bit of uncalled for drama in the middle of the day which we could have well done without. I had previously ordered over the ‘net’ a birthday cake for my sister so this had arrived just as I was leaving to go down into town and now was the time to unpack it and inspect that all was as it should be. Imagine my horror when the cake’s icing said ‘Happy Birthday to Pauline and Alex’ with a design that was not the one I had chosen. The packing note with the cake had a photo of the design and text that I had chosen for my sister so in the midst of preparing a delayed lunch (hastily) I made several attempts to make contact with the firm supplying the cake. They are horrified at what had happened and promised to put it right by despatching the correct version of the cake, plus text, that should arrive tomorrow (or so they promised) In the meanwhile, the firm would have to try and track down the ‘Pauline and Alex’ from their range of customers to indicate they would not be getting their cake when they thought that they would and presumably another customer has ours. If there has been a more systematic error in which each customer on the list has been displaced by one, as it were, then they could potentially have a queue of dissatisfied customers. As to the cake that that is now in possession we can either throw it away or eat it (we will do the latter!)

In the latest of the series of industrial dusputes that is afflicting the nation, then barristers have voted to go on an indefinite, uninterrupted strike in England and Wales from next month. The walkout by members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) will begin on 5 September. This seems to be the way to go on strike if one intends to do it – no messing about for a day or so but a full-scale, wholehearted, 100% withdrawal of services. One might think of barristers as being well paid but successive cuts have reduced their remuneration to little more than the minimum wage, so they claim.

Today was not quite our normal Sunday routine as my normal newsagent is still on holiday in Vienna until Tuesday. So Meg and I had a ‘normal’ Sunday morning breakfast and then set out for Asda so that I could obtain a copy of the Sunday Times and one or two other bits and pieces of things that I know I can only buy in Asda. Well, Sod’s Law kicked in and the only newspaper of which they were sold out was the Sunday Times so whilst we were in the car we made for a local garage. Here we were at last successful in getting the last copy of the Sunday Times that they had and so we made for the park. It was quite a pleasant day today and sitting waiting for us on our usual bench we met up with Seasoned World Traveller. Somehow we got onto Hippocrates theory of personality and although Hippocrates is generally known in the West as the ‘father of modern medicine’ (and hence the Hippocratic oath – ‘do no harm’) his theory of personality found expression in the Middle Ages as the various ‘humours’ in the human body. Whilst our level of knowledge has moved on and we no longer believe in the predominance of ‘humours’ the theory of Hippocrates is not without modern interest. This is because it was claimed to be based upon a lifetime’s observations of people i,.e. not theorising purely as a cerebral exercise and also modern psychologists have come up with schemas of personality types that are not a million miles away from the Hippocratic notions. We parted with a brief discussion of ‘Emotional intelligence’ (labelled EQ) to distinguish it from the generally accepted measure of intelligence or IQ (=intelligence quotient). When we got home, we had a Sunday lunch of cooked gammon, baked potato and mange tout, made a bit more enjoyable for us by not making a lunch that was too overwhelming. Like yesterday afternoon, we soon quite absorbed into some of the men’s gymnastics individual champioships for each individual piece of apparatus and the British team are so far doing their bit by bringing in a fair haul of medals. But tonight, on the athletics track, it is going to be the finals of a lot of track and field events including some of the relay races which are always incredibly exciting because all kinds of things can go wrong, not least in the handovers of the baton which can make or break a victory.

The contest of the Tory party leadership trundles on, for an apparently ridiculous amount of time, as there is still a couple of weeks to go before the final result is announced. Even some Tory party ‘grandees’ are saying this is all a bit ridiculous as a couple of well publicised video debates followed by voting meant that the whole context could have been concluded within a week or so. I happened to hear at lunchtime (in the Radio 4 ‘World at One’) a bit of ‘vox pop’ from a conservative association in I think Sussex. Airtime was given to one view by an elderly white female that they were voting for Liz Truss because she wanted to have a tax cut (most economists conclude this is ridiculous when inflation is over 10%), that Liz Truss would cut a lot of bureaucracy out of the NHS (the NHS is actually one of the most under-managed of all western healthcare systems) and that the civil service needed slimming down (was she not aware of the staff cuts and restrictions on salary that the public sector have experienced, with public sctor pay rises lagging well behind the private sector as of now) Of course, all of these opinions could have been taken straight out of the columns of the Daily Mail (about which the best that can said is they are ‘evidence light’ but ‘prejudice heavy’) The thought that the next Prime Minister of the country is being chosen for us by people as uninformed as this is truly depressing. The interesting thing about the Liz Truss campaign is that in the early stages and until very recently, she has campaigning on a slogan of ‘no handouts’ However, the fact that three out of four Tory voters support the Starmer policy of keeping the cap on energy prices in October not to mention that this is a very popular policy in the country as a whole means, that Liz Truss is already starting to hint that some extra support ‘might be available’ In the meantime, there are a team of officials and ministers-in-waiting busy assembling a package of measures for any ‘incoming Prime Minister’. So we may shortly have the spectacle of a Tory politician elected on a policy of no handouts which is abandoned within minutes or hours of being elected when the reality principle kicks in (quite neatly expressed by the Americanism ‘when the rubber hits the road’)

Today dawned as a bright and cheerful day but after Meg and I had breakfasted, I needed to go in search of some pharmaceutical stores where I could buy some medicaments for Meg wo has been suffering lately with the excessively high temperatures that we have experienced of late. I got several preparations that I think are going to be useful for Meg so after applying one of these, we were ready for our venture into the park today. Perhaps because it was a Saturday, we seemed to bump into a lot of people, some of whom we have not seen for some time. We had just about finished our coffee when we bumped into a couple who are the next door neighbours to one of ex-Waitrose regulars. They had been on holiday to Croatia which explains why we had not seen them for some time. Wev exchanged news about the holidays that we had taken in the former Yugoslovia and it happened that we had both visited some of the same places in the extreme north of the country – Pula with its magnificent Roman ampitheatre which must be one of the best preserved outside Italy and the lakes of Bled (where rowing competitions are often held) and Bohinj both on Slovenia. Then we were joined by Seasoned World Traveller and shortly afterwards by our University of Birmingham friend. Then, they too were joined by dog-owning friends and their dogs so lots of multiple little conversations were taking place between several of us. Then we made for home and had a completely vegeterian lunch of some quiche, primo cabbage and a melange of tomatoes, peppers, onions made a little spicier with some tomato and some brown sauce.

This afternoon, Meg and I were absorbed in the mens team event finals in the European gymnastics competition being held in Munich, which may be a part of the entire athletics competition. Here there were five male British gymnastics who have to perform on four pieces of gymastic equipment as well as a floor piece. The British team were favourites and eventially won the competition with over 6.5 points clear which is quite a high margin. The gold medals have to take an awful lot of winning when you think of the various events at which needs to excel. When it came to the medals ceremony, it was interesting to see that the coach is also awarded a medal which must surely be fair. What is extraordinary about this competition is that the gymnasts have come hot from the Commonwealth Games of only two weeks ago so the amount of recovery time after competition must be minimal. To cap all of this, two British girls have just won gold in the Diving finals held in Rome although the field of competition was quite low. But the British pairing had only to start to dive with each other a few weeks before the Commonwealth Games competition and this one so that is a gold-rush if ever there was one. Tonight, as last night, will be a fairly full night of semifinals and finals in the track and field events so we will probably be glued to this all night. Earlier in the afternoon, I suddenly thought about the train tickets that I needed to buy for our journey from Harrogate to York next week. I use ‘thetrainline’ to buy tickets but with the pandemic having been rampant, I have not bought any train tickets for a couple of years. I had forgotten that you can actually nominate a train station from which you can pick up the actual physical tickets if you feel he need for them. However, I opted for electronic tickets and, fortunately, this worked out OK and I printed out the electronic tickets complete with QR-codes. There is probably an app I can download onto my phone but I have not investigated this yet.

In the Tory leadership elections, Michael Gove has accused Liz Truss of taking a ‘holiday from reality’ with her plans to cut taxes during the cost-of-living crisis, and warned the Tory leadership frontrunner is putting ‘the stock options of FTSE 100 executives’ before the nation’s poorest people. The former cabinet minister launched the outspoken attack as he endorsed Rishi Sunak to be the next Conservative leader. After this attack, perhaps it is no surprise that Michael Gove intimates that he will not be offered another Cabinet post and therefore he is resigned to living the rest of his Parliamentary days on the back benches. There is quite an irony in all of this as Michael Gove had the reputation of being one of the most effective ministers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, finally taking on some of the big builders to make them responsible for correcting the cladding on many of the hgh rise buildings that have been built recently. But as Enoch Powell, the notorious conservative politican observed (and I paraphrase a lengtheir quotation) : ‘All political careers end in failure’

Friday promises to be the most delightful day as it bright and sunny with a slight cooling breeze and rain quite a distance on the horizon. Meg and I popped down to Waitrose where we picked up our newspaper and much-needed supplies of icecream which I had forgotten to replenish when I shopping on Thursday. In the park, there was a little bit of the gathering of the clans. First, Seasoned World Traveller spotted us from afar and trotted over for a chat. Then we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend who we seem to have missed for some days now so it was good to all meet up. In the midst of all of this, our Irish friends (who live adjacent to the park) strolled along and conveyed some good news about the wedding anniversary celebrations we hope to hold in about three week’s time. It looks as though the three couples who are all celebrating (commiserating?) wedding anniversaries in some three weeks time can all coincide to have a joint meal as it now looks as though all of our dates can be made to coincide. I am awaiting a text from our Irish friends who is coordinating the whole of this little celebration for us. When we got home, we indulged in a little of the sports competitions and watched some of the heats in the kayak, and two varities of canoe before cooking our traditional Friday meal of sea bass served on a bed of salad.

This afternoon, I spent a certain amount of time getting some of my financial records in an easily understood form before we have a meeting with the bank at the end of the month. This is a fairly long job but I am half way through it so should manage to complete the rest fairly easily. Before our neeting, though, certain documents have to be assembled before we submit them to a secure website so I am busy at the moment ‘getting all of my ducks in a row’ so to speak. When Meg and I were having our afternoon cup of tea, I half listened to a Science item on Sky News which I found quite exciting. It is fifty years since the American moon landings and one wonders why we, as a civilation, would want to return. But the Americans are planning to do that in about three years time and to that end are going to test a huge rocket which is the largest ever built. The object of the American interest is the Southern (I think) pole of the moon in which there are some parts in permanent shadow and other parts in total sunshine. The thoughts are that the deeply shadowed areas may contain water in the shape of ice. At the same time, those parts in permanent sunshine might lend themselves to power generation via solar cells. So if that portion of the Moon is found to be a resource in which there is both water and power available, then this might help as a launch base for any further interplanetary exploration.

Yesterday was the day when ‘A’-level results were to be published and it already been announced that the portion of ‘good’ grades was to be lower than last year (when grades were inflated because all of the assessments were teacher assessments and the traditional exam was abandoned for the time being) This year, though, traditional exams have been reinstated so the examination baords are trying to get back, in stages, to the ‘status quo ante’ before the pandemic struck two years ago. Over the years, we have got almost used to the same images of ‘A’ level students celebrating their success and the photographers have tended to focus on long-legged, blonde females jumping up and down with joy rather than their spottier and (glummer) male counterparts. These images had got so predictable over the years that I think the news gathering media were making some efforts this year to have less of stereotypical images. Nonetheless, my instant ‘content analysis’ of the media reaction this year was that photograpgers and electronic news gatherers were trying to be more representative than hitherto but I still imagine blondes to outnumber brunettes by three to one (but perhaps they do in the adolescent female ppoluation but I doubt it somehow).

More Donald Trump news now that I quote with a fascinated horror. After the FBI came after Trump raiding his Florida home to locate government documents that had been squirrelled away there, Trump’s response has been to appeal for funds. He is appealing to ‘all American patriots’ to help to fund his legal fees and, to date, he seems to have been receiving donations at the rate of $1 million a day. Once the money is received (as it was after the raid on the Capital building where Trump similarly appealed for funds) the money tends to get diverted sideways into various fringe organisations and therefore, not necessarily spent on legal fees. But one of Trump’s financial aides has pleaded guilty, as part of a plea bargain, in the investigation of Trump’s finances so the noose may be tightning if only ever so slightly.

Today is my shopping day so, as usual, it was up bright and early and to the supermarket, via an ATM, a minute or so before the supermarket opened. As we are going away next week, I have to cater for one day less in the week but on the other hand, tend to buy one or two things that will be useful as a repast during our journey. The shopping having been unpacked, it was then time for Meg and I to make our customary journey to the park. The car park seemed to be teeming with cars and, as we have come to expect, there were a fair sprinkling of scooters in variety. We did manage to have a few words with an acquaintance that we only meet every so often, and then she shot off in her motorised wheelchair which seems to go at a ferocious pace before she has a quiet read of a book under the shade of one of the park’s trees. When we got home, I resurrected the rest of the chicken carcase to make into a fricasee type meal and then we settled down to see what offerings there were in the various sporting competitions taking place at the moment. We were fairly interested in the one metre springboard synchronised diving and the female British pair were edged into a fourth place by 0.4 of a point which must be one of the cruellist place to be. On the other hand, our male gold medal holder successfully defended his title so there was fairly mixed news. Tonight, on the athletics track in Munich, there should be some interesting semi-finals with British interest as well as the final of the 1500 metres which, to a British audience, is always a ‘must watch’ event.

The latest news from the contest to lead the Conservative party is more of the same. It seems that Liz Truss has a lead of some 32 points (66 to 34) and some 57% of the constituency parties electorate have already voted. Of those who have yet to vote and have made up their minds, some 44% are committed to Truss and 29% to Sunak. The interesting thing about this campaign is that on the occasions when the two candidates have publically debated face-to-face, most famously in the Sky News debate, Rishi Sunak is nearly always adjudged to be the winner. Nonetheless, despite the very slight tightening of the polls that have taken place recently, this hardly seems to have harmed the Truss campaign at all. This reinforces, for me, a couple of points. Given the existing make up and mood the Conservative party out in the country, being ‘competent’ hardly seems to be important whereas garnering the votes of the right wing (and Brexist faction of the party) seem to be critical. Rishi Sunak is damaged, rightly or wrongly, for two things. The first is that he is blamed for using the dagger of revolt against Boris Johnson. This is despite the fact that eventually a substantial part of the Conservative party came to the view that Johnson was not fit to be their leader any more. A second factor was the non-dom status of his millionaire wife damaged him enormously – a fact that was not helped by the the fact that Sunak has admitted to holding a green card while living in Downing Street – declaring him a permanent resident of the US and part of this arrangement is a declaration that one intends to become a permanent resident o the United Statess. Also reinforced is the point that the overall ‘look and feel’ of candidates is of greater significance than either the policies that one espouses or even the generally acknowledged level of competence one exhibits. Those of long political memories may recall that one of the most brilliant Conservative policians of the 1960’s and 1970’s – Iain McCloud – was damned by getting the reputation that he was ‘too clever by half’ Finally, the same survey showed that if Boris Johnson had been a candidate in the present election, not only would he have won but he would have garnered as many votes (practically) as the other two candidates put together. This must surely mean that to many conservatives, the fact that Johnson was demonstrated to be a serial liar as well as the Prime Minister who tried to dissolve Parliament illegally is not at all important to them.

It has been rather a strange day today, but so it goes. It had been raining quite a lot yesterday evening and during the night so it was refreshing to wake up to quite a drippy morning. Our domestic help called round this morning but after a chat and some consultation, we felt that we needed to pop to a pharmacy to pick up some medication to cope with some problems caused by the excessive heat of the last few days. We went to our local Morrison’s store, if only because parking is so easy outside, and requested a consultation with the pharmacist. Normally, I have quite a regard for pharmacists and trust their advice but the service we got today was quite perfunctory. Eventually, though, we took the advice of other pharmacy assistants who seemed a lot more helpful than the actual pharmacist so once we had supplied ourselves with medications we made for home. I have quite a lot of my financial ‘book-keeping’ that I needed to do to keep my records up-to-date so this took the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon as well. I change to a different sheet of my financial spreadsheet once a month and this helps me keep track of my monthly receipts and outgoings.

Some of the recent projections about the cost-of-living and inflations crisis that is threatening to overwhelm us are mind boggling. Today, inflation has jumped to more than 10% – the highest for 40 years. One in four people won’t be able to afford to pay their energy bills in October, based on current forecasts. The figure could jump to one in three (34%) people in January when prices are predicted to soar above £4,200. Citizens Advice says more than 13 million people could be left in the red, as spiralling costs rapidly outstrip the support on offer. Of those who won’t be able to pay in October, the majority (68%) have a household income of less than £30,000. Some 3.2 million disabled people and 4.4 million families with children are set to be unable to afford October’s hikes. The political reaction to all of this is interesting, if only because in about three week’s time, we will have a new prime minister, probably Liz Truss, who is committed to providing ‘no handouts’ If and when Liz Truss is elected, this particular commitment of ‘no handouts’ will surely bite the dust, so we we will have the fascinating scenario of a politician elected on the slogan of ‘no handouts’ reversing the slogan upon which they have been elected within hours. Nobody is talking yet of a mass uprising on the streets but this must remain a possibility. I remember very vividly the story about the bankruptcy of Uper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971/72. The then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, receive a phone call from the Provost (equivalent of Lord Mayor) of Glasgow indicating that was the very real possibility of a violent uprising on the streets of Glasgow which the police and military would not be able to contain – therefore the Provost could not guarantee there wuld not be the equivalent of an insurrection in Glasgow, not to mention other parts of Scotland. Ted Heath apparently went white with fright after receiving the phone call and ordered an imediate ‘U-turn’ in whih Upper Clyde Shipbuilders was to be nationalised, even though the right wing members of his government wanted it to go bust and to tough out the consequences. I am not sure whether his story has ever been fully documented but that there was a very sudden U-turn which is well documented in all of the political histories.

Some politicl news from the other side of ‘the pond’ is disturbing. Liz Cheney has been one of her party’s most outspoken Trump critics, and was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president after the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021.
She has had to concede defeat to Harriet Hageman on Tuesday, whose candidacy was endorsed by Mr Trump in the Republican primary. Observers say Ms Cheney’s loss indicates that Mr Trump still has a grip on the Republican Party, as his critics fear he is considering running for president again in 2024. Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC News on the morning after her election defeat, Ms Cheney said she will do ‘whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office’. Dick Cheney was a former Vice-President of the United States and to British observers, it is a little jaw-dropping that the daughter of such a prominent ‘neo-con’ as Dick Cheney could come out so strongly against Trump. Her defeat in the State of Wyoming against Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for Congress, was massive – and Donald Trump’s reaction was that Republicans like Liz Cheney who is called a ‘RINO’ (Republican in Name Only) has evidently thrown in her lot with the radical left. But Liz Cheeney is convinced that Donald Trump is a truly dangerous actor but he seems to receive the adoration of much of the Republican party (who believe, like Trump, that the election was actually ‘stolen’ from them)

I know that I am the creature of habit but nonetheless it is pleasant to drop into our ‘normal’ Tuesday morning routine. The weather is going to break today and we shall expect showers at random intervals throughout the day. But we had a fairly leisurely breakfast and then popped down into Waitrose by car so that we can pick up our copy of The Times and also bump into some of our Tuesday morning regulars. First of all we met up with Seasoned World Traveller and after my experiences with the phone provider yesterday, I managed to pass a few tips about the tariff that he needed to request after he had installed the SIM that I had ordered for him. Then, seated at one of the tables was our Knowledgable Gardener who used to come along on a monthly basis and do the heavier ‘trimming’ work in the garden before he was taken ill. I enquired about the progress that he had been making in his recovery and it was reassuring to know that he is being monitored quite regularly by various clinicians i.e. not just abandoned to his own devices. Then I started chatting with one of pre-pandemic acquaintances who we often meet on a Tuesday. Her husband had recently been admitted to long term residential care but it appears that both ‘partners’ to the couple are adjusting reasonably well to their changed circumstances. Finally, I was delighted to espy ‘Bromsgrove School Teacher’ who often used to freqent the Waitrose coffee bar in the pre-pandemic days. She and I were both teachers of politics and I had actually given her some of my politics textbooks in the hope that some of them might be useful either for some of her young scholars or as an addition to the school library. I have only seen her once or twice in the past couple of years so we had we had an enjoyable chat and ‘catching up’ today. Her baby which was pretty young in the pre-pandemic days is now a boistrous three-year old but was in pre-school this morning. I managed to pass on the bad news that if her child had got into the habit of waking every morning at about 5.00am and he was anything like my own son, then this early riding habit would probably persist right throughout his working life. So all in all, as last Tuesday, it was a conversation filled morning. I walked down to my Pilates class in slightly muggy conditions but when the class finished at 2.15, it was announced to the class that it had rained and was, in fact, sill raining. In practice, it was the lightest spattering of rain that could be imagined and I am sure that the water would probably evaporate again the minute it touched the sun-scorched earth. Elsewhere in the South and the Midlands, it may be that the long expected rain was more like the deluge that some of us have been hoping for but all the rain has done for us so far has been to add to a general feeling of humidity.

In the latest political news, it has been revealed that eleven Government whips have now come out collectively in favour of Liz Truss. The fact that this expression of support has come so very late in the day speaks more of the fact that MP’s are positioning themselves for jobs in a new administration. It could well be that the race is already both won’and ‘lost’ as most of the Conservative party members will already have submitted their votes and there is almost no way in which the enormous lead that Liz Truss has in the polls is likely to be reversed. There is quite a wicked story doing the rounds that Boris Johnson is convinced that Liz Truss will prove to be so incompetent in the job that it is only a matter of time before the Tories say ‘Come back, Boris! All is forgiven!’ The first part of this proposition is almost certainly true – but who knows whether Boris Johnson will ever worm his way back into the affections of MPs? Meanwhile, the Labour Party and Keir Starmer have put forward a policy to combat astronomic fuel bills and inflation at the same time by suggesting that the ‘cap’ on fuel prices should not be lifted in October. This policy will be expensive (in the tens of billions) and may even rival the costs of the furlough scheme but it is a policy which even meets the approval of three out of four Tory voters – will this prove to be a game changer? Certainly, it makes the policies of the two Tory leadership contenders seem a little anaemic, not to say indecisive. But the interesting thing about the Labour policy is that telling people that Labour believe they shouldn’t pay ‘a penny more’ for energy over the winter than the current cap – an average saving of £1,000 – is easy to understand and promote. Also, whilst some may ask for a more targeted approach, the point about a universal policy is that there are no administrative costs in applying complex rules as to who may or may not qualify which always creates anomalies.