As yesterday was dull, rainy and blustery so today was almost the exact reverse. We awoke today to a frosty scene in which cars had to have a certain amount of the ‘hot water poured from a watering can’ regime to make sure that we could unfreeze the car locks (and retractable mirrors) before we could set off for our weekly food shopping. Today I went to the smaller of the two Aldi stores that we have here in Bromsgrove and was queuing outside the door at one minute to eight before the store opened its doors at 8.00am promptly. I must say that I felt quite pleased with my shopping experience here today as I managed to get every item that I felt that we needed and with no omissions. Doing things in this particular fashion means that I am somewhat faster overall and I think the cost for the six bags of shopping was probably only purchased for about two thirds of the cost of their equivalent at Waitrose. Once we had got the shopping all put away, it was time to get ourselves ready for our little trip out today. We had decided to visit a little market town of Alcester which has a population of about 7,000 and is reputed to have a pretty High Street and some excellent charity shops. Meg and I got there some time before 12.00pm amd immediately set about finding ourselves a coffee shop where we could have some cappuchino and, hopefully, some toasted tea cakes. This is when the fun and games started as the shop had invested in a new microwave oven which was evidently hypersensitive and at the touch of a hat the residual cicuit breaker would trip plunging us all into darkness. Actually, a long time ago, Meg had and I had a microwave that kept doing this and it was particularly frustrating if you happened to have the computer running as your work was liable to be lost (at best) or files corrupted (at worst). In the event, after a couple of such blackouts, our toasted teacake duly arrived but we had no idea we were going to spread so much mayhem in our wake. Well, our friend who told us that Alcester was full of good quality charity shops was certainly not wrong. I bought a glass ovenware dish that I think will complement our range of other ovenware cookware. But then in another shop I espied what I thought would be an excellent and stylish three-quarter length coat for Meg which I think be excellent for our daily trips down into town, particularly as the weather is now improving. We did a quick ‘try on’ in the shops to make sure that all of the crucial zips were still in working order and then completed our purchase. We then had a quick flash around other shops, including one of those hardware shops that seems to stock everything and you suddenly realise that you might utilise a thingamabob which the store stocks. In our peregrination up and down the High Street, we had espied a place where we might lunch and this was an old coaching inn that were offering two course meals at special prices for pensioners. Meg and I are not proud in this respect so we ordered a meal of roasted vegetables lasagne (for Mike) and a spinach and ricotta pasta (for Meg), both served with a very good salad and some coleslaw. These meals were absolutely delicious and we asked our waitress if she could also let us have a serving spoon so that when we were a certain way through our meals we could do share each other’s meal. Then we treated ouselved to some baked sponges (typical nursery food) served with either with cream, ice-cream or custard. A couple of these two course meals cost us £20 so I do wonder whether at this price, considering the costs of food preparation and service, whether we are getting to meals at practically a cost price. Feeling replate by now, we decided to return home which was just as well because the weather had darkened and we had certainly had the best of the day.

Yesterday, at the end of a press conference, President Jo Biden  promised an extra $800 million in military aid which brings the total delivered or promised this week to $1 billion. As he was leaving the press conference and in an apparently ‘off the cuff’ remark, Jo Biden called Putin a ‘war criminal’. What had prompted Biden’ s remark was the fact that a theatre in Mariupol housing more than 1,000 women and children and with the words ‘Children’ (in Russian) clearly marked outside had just been flattened by Russian rockets. Although there are some survivors, it is hard to know at this stage the even approximate numbers of survivors.  Now whether this is objectively a ‘war crime’ or not, it is interesting to speculate whether it is politicaly useful or inept, to decribe Putin as a war criminal. Putin has reacted with absolute fury – which may not be helpful if the final negotiations between Russia and the Ukraine are at a particularly delicate stage.

Today turned out to be wet and windy – just as the weather forecasters had predicted but unpleasant enough to be sure. We did have plans to go out to one of the small neighbouring towns but it was not the kind of weather for strolling up and down a place you do not really know so we quickly bandoned those plans. Instead, we decided to go back to our usual haunts of a trip to Droitwich and then we got there, we made for our usual coffee shop and treated ourselves to coffee and scones – scones are not really my thing when I am trying to count the carbs but their teacakes had failed to arrive this morning. Then we went round Wilko which is always a pleasure. I managed to buy a replacement for an ‘Anglepoise’ style lamp which bit the dust the other day. Its replacement is a small but beautifully designed little spot light in a dove grey which completely lights up the dull corner of my deak and cost me the princely sum of £6.50 (which is about half the price of its nearest competitors such as Asda and even Argos) Other purchasers seem to have given it glowing reviews (if these are to be believed) but so far, it absolutely needs my needs  and according to the blurb on the side of the led bulb box, the bulbs should last for an average of 25,000 hours (11-12 years of use if I have it on for 6 hours a day).

The news today has been dominated by news other than from the Ukraine. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a British-Iranian woman who has been in jail in Iran for six years. Her husband has campaigned tirelessly for her release but the Iranians have been hanging onto her for years on a variety of trumped up charges in an attempt to get the UK to pay a long-standing debt. This is a historic £400m debt for tanks bought by the Iranians but not delivered (in the days of the Shah of Iran) For years, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) claimed the two issues (of the unpaid debt and the gaol sentence handed out to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe) were not connected. But in practice, the Iranians made them one and the same issue.  Some in the FCDO had wanted to pay the debt but were prevented initially by reluctance within the Treasury and the United States, fearing it would reward hostage-taking and even fund terrorism. So this good news has largely crowded even the Ukraine war.

There are some indications this evening that the Russians and Ukrainians may be having ‘serious’ peace talks with each other. With Moscow’s ground advance on the Ukrainian capital stalled, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being ‘seriously discussed’ by the two sides. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s demands for ending the war were becoming ‘more realistic’. According to the Financial Times, a 15-point plan to end the fighting has been drawn up. This includes a ceasefire and a Russian withdrawal, with Kyiv having to accept neutrality and curbs on its armed forces. Citing three sources involved in the negotiations, the FT said Ukraine would have to give up its bid to join NATO – something Mr Zelenskyy has already hinted at. Of course, it would not be the first time that negotiations have started, appear to be progressing and then break down. There was also the reaction broadcast on Radio 4 this morning  that sometimes both sides, even in a severe conflict, may find it in their interests to ‘pause’ or having a temporary ceasefire if only to resupply and this despite the negotiations going on above their heads.There seems to be a tacit acknowledgment that the Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO is now ‘off the table’ and I am sure that the degree of autonomy to be given to the two Russian speaking areas will be contentious in the extreme.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that the number of today’s blog is 730 i.e. exactly twice 365 or a complete two years of blog. So this blog started when as a society we were just about to start on the very first lockdown and one has to reflect that we have had quite a significant couple of years. In fact, the everyday news of the pandemic seemed to end on one day and the war in Ukraine started on the next. I do get the feeling that like those kaleidoscope puzzles that you shake and then all of the pieces end up in a different configuration, one has almost the same feelings about the current world order. For example. Germany has made an immense shift in its own foreign policy and is now going to sepnd a much higher proportion of its GDP on armaments – no doubt reasoning that with Russia in its present leadership this is no time for pacific sentiments.

Well, today has been quite an interesting day what with one thing or another.  Again, like yesterday, it was a beautiful day and Meg and I walked to the paper shop, calling in at Waitrose en route to collect some supplies. Then we made our way to the park where we were pleased  to have a sit down and to enjoy a little more spring sunshine. We knew that we did not have to tarry too long as Tuesday is my day for my weekly Pilates session so we set off for home in plenty of time. On the way home, though, we bumped into our Italian friend and we had quite a long chat, mainly discussing the practicalities of hosting a Ulrainian refugee family. I told our Italian friend about the ‘Cake Sale’ being organised on Friday by one of the large insurance companies in the town and Meg and I will no doubt go down there (even though cake is not really ‘our thing’) and I wonder who else we will bump into when we get there. The chat with our friend made me a little late for my Pilates class so I really had to put my skates on to get myself turned out and ready for the class. On my way down, there was some surveying work going on along the pavements along the Kidderminster Road and I suspected that the firm was using ground penetrating radar or other types of instrumentation to determine the cables buried beneath the surface. But what was so remarkable was the variety of colours of both spray paint and chalk there were being used to indicate the type of cables and their location. I counted six different colours of paint that were being utilised (white, yellow, blue, green, orange and red) and the pavement rather looked as though a gaggle of primary school children had been let loose to do their best. In fact, when the work started yesterday, I asked one of the operatives whether they had been deprived of coloured crayons when they were a child and hence they had now got themselves into a job where they could spray away to their heart’s content.

On the way down to my Pilates class, I called in at an ATM in the wall of the Asda supermarket which is on the way to the location where my class is held. I requested that the ATM dispense £200 and my card was accepted and then returned to me. Then a message came up which indicated that my cash was being counted and after an indeterminable time grinding some sort of mechanism, I waited for my cash in vain. After what seemed to be an eternity, a message came out to say the machine could not comply with my request but had I just lost my £200? Either the ATM had run out of cash or it was malfunctioning but there was no way of knowing which of these possiblities it was. The supermarket actually has two ATMs adjacent to each other and I managed to get the cash that I needed from the neighbouring machine. Then it was off to Pilates and my class before I walked home – but evidently whether or not I had just been deprived of £200 was preying on my mind. So when I got home, I immediately got onto my internet banking to discover that the first machine had indeed debited my account – but then another system had reinstated the money when it failed to dispense the cash. I suppose that this is the system working as it should but I have to say that having used ATMs for about 25 yers or so now, I have never had the experience such as I have experenced today. It really is one’s worst nightmare when the cash fails to appear but I suppose they have to run out of cash every so often and perhaps many people have this type of experience before – but not me.

There was an incredible happening on Channel One of the Russian state broadcaster. During a live broadcast on Monday evening, Marina Ovsyannikova, who is thought to have worked for the company for years, walked on to the set behind the presenter with a placard denouncing the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Following a court hearing, she was fined 30,000 roubles (£213), state media reported. It is not clear if she will face other, more serious charges over the protest because, in theory, she could spend the next 15 years of her life in gaol.

There is a hint tonight that the Ukrainian negotiating team may be prepared to buy peace by abandoning Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO. But, when the war ends, if Ukraine as an independent nation gets itself armed to the teeth and acquires a superb air defence system, perhaps it doesn’t need to join NATO at all. The Russians are not going to invade a well armed and prepared Ukraine on a second occasion, after all, if they eventually withdraw with a bloodied nose.

Today was the most beautiful fine day and we looked forward very much to a pleasant stroll in the sunshine.  On our way down, we were pleased to run into our Irish friend from down the road and we chatted for a bit about church matters and a tooth her husband was going to have extracted, which occasioned him having to undertake a COVID test. This involves going to Worcester Royal some 14 miles away which is always a bit of a pain. But to alleviate the absolutely horrendous carparking provision in the hospital, one has to drive up to a special COVID pod and all of the procedures are done through the open car window which makes a lot of sense to every one concerned. We went on our way and called in at the newsagents where there was a notice in the window displaying the fact that a large insurance company that occupies a very prominent position in the town was going to organise a ‘cake sale’ with the proceeds going to the Ukrainian relief fund. The newsagent and I chatted about this and we were delighted that a communal effort was going in in the town. Meg chatted to his wife who was just leaving the shop and she was explaining that her daughter, who she had not seen for two years, had just completed a flying visit from Los Angeles and had just returned to the States. We go to the park and the fine weather seemed to bring out lots of our park acquaintances. In particular, we had quite a long chat with a lady who had an incredibly friendly ‘working collie’.  I have subsequently discovered that a ‘working collie’ is a dog bred not to be a pet as such but to a ‘working sheep dog’.  I now know that to become a fully accredited working sheep dog is quite a long and arduous process where the dog in question has to exhibit various skill levels. The dog that we met in the park was insistent that we throw the ball as far away as we could so that the ball could be retrieved and dropped at our feet waiting for the next throw – you could spent all morning doing this. As we sitting in the pleasant spring sunshine, we were passed by a goodly number of our regular park acquaintances – we evidently all appreciated the beautiful weather. In the park, the flowering cherry trees are in almost full bloom ad the weeping willows next to them are coming into their greenery so the two types of trees complement each other well. Then we progressed home and had a lunch consisting of the ham cooked yesterday and a mélange of vegetables cooked today.

In the afternoon, I needed to devote a certain amount of time to get my accounts into order. This is because at this time of the month I have some payments flowing in and several more designed to flow out again so I need to ensure that my various records and spreadsheets are duly updated. This seemed to go fairly effortlessly and I was pleased to get it done for another month.

The latest news from the Ukraine, despite the tightening of the Russian noose around the Ukrainian neck, is showing some slight signs of hope. There is another round of Ukraine-Russia negotiations underway today, via a video conference and the Ukrainians were presssing for a cease fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and some security guarantees for Kyiv. On a somewhat more positive note, a total of 10 humanitarian corridors have opened in the Ukraine today. It is hoped that an aid convoy could relieve the stricken, shelled city of Mariupol after days of failed attempts.It is understood, though, that some 2,5000 have died in Mariupol since the Russian invasion and the whole city seems to be without power, water and food in the middle of a Ukranian winter. People are so desparate for water that there are reports that frantic inhabitants are opening up their radiator systems to get access to the fluid circulating inside (which, if you have ever seen it, is black and iron oxides contaminated) The latest reports tonight have indicated that a relief convoy into Mariupol has failed yet again but a convoy of about 160 cards managed to leave the stricken city during a two-hour break in the hostilities. The news from around Kviv is that the Russians have laid waste to a string of small towns to the north of the Ukrainian capital. Their tactics may be to ‘clear’ these areas before starting a final sweep into the Ukrainian capital.

At home, Michael Gove has announced a scheme, already trailed in the media yesterday, that there will be a scheme offering £350 a month to anyone offering accommodation to Ukranian refugees. Government sources later said, as of 6.30pm on Monday, 20,000 people had already signed up to offer their homes to Ukrainians. This included 1,500 people registering to offer support within the first hour of the website going live on Monday afternoon.

Today being a Sunday, I got up fairly early and had a quick snack of one of those ‘instant’ sachets of porridge that can be prepared in two minutes in the microwave. Then it was off, just after 8am in order to get our copy of the Sunday Times before I get back to watch the Sunday Morning (politics) programme from 9-10. Meg and I breakfasted and then slowly wandered down to the park, being in no particular hurry this morning. Then we met up with our two friends and treated ourselves to a cappuchino and a slice of toast with a mountain of grated cheese on it which the cafe does rather well and cheaply. We chatted on a variety of social and political issues, as is our wont, before the wind started to get the better of us and we judged it time to go home. I had a gammon joint cooking gently away in the slow cooker at home, so lunch was fairly easy to prepare. After lunch, I was prepared for a nice lazy afternoon but it turned out not to be. I have over my desk one of those ‘Anglepoise’ lights, popular in the 1970’s but less so nowadays, whose great virtue was that it was adjustable to almost any height or oientation that you wanted – very useful if you were engaged in a tricky little job. Anyway, I noticed that the fitment inside the shade had loosened and there was no way it could be evidently tightened up. As any bulb was at a crazy angle the whole thing was a heat and appliance disaster and I felt that it had to go. The trouble was that the extended flex went round round the back of a filing cabinet and god knows what other things I had stored around the filing cabinet so it almost took a reconstruction of my study to get the whole flex located and removed. It gave me the opportunity of a mini tidy-up and I discovered one or two things that might come into useful to me now that I know where they are. Then I started work on the light itself to see if I could perform a quick repair on it or not. The answer is that after an hour, I came to the conclusion it was not reparable and decided to salvage some bits of pieces. Everything semed so engineered, though – even the flex extender I had put on it to give me  an extra long flex had four screws on one side and two on the other, so even this took some time to deconstruct. So a quiet afternoon ended up with screwing myself into incredibly tight corners and then doing a lot more sorting out and tidying up than I had bargained for. So I am looking forward to a quiet evening.

The news from the Ukraine is simultaneously horrifying but, at the same time, there is some prospect of peace. The Russians really do seem to be tightening their grip on several cities and they are getting ‘all of their ducks in a row’ before threatening Kyiv itself. However, the slightly more optimistic reports of negotiations indicate that the Russians are adopting a more constructive attitude – perhaps they are beginning to realise that hnd-to-hand fighting street by street is not what they had anticipated. Perhaps they are also realising that ‘capturing’ cities in the Ukraine is one thing but holding them quite another thing altogether. For example, in one town where they had arrested the local mayor and installed one of their own, they had not anticipated thousands of people coming out on the streets, unarmed and standing in front of their tanks to demand the release of their mayor. Also, the Russians must also realise that an anti-war movement can only grow in Russia itself nd the prospect of another Afghanistan and the prospect of an eventual ignominious retreat is bringing them to the negotiating table. There is some optimistic talk that talks leading to a settlement could be arrived at ‘within days’ but, of course, there is often a false dawn before we can allow ourselves to be optimistic.

Meanwhile the goernment is to announce a policy tomorrow in which it looks as though individuals will be offered £350.00 a month for members of the great British public  to provide some accommodation for refugees from the Ukraine. It will be fascinating to see if these ideas come to fruition and how many places are actually forthcoming. The interesting thing about all of this is that it appears that the public is way ahead of the government in this and takes a relaxed view about large but short-term immigration from the Ukraine as the horrors of the crisis have made a deep impact on public opinion. It also looks as though Priti Patel (Home Secretary) who theoretically is in charge of all immigration issues is being completely sidelined by Michael Gove. One does wonder if some members of the government are quite happy to ‘diss’ some of their cabinet colleagues

Today dawned nice and bright so Meg and I after breakfasting at our leisure prepared to walk down slowly into town to enjoy a bit of spring sunshine and get our exercise done. We had a loose arrangement to meet with our regular couple of friends outside the park cafe and so we all enjoyed a sit-down in the pale spring sunshine, which was quite a change from the rainy day of yesterday. Whilst Meg was sitting with our friends having a coffee, I took the opportunity to walk quickly the remaining distance to the newspaper shop to pick up the Saturday edition of The Times which, apart from other things, contains a good guide to all of the TV and radio programmes in the week ahead. We spent a pleasant half hour or so in the company of our friends and also had chats with another couple and a park regular who we had not seen for a few days now. Once we had put the world to rights again, we all took our leave of each other knowing that we would be at home in plenty of time to watch the ‘Six Nations‘ rugby matches which were scheduled for the early and the late afternoon. The first of these matches was Scotland vs. Italy and I do not think we had great expectations of it. Nonetheless, although Scotland always seemed likely to win the match, which they did with some degree of ease, nonetheless the Italians played with a great deal of flair and imagination. They brought on a young winger who obviously had a lot of talent and upon his debut he managed to ‘wriggle through’ and score a couple of tries, which is quite something for Scotland. One has to remember that they went through the match wih Englnd without scoring a single point so to score a couple of tries in the second half was no mean feat for them. The really ‘juicy’ match this afternoon is going to be the England-Ireland match which I cannot see Englnd winning. This match (or rather the second half of it) exactly coincides with our attendance at church on a late Saturday afternoon so we have got our PVR set up to record this and we can watch this after we get home. We will also be looking forward to our homemade root vegetable soup which I made a couple of days ago and which, as it contains no preservatives, we like to consume within a couple of days of it being made.

There is a sort of interesting potential development in the Russia-Ukraine war this afternoon. Apparently, the Israelis are having some success in getting the two sides togther and not just grandstanding with each other, which has been the story hitherto. I suppose the Israelis have plenty of experience of occupying neighbouring territories and the problems thrown up by this – given the exodus of some Jews from Russia to Israel, I suppose they have a fair number of fluent Russian speakers who might have some skills in delicate negotiations so, although it is clutching at straws time again, this may be a glimmer of hope for the end of the conflict.

After we got back from church we  we had some of our homemade soup and then settled down to ‘watch’ the England v. Ireland rugby match. However, this turned out to be incredibly frustrating experience as we manged to get the vision part of the transmission but the sound channels was completely garbled. We were on the point of abandoning this altogether and decided to cut pur losses and watched a pre-recorded version of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ but again, we got no sound. So we turned the control back to TV and then back onto the AV and suddenly the sound came back. So we started watching the rugby again from the beginning but after about 30 minutes, the same old problem started to recur. So we stopped the whole lot, fast-forwarded to the interval and now it started to work again. So all of this was an incredibly frustrating experience and I do now know whether the fault lies with our VCR or whether there was a problem with the quality of the trasnmitted signal that out VCR couldn’t cope with. We are going to see if we can see most of the second half but are not particularly hopeful.

The application to examine listing of files in their folders in the MAC operating system is called ‘Finder‘ and this has its frustrations – for example, if you have copied over a whole group of files, then Finder does not always update itself correctly. I downloaded a free app from the Apple App Store called ‘Commander One‘ Their ‘Help’ screen is interesting as it states ‘For all those who’ve been longing for a dual-panel file manager for Mac, we did our best to stay close to Windows classics, and did it with all the affection to OS X users‘. I have not had much opportunity to play with this but at first sight, it seems to be just what I want i.e. a source screen on the left (the MacBook’s hard disk) and a second screen on the right (destination screen of your backup) and it is very easy to transfer files from one pane to the other. I think it also has an FTP capability but this I will have to explore when I have more time.

Today was a dismal day but we did not mind too much because it was the day when our domestic help calls around and we are always glad to have a chat and a catch up on the week’s news. But through the post this morning, I received another flash drive which is the same size as the SSD in my McBook (a measly 128GB) so I rapidly reformatted it to the MAC formatting system and then got it to work making a backup of all of my transient (non-App) files. This was going to take it about an hour and somewhat more so I just let it get on with it whilst I had breakfasted and then showered. As the day was so showery, Meg and I had a think (but not for long) and decided to go down into town by car. So we collected our newspaper and then set off for the cafe in the park where we anticipated that we would meet with our two regular friends. This proved to be the case and in no time at all we were discussing big geo-politics. Should Estonia be admitted to Nato and was it a good idea to admit the Baltic states to Nato and so on. Of course, the over-riding question to all of this is to determine if there is a point at which ‘the West’ feels compelled to challenge Putin’s Russia directly although the risks of a third World War and a nuclear confrontation are increased considerably. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the country has reached a ‘strategic turning point’ in the conflict, and that he is convinced Ukraine can win. He also accused Russia of deploying Syrian mercenaries into Ukraine, following Vladimir Putin’s invitation for volunteers to fight for the country. Meanwhile, there are several reports that are indicating that drones are being successfully used to attack Russian supply lines and 2-3 Russian commanders were killed in the last day or so. Also, the Ukrainians are very successfully utilising some not so subtle propaganda when they capture any Russian soldiers who are usually conscripts. The first thing they do is to put a mobile phone in the young conscript’s hands and say ‘Phone your mother and tell her where you are and what you have been doing‘  This is proving to be quite an effective tactic as it means that information not provided by the Russian state is going straight into the families and communities from which the young conscripts come and this is certainly helping to fuel whatever counter-culture there is in Russian society at the moment. 

And now for domestic political news – although not a  million miles away from the Ukrainian conflict. I think it is fair to say the UK response to accepting refugees from the Ukraine has been laggardly, bureaucratic and quite frankly inhumane. We are requiring that refugees have passports and then must travel from Calais to Lille or to Paris or to Brussels to get a visa having submitted a long application form and supplied their biometric data. Practically every other European society are allowing the refugees in instantly and indicate they will get the paperwork sorted out later. But the  UK is insisting that everyone supplies a visa and biometrics in case terrorists use the crisis to ‘sneak’ into the UK. Two sources told Sky News that Mr Johnson, his new chief of staff Steve Barclay and Number 10 head of policy Andrew Griffith have been cautious about opening up routes for Ukrainians to come in large numbers without full checks. ‘The problem is Number 10 – the PM and Steve Barclay – who are personally slapping this down,’ said a source. A Tory source said that some people in Number 10 have been more hardline on migration issues than many expected, and it was unfair that Ms Patel was getting the blame. It does seem almost unbelievable that Priti Patel’s suggestions for more humanitarian approaches are being slapped down. There has been some reluctant liberalisation announced day by day and the latest sitution is that one cn apply online (assuming, of course, that you can supply biomtrics and passpports online). It really does seem that our present Home Office throws up every (bureaucratic) obstacle it can think of to allow more Ukrnians to enter the country but the media are already focussing upon the cruelties involved in the system – asking a blind, 80 year old mother who have never used the internet to travel to Lille or to Paris and wait there for days until an application for a visa is accepted or rejected.  To illustrate the problem, then about 760 visas have been granted under the Ukraine Family Scheme, with 22,000 applications ‘on their way through’. This represents less than 3.5% of the total eligible. Home Secretary Priti Patel was asked multiple questions about the UK’s handling of Ukrainian refugees at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, a government source said, with everyone said to be raising concerns. As one cabinet minister is reported to have said ‘The process isn’t necessarily going as fast as it could be. Is the Home Office the right department to be running this? Not sure’ If I were a cartoonist I would certainly draw a cartoon of Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus in their flight into Egypt being turned back at the border because they did not have a visa.

Thursday is my shopping day and so, in theory, I should have got up in plenty of time to get to the supermarket as it opened at 8am in the morning. But I overslept a little and it was practically 9.00 am when I arrived at the supermarket but it seemed pretty uncrowded at that hour in the morning so I was not too unhappy to be an hour later than planned. Today I was trying an experiment which was to go the smaller of the two Aldi stores that we have here in Bromsgrove and also to go round the store without the benefit of a list. Taking one thing with another, I think that both of these strategies worked as I intended. Without a list, there was less chasing about the store looking for one particular item. Also, the fact that the store is quite compact means less overall trailing up and down. As it turned out, there was one or two items that I could not find or they did not stock but I can always rely upon the Waitrose at the bottom of the road to remedy any deficiencies. Whilst I was out, I also collected the newspaper and this means that when we eventually walk to the park, there is a slightly less long walk for Meg to cope with. So after the shopping was unpacked, Meg and I went on our customary walk and the weather was almost springlike with the flowering cherry starting to blossom in various places and other shrubs and trees ready to burst into life at a moment’s notice. It was fairly late when we got back so we had a somewhat delayed lunch of quiche.

This afternoon, we had three pleasant surprises to brighten up our afternoon. The first of these was the fact that I had ordered yesterday a 64Gb micro memory card – I nearly always tend to buy SanDisk cards as they have a 10 year warranty upon them which is good enough for me. As this was cheap enough, I also bought a microSD card reader which plugs into one of the USB3 ports in my MacBook. This, in effect, gives me the facility of an additional card reader on my MacBook and I have already made a backup of my usual working files. The second pleasant surprise was that my sister called me on the phone and we converted this into a FaceTime call between my sister and Meg and I. We exchanged news as to how we were  both coping on a day-to-day level and my sister seem to be getting her ‘act together’ in seeing neighbours. She is talking about getting a mobility scooter when the spring advances a little and I think this is an excllent idea. I am trying to encourage my sister, despite her mobility difficulties, to do what she can to maximise social contacts as a way of counteracting the loneliness she undoubtedly feels after the death of her husband. The third good thing to happen this afternoon was that we were preparing to eat out little bit of supper in front of the TV, the doorbell rang and it was our next door neighhbour distributing some hot apple crumble and cream that she had just dished up and wanted to share with us ( a sort of ‘Meals on Wheels’) We did not have the time to have a chat on the doorstep but it was a most wonderful,and neighbourly, act to look after the ‘old folks’ next door.

Talking about the ‘person next door’ the house that had belonged to our neighbour, across the way from our communal green area, has been up for sale since the death of our neighbour last August. It has on the market with the ‘Purple Bricks’ estate agency and although there is undoubtedly a presence online, we have not observed anyone coming around to confirm their ‘online’ views with a site inspection. As of yesterday, though, we noticed that a ‘Sold’ sign had just been affixed to the board and today we did notice a couple of largish vehicles were paying a visit to the bungalow. So it looks as though in the fullness of time, we shall be expecting some new neighbours. I suspect that it may be a month or so yet until people move in as in all probability the house has been bought in order to secure it and as there is no onwards chain, the vendors will be disposing of their current property before moving into their new one.

In the Ukraine, the artillery attacks on the Ukraine cities seems relentless. Some are arguing that the Russians have derived their tactics from their conflict in Syria where at least one city, Aleppo, was systematically flattened. On the other hand, the Ukrainians seem to be having some success when it comes to ‘taking out’ strategic parts of the convoy of miliary vehicles (as in north of Kyif) when they come across them.

Wednesday is a generally a day free of other commitmnts for us and is therefore a good day to enjoy a day out. We determined a few days ago that if the weather was to be reasonably fine, we would make a little trip out to Evesham. So after we had had breakfasted at some leisure, we set out for Evesham which we have not visited from way before the pandemic so it must be at least three years ago now. When I consulted one of my trusty road maps to give myself an overview of the road systems, Evesham lies at the opposite corner of a parallelogram from Bromsgrove so we could basically choose an easterly route or a westerly route, the difference in timing and miles being minimal. We chose a westerly route which turned out not to be ideal. We had been making reasonable progress until we had come to one of the villages through which we had to pass to get to Evesham but the road was entirely blocked so we sent on quite a long diversion to get into the town by another route. We got parked reasonably centrally once we remembered the layout of the town- by this time, it was getting a little late so instead of seeking out a place for a late coffee we decided to cut our losses and make for an early lunch. We walked down the high street which we vaguely remembered and then espied an Italian restuarant in which we recall having had a magnificent meal, probably the last time that we visited. As we approached it, we realised with some dismay that it was only open in the evenings and at lunchtime on Fridays or Saturdays. One can sort of understand this – often better restaurants do not have a lunchtime opening and last time we came, perhaps we had struck lucky and come on a Friday.  So we progressed down the main street and came across another place which was evidently serving both coffees and light lunches. So we entered and ordered a risotto which was pretty good once it arrived. It contained salmon as the principal ingredient and was garnished well with watercress but had a lightly poached egg served on the top of it which seemed an excellent idea (as the egg overflowed into the rice once you started to eat the dish) I thought this was a good idea so I have ‘filed it away’ in my mind to do this the next time we cook a rissotto for ourselves. I used to do this about once a week but have got out of the habit since I am trying to minimise carbs when I can. After lunch, we strolled around the old buildings which constitute Evesham Abbey and its surrounding buildings. But by this stage, the wind had really intensified so we did not stay overlong but reminded ourselves of he magnifient view over the park which runs down towards the river (Avon). The last time we were here, we seemed to remember it was a brilliantly hot summer day which is when the park can be appreciated at its best. We viewed the memorial to the burial place of Simon de Montfort which we remembered as having a prime location. Simon de Montfort’s parliament of 1265 is sometimes referred to as the first representative English parliament, because of its inclusion of both the knights and the burgesses, and de Montfort himself is often regarded as the founder of the House of Commons. So the specially constructed memorial stone had been formally opened/re-opened by the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1965. As it happens, I remember the date of 1965 well as it was the 700th anniversary of the founding of the Parliament. I was working in the reference department of the Central Office of Information, in London, and we were beseiged with whatever information we could uncover to feed to the world’s press at the time. This was quite an eventful year because it was also the year in which Winston Churchill died which occasioned another feeding frenzy from the world’s press.

My observations of the last few days concerning the donation of Mig fighter aircraft from Poland to the Ukraine via the Americans now seems to have been unduly optimistic. Basically, the Americans are refusing to ‘play ball’ with this proposal arging that the plan was ‘untenable’. Evidently, the USA feels that this whole gesture might be seen as a hostile act by NATO and might occasion a Russian attack on NATO which would almost certainly be the start of WWIII. Meanwhile, the stories emanating from the Ukraine are equally horrific. It seems that the power has been cut to the crippled Chernobyl reactor which could mean that the ‘normal’ cooling processes of the radioactive waste become less viable. The even more horrific event is the shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol in which it looks as though newly born infants (and presumably their mothers)  will have been buried alive in the rubble. One could not think of a clearer example of a war crime than this.

Today is my Pilates day so to some extent, this dictates how the day is going to shape up. It seemed to be quite a fine morning although a chill wind was blowing. Nonetheless, Meg and I went down to collect our newspaper and then made our way into the park. As we were a little conscious of the passing of time, we occupied some of the benches overlooking the lake where we consumed our coffee and ate our biscuits (well, Meg did – I treat myelf to an orange to cut down on the carbs) Then we had plenty of time to get home and I put some fishcakes in the oven before i departed for my Pilates class, which I must have been doing for about 9-10 years by now. Our sessions are organised into six-week blocks and we typically have a mini-period of relaxation in week 3 and a somewhat longer one at the end of the final week of the block, week six. However, if any one has a birthday in the preceding week (which one of our number had) then our Pilates teacher relents a little and allows us 5 minutes of relaxation at the the end of the session. My contribution to this is that I nearly always manage to fall into a sleep before the end of the 5-minute relaxation session and I gently chide my teacher if she fails to induce me to sleep.

This afternoon after which we had our lunch and a doze the TV event of the afternoon was to witness the historic video link by means of which President Zerlenskyy made the first ever address by  a foreign leader to the House of Commons. Sky News reports the ‘first ever address’ but a quick Google search indicates a list of about 50 people from 1939 onwards who have addressed a joint meeting of the House of Commons so I find this claim a little misleading. But an interesting political development has emerged this afternoon. A fascinating report has been published in the Jerusalem Post this afternoon, which quotes sources it says were privy to a meeting three days ago between Israeli PM Naftali Bennett and Vladimir Putin. This reports indicates that the gap between Putin and Zerlenskyy is not as great as popularly supposed. The report indicates that Zelenskyy can fortify Ukraine’s independence but will have to pay a heavy price. Assumptions are that he will be forced to give up the contested Donbas region, officially recognise the pro-Russian dissidents in Ukraine, pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO, shrink his army and declare neutrality. If he declines the proposal, the outcome may be terrible: thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Ukrainians will die and there is a high probability that his country will completely lose its independence. It is slightly difficult to know what to make of this report. One might not have been totally surprisd if this report had surfaced in about a fortnight from now after the Russians had totally over-run and were, in theory, in control of Ukraine. On the other hand, and against all of the odds, it does seem that there is today a prospect that the Ukraine will not actually lose this conflict. There seem to be inflicting casualties on the Russian troops (about 12,000 by their own reckoning, but about 3,000-4,000n according to America’s CIA) The apparent superiority of the Russian military machine must be tempered by the knowledge that many of the raw young recruits, used by the Russian invading army, do not seem to have too much stomach for a fight and, according to many reports, feel that they hve been cruelly deceived by their military leaders, many believing that the were only on an ‘exercise’ and not knowing they were actually in the Ukraine. The 40 mile long column of military vehicles to the north of Kyiv appears to be literally and figuratively bogged down and crippled by shortages of fuel, food, water and critical supplies – and it appears to be going nowhere in the short term.  A least 2-3 senior Russian military leaders have to have lost their lives and there is the prospect that some Russian Mig-29 fighter planes might be sent from Poland to bolster the Ukrainian air defences. The Ukrainians seem to have had quite a lot of success by utilising drones that have successfully attacked the Russian supply chains. So, in my book, it is still a little too close to call.

The breaking news tonight is that Poland is going to hand over all 23 of the Mig-29 fighters  (Ukraine already has 37) to the Americans, at no cost.  They, in turn, will resupply Poland with the latest generation of fighter aircraft whilst the 23 will be ‘given’ to the Ukranians. This will increase the supply of this particular fighter by some two thirds and, of course, the Ukrainians already have pilots who know how to fly them. How much of a difference is this going to make and how soon can the aircraft be deployed?