It was a most beautiful day today so Meg and I were keen to get a ‘normal’ walk in whilst the weather was set fair.  We did not quite get up at the crack of dawn, recouping somewhat some of the sleep that we had lost by staying up for the early election results on Friday morning. So when we had breakfasted and showered, we went together by car to collect our Saturday edition of ‘The Times‘ which is always stuffed full of a variety of supplements. Then dropping the car back home, we started a gentle walk down to the park which was generally in its spring greenery. I had noticed with a certain amount of satisfaction that the hornbeam tree I planted about a year ago and which looked pretty dead only about two weeks ago had now burst fully into leaf which proves, I suppose, that it is in a certain amount of health. It was planted on a slope in ‘Mog’s Den‘ and so is not the easiest of locations to ensure that it has an adequate water supply whilst relatively young as water tends to drain away quite rapidly. In the park, we met with our University of Birmingham friend briefly but he had to leave us quite quickly to lend his  expertise to a type of community repair service. I think that the idea behind this is that anyone can bring along an appliance of any type that needs fixing and the volunteers can bring their experience and skills along to see what they can do. I suppose you could call it a type of recycling as otherwise relatively useful appliances might be consigned to landfill or wherever else they go. When we got home, we had a midday meal of mince and veg before listening to ‘Any Questions‘ and ‘Any Answers‘ on Radio 4. I can listen to this program whilst preparing lunch and it sort of keeps me in touch with ‘Middle England’ but the panellists are generally quite sensible (Matthew Parris who writes for ‘The Times’ being one of them)

After lunch, I decided that I really needed to tackle the weeds on the patio outside the kitchen window. The most eye-sore weeds had already been removed but I decided that the remaining moss and weeds in between the paving slabs had to be tackled. This proved a much bigger job then I had first anticipated. Eventually, I worked out that for each slab I needed a three stage process. The first involves a gloved hand to remove or pull out whatever weed was easily graspable. Then for the second stage, I had a spcial tool designed to remove weeds from in between paving slabs and then finally, the most useful tool of all is a wire brush which does a magnificent job in removing all remnants of even the tiniest of weeds from between the slabs. I also found an old washing up brush quite useful to be pressed into service to make things neat and tidy. Of five ‘lines’ of slabs, I have managed to do two of them so I am 40% of the way through the job – more tomorrow if the weather holds good.

There is a rumour doing the rounds of the media this afternoon. Next weekend, the Eurovision Song Contest is going to be held in Italy. But certain interesting rumours are alreasdy circulating: in particular that the song from the Ukraine is bound to win. I suspect the European song contest has got more and more political as the years have gone by but this year, the Ukrainian band, will use their presence at the contest to ‘remind’ the audience of the war in Ukraine. I think that people have surmised that all of the Baltic countries and countries neighbouring the Ukraine will vote for it (rather than for each other). In addition, there may be massive sympathy votes from all quarters of the continent and, if you add all of these factors together, one can predict an out and out win for the Ukraine. Russia is banned from the contest (if they had not been, can you imagine a Russian jury voting for the Urainian entry) So this is not exactly a fix but an infomed guess as to how things will work out. I will watch it with a particular interest this year (rather than having it on in the background which is normal)

All this afternoon, the elections in Northern Ireland have been unfolding. I say ‘unfolding’ because in the system of proportional representation adopted in the province, the voters number preferences 1 to 5 in groups of constituencies each group generating 5 MLA (Members of the Legialative Assembly). In the Northern Ireland context, any member gaining 1/6th of the vote is automatically elected but that is when it becomes interesting. The person who gets the fewest vote in a round is eliminated and the  second preferences are allocated. This process proceeds until all of the seats have been filled. It now looks certain that Sinn Féin will have the highest portion of seats and of votes, beating the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) Whether the DUP will participate in the process whereby the  Sinn Féin leader becomes First Minister and the Leader of the DUP becomes their deputy remains to be seen – I suspect not.

Last night, Meg and I decided that we would stay up for an hour or so to watch the Election programmes which were being broadcast from 11.00pm onwards. In the event, nothing really dramatic was apparent in the opening hours but we both managed to fall asleep in our chairs and then drag ourselves off to bed at about 2.30 in the morning. Consequently, we have both felt somewhat like ‘death warmed up’ today and, in truth, it would have been better if we had gone to bed at the normal time and listened to results on the radio (and, no doubt, we would have fallen asleep in the middle of this also) This morning, it was the day when our domestic help calls around and so we had our normal chat and a joke or two before we took the car into town. I collected the newspaper, bought a few provisions at Waitrose that I had forgotten about last Thursday and then we made our way to the park. It was quite pleasant although a little cool on our normal park bench and after a little while, we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend to which we had been looking forward as we often ‘touch base’ with each on Friday mornings. Our friend is trying to plan a trip to Spain on his own to improve his Spanish so we spent several happy minutes talking about potential routes, towns, airports and the like. No doubt, we will carry on a bit more tomorrow once we have had the chance to Google a bit more information for ourselves.

Once we eventually made it home, I started cooking what used to be a Friday favourite of ours which was a risotto. Our domestic help is particularly partial to the risottos that I make but I started off putting some smoked haddock into the oven to cook for the prescribed 17 minutes. Then I built up the risotto in stages starting off with clarifying an onion and then gradually adding the chicken stock, a bit of ready mashed potato which is a bit of a cheat but I use it as a  thickener. Then, after adding the cooked fish, I finish off with a couple of huge dollops of plain yogurt and some grated cheese. To keep the carb count down, I do not use convetnional rice any more but some of those veg alternatives such as cauliflower rice  which cuts the carb quotient dramatically. Once we had this meal inside us (washed down with a smidgeon of Pinot Grigio which all I had left in a bottle) I knew that the lawn mowing beckoned. Accordingly, I got my weary limbs into gear and started the weekly mowing, conscious of the fact that rain is threatening at about 4.00 in the afternoon. I reckoned I had an hour and ten minutes which should have been just about right. I got all of the mowing done in time just before the threatened rain was scheduled to arrive and then parked myself in front of the TV  to catch up on the local eletion results. By this stage in the afternoon, the results from Northern Ireland were starting to come through and it looks as though the Irish nationalist party of Sinn Féin may end up having the most seats and largest share of the popular vote. The fascinating question is whether the ‘Democratic’ Unionist Party (DUP) will live up to its name and accept its part in the democratic process, according to the Good Friday agreement, in which the two leading parties can nominate the roles of First Minister and the deputy. I am not going to get into the attempt to understand the labrinthine nature of Irish politics. But it is a case of ‘watch this space’ In Scotland, the Scottish Labour party has more or less got its act together and relegated the Tories to third place whilst the SNP goes onwards and upwards. I have not seen the analysis yet but no doubt the following analysis will be analysed in depth. This is that by the time you have put together the votes of the SMPs, the Liberals and the Greens will there now be a great push to advance the cause of Scottish independence. When the Scots view what the English parliament has got uo to in recent months, no doubt this will give a further impelling twist towards Scottish independence.

Whilst  the election results will no doubt be chewed over in the Saturday and Sunday quality press, a thought has occurred that if you put together the Labour votes with the great success of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, then it might just be possible for there to be an ‘anti-Tory alliance’ at the time of the next General Election. The Irish MP’s (Sinn Fein) do not take up their Westminster seats so there may be a majority of literally one or two for an ‘anti-Tory alliance’ to form without needing the support of the Scottish Nationalists. This, in turn, has implications for any future push to Scottish independence. Food for thought only, at this stage.

Thursday is my shopping day but I departed early so that I can make a flying visit into the adjacent Morrison’s supermarket which is practically next door. I was pretty sure that they would stock the Beet juice that I wanted (but our local Asda was out of stock). I availed myself of a couple of cartons and at my normal rate of consumption, that should last me for a couple of weeks. When I eventually got home, I checked whether I could get it online to save me a lot of traipsing around and indeed I can, so I think I will do that in future. I completed my Aldi shopping getting everything I wanted and was pleased to be able to buy one of those chickens that you roast completely in its own bag, just popping it into the oven for the relevant amount of time. I have found in the past that this saves so much time and hassle so that is destined for our Sunday roast. When I got home, I unpacked the shopping but Meg was not feeling too well so was spending some extra time in bed whilst I occupied myself with other tasks. I had intended to go off to the Domestic Refuse facility (‘the tip’) in order to dispose of my final garden bag of plants clippings but I just filled up my brown bin (only emptied this morning), judging that I could better use of my time and money than making a round trip to dispose of one bag full of rubbish. A second task in which I was engaged was attempting to get a really accurate measure of my height, so that I can feed them into my BMI (Body Mass Index) calculations. This is quite difficult to do on one’s own. It is easy to get a measure of your height when lying down – I tend to use an empty shoe box as a ‘top’ marker and then measure the distance from the skirting board to the shoebox. But your height is different by quite an amount when you measure yourself standing up. Each vertebrae compressed very slightly but the cumulative effect is to make a difference of about ½” – and even this amount can vary during the day. Using the shoebox method on the top of one’s head, followed by a pencil mark and subsequent measurement with a tape measure, I think I have lost about 3.6cm (1.4″) over the last four years. I know that I had a really accurate measure of my height just before I was in hospital some four years ago now but I thought as I am now in a measuring of BMI mode again, I would try and get a really up-to-date and accurate measure. I think I might enlist the assistance of my domestic help tomorrow as an extra pair of hands and eyes to make my measurements accurate to the millimetre.

This afternoon was quite a fine afternoon. Just before lunch, I managed to get my lawn edges a quick whizz with my manual mower before the main cut with the petrol mower tomorrow. This afternoon, I really wanted to get a big pebble-dressed circular bed weeded and tidied up and this job too was satisfying to get done of the day. Meg and I enjoyed a bit of late afternoon sunshine after I had flashed a cleaning sponge over the outside table and chairs and the day’s gardening quota had been completed.

Today is Election Day and of course nothing really kicks off until about 11.00pm this evening. Nonetheless, being a self-confessed election junkie. I thought I would get myself prepared in the tradiitonal fashion. I have bought today a bottle of Newcastle Brown and some bottles of a particularly good low alcohol lager which I used to buy from Waitrose but was being sold in Morrisons. I have a strategy in place to consume this alcohol as the election results trickle in. If it appears that the parties that I support or doing somewhat less well than the pundits predict, I shall open the good low alcohol lager. On the other hand, if the results are just about what we would anticipate, then I enjoy a can of low-alcohol Guinness that I happened to have in stock. But if the results are much better than predicted, then I shall go the whole hog and drink the bottle of Newcastle Brown bought for such an occasion as this.

The Bank of England interest rate was raised to 1% today and there are predictions of more rises to come. But there is also a prediction that inflation will exceed 10% in the year ahead and the economy as a whole may contract by ¼%. The present generation has never known such economic pain before. The reasons for this are put to a combination of the Ukrainian war, the rising fuel prices and the aftermath of the pandemic. Strange that Brexit does not get a mention, though, isn’t it?

Today started off with sporadic rainfall, although it was quite sustained in the early part of the morning. We did have some tentative plans to have a mini-day out this morning but, having picked up our newspaper, we only made a decision where to go at the very last moment. We eventually set course for a local crafts centre called Jinney Ring. This curious name comes from the invention of the Jinney Ring which allowed horse power to be converted to drive the previously manual farm equipment. The horse would walk around a large wheel with cogs, which turned shafts, and then the belts and chains of the farm equipment. We had often seen signs to Jinney Ring but never got round to actually going there until this morning. We made straight for the restaurant where we ate some locally prepared produce (apple pie) to go with our cappucchinos. Then we had a cursory look at some of the arts and crafts on display but I did not have a burning desire to purchase a pen with a genuine wood-turned barrel (at either £49.99 or £99.99) or to buy any glassware or pottery. But we did tarry a little at one of the units which was selling plants and purchased both a sweet pea plant also a mange tout pea plant – these we can plant out almost straight away. As our elevenses turned out to be quite filling, we decided to prepare a light lunch once we returned home as we had most of the ingredients to make up quite an extensive salad lunch for ourselves. This turned out a bit bigger than we initially thought but there again we did manage to combine a lot of different flavours and if we hadn’t used up some of the ingredients they would have gone to waste anyway.

As from 1st May, I have decided to try and keep a tight control over my diet with the aim of losing 7 lbs (½ stone) over the next few weeks. This is going to be established not by a rigid or a crash diet but just by being careful with my carbohydrate intake, whilst at the same time keeping my exercise levels at just above the previous level. So far (after only a few days) I am on track and am keeping my results in a little spreadsheet. I do have some historic spreadsheets where I have recorded BMI and body-fat indicators and I am stitching my recent results into this historical series (which, I must say, is rather sporadic) However, it is quite reassuring to know that I am only 2-3 lbs away from the weight that I recorded at the same time of year three years ago.

This afternoon, the highlight of my afternoon was a Skype call to one of my Hampshire friends. We have been in touch by email quite a lot over the last few weeks but have not had a face-to-face session via Skype so we thought we would make up for it today. We had a good old natter over topics more numerous to mention but after an hour and a half we felt our respective spouses might be wondering what had happened to us so we decided to call it a day. I knew that in the late afternoon, I had a job to do which had to wait until it was the relevent bin-emptying day. This was to take the canvas bag garden waste containers in which I had stored my chopped up pieces of my moribund clematis plant and dispose of the contents via my neighbour’s ‘brown bins’.  I managed to squeeze three of my four bags of clippings into two of my neighbour’s bins but they were already at least three quarters full. I was relying upon the fact that the bin belonging to the empty house across the way from our communal green area could be utilised but it looks as though the relatives of our neighbour (who died last August) had turned up to tidy up the garden, no doubt to attempt it to make it look more attractive to facilitate its sale. So it looks as though once the shopping has been done in the morning, I shall have to make a ten mile round trip to our local domestic refuse site to completely get rid of garden clippings.

A bit of breaking news which is quite significant. Last week, the High Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully by discharging untested hospital patients into care homes during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government have decided not to appeal against this ruling and therefore, it should follow, that relatives might have a claim for compensation against the government. The Government may have cynically calculated, of course, that any court case claiming compensation may well fail because of the difficulty in establishing an exact line of causation or route of infection. The Government could argue that COVID-19 could have been brought into the home by a care worker or transmitted from another resident.

Today is the day for my Pilates session so that rather dictates how we plan out our morning.It was a somewhat gloomy start but with the promise of better weather to come later in the day. Meg and I went by car to collect our newspaper and there we were quite surprised when the newsagent enquired after my five daughters.  I had to disabuse him of the fact that I had any daughters, let alone five, and I was reminded that even Mr. Bennet, the patermilias of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice only laid claim to four. I cannot for the life of me think how such an impression might have arisen apart from the fact that in the very earliest day of the pandemic my son and/or daughter-in-law used to call in at the newsagent, complete with my token, to collect the newspaper on a daily basis. Perhaps he thought that each time my daughter-in-law entered the shop, she was a different person but who can say – anyway after this revelation we journeyed on to Waitrose. We rather hoped that being a Tuesday, we might bump into one or two of our pre-pandemic Waitrose friends but it was not to be. So we made our way home and I got things prepared for the rapid lunch that we have when I return from my Pilates class. On my way back home, I made a lightning visit to my local Asda store because there are one or two things which I know can only buy there. It was frustrating to find the item that I really wanted to buy was sold out so I shall have to see that as we are on the road, we might be able to find out what we want from Waitrose in Droitwich. But whilst in the Bromsgrove store, I did manage to get one or two things that we needed. Later on this afternoon, we popped round to see our neighbours because I needed them to witness a document which they readily did and provided us with a nice cup of tea and biscuits as we were there. In the late afternoon, we always FaceTime some of our Waitrose friends and we exchange news about the sort of week we have had. Both of our friends have badly compromised immune systems so thay were incredibly cautious during the whole of the two years of lockdown that they had endured. Anyway, now they are getting out and about quite a lot more and really appreciating a taste of liberty. They gave us some advice about a local Crafts Centre complex in the locality that we intend to visit  tomorrow. We understand there are a variety of craft workshops which we can visit as well as a tearoom/restaurant so we shall have to see how it all works out.

There is quite a big political story playing out in the Unites States at the moment. One ‘achievement’ of the Donald Trump presidency was to make nominations of known right-wingers to the Supreme Court such that the balance of the Supreme Court has changed from a position of approximate equality to a conservative majority of 5:4 or even a 6:3 split on some issues. Many on the extreme right of american politics have been waiting to bring a raft of issues to the Supreme Court of which the most prominent and important is abortion but many other issues queuing up behind such as LGBT rights and some raclal equality cases. The most famous case in abortion law is Roe v. Wade which is the classic case that guaranteed abortion rights to US women for the last half century. But the conservative right have been pushing issues upwards towards the Supreme Court to facilitate it making a decision that would effectively set back abortion law to the position of at least fifty years ago. There are several states which have already passed legislation such that when Roe v Wade is nullified, their own state legislatures will immediately bring in draconian abortion laws into action. In the case of Texas, a prosecution can take place when a women is only six weeks pregant (as soon as a foetal heartbeat can be detected) and before some women even realise they are pregnant. Any citizen can initiate a prosecution and anybody even remotely involved in an abortion, e.g. a taxi driver taking a women to an abortion clinic can also be prosucuted and sued for thousands of dollars. Now to bring us up-to-date. It seems that the draft of what may be the majority opinion has been leaked, the full judgement being available in July. The draft judgement is rumoured to rule that Roe v Wade has never been constitutional and should be repealed immediately. This judgement is much more severe than anybody could possibly have projected nd the whole issue  seems likely to split the USA from top to bottom. Most of the population support the abortion provisions of Roe v Wade but the conservative right have money, a lot of the airwaves and extremely vocal advocates so a battle royal is in the making. 

The gloomy spell is continuing but we hope not for very long as the forecast for the next few days ahead indicates that a high pressure system might be heading our way from the Azores so that we have something approximating to May rather than April weather. According to the weather app on my iPhone, it was going to be cloudy and gloomy all day but no actual rain was forecast. Meg and I were just about prepared for this but no sooner had we got outside then a few splatters of rain started to fall, so we cut our losses and decided to go by car. We picked up the newspaper and then made our way to the park but even for a Bank Holiday the numbers in the park were reduced apart, of course, from the inveterate dog walkers, who like us brave the elements almost every single day. We were not surprised not to see any of our park regulars so after a chilly episode drinking our coffee we made for home where we made short work of polishing off the beef that we slow-cooked yesterday.

After lunch, we thought we would entertain ourselves a little by looking at some old films broadcast on ITV4. Whilst tuning into this channel, i saw the last five minutes of ‘Bridge over the River Kwai‘ (British POWs captured by the Japanese) and was just in time to see the denouement of the film which I vaguely remember from about sixty years ago. In this final scene, the British hero played by Alec Guiness collapses on top of the detonator which happens to blow up the bridge built by the British in Burma, just at the point where a train was crossing and evidently  plunged into the river below. I was glad not to have seen any of the preceding action because I stumbled upon the most memorable part of the film at the very end. Then Meg and I started to watch ‘Spartacus‘ (made in 1955) but this was so naff for modern tastes that we abandoned this fairly quickly. Flipping through the channels, we found a ‘Mr Bean goes on holiday‘ type of film but this was not particularly funny so we abandoned this as well. Having got to this stage in the afternoon and as the weather had brightened somewhat, I decided to go and spend some 20-30 minutes carrying on the big job of lawn edging/gully clearing. I must say this was not the most pleasant of jobs when everything was still a bit soggy but nonetheless, I made a bit of progress. ‘En route’ I took out some enormous dandelions that had established themselves in the back lawn. I have a specialist dandelion ‘rooter’ which is almost exactly like the old fashioned tack lifters but on a bigger and heavier scale. In theory, this should enable you to take out the whole of the dandelion the roots of which might extend for several inches into the earth. Sometimes, though, the dandelion root will break off half way down but at least its regenerative powers ought to have been severely compromised.  This being completed, I came in for a cup of tea and then deployed a certain amount of willpower to start off again with a series of ‘stepper’ routines to keep myself fit. The theory here is not only to reduce carbohydrate intake wheever this is possible but also to increase your exercise quotient slightly so that your body responds to these two extra demands by burning off some fat reserves. I have a particular ‘stepper routine’ video which I have used for about four years and have found very good. The video figures a yong American instructor called Kelly Anne who I think has a good instructional technique and after some warm-up exercises, you enter the main body of exercises which each take about a minute. All in all, the entire regime takes about 12 minutes and to ensure that I am in the right mind set for this, I change into the track suit bottoms which I wear for my Pilates exercises each Tuesday. Not having done these exercises for a bit, I must say that I found them somewhat on the ‘tough’ side today compared with how I found them four years ago but that is only to be expected, I suppose. I am hoping to achieve a steady but unspectactular weight loss of about 2lbs a week (a kilo per week) and at least I know I have done this all before. One factor impelling me onwards is a recent article in The Times extolling the virtues of losing ½ stone in weight so I keeping it and re-reading it every so often to keep the goal before my eyes. Earlier in the day, we have made an arrangement to have a meal with four of ex-Leicester Polytechnic colleagues and we have now found a date and time in about a couple of weeks and a location which is relatively central for all of us (Leamington Spa in a little bistro that we used in out last pre-pandemic ‘rendez-vous’)

As predicted, it was evident that we had some showers of rain during the night. As I walked down for the newspaper early on this morning, it was gloomy and a certain amount of rain was hanging in the air but not actually drizzling. Having collected the newspaper, we viewed the ‘Sophie Rayworth‘ politics programme but I must admit it seemed a bit anodyne to me. In view of the political happenings of the week when a Tory MP resigned after admitting to watching porn on his mobile phone on two occasions and subsequently resigned, I thought there might be somewhat more in-depth questionning of the moral depths to which the current Parliament seems to be sinking.  The Tory MP who has been forced by the pressure of his colleagues to resign, Neil Parish, has claimed that he was searching the web for pages concerned with tractors and in the pursuit of this, happened to stumble across the porn website. One wonders what search terms he was using because it is almost impossible to think of any natural affinities between sites showing tractors and porn sites. So even this explanation seems to be a not very convincing. Some Tory friends have rushed to his defence saying that ‘Dominator’ is the name of a popular make of tractor but I am not at all convinced. We went by car down to the park and sat on a rather soggy bench to drink our coffee  (but we do have an old tea towel to dy off the park bench on occasions such as this) Then we made our way home without tarrying a great deal.

We had plenty of time to enjoy a beef dinner this lunchtime, the beef having cooked in the slow cooker during the morning. I have to prepare an onion gravy, of course, to which slices of the cooked beef are added and we accomapnied this with baked potato and some primo cabbage. Everything was much more tasty than I would have predicted and half of the cooked beef was labelled up and going into the freezer to be eaten in a few weeks time. 

It really has been a ‘drip,drip’ of rain right throughout the day and so gardening was completely out of the question. Instead, we treated ourselves to an episode of ‘Morse’on ITV3 which occupied most of the afternoon. It is pretty evident in both the ‘Morse’ and the ‘Endeavour’ (= young Morse) series that the overarching themes always seem to centre around the powerful either in the police, local authorities, Oxford colleges and the like are eventually exposed for thir wrongdoings  but not before various attempts of the local elites to protect themselves. One wonders if the writer, Colin Dexter, was actually on a mission. One commentator had advanced the observation that ‘Dexter’s Oxford, which is the backdrop for Morse’s adventures, is the most enduring fictional representation of a UK university – perhaps any UK educational institution. It includes depictions of town as well as gown, and balances an idyllic surface by plumbing the murky depths of elitism and corruption.’  

The crisis surrounding the toxic culture in Parliament is now receiving a lot of media attention. According to the Institute for Government, the Palace of Westminster, home to the UK parliament, is a workplace as well as a cornerstone of the nation’s democracy. There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons, over 800 peers in the adjacent House of Lords, and 3,000 parliamentary staff serving both – as well as the staff employed by individual members. When you consider that the legislators themselves are greatly outnumbered by advisers, researchers, journalists, lobbyists, secretarial staff and I know not what else, then the legislators themselves seem to be outnumbered by more than two to one. Many of these will be young men and women,at the bottom of the pecking order but eager to establish a career for themselves and perhaps susceptible to advances and ‘offers’ of various kinds. Fuelling all of this are some thirty bars selling alcohol at subsidised prices. Even in the 1980s it was reckoned that some 10% MPs were alcoholics nd at least one party leader (Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader) drank himself to death. We might add to this the fact that normal ’employment laws’ do not seem to apply as MPs act as their own employers, often without the slightest idea of what is regarded as ‘normal’ relations between employer and employee. Whilst not being an apologist for all of this,one perhaps has to ask the question why there is so little sleaze and corruption in the Palace of Westminster rather than so much. Of course, there is a great feeling that we are all ‘marking time’ until the local elections have taken place on Thursday next. Being a bit of an election junkie, I am going to arm myself with several bottles of Newcastle Brown and I hope to enjoy myself when the results come rolling in early on Friday morning.

Today seemed to be one of those ‘running around’ days where I rushed from one thing to another. I went down by car to collect the newspaper even though it was a fine day. This is because we wanted to meet up with a Waitrose acquaintance way back from our pre-pandemic days. We had arranged to see her for a coffee in Waitrose because I wanted her to have some material in my possession fron a body called ‘Worcestershire Association of Carers‘.  From what our acquaintance had told us the other day, it was evident that she was having to give a lot more care and attention to her ailing husband – as I already had several leaflets and pamphlets in my possession, I thought some of the material I had might be useful to help her get ‘plugged’ into whatever networks she might find helpful.  So I was glad that we made contact and shared a few stories before I had to dash off to WH Smiths both to buy a birthday card and to get it into the postal system as soon as I could. Having selected my card I found an incredibly long queue at one of the counters. There were two counters in operation and one counter was being used to check the passport application of a couple who were getting married/re-married. Whilst their complicated  form was being processed at one counter, a queue of about 20 were waiting (impatiently) in the other queue. I decided to save time by writing the birthday card as I waited in the queue but even this became complicated as I needed to handle/juggle a parcel I needed to post, a diary with the address of former colleague within it, the card itself, its envelope and finally a stamp to transmit the whole thing. Fortunately, I managed to finish this and pop it into the post box as the queue slowly advanced through the shop. When I reached the counter, I needed to post my parcel (maps of Madrid for a former colleague who is visiting there in a week or so) and I also bought a ‘book’ of first class stamps. A first class stamp is practically £1.00 (95p actually) and the Post Office are trying to compensate for this by making the stamps bigger but also incorporating a bar code. Although I like to have a supply of first class stamps in the house on a ‘just-in-case’ basis, today I only bought the stamps that I knew I was going to actually need in the next few days. Several of my former colleagues all have their birthdays in May so I need to get myself organised to get the card buying and posting activities suitably sequenced. After all of this, I made a lightning visit round one of our local cut-price cosmetic stores to get Meg and I things we both needed and finally, I picked up Meg at the entrance to Waitrose, still  chatting. Meg and I made our way to the park and to our normal bench but we did not have our coffee flask with us as we had drunk our fill in the Waitrose café. I left Meg on the bench to see if I could locate our University of Birmingham friend in the park cafe. Fortunately, he was there and I managed to hand over a few little calculations I had done for him and wanted him to have before we both forgot. When we got home, I made up a salad by throwing together some thing I already had in stock, supplemented by a few last minute purchases at Waitrose.

Once we had done this and were settling down after our lounge, I was perusing the newspaper to see what we might watch this evening (not a lot as it turned out). The newspaper told us that it was the England v. France Rugby final of the Women’s ‘Six Nations’ both teams having undefeated before this match. So we settled down to watch this, the match only a minute or so old. The French women made a storming start and scored a try which they converted in the first few minutes. But the English women slowly started to reassert themselves and eventually won the match 24-12. It seemed that French errors, typically in the lineout contributed to their demise. The English team certainly had the maul perfected and scored several tries  after their maul and the English defence was very robust. Both England and France had a player ‘sin-binned’ for transgressions that were more technical than as a result of foul play but in the end, not even the partisan French crowd would deny that England were the better team.  

After the rugby match, I shot outside to do a little lawn edging at the font of the house. This took me about half an hour and I am going to keep on top of this if I do it the day after the main mowing is done. Then we went to church which is usual each Saturday evening and treated ourselves to a bowl of ‘good’ soup before we settled down for the evening. 

Well, today turned out to be a beautiful day and whilst a trifle cold, there was not much to spoil our enjoyment of the day. Meg and I tarried a little this morning so that we could have a chat with our domestic help who arrives every Friday. She was a little later this morning as she was taking her dog to the vet (and, incidentally, it seems to be overcoming its health problems and responding well to treatment) So we strolled down to the park and had a chat with our Italian friend down the road who was about to give her plants a bit of a watering. We got to the park about midday and fell upon our coffee and comestibles of which we were by now feeling the need. Before long, our University of Birmingham friend strolled along  and we had our usual far-ranging discussions, speculating about which parts of Spain we wanted to visit, and when. Our friend is teaching himself Spanish and is going to organise an expedition to Spain by himself where he can just sit and chat  and absrb the culture. He is thinking, and quite rightly, that the best way to really learn a language is to travel alone which forces you to interact with the culture. If you travel with a companion, then the two of you will always form a ‘bubble’ within the country that you are visiting – travelling alone forces you to interact with culture and get things like bus and rail tickets organised, meals and drinks ordered and the like. Meg and I think he is absolutely right in all of this and although it would be wonderful for us to travel together, we respect and understand our friend’s reasons for wishing to travel alone. Then a surprise was sprung upon us-  our friend had acquired a cake cooked by his 92-year old mother-in-law but he is trying to cut down on his consumption of cakes and the like so he wondered if we would like it. We accepted it gratefully as we could regard it as an advance birthday present (in less than two weeks time) To help us transport the cake home, our friend gave us a lift home which, again, was gratefully received and we said we would meet again tomorrow to discuss some other matters of mutual interest. Whilst at home, we cooked our by now conventional meal on Friday which is smoked hake baked in the oven. Our domestic help who loves smoked fish shared a smidgeon of this with us  and we also helped us to a little, advance portion of the cake we had just received.

Being a creature of habit, Friday afternoon is time allocated for the weekly mow of about 250 m² of our communal lawns at the front of the house and approximately half of that for our lawns at the back. I preceded my main mow with a quick flash of the edge overhanging  the gullied area with  the ultra light hand mower. This adds only about 5 minutes to the overall cutting time and ensures the grass is cut right to its edge. The main mowing proceeded to plan and, as it was so warm, I even needed to take my gardening jacket off. When I had finished, my neighbour who was toddling about in his own garden, wandered over and gave me a few complimentary words about how well the overgrown and troublesome clematis had been disposed of. By this time, it was time for tea so we popped in and treated ourselves to some fruit and ice cream.

I have been wondering over last few days whether the identity of the Tory MP who has been ‘caught’ viewing porn on his mobile in the Commons Chamber will be revealed – if not by the (female) Tory MPs who witnessed his viewing or by part of the ‘sisterhood’ if one of the Tory MPs had communicated with her one of non-Tory brethren. Tonight, the identity of the male Tory MP in question has actually been revealed – a certain Neil Parish, who is the MP for Tiverton and Honiton. I must say, though, that the way the MP is being treated by the press so far is quite extraordinary. A male Sky News reporter started his questionning of the MP with the question (or something similar to it) ‘I wonder if you came across the porn site and opened the file by accident‘ to which the ever-grateful MP responded ‘Well, yes, it was an accident…‘  One cannot imagine that a non-Tory MP would get such a lenient and sympathetic tone of questionning, nor can I imagine that a female journalist would come up with a similar tone of questionning. However, no doubt, the satirical programmes broadcast late on a Friday evening wil have a field day and I am also looking forward to what ‘NewsNight’ has to say on BBC2 (hopefully, one of their female presenters)

It was remarkably colder today – I suppose we have got quite used to the almost balmy spring days in the last week or so and hence it comes as a bit of a shock to the system when the weather drifts remarkably colder, which it will for the next few days. Thursday is my shopping day so, as usual, I got to the supermarket about one minute before opening time but I did allow myself a quick perusal of both ceramic planters and clematis in case we eventually decide to replace our moribund clematis plant with a new one. By the time I had got the shopping unpacked, we were running a little late so  Meg and I decided to make our visit down to town by car. Once we had collected the newspaper, we installed ourselves upon our usual park bench in an almost empty park. As it was pretty cold and I had a job to be done this afternoon, we decided not to linger but made our way to the parked car. As we wandered along, we remarked to each other that we had not seen our Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker for several days now but as we got near our car, he hove into view. It transpired that he had recently had a dose of COVID- paradoxically, he may have been exposed to the virus whilst he attended a busy doctor’s waiting room as he was attending the clinic for his second booster (4th jab in total). He had experienced a few mild symptoms and one of his eyes had been somewhat affected but taking one thing ith another, it had not set him back too much. However, it did explain why we had not seen him in the park for several days.

When we got home it was only about 1.00pm so I decided to make a start on removing the big old clematis root, now that I had got the whole of the old plant snipped into little pieces and ready to be disposed of. I have a particularly good spade for this particular job which i think I had inherited from Meg’s father. It is a ‘Spear and Jackson’ and goes by the rather quaint name of ‘Neverbend’ but it does have the virtue of having a pretty hefty iron shaft. A quick look on the web reveals that this brand name for the spade is still in use and users claim to have massively abused their gardening tool but it has withstood all rigours over the decades. I wanted my trusty old spade to cut through tree (or rather shrub) roots and I had recently  sharpened it  so it should have been up to the job. Indeed it was and the old huge stump came out in about ten minutes of concentrated effort. I then sawed it in half to aid its disposal and spent a fair amount of time disposal of a huge quantity of dead leaves that had been left behind. I think I will sink my yet-to-be acquired ceramic planter so that it sits in the hole left by the old root and I have also left some of the support wires and hooks in the wall so that I can quickly support the new clematis as and when it is needed.

Immediately after lunch, our hairdresser was due to call but she was delayed by about half and hour. By the time Meg and I were shorn, we decided to have a rather lazy afternoon so I devoted myself to writing a few emails and then to a good read of the newspaper.  

This Thursday, Parliament is due to be ‘prorogued’ i.e. this session of Parliament is brought to a close and then a new parliament will open with a Queens Speech on May 10th. No business can be carried over from the current Parliament to the next, so any legislation which is only half way through the process is, I believe, lost. When the new Parliament commences, there will be a ‘Queens Speech’ (written for her by ministers) delivered in the House of Lords, where the members of the Commons have to crowd in to whatever spaces are available. But what is significant at this time of the parliamentary timetable is that the Government has to really make up its mind and decide what legislation will be brought forward in the next session of Parliament and will therefore be announced in the Queens Speech. But whilst Parliament appears to be in abeyance, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. Most importantly, of course, are the elections to be held next Thursday. Also several scandals are rumbling on, of which one is the Conservative MP recently discovered to have been watching porn whilst in the House of Commons chamber.  Some other MP’s (female Tory MPs) know who that MP is but given the rumour mill at Westminster, will the identity of the Tory MP leak out (before Election Day?)