This morning we knew that our regular central heating engineers were due to call around to give our gas boiler its annual service so we were prepared for a slightly different routine this morning. Fortunately for us, the firm we utilise, who live almost around the corner from us, turned up reasonably early so we got the boiler serviced with the minimum of fuss. It was interesting to chat with the central heating engineer as to what he thought the future held in store. We got the ‘low down’ on the different alternatives and varieties of heat pumps such as air source heat pumps (a bit like air conditioning in reverse) and his view, for what it is worth, is that many of the alternatives have not been thought through and we could see the return of traditional gasometers filled with LPG. His own view was that hydrogen is a fuel worth considering apart from the fact that every house will contain within a potential bomb if hydrogen technology to become more extensive. Once the gas service had been completed, I walked down to town on my own because I wanted to visit a few shops after picking up the newspaper. So I made a trip along the High Street, making an appointmnt at the opticians, paying a visit to an ATM and finishing off with buying some cosmetic items principally for Meg. When I eventually got home, we decided to have our ‘elevenses’ at home amd then proceeded straight away to cook our lunch. The afternoon seemed to presage a beautiful sunny afternoon as the sky was blue and the sun shining brightly but only when we got outside did we realise that there was actually quite an icy blast.  So Meg and I decided to reverse our normal pattern and go for our walk in the afternoon. Of course, the park has a different clientele at this time of day as there are fewer dog walkers and youngsters on their little bikes and more school children making a shortcut through the park on their way home. We were pleased to get home, though, as by the time we had left our bench the icy blasts had started to chill us more than was comfortable.

The Ukraine news still appals us and fascinates us at the same time. The most extraordinary ‘event’ of today is that the Russians have established some humanitarian corridors but only if they lead to Russia or Russian-controlled areas –  for example, a corridor has been established out of Kyiv but only straight to Belarus. Naturally, the Ukrainians have rejected these ‘offers’  believing that Ukrainians who availed themselves of these corridors might end up being used as a propaganda tool for the Russians. One particularly heart-rending stories of today  is the account of the death of mayor of Hostomel, a small town close to Kviv and home to the Hostomel airfield, a key strategic point at the centre of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.   The mayor had been shot and killed, dying with a couple of his colleagues while distributing bread and medicines to those in need. There are numerous other stories of direct attacks upon civilians and their dwellings which must, by any account, constitute a war crime. There are some Ukrainian journalists compiling careful evidence for what may well become critical evidence when those responsible are charged (as they will be) with war crimes.

Now this may be clutching at straws but here goes anyway. There are some intelligence sources which claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is suffering from terminal bowel cancer. An ex-military intelligence offer working at the Pentagon in the US said analysts had been studying the 69-year-old and that they believe him to be gravely ill. The ex-intelligence offer says that his ‘puffy face’ is a sign that he is taking chemotherapy drugs or steroid and that his unsmiling expression shows that is he in constant pain. This could have made him more aggressive or he may be attacking Ukraine as he knows he is dying and wants to leave a legacy. The source said: ‘In the past we have seen him smile, but in 2022 there are few pictures of him looking happy. His look suggests he is in pain and our people suggest his angry look is most likely as a result of him being in agony.Our people are confident he is ill – he is concerned about Covid as he keeps his staff at a distance.’  Well, this might be largely material designed to bolster the confidence of everyone opposed to Putin and I would take it with the very largest pinch of salt but it is interesting nonetheless. Of perhaps more significance is the story that  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the United States was ‘working actively’ on a deal with Poland to supply Ukraine with jets to fight invading Russians.The deal, according to reports, could involve Poland handing over its existing MIG-29s, a Soviet/Russian-made jet fighter Ukrainian pilots are familiar with, and the US would then provide its F-16 fighters to Poland as replacements.

On Sunday mornings, I get up a little earlier than I would normally feel inclined because I like to set off to collect the Sunday newspaper at about 8.00am so that I can get back, prepare breakfast and watch the Sunday Morning (politics) programme. As it tends to be quite cold first thing in the morning, the last time I went shopping I bought some of those packets of ‘instant’ porridge which takes about 2 minutes in a microwave. I am finding these very useful on those days when I leave the house early, for example to go shopping, although I find that I have to watch the microwave very carefully to make sure that they do not bubble over.  After we had watched our fill of Sunday morning TV, Meg and I set off for the park and, quite unusually, we did not take any provisions with us. This is because we had a loose arrangement to meet our two regular friends in the park cafe. We started off drinking some coffee outside but eventually, the cold wind got the better of us and we beat a hasty retreat to one of the few tables provided inside. A lot of our discussion today, as almost every day, was to discuss Putin’s frame of mind and his likely courses of action. One line of speculation that we have is whether the American diplomats are in touch with the Chinese president (Xi Jinping) and whether it would be in China’s long term interests to put some pressure upon Putin (by not buying any of his gas?) in order to resolve the situation. This might consolidate Xi’s position as a world leader but I am sure that the situation is being watched with interest from Beijing. After we had sorted out the geo-politics of the world, we set off for home and cooked a Sunday lunch of turkey. We had some sprouts left over from last week but I have discovered a rather innovative way of ‘tarting’ them up a little so that they become a culinary treat. We have in our kitchen some chopped apricots which bought because we could not find any of the whole ones. To make the sprouts a little special, I have cooked them in some boiling water (with a little demerara sugar added to counteract a ‘sprouty’ smell) and then drained and dried them off and returning to the saucepan with some cooking oil. Then they get tossed in oil and a little bit of runny honey added at the last moment and this makes for a delicious – and unusual- vegetable.

The Ukrainian situation continues to appall. Firstly, in the nuclear reactor which narrowly avoided damage in the conflict in the last week, the Russians in control are cutting off phone and internet contact in the area.  This is making the plant very difficult to operate by the native Ukrainian staff and the international nuclear autorities are getting increasingly concerned about the situation. Secondly, the number of refugees from the Ukraine now constitute the biggest flow of immigrants since WWII and is 1½ million and rising. But thirdly, the protest movements are really starting to underway in Russia itself. The Russian government has banned the use of the phrase ‘war’ or ‘invasion’ under pain of a 15 year prison sentence. Nearly 4,000 people have been detained at anti-war protests across Russia on Sunday, rights groups and Russian authorities say. Some 1,700 people were detained in Moscow alone, the RIA news agency reported, citing the interior ministry. The OVD-Info rights group says detentions took place in 53 cities. Although protests have become increasingly restricted in recent years, numerous rallies have taken place across Russia since the invasion. In the last 11 days, more than 10,000 people have been detained at protests, OVD-Info says. So the amount of internal repression is enormous but in these days of the social web, it is increasingly difficult for the Russian authorities to maintain the tight control over news events to which they are accustomed. The older (and non-internet savvy) elements of the population do tend to believe the messages that their government is feeding them. But If the protest movements keep growing in size, a point will come where the government cannot shoot and imprison all of the protesters in the country.

Meanwhile, at the border in Calais, the French are saying that the UK authorities are displaying a great ‘lack of humanity’ in denying Ukrainian refugees. According to the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, 400 Ukrainian refugees have presented themselves at Calais border crossings in recent days – only for 150 of them to be told to go away and obtain visas at UK consulates in Paris or Brussels. Priti Patel (the UK Home Secretary) later denied France’s accusations that Britain was not doing enough to help those Ukrainians in Calais. So who to believe? This is just another example of the constant spats between French and British officials over whole of the refugee crisis.

The gloomy spell continues over much of the UK – in fact I read with some dismay that the spell of gloomy weather having spread eastwards may now reverse itself and backtrack on itself to persist for a few more days. I have started looking forward to ‘Weather for the week ahead‘ on the BBC News Weather tab and from this I learn that ‘Chilly, sunny and dry weather will slowly give way to wetter, windier and milder weather in the coming week.‘ As it looked as though the rain was going to hold off, Meg and I walked down to the park but a chilly wind started to blow. We made our way to our norml bench and had our coffee but our two regular park friends must have spotted us from their vantage point of the café below us so they wandered up for a chat. I left Meg with them whilst I made a fast walk into town to pick up the Saturday edition of The Times and then, upon my return, we decided it was a bit chilly sitting down for an extended chat so we made an arrangement to meet in the park cafe tomorrow for our ‘elevenses’ coffee.

Meg and I typically have a lazy afternoon on Saturdays and today was no exception. This is because we leave to go to church in the late afternoon (and now, fortunately, it is light when we leave the house) and then return later for something like a bowl of soup. Fortunately, I still have some left over from the other day so this is always a bonus. Tonight, I am going to try to give it a slight ‘twist’ by adding a rice biscuit and some grated cheese of which I have plenty since my weekly shop-up. We may treat ourselves to an opera via YouTube this evening but if we do, we have to be slightly careful not to choose an overlong performance as we do not like to gt too late to bed these days. Whilst intermittently reading the nespapers and dabbling bout with my Apple MAC now that I have got it restored to functionality, I cam across a little known feature of the newly-installed operating system (Monterrey) that will help to enhance the security of computer browsing. Apple call this technology ‘Private Relay’ and it gives you some of the advantages of a VPN (Virtual Private Network). It is quite possible to be identified over the web with ‘normal’ browsing when two pieces of information are combined i.e. the actual address of your computer called an IP ddress and the address website you are visiting. The Apple technology splits these two bits of information, routing them via different servers (one of them, not Apple’s) and also encrypts the address of the wbsite that you are visiting. There are many more technical details than it is not appropriate to go into here but basically for a user such as myself one’s internet browsing experience is enhancd without having to go through the hoops of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) This all sounds a ‘good thing’ and time will tell, I suppose, whether my system is made significantly more secure than it otherwise would have been.

Russian forces continued to shell the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Saturday, despite agreeing to a ceasefire just hours earlier – throwing an attempted mass evacuation of civilians into chaos. as one resident said ‘I can see cars of people who tried to flee and they are coming back. It is chaos.‘ Three hours after the ceasefire was supposed to begin, at 09:00 (07:00 GMT), Mariupol authorities announced they had postponed a planned mass evacuation because of the continued bombardment. Whether all of this is bad faith on the part of the Russians or just a military ‘mess-up’ it is not possible to say – the Sunday newspapers tomorrow may give us a fuller picture.

At this time of year as we experienced ‘pancake Tuesday’ and then Ash Wednesday last week, then all of this presages that Easter is not too far away (although I think Easter is a little late this year on 17th April).  I can remember fairly vividly when we first started supermarket shopping when we were students (in the mid-1960’s), one did get a graduated approach to the onset of Easter. As I remember it, the very,very first potatoes in the stores were Egyptian which were followed a week or so later by potatotes from the Canary Islands (quite a way south of Spain!) Then we go the new season’s earliest offerings from Cornwall before finally, the very earliest of our own new potatoes might have been ready in late April or May. Nowadays, the potatoes seem to have sprayed with something and then kept in a cold store and then bagged and could potentially be months old. Personally, I quite like waiting until foods come into their ‘proper’ season instead of having goods sourced from all over the world and completely at the ‘wrong’ time of the year.

Meg and I were a little late up this morning but we still enjoyed a chat, as is customary, with our domestic help who calls around each Friday. Once we had got ourselves up and running, we took the car into town and then collected our newspaper. Then we popped into the park and stuck our heads inside the cafe to see if any of our friends were finding refuge inside. There we teamed up with our University of Birmingham friend as well as Seasoned World Traveller. We had our usual exchange of banter over some extraordinary subjects before Meg and I had to make a fairly rapid exit to strike for home. This is because we have a lunch date with the French lady who lives down the road and who we have we have to got to know a lot better recently. We have had a long running agreement to choose a Friday when neither of us had any other committments and this Friday fitted the bill perfectly. Just after our friend arrived, I got cooking the sea-bass which is extremely easy to cook (3 minutes on one side and then 2 minutes on the other). This is then served on a bed of salad and eaten quickly and we washed it down with some glasses of white wine as well. During and after lunch, we had some interesting chats including explanations of the contacts that we had in Spain and in Mexico. We learned today that our friend during her university course in France  was due to go off and have a placement in Spain as she was studying this at University. But her course coincided with that period in French history when lots of young men were being called up to serve in the French army in order to combat the Algerians in what was to become the Algerian War of Independence. Her course was quite badly impacted by this as when several course members disappeared, they had to keep reorganising the course around the existing students. So whilst the university experience of the present generation of students has been badly  impacted by the COVID pandemic, so her own undergraduate experience had been affected by France’s last colonial war (as I suppose it was) We had a really interesting chat over lunch and coffee and I dare say we will keep on exchanging social contacts like this, which we both enjoy.

The really big Ukrainian news this afternoon is the attack on the nuclear plant which is the largest in Europe. It looks as though the Russian attack was intentional and not accidental. As it transpired, the Russian shells had set alight a training facility building which was a little set apart from the main series of reactors, some of which were shut down. I suspect that an inexperienced commander made completely the ‘wrong’ call when it came to firing on or near a nuclear reactor but if the decision was taken higher up the chain of command this constitutes irresponsibility of the highest magnitude. The USA and many other countries are calling this attack on a nuclear facility a war crime – it may be that this is written into some international law somewhere but I am sure that ‘war crime’ is an accurate description. The world may well have narrowly escaped from a Chernobyl Mark II – the important point here being that the nuclear reactors themselves do not have to be directly attacked but if their power supply fail that automatically cools the core, then we would literally be in ‘melt-down’ situation. This version of the nuclear reactor is better designed and more capable to containing nuclear escapes that was the case in Chernobyl but we have to say that the world as a whole has just ‘dodgd a speeding bullet’ as it were.

Late on this afternoon, the news came through that Shane Warne, the legendary Australian spin bowler had died apparently of a heart attack (or natural causes) at the age of 52. One does have to be a follower of cricket to appreciate that he had a prodigious talent – in general terms, leg spinners do not attract the kind of adulation that fast bowlers do in the whole world of cricket but one has to perfect one’s skills over many years as a rule. It is true to say that Shane Warne lived life to the full, both on and off the cricket field and he was actually found dead in his house in Thailand. The bit of video clip which is replayed constantly is the way that Shane Warne dismissed Mike Gatting, the English captain, with his first ball in the Test match of 1993. The ball itself pitched outside leg stump and then turned prodigiously to nick Gatting’s off stump. Although I disapprove of the habit of ‘sledging’ (loud comments made by a fielding side to disconcert a batsman) one of Shane Warne’s was very funny – he called out ‘How is your wife doing today – that is, your wife and our kids‘ (the implications of which one does not have to dwell upon too much)

Today was another gloomy day but not quite as gloomy and overcast as yesterday. As Thursday is my shopping day, it was time to go to the larger supermarket where I have a more extensive shop. I had a very comprehensive list with me but on reflection, I am not entirely sure this is always a good idea. I suppose if you have a list ‘in your head’ which is how I used to shop, then if you forget one or two things it hardly matters whereas if you have a printed list in front of you there is a compunction to try and buy every single item on it, and perhaps one or two things in addition. Next week, I am due to the go to the (smaller) Aldi store and I think this might make for a less stressful shopping experience. I might, as an experiment, try and shop without a list next week (which is the way I used to shop) and see what kind of a difference this makes.By the time I had got back from the shopping, got it all unpacked and then had breakfast, time was moving on. So Meg and I went into town by car, collected the newspaper and then just had a quick walk round the park, without the benefit of a flask of coffee because we thought that we would have all of this at home. After we got home, it was a case of having our mid-morning coffee and then catching up on the latest grim news from the Ukraine before cooking lunch.

The news from the Ukraine is enough to make one weep. The Russians have two terrible weapons in their armoury – cluster bombs and thermobaric (vacuum) bombs. Cluster bombs release a series of bomblets which are spread over a large area and not all of these explode. This means that an area of land where they have been used can remain dangerous for years – although they can be removed painstakingly from some battle ground terrains, whether they have been removed successfully from an urban area is open to question. The second kind of weapon, popularly known as a vacuum or thermobaric bomb, is exploded in the air. After the initial ‘explosion’ the released material combines with the oxygen in the air to produce a weapon of complete ferocity. Both of these weapons are not completely illegal although some military authorities have said they will never use them – but not Russia. They are designed to be used against purely military targets  but their use against civilian populations is certainly a war crime. There is already some evidence that cluster bombs have already been used in the battle to take Kharkiv – to date, we have no definitive evidence that the thermobaric bomb has yet been used by the Russians but we do know that they have them available for use. Although the Ukrainians are putting up the most incredible resistance, in the long run it is almost inevitable that will succumb to the might of the Russian military regime. As I blog this evening, there is some news that human corridors are going to be provided, presumably under the cover of a temporary cease fire, to allow residents to leave a city before a final onslaught. The Russians are indicating that once they have encircled Kyiv they will probably pound the city almost to destruction in order to secure a victory. The nearest exemplar that we have from history is what the Russians did to Aleppo in Syria when most of the city was physically destroyed and there was a massive exodus of its peoples. 

Tomorrow we are looking forward to sharing our lunch with a French lady who lives next door to our Irish  friends and who lost her husband in the autumn. We have already had ‘tea’ in each other’s houses but we are trying to take the opportunity of sharing the occasional meal with other if only to try and make the winter go a little bit more quickly. Tomorrow, we are just going have a simple meal of sea-bass which will take no time at all to cook – we will wait until our friend arrives and then do a bit of cooking on the spot. Tonight I deployed the soupmaker, making a soup out of a variety of root vegetables (swede, parsnip, carrot, celery and some fried onions) and as is usual on these occasions made far too much. I have enough prepared for a second meal which just requires heating up and also a supply of ‘diced’ vegetables which means that all of the hard work of preparation has been done for future meals. What, I suspect, absolutely makes the difference to these root vegetable soups is a few spoonfuls of a balti cooking sauce which just add a little bit of spice to the finished product, without overwelming it all. Late on this afternoon, the book on the Monterey operating system arrived (only ordered yesterday from Amazon) so I am hopeful that I will uncover a lot of ‘tips’ to more fully exploit the new operating system.

Today must have been one of the gloomiest days I have experienced for a long time. There seems to have been a thick blanket of cloud all day long long and intermittent bouts of rain. So Meg and I were running a little late today so we decided to pop into town by car, collect our newspaper, pop into Waitrose where we pick up some supplies of things that we only seem to get in Waitrose and then get back home to have our ‘elevenses’ at home. Then, as it was such a gloomy day we decided to cheer ourselves up with a  heart-warming curry. This is a sort of tradition which we have carried over from our student days. Even then when Meg and I lived in a block of flats with a couple of our university friends, we shopped in a ‘Spa’ supermarket down below. Thursday was always our traditional night to shop because we didn’t want to clutter up our Friday evenings which were devoted to partying. By Wednesday, we were running out of a lot of our provisions so anything we had left over tended to go into the curry on a Wednesday evening. The curry that we made today followed our fairly conventional formula which is always to start off with frying some onions and then using up the last of the tomatoes and mushrooms bought in last week’s shopping. In the absence of any meat left over from the weekend, we threw in some Quorn ‘mince’ and then supplemented the whole of this with some frozen petit pois and a mugful of onion gravy. The bit that makes it a bit special is that we always throw in a few sultanas, a couple of apples diced small and a spoonful of demerara sugar.  This makes it a little bit special – we serve it not on conventional rice but one of those specialist pouches that are available these days of what is sold as ‘Riced’ sweet potato  which claims to be 62% lower in carbs than white rice. Just before serving up, I stir in some Chinese curry paste to which I am partial and then finish it all off with a big dollop of Greek style yogurt.

The assault on the Ukranian cities is terrible to behold – and it looks as though Russian paratroopers may actually have landed in the second city of Ukraine which is Kharkiv. The number of refugees is now of the order of 800,000 whilst the Ukrainians are claiming that they killed nearly 6,000 Russian soldiers. Of course, both sides have a vested interest in over or understating military casualties but even the heavily censored Russian state media is now admitting to deaths in the Ukraine. I realise that it is just part of the propaganda war but the Ukrainians are doing two things which are interesting. Firstly, it is broadcasting pictures of captured or killed Russian militia so that their families in Russia can identify them – this, I believe, though is a contravention of the Geneva convention. Another thing that they have done is to broadcast the interviews of some captured Russian POWs in which young conscripts were saying thay were tricked into the invasion. They claim that they were told they were just part of a military exercise – when they discovered they were part of an invading army, they were warned they would be shot as ‘enemies of the people’  if they did not continue with their mission. They claim that they were ‘cannon fodder’ and, as such, were cynically used by the Russian military authorities. Back home, Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that the Russians were guilty of war crimes and certainly the evidence is being collected on the ground  on a day-by-day basis. The Ukrainians are calling for a ‘no-fly’ zone across the whole of Ukrainian air space. But if Nato were to introduce a no-fly zone then they would be committing themselves to shooting down any Russian military aircraft and this would certainly trigger a complete war against Russia. With Putin in such an unpredictable mood, then this could be the start of Amargeddon so NATO is probably quite correct in not being drawn into this. But I am puzzled why some powerful weapons could not be smuggled in the Ukraine so that they could fire them at the apparently static 40 mile long Russian convoy making its way to Kyiv.

Our son popped by this morning and helped me to reinstal the virus protection on my Apple Mac desktop and which does not seem to have been properly operative since the upgrade to the operating system. Nonetheless, we managed to get the virus checker properly reinstalled so this has got to be a ‘good’ thing. In the meanwhile, I am enjoying using my system where I put the system to sleep when it is not in use and with a keystroke to bring it back into use when needed.

Today we had to get up fairly early and get ourselves going because it was the day scheduled for our house alarm system to receive its annual maintenance. We always make sure that this is done more or less on schedule because on our house insurance policy document, we have to tick a box to say that our alarm system had been subject to an annual service. If we ever had to make a claim, we would not wish for it to be denied on the basis that we had made a false statement in our house insurance documentation. This whole procedure only took about 30 minutes or so and after it was all done, Meg and I set off for the park as it was quite a fine day. The sky was fairly clear when we started out and there was a coolish wind which was not sufficient to deter us from making a journey on foot. On our way down, we chatted with our Italian friend along the Kidderminster Road and then picked up our newspaper and made for the park. There was quite a gaggle of people and their dogs as we were approaching our favourite bench- to be honest, I suspect that the dogs are inclined to engage in greeting each other, after which the owners have little choice but to join in. We had our coffee and comestibles but did not linger too long because we knew that we needed to get back in time for me to assemble my Pilates kit and leave the house in plenty of time for a leisurely type walk down into town. At the same time, I relieved an ATM of some of its spare cash and proceed to my class, after which it was home and then a somewhat belated lunch. Today, as we often do on a Tuesday, we had some haddock fishcakes which I have to say were delicious and we serve them, as time is limited, with one of those special packs of microwavable veg that cook in about a couple of minutes.

The news from the Ukraine is as grim as you might expect. What is dominating the visuals is the sight of a Russian convey some 40 miles in length. The column is made up of armoured vehicles, tanks, towed artillery and other logistical vehicles and is believed to be around 17 miles from Kyiv. Of course, if the Ukrainians had an airforce or ballistic missiles of any real clout then it could have tried to ‘take out’ some of these convoy of vehicles. It looks as though the Russians intend to completely encircle Kyiv and then proceed with tactics that combine both elements of a mediaeval siege but which also might attempt to tighten the noose. But some military analysts on Sky News are reporting that Putin might be planning two absolute massive strikes on both Kyiv and the second city of Kharkiv. The web is full of contributions sufficient to make us all ‘armchair generals’. There are two interesting things I have read though, just today. The first is from an an urban warfare expert has said Ukrainians ‘have all the power’ and a ‘real possibility to win’ as he described how untrained civilians could beat back Russian forces. Retired Major John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, urged civilians to ‘keep resisting’ as the battle to control Kyiv intensifies. He told Sky News ‘the challenges are only going to increase’ now that Ukrainians have ‘successfully hurt the Russian army’. The second amazing bit of web advice is how to engage the local population in modern urban warfare. For example, there is advice how to set up road blocks in such a way that your own vehicles can quickly navigate them but invading forces have to circumnavigate a route full pf ‘S’-bends between tall buildings in such a way that individual vehicles can be attacked with molotive cocktails and/or small arms fire. Whether all of this is useful advice or not, I cannot say but it does seem to be true that an army of invasion is one thing but an army of occupation needs to be some 5-10 times larger. The Ukrainians are already arguing that the Russian casualties are already at the level of 5½ thousand.  In time, the body bags will start to come back to Russia but, of course, they will probably be brought back with the minimum of publicity. It is said by some informed insiders that Putin’s greatest fear is the publicity which may (or may not) surround the repatriated body bags as a visible reminder of the price that Russia is paying. The Americans realised that the sight of body bags coming home helped swing public opinion against the war in Vietnam. The Presidents Bush (father and son) ‘solved’ this problem by not allowing the filming of dead American soldiers in their body bags in 1991 and again in 2003.

Here we are the last day if the month – I have always wondered when those individuals born in a leap year on February 29th actually celebrate their birthday and I suspect March 1st which day it is tomorrow. The day started cloudy and with a band of rain threatened to sweep across the country later in the afternoon which it duly did. Meg and I decided to go down into town by car as we needed to call into Waitrose to collect a few things. Whilst there, we managed to make contact with one of the old established staff and ascertained that the coffee lounge facility will definitely reopen on 30th March which is in just over four weeks time. After this, we made our way by car to the park and chose a carpark near to the park’s café just in case any of our regular friends were lodged in there. As it turned out, there were not, so we made our way to our normal park bench in the upper reaches of the park where we consumed our coffee and were immediately visited by several dogs, liberated from their leads, who bound towards us hopeful that there may be a titbit coming in thir direction, which there never is. We got back home relatively early after all of this as we were quite keen to watch the latest news available from the Ukraine where it does appear that the remaining population in the Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, are being subjected to the most horrendous bombardment. For a start, the Russians appear to be using cluster bombs (which are, incidentally, illegal) and the Ukrainian authorities are admitting that dozens have been killed. The Russians may well utilise what is termed as a ‘Thermobaric‘ bomb, otherwise entitled ‘The Mother of All Bombs‘ This is the largest bomb yet manufactured short of an actual nuclear weapon. It is exploded in mid-air and sucks all of the oxygen out of the air for 300 metres around, as well as having the destructive power of 44 tons of TNT. Thermobaric weapons are considered to be one of the most brutal war weapons that exist and their destructive power, via the shockwave that they create, is immensely destructive both of people (whose internal organs are shredded to pieces) and to buildings. By some accounts, this weapon has been authorised for use in Ukraine but whether it has actually been used has not yet been reported upon.

As I write this blog, I am half-listening the Radio 4’s PM programme in the background. There was an interesting discussion whether the Russian population, subject to the most heavy of censorships, had any idea what was being done in their name. After all, the Russian government has banned the use of words such as ‘war’ or ‘invasion’ but are instead speaking of ‘military operations’ But in the absence of any real information, how do the Russian population react to the fact that all of a sudden interest rates have risen to 20%, the rouble has collapsed, that football matches are being withdrawn as well as cultural events such as Eurovision, that all of. sudden people are abandoning the ‘normal’ ATM’s that only dispense roubles but instead are queing to access any sources of money that are not roubles? The same report which was trying to assess the mood and knowledge of the war in the Ukraine reported the response of one citizen who, years ago, was asked their opinion of the fact that the Crimea had effectively been annexed. The response was ‘Do you want me to answer ‘offically’ or ‘unofficially?’  Meanwhile there were heart- rending scenes of refugees at the Hungarian and other borders. About ½ million refugees have already fled the Ukraine but at the borders, as there queues of people up to 20 miles long, they were letting individuals through about 50 at a time. So when the barriers went up, the women and children were let through but any of their husbands or sons who had helped to flee now had to turn back into the Ukraine, perhaps to their deaths, in order to fight the invaders.

And now for some slightly more cheerful news. I have been gradually getting my MAC computer to run at somewhat like a decent speed instead of an incredibly slow crawl. A major step forward was updating the operating system to the latest version which is called ‘Monterey‘ (a mountain range in California) This has the advantage of clearing out a lot of system junk but the present age of my machine (2015) means that it is only just capable of running the new operating system. I have now adopted the practice of only turning it on/off about once a week or a fortnight, the rest of the time resorting to a ‘Sleep’ mode which keeps all of the programs still in memory with a trickle charge of current. This makes it easy and fast to turn on, with no long waits and the system even updates instead whilst it has having a ‘sleep’ or, as Apple say, a ‘power nap’

Today being a Sunday was my day to get up early and get to the newsagents in plenty of time to get back for the Sunday morning (politics) programme. I listened to a selection of Bach on my way down but at 8.00am in the morning, I don’t think I passed another soul on my walk there and back. It was quite a fine day but pretty cold at that hour in the morning, as you might imagine. The newsagent and I spent a certain amount of time discussing Putin and how the world had suddenly become somewhat disordered. On the Sunday Morning show, Liz Truss (our Foreign Secretary) was the weekly member of the government to be intereviewed and, for once, I found her fairly forthright and to the point. For example, she acknowledged that the conflict with Russia might last for years, that an attack of Ukrainian democracy was in effect, an attack on all European democracies and that mechanisms should be fast forwarded to allow entry into the UK of any Ukranian passport holder. The Immigration minister, Kevin Foster, has apparently tweeted that any Ukrainians who wish to flee from Putin should apply for a vacancy as a fruit picker and then wait for several months for the application to be processed – and entry into the UK to be granted or denied. To show the dvisions in the Tory Party over this, Fraser Nelson, another guest on the programme who is the editor of the Spectator (right wing weekly periodical) has suggested that any Ukrainian passport holder should be offered immediate and unconditional entry into the UK – along the lines of wht was offered to the Asians who were being thrown out out of Uganda by Idi Amin in the early 1970’s or even the deal currentlly on offer to any of the residents of Hong Kong who wish to relocate here.

Before we walked down to the park today, I had the quickest of scans through the ‘Sunday Times‘ and found some analysis that suggested that Putin was ‘mad’ rather than just being ‘mad’  It is being said by those who have known Putin for a long time that he has undergone quite a personality change in the last year or so (since COVID). He has apparently almost become a social recluse and only surrounds himself by his acquaintances of many years ago when they were both officers in the KGB. The long table that we have seen in recent videoclips of Putin with other world leades urging a diplomatic  solution to the Ukraine ‘problem’  is Putin’s attempt to keep as far away as possible from any potential sources of infection. 

Be this as it may, two amusing stories have arisen from the horror about to be unleashed in Kyif. The first of these relates to a Russian armoured vehicle which had run out of fuel and was surrounded by local Ukrainians. When asked what they thought they doing, the young Russian soldiers admitted that they had no idea where they were i.e. what country they were in nor did they know where they meant to be going. What evetrually happened to them, I know not. The second story I rather like. It has reported that in Kyiv that the local popuation are doing what they can to remove street and direction signs that might be of some use to an invading army. It is said that directions to nearby cities have been replaced with profanities that could be translated as “Go f**k yourself”, “Go f**k yourself again” and “Go f**k yourself back to Russia”. but the story may well emanate fron Ukraine’s road sign agency Ukravtodor which has mocked-up a road sign containing these profanities in Ukrainian.

The more serious story tonight is that, using veiled language, Putin has ordered his miliary chiefs to get ‘readied’ and put into position some nuclear weapons, both tactical and long-range. One has to say that is probably bluff and bluster but, of course, it is very difficult to read Putin’s mind and to know whether he just might launch nuclear weapons. In the case of the American nuclear deterrent, I believe that has to be a ‘dual lock’ policy i.e. a nuclear strike has to be got to be authorised by the President and a senior member of the military. It was rumoured in the dying days of the Trump presidency, the suitcase containing the miliary codes necessary to activate a nuclear strike was kept well away from the President. One presumes that the american military might be composed of Republicans but not deranged Republicans à la Trump. The interesting question is whether the Soviet military planners thought of a similar contingency in case a nuclear war be started ‘by accident’ by a deranged President of Russia. The slightest glimmer of hope tonight is that Russian and Ukrainian negoriators have decided to meet with each in a neutral location in Belarus. Is this a tacit acknowledgement by Putin that things are not going to plan?

Having woken up quite early this morning, I took the opportunity to pop down into town on my own, before breakfast, to collect our copies of the Saturday newspapers. At this hour on a Saturday morning, I only encountered one jogger and one dog-walker but the weather was quite bright but chilly. Before I set off on my journey, I availed myself of one of those ‘instant’ packets of porridge oats which help to set you up for the day. Then it was a case of getting home, getting a quick update on the Ukrainian situation (about which more later) and our normal ‘cooked’ breakfast which is normally a fry-up of a red onion,  a tomato, some mushrooms, a spoonful of instant garlic and some tomato and onion pasta sauce. This constitutes a filling for an omelette that I make for Meg whilst I have some of the mixture only.

And so, we return to the Ukrainian situation. I would not have been surprised if the Russians had not taken the opportunity to roll on into the centre of Kyiv under the cover of darkness. Having attacked Ukraine from multiple directions, it appears that one of the war aims of the Russians is to move quickly onto Kyiv to attempt a swift ‘decapitation’ of the Ukrainian government. Western officials estimate that Russia had up to 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s border – far more than Ukraine’s entire regular army of 125,600. Russia also has an overwhelming superiority in terms of control of the air ways. According to military analysis, which is being well explained on the Sky News channel, the Russians are assembling  a range of terrifying armaments including precision fighter bombers, tanks, armed personnel carriers and artillery that can inflict untold damage. The Ukrainians are evidently completely outgunned and no match for the military might of the Russians. However, by all accounts the Ukrainians have so far been putting up a dogged defence of their country against overwhelming odds and have slowed the advance of the Russian army, much to the surprise of the Russians. The Ukrainians, though, have to make some terrible military decisons. They can decide to try and attack the Russians who are are now within 20 km of the city centre and perhaps even closer.  Were they do this, they would certainly be overwhelmed and Kyiv would all to intents and purposes be left undefended. On the other hand, if the Ukrainians stay their hand somewhat and allow the Russian forces to enter the city down the main roads, then the advancing forces are much more vulnerable and susceptible to guerilla style attacks.The latest thinking seems to be that the Russians are assembling their forces today (Saturday) and may make a final concerted push into the city during the hours of daylight tomorrow, Sunday. If this is to be the case, then the onslaught into the Ukrainian capital will be terrible to behold and the civilian population that remains (women and children and the aged) will be subject to the most horrendous slaughter. There is no doubt, of course, that the Russians can and will conquer the Ukraine in that way but the huge question remains that once a city has been ‘captured’ can it actually be held and occupied without a really massive army of occupation? Imagine a tank or a personnel carrier advancing down a modern urban street but subject to attack by AK-47 rifles (Kalashnikovs) which are being handed out to whoever in the civilian population is prepared to handle a weapon. The Russians may have thought that they were going to enter a country where they were greeted by flowers and flag-waving crowds – instead, they may have to engage in hand-to-hand fighting street by street and house by house – for which they are almost certainly not prepared.

The international ramifications are also become interesting. Yesterday, in the Security Council a resultion was passed by 11 votes to 1 (that one being Russia) and three abstentions, the most critical one being China. Although in the Security Council, each of the 5 permanent members has the power of veto, the way might now be open for a general vote of the 192 members of the UN where no power of veto exists. So this will be interesting to watch in the days ahead. There is also talk that both Sweden and Finland, noted for their neutrality (particulaly Finland) may now be prepared to join NATO. Russia is now issuing blood-curdling threats against Sweden and Finland so if these if these two states join Nato then it could be that Putin has completely overreached himself. The Russian propaganda is also interesting and one wonders if they really do believe it themselves. They are arguing that Ukraine has been captured by a cabal of drug-crazed neo—Nazis,hell bent on the genocide (of any Russian speakers in the east, presumably). I would surmise that the rest of Europe will now start to pour weapons of every description into Ukraine so that the remaining citizenry can arm themselves for the conflict to come.