Today dawned bright and fair so this presages the start of some good weather. Once Meg and I got ourselves showered and breakfasted, we popped down into town by car, primarily because I wanted to pick up one or two things at Waitrose, which we treat rather like a corner shop when we run out of one or two things. We met up with our University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller and we had quite a jolly time talking about the sinking of the Russian battle cruiser, the Moskva. The Ukrainians had commemorated the original act of defiance in which some Ukrainian military had shouted at the Russians ‘Russian warship, do (obscenity) yourself‘ These military had been captured but then released quite early in a prisoner exchange and were promptly awarded medals for gallantry by the Ukrainian president. The Ukrainians have subsequently issued a stamp which shows the Russian battle cruiser in the background but Ukrainian soldiers in the foreground making an obscene gesture in the direction of the warship. But of course, this stamp is already outdated because the image of a ship needs to be replaced/superimposed by the image of a sinking ship. The ‘inside’ story is starting to emerge today, courtesy of Sky News. The pride of Russia’s fearsome Black Sea fleet was taken out in one of the most cunning operations of the war. Ukrainian commanders destroyed the huge Moskva warship by using drones to distract its defence systems and allowing surface-skimming missiles to strike. The 12,500-ton cruiser’s protective sensors seemingly did not see the Neptune rockets heading its way because they were tracking Turkish TB2 drones. Providing a massive boost to morale in Kyiv, and a huge blow to Vladimir Putin’s navy, two missiles slammed into the port side of the 611ft Moskva, rocking her violently and causing a catastrophic explosion and huge fires. As flames lit up the stormy Black Sea, the ship’s 510 crewmen frantically climbed into lifeboats and fled. As a postscript to this account, the Ukrainians are now claiming that the captain of the battle cruiser was killed. American intelligence sources think that several other crew lost their lives in the fire and subsequent explosion. The Russians are admitting the fire but not the missile damage. However, as if to undermine their own story, the Russians have immediately started to bomb a Ukrainian factory near to Kyif which both manufactures and repairs anti-ship missiles. One wonders why they would do this, as the Russians would have us believe, the ‘fire’ on board their battle cruiser was accidental or not caused by a Ukrainian missile. By all accounts, though, the Russian cruiser was bristling with defensive equipment which should, in theory, have protected it. But does the failure of these systems to work point to failures in the technology itself and/or to the training of the naval personnel on board? The military significance of the loss of this ship means that any attack on Odessa might be more difficult as the Russians would have to rely upon more amphibious landings.  

We lunched on some smoked hake fillets, first purchased from Aldi some 3-4 weeks ago and then purchased again last Thursday. Like last time, these proved to be absolutely delicious – I follow  the cooking instructions to the letter wrapping them tightly in tinfoil and then baking them in a pre-heated oven for some 17 minutes. They were delicious and I have an idea they may be a regular part of our cuisine from now on. Last night, we were just setting down to watch our evening’s TV when there was a knock on the door – it was our next door neighbour with two delicious bowls of apple and rhubarb crumble complete with custard which she had just served up. We devoured these with alacrity, secure in the knowledge that now we won’t starve with a good neighbour like that next door. When today’s lunch was well and truly over, it was time for the weekly lawn mow. As it was such a pleasant afternoon, I even had to divest myself of my gardening jacket and mow in my shirt sleeves. I was three quarters finished when our next door neighbour wandered across for a chat. As well as revelling in what had happened to the Russian battle cruiser, we were discussing gardening topics and, in particular, vegetable growing. My neighbour has an allotment or even two and is growing quite a lot of his favourite vegetables this year. I showed him the section of land that had been devoted to dahlias but is now being pressed into service as a vegetable plot. In the next few days, provided it is warm, I will get to work raking the soil to get it into a fine tilth and then I can proceed to sow in the open air. Yesterday, on our day out, I popped into a hardware store that sold vegetable and flower seeds and bought his last remaining packet of sweet pea seeds so these can now be sown pretty quickly.

Today was my normal ‘shopping’ day and I got to my local supermarket in plenty of time before it opened at 8.00am. I was a little surprised to see that quite a lot of people have evidently had the same idea as myself because although I was there a few minutes before the opening time, I was still about fifth in the queue. I spent some time looking at the garden requisites that they store outside the store and noted the code numbers for two different kinds of sowing compost which I intend to buy (one for myself, one for my daughter-in-law who was on the hunt for peat-free compost) Shopping was quite a painless affair and I was pleased to see that the store was still stocking some smoked hake which we bought a couple of weeks ago and found absolutely delicious. I mentioned the code numbers of the bags of peat to the assistant as the bill was being totalised and they just got added onto the end. So this made life easier as all I had to do was to pack the shopping inside the car and then collect my two bags of peat to sit on the top. Meg and I had a leisurely breakfast followed by the unpacking, during which time Meg was getting ready. Then we went off in the car to collect our copy of the newspaper and set off for the little town of Alcester which we intend to visit on a further occasion as we had a nice time there some weeks ago. It was some time after midday when we arrived so we decided to forego the customary coffee and teacakes but instead did the rounds of some of the local charity shops which are all of an excellent quality. Meg bought herself a pair of espadrilles (or something similar to that, as they had stout soles but a very pretty fabric ‘upper’ and we probably use these as slippers or ‘house shoes’). For my part, I got tempted to buy a pair of walking boots which were a very subtle tawny colour and looked both unusual and original. These can become my ‘main’ walking boots and some of my others can now be downgraded to the status of ‘gardening’ shoes as my existing gardening shoes I have had for several years and are practically dropping to bits. Then we made our way to the local hotel which we know offers special ‘deals’ midweek to ‘Senior Citizens’ but they were quite heavily booked already for lunchtime. We accepted the offer of a later lunchtime appointment and in the meanwhile availed ourselves of their very pleasant lounge whilst Meg drank a coffee and I treated myself to a low-alcohol beer. Eventually, an early slot was found for us as there had been some ‘no shows’ so by this stage, we were pleased to get ready to eat. Once we had our meals delivered, we were not disappointed, Meg having a prawn salad and I had  a vegetable lasagne. Thee were both delicious and we treated ourselves to some homemade apple pie cake – unusual but equally delicious.

When we got home this afternoon, we had a customary cup of tea and then I started to do a little gardening job which is to mow the edges of the lawn and the ‘fiddly’ bits around the communal green area with my little hand mower. Whilst outdoors, we had a pleasant chat with our next door neighbour whose company we enjoy tremendously. We discussed the war in Ukraine amongst other things and generally put the world to rights. There is rarely anything to smile about in the Ukrainian conflict but a recently reported incident brought us some flickers of satisfaction. The flagship battle cruiser of the Russian Baltic fleet has been successfully attacked by the Ukrainians, starting a fire on board which resulted in all of the ammunition exploding. The ship had to be abandoned and was then towed back to port. This missle cruiser (the ‘Moskva‘) was not particularly state of the art and was quite ancient  but it is is being reported that this may well be the biggest naval loss in conflict since the end of the Second World War.

Meanwhile, back on the domestic front, there is a scheme unveiled today by Priti Patel to take all single male  asylum seekers who arrive in Britain across the channel and to resettle them in Rwanda, some 4,000 miles away. Whether this policy will work or not is an interesting question – other countries have tried a similar policies which have failed and the costs involved may be quite enormous. Of course, this may be a welcome distraction from ‘partygate’ and it is not unusual for the Tories to run an immigration scare story to distract attention from things happening at home. Rwanda has rather a poor human rights records so one wonders how many asylum seekers would fare.  

Today was a day slightly out of the ordinary. In the middle of the morning, Meg and I had a chiropody appointment which had had to be rearranged from a week or so ago and this all worked out as planned. Our chiropodist told us that in a few week’s time, she was due to make an attempt on the Three Peaks (Scafell Pike in England, Snowden in Wales and Ben Nevis in Scotland) and I think she was very brave to attempt such a feat. I think she was going to do one or two preparatory walks and then the logistics of the assault on the Three Peaks was handled by a company who transported people from place to place. I suppose that being a chiropodist she will know how to handle to prevent and/or treat any blisters that might ensue. She assured me that she had a good pair of boots which I suppose is a prerequisite – you do not want to be in a position to be breaking in a new pair of boots before a mammoth walk. After our appointment, I went down and collected the newspaper and we then had our elevenses at home but watching all of the shenanigans following the fining of Boris Johnson for breaking COVID regulations. We have recently received one or two Easter cards and this prompted me to think of the Easter cards which we intended to send this year. I quickly rustled up the addresses of most of the people to whom  we send Easter cards, ready for posting later in the day. Towards midday, we drove to our favourite hotel/restaurant near Kidderminster where we were booked in for a family meal with our son and daughter-in-law. There we had a pleasant meal and on our way home, I presented our daughter-in-law with a little present of some patio roses in an attractive little container which they were selling off in our local Waitrose a few days ago.  Then I popped out to the post to get our Easter cards well into the system and hoping that they get by Saturday at the latest. All post boxes have a little metal tag which should be changed daily so that you can can whether you have just caught or missed the post for the day – in our local pillar box, though, the little metal tag was missing which always leaves you with some uncertainty whether you have caught the post or not.

The seqelae of the ‘partygate’ affair rumble on today. One justice minister who is a member of the House of Lords has resigned today and one MP has broken ranks to call for the resignattion of the PM. However, one has to say that the resounding silence of practically every Tory MP speaks volumes – by their silence, are they condoning the fact that the first Prime Minister ever to have been convicted of a non-trivial offence is considered still fit to be their leader? We are not at the end of this saga by a long way. For a start, the Met police have not finished processing all of the potential ‘partygate’ transgressions so it is possible that Boris may be fined over and over again for subsequent offences. Then the Grey report will take over once the Met investigations and issuing Fixed Penalty Notices has run its course. And hanging over everything of course is the act that the local elections to be held on 5th May will be the first opportunity for the electorate as a whole to express its opinion of partygate.

The Ukrainian news tonight is that the crucial city of Mariupol may well fall in hours to the Russians.If the Russians succeed in capturing this city, which now looks overwhelmingly likely, the the Russians will link the swathes of territories in the east with those in the south, including Crimea. This may well be the ‘victory’ that Putin craves in order to declare a triumph in the big military ceremony that the Russians hold each 12th May. Assuming that the Russians do manage to ‘capture’ this territory, there will be the possibilities of ethnic conflict and ethnic tensions for decades ahead.

There is an opinion poll tonight that indicates that people in general are more worried about the cost of living crisis which is engulfing us than catching COVID-19. As the inflation rate has hit 7% today, there is even worse economic news to come as the inflation rate has hit 8% and over. The same survey reveals that some 49% said they felt in control of their mental health, compared with 54%  six months ago, with the number of people reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression at its highest level for 11 months. This probably indicates that we will have a chronic mental health crisis hanging over us and, as we know, the mental health services have always been the ‘Cinderella’ services (ie underfunded) of the NHS.

When we woke up this morning, we had evidently had quite a drip-drip of rain during the night and it continued throughout most of the early morning. If I have done some gardening the day before, this always gives me rather a smug and self-satisfied feeling that I have got my quota of gardening done before the heavens opened. To be honest, we were not particularly concerned about the rain as we had intended to make a journey to Droitwich by car in any case. So after breakfast, Meg and I collected our newspaper and then hit the road for Droitwich. Following our well-established routines, we made for our favourite cafe where we indulged in cappuchinos and our favourite large toasted teacake between us. After that, we had a quick tour round the charity shop next door to the coffee shop. Within seconds, my eyes alighted on a very sophisticated purple top made by Eastex which I suspect was brand new stock but ‘remaindered’ so we snapped it up. Tomorrow, Meg may well have the occasion to wear it as our son and daughter-in-law have invited us out to our favourite hotel/restaurant just outside Kidderminster and she can no doubt show it off. We knew that we were somewhat time-constrained this morning as Tuesday is my Pilates day so we then made a lightning visit into our local Wilko hardware store. Here I bought several packets of seeds which I intend to sow in the next few days, assuming the weather conditions are propitious. I bought some parsnip, leek, beet, spinach beet and lettuce seeds and I already have the reclaimed space ready by the side of our communal area once the soil has warmed up a little. Whilst I was it, I also bought some seed pots for young plants and a Wilko carbon steel edger tool which previous buyers have raved about in their evaluations on the web. The purpose of our visit was ultimately to pop into Waitrose to buy some more sweet pea ‘baskets’ but in this respect I was disappointed because the Droitwich branch of Waitrose were offering some different kinds of  swet pea baskets which were 50% more than their Bromsgrove counterparts so I decided to give this a miss and see if our local Aldi have some more suitable offerings when I go food shopping on Thursday.  

After I had attended my regular Pilates class in the middle of the day, I popped into our local Asda because there are one or two things that I can only buy there. I made for the motoring section and bought one of those special brushes that are designed to fit the irregular spaces within car wheels and associated trim. These brushes are of a slightly unusual design as they are effectively two loops of wire with the brush components set at right angles to each other. I think that one of these brushes will prove invaluable for cleaning the blades of my little cylinder lawn mower in sparkling condition  and whilst I was at it I bought a large canister of WD-40 at a good Asda price. Well, I thought the canister was a bargain because it looked twice the size of the regular 200ml which I am using at the moment – but this was a triumph of marketing and appearances over actual contents because although the tin looked as though it was probably double the size, the contents were only an increase of 25% over the ‘regular’ size.

When I got home, I discovered that Meg was in a state of high excitement and had been glued to the TV. This is because the news had broken (at about 2.00pm) that Boris Johnson, and his wife Carrie Johnson and the Chancellor Rishi Sunak have all received Fixed Penalty Notices as the Met police have adjudged that they are in breach of the COVID regulations in force at the time. By all accounts, these fines have been paid already which means, presumably, that the recipients are acknowledging their guilt rather than denying the offences and arguing their case in court. Of course, the most critical players in this scenario are Tory MP’s who have the power to dispose Johnson within minutes if they had a mind.  Sky News, though, have been organising a little ‘diary’ of which cabinet ministers have already pledged their support to Boris Johnson and when (it comes as no surprise that first out of the blocks was Nadine Dorries) The rest of the Tory party appear to be biding their time but of course the overriding sentiment is that one should not change the prime Minister whilst the country is so heavly involved (if not actually at war) with the situation in the Ukraine. This, of course, is a specious argument as it is being quoted that Churchill replaced Chamberlain just days before the Second World War, Lloyd George replaced Asquith weeks into Somme and Eden lost his job during the Suez crisis. But many Tory MP’s are of the opinion that Boris’s indiscretions are ‘priced in’ to their loyalty to the PM.

It was good to wake up to a fairly bright day and the prospect of a nice spring day. Meg and I had already determined beforehand that we were going to make our journey by car this morning and, so after breakfasting, we set forth. I had a particular reason for wanting to take the car this morning. Over the weekend, we noticed in Waitrose that they had some arrangements of ‘sweet peas’ with a little bamboo framework to support the young plants. We have a particular raised bed on our patio which is tailor-made for the growing of sweet peas and we already have our support framework in place against a fairly sheltered wall but in full sight of the kitchen window. I had determined to buy a couple of these plants and to get them planted as soon as possible because we did not wish to ‘miss the boat’ as we have occasionally done in years gone by. But by the time we got there this morning, all but one of the plants had been sold but at least we secured one. We contacted the member of staff whose duty it is to look after the plants and flower sales in Waitrose and discovered that although the Bromsgrove store might not receive any more supplies, the Droitwich store probably had some still in stock. So we resolved to make a flying visit to Droitwich in the morning but we will have to be fairly expeditious as Tuesday is my Pilates day.

We had an earlyish (for us) lunch and then there a ‘little’ gardening job scheduled for the afternoon. This little job seemed to be a bit more complex than originally envisaged as we wish to neaten up where the lawn abuts our paved patio. This job, as it had not been done for some time, involved  several ‘passes’ with a variety of implements. First we had to cut off the grossly overhanging grass and then used a veriety of edging tools and our new patio knife to achieve the kind of effect we wanted. The first time in a season is always a little on the time-consuming and demanding side. but subsequent neatening efforts – every few months- should prove to be a lot less problematic now. So although I wanted to only spend about a half hour on the job, I fear it was a little longer and I feel as though I may ache a little afterwards.

The Ukrainian situation is full of foreboding today. Russia is probably looking to ‘double or perhaps treble’ the amount of troops they have in the Donbas area in the next phase of its war in Ukraine, a western official has said. It is evident that Russian troops from around Kyif have been withdrawn and are now being regrouped and reinforcing the trpps amassing in the east of the country. The Russians seem to be augmenting their troops perhaps with some ‘veteran’ troops from past conflicts, removing troops from the Syrian theatre of war and even utilising mercenary forces. In the meanhile, a new general has been appointed who the press have dubbed ‘the Butcher of Syria’, Alexander Dvorknikov. According to John Simpson, the BBC World Affairs correspondent, Dvorknikov has great form when it comes to the planning and execution of war crimes. It is said, for example, that in Syria he would shell a city until the emergency ambulance and fire fighting personnel had been deployed and then he would shell it again to maximise the impact upon the civilian population. Everyone in the west is expecting the next few weeks to get incredibly nasty. One particular date that figures large in the Russian military mind is May 9th, known as Victory Day.  This is a holiday that commemorates the surrender of The Greater German Reich in 1945. It was first inaugurated in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945 (after midnight, thus on 9 May Moscow Time). It is believed that Putin wants to be in a psosition to announce  a great military victory on that date – therefore, the Russians may make the most almighty onslaught on the Donbas (eastern) regions of the Ukraine which border Russia and have been the site of ongoing insurrections and conflicts between local insurrectionist and Russian-speaking militia and the Ukraines since the invasion of Crimea in 2014. There is some other Ukrainian news to give one pause for thought. Apparently, some of the nuclear materials have been ‘liberated’ from the wrecked nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. The Russian soldies have contaminated themselves by churning up the ground with their military vehicles and the nuclear materials that they have stolen may well kill them within the year (unless they handled with a great deal of care and specialist knowledge which seems unlikely).  The Ukrainians themselves are reporting that the ignorance of the typical Russian militiamen has to be seen to be believed.

Today being Sunday was the day for an early rising and then a trip down to the paper shop for our copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ It was quite a nice bright and not particularly cold when I started walking down, accompanied by a bit of Bach on my ancient iPhone which is my Sunday morning treat. On such occasions, I often think of little numerical puzzles I have encountered – for example, I have discovered that with a bit of rounding a square metre is 1.2 square yards- conversely to convert square yards to square metres, one multiplies by 5/6. As a case in point our communual green area, minus the BioDisc is 300 square metres which it is easy to convert into 250 square metres. But it whilst I was doing a bit of internet searching into push mower rotation speeds that I came across the opinion that revolutions measured in revolutions per minute (rpm) is a particularly pointless idea and one to which we cannot really relate. For example, I know that at my 2mph my little push mower will rotate its blades to give the equivalent of 2200 rpm which is about three quarters (2900 rpm) of the conventional standard for hover mowers and some petrol driven mowers. Now 2200 rpm sounds not to be a particularly fast rate but if you convert it into seconds, it becomes 36.7 revs per second, which ‘sounds’ a lot faster. Again, to try and get my mind around the magnitudes of revolving objects, I now know that a human blink has a typical duration of one third of a second. Now my trusty little lawn mower will deliver a cut with one of its blades at the rate of 12 for each eye blink. Now rather than my ‘slow’ 2200 rpm, I have an incredibly fast 12 ‘cuts’ per blink-of-an-eye which sounds satisfing fast – but all of the statistics are essentially the same. On a similar theme, there is one fact that had stuck with me since my GCE ‘O’-level days and that is a little formula that ‘60 mph is 88 feet per second‘. With a bit of rounding up to 90 this is 90 feet (or thirty yards per second). I mention this only because in my late 20’s I was involved in a bizarre accident in the Polytechnic in which I then worked.   The campus straddled and was criss-crossed by some busy roads. One of these was a ‘T’ junction and approaching one of these a driver ‘fainted’ and crossed the road, hitting me first and throwing me into the air and smashing both my legs and taking two of my students on its bonnet through some iron railings. I reckon the car was going at about 40mph and was about 10 yards (30 feet) away from me before the car accelerated across the ‘T’ junction and hit me. As 40mph is 60 feet per second, then I had about half a second to react to the car speeding towards me. Meg’s father, when we recounted the story of the accident to him could only observe ‘Why didn’t he jump out of the way?‘ All that I can say is that I had just about enough time for my brain to register to not continue walking forward and hence the car hit me with the corner of its bumper rather than full on (when I might have been killed outright) I just thought I would mention how some of these equivalences might work out in practice (As a sequel, the ‘fainted’ driver recovered and fled the next day to Florida where our lawyers served a High Court writ upon him and the case came to court some 5 years later.) Incidentally a ‘fainted’ body at the wheel of a car is not legally responsible for their actions and therefore a legal case where one has to prove that the driver was ‘at fault’ is difficult to construct – but that is another story which I will not go into just now).

Around Easter time, I always like to listen to a rendition of an oratorio, typically broadast upon Radio 3. Today, I looked at the offerings for Palm Sunday and was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a live performance of J.S Bach’s ‘St John Passion‘ so Meg and I particularly enjoyed listening to this whilst we were having our Sunday lunch and a pleasant relaxing read of the Sunday newspapers. Later in the week there is a performance of ‘Matthew Passion‘ on Wednesday evening (rather an odd choice of day as one would associate this with Good Friday or Holy Saturday (Easter vigil). When we go to church next Saturday, there will be a special Easter service starting at 8.00pm (when it is just about getting dark) when a special ‘flame’ accompanied by candles. I learn from the web that by Constantine’s realm in the fourth century CE, the night of the vigil of Easter began Saturday at dusk, with the lighting of the ‘new fire’, including a large number of lamps and candles and the paschal candle. The paschal candle is very large, made of beeswax and fixed in a great candlestick created for that purpose; it is still a significant part of Holy Saturday services.

Today dawned as a beautiful bright day but it was one of those that when I arose to make our early morning cup of tea, it was evident that there had been quite a hard frost during the night as the lawns were white over – however, as the sun rose, this soon burnt off. It is always a pleasure to look out on the front lawn once it has been mowed (and edged) the day beforehand. After breakfast, Meg and I walked very slowly down into town. We passed our Irish friend who was busy on his knees in his front garden (planting rather than praying) and he was busy planting out some dahlias as his others had not survived the winter. Once we got into the park we had our coffee and I left Meg to go and off and collect our newspaper. I did have a brief chat on the way back, though, with Seasoned World Travellor who was having a coffee in the poolside cafe. When we got home, we cooked some chicken breasts for lunch – I was anxious to ‘tart them up’ a little as otherwse they might have been a bit too bland. I decided to experiment with a honey mustard sauce, augmented with a little barbecue sauce. In theory, this should have been OK but I suspect that I overdid the mustard somewhat so I am making a mental note to myself to moderate the amount of mustard the next time I try something similar to this. This afternoon we are due to go to church leaving the house at 5.30 and returning just before 7.00pm. What is rather good now that the hour has gone back is that we both go and return fom church in the daylight which always elevates the spirits a little. When we get to church, we must stop and admire the floral decorations in which one of our friends has been heavily involved, tomorrow being ‘Palm Sunday’. We will have to wait and see whether we get our traditional palm (folded into the shape of the cross) which used to be the tradition years ago, but of course things change.

One of the unanticipated consequences of the conflict in Ukraine is the likely absence of wheat which has probably not been sown and/or harvested. Ukraine and Russia account for a third of global wheat and barley exports, which countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa rely on to feed millions of people who subsist on subsidized bread and bargain noodles. They are also top exporters of other grains and sunflower seed oil used for cooking and food processing. So there are some predictions that the hungry of the world might be even more hungry once the full consequences of the war in Ukraine have played out. The other news from the Ukraine is equally depressing. Sky News reports that General Alexander Dvornikov has been placed in charge of Russia’s invasion after it failed to gain control of Kyiv. Formerly commander of Russia’s southern military district, General Dvornikov has been linked to some of the worst atrocities committed by Russian-backed Bashar al Assad forces in Syria.  Speaking to Sky News earlier, former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Roderic Lyne appeared to confirm the reports. Claiming Vladimir Putin has failed in his military objectives, he said: ‘I think that’s why they are re-concentrated their efforts on the south and the east. They’ve appointed a new general with a pretty savage track record in Syria to try to at least gain some territory in Donetsk that Putin could present as a victory.‘

Tonight, or rather late on this afternoon, I put all of the ingredients together for a ‘souper’ winter vegetables soup. So far, I have used carrots, parsnips, swede, celery and turnip supplemented with a fried onion and made with half a tin of coconut milk. This should be bubbling away whilst we are out and ready to consume when we return.

It is the first round of voting in the French president election tomorrow. Normally, this would not be of a great deal of interest to us in the UK but this time around, things are different. This is because the extreme right candidate, Marine Le Pen is within a percentage point or so of beating the incumbent president, Macron. She took over from her father as leader in 2011 and, in an attempt to distance herself from his reputation, banished him from the party in 2015. After losing out to Mr Macron in 2017, she rebranded the National Front to National Rally. Although anti-immigration by nature and a previous supporter of Mr Putin, Ms Le Pen has been quick to announce her support for Ukrainian refugees. She has also focused heavily on the cost of living crisis, which many credit with her recent uptick in the polls. Were she to win through in the second round, the dynamics of the politics of the whole of Europe would receive quite a jolt. 

Today dawned bright and clear and all of the indications were that it was a fine day for a walk. But Meg and I found it a little difficult to get ourselves going this morning but eventually we got ourselves ‘into gear’ and set off for town mid morning. Before we left, we had a phone call from some of our church friends thanking us for some wire brushes which I had spare and left on their doorstep (to help remove rust from some gardening tools – what else?) As we walked down the hill, we bumped into our Irish friend who was getting herself prepared to go off for a few days holiday (coinciding with half term) with some members of her family. Then we struck out for the park and no sooner had we consumed our coffee than our University of Birmingham friend strode into view and as we have not coincided for quite a bit what with one thing or another so it was pleasant to catch up on all of our news. We were putting our heads together to see if here was a small friendly Spanish town to which our friend could journey on his own, to improve his Spanish (hence wanting to go alone – if there is more than one of you, then you form a ‘little bubble’ and do not interact thorughly with the country whereas on one’s own, you have to sink or swim by yourself). We then met up, as is usual with Seasoned World Traveller and then Meg and I pushed on into town where we picked up our newspaper and then made a quick visit to Waitrose, as is our wont, to pick up some things that I have invariably forgotten in my main shopping earlier in the week.

This afternoon was my lawn cutting day and everything worked out well. At this time of year, one can practically see the grass leaping out of the ground so it always good to get this routine job done. The gardening books always used to say, quite irritatingly, that for any particular job that one should ‘choose a nice day’ as though one had complete ability to order a particular set of weather for a particular day. But as soon as the major mowing had been done, there was a little measuring job that needed to be done. I have set myself the objective of trying to work out the rpm equivalent of my little push mower whch I utilised yesterday. By a fortunate coincidence of numbers, the recommended mowing speed of 2mph is almost exactly 1 yard per second and this fact comes in useful later on my calculations. I then measured the circumference of the driving wheel which is 27″ – hence in takes one and a third revolutions of the driving wheel to cover a yard. I then worked empirically (and this was the tricky bit) the gearing ratio between the driving wheel and the reel speed which turned out to be a ratio of 1:5.5. As there are five cutting blades this makes one revolution 5.5 x 5 which is 27.5 ‘hits’ of the blade per revolution or just 36.67 hits of a blade per yard. From this data, I have mnaged to work out that the RPM equivalent at 2mph is actually 60 times this which is 2200rpm. At. walking speed of 2.5 mph, this would be 2750 rpm which is pretty close to the 3000 rpm which a conventional hover mower would offer. Or so I reckon.

Two bits of Ukrainian news are hitting the headlines this evening. One of these which might just be wishful thinking or western propaganda is that in the retreat from Lyif, some Russian troops may have abandoned a lot of tanks and artillery. The abandonment of vehicles  is said to be ‘a collapse of the will to fight’ which bit of information is certainly consistent with several other stories to the same effect. But the other really terrible piece of news is the fact that thousands of people had crowded into a railway station in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine. Estimates of the numbers killed range from 30-50 and hundreds have been killed. It was well known to the Russian military authorities that thousands of civilians were assembling in the railway station to effect their escapes from the shelling that is going to be unleashed upon them. It looks, therefore, that the attack was intentional and the clearest example of a ‘war crime’ to add to the growing list. Bit by bit, the West seems to be adding more sohisticated weaponry to the Ukrainians, no doubt stimulated by the scale of the atrocities that are revealed as the Russians retreat from the north. Boris Johnson has said he would give Ukraine’s military more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles, and precision munitions. He also promised more helmets, night vision googles and body armour. Whether this will prove effective in the coming onslaught in the East of the country, time will tell.

Today was the type of day that I would describe as ‘glowering’ in that it was generally overcast with just some slight bursts of sunshine that did not seem to last very long. But there seemed to be a very strong and blustery wind which made any kind to the park an unpleasant prospect. We were a little late this morning because, as is normal on a Thursday, I had got to the supermarket to go shopping and all of this worked out as planned. One of the joys of Aldi is that after the food shopping has been done, there are always the ‘central aisles’ in which there are a variety of household and hardware type goods (probably remainders from high quality manufacturers) in which you are never quite sure whether you find something useful. Last week, for example, I bought from the central aisle one of those incredibly useful garden ‘Flexi Tubs’ as Amazon calls them – needless to say, they had practically all gone by today which is typical for incredibly good bargains which shoppers are wont to snap up. Today, I was wondering whether it was possible to buy some more pyjamas for Meg as the ones we bought about a month ago have proved to be excellent. Today, though, I picked up what is advertised as a children’s ‘athlete’ suit  and looking at the size of the garment which would fit a 13-14 year old child, I was sure they would double as an extra pair of pyjamas for Meg. So I took a chance and bought them and they have proved to be an excellent purchase insofar as we can tell – let’s hope that they survive their first immersion in the washing machine without shrinkage tomorrow morning. After we had unpacked the shopping, neither Meg nor I felt inclined to go on a trip to Droitwich as it was so windy and unpleasant. Instead, we went by car and treated ourselves to a coffee in the newly opened coffee lounge in our local Waitrose we have now started to frequent once more. I bought a few things I had forgotten in the morning shop and then it was home for a lunch of quiche.  

Friday (tomorrow) is the day when I routinely cut our grassed areas, both the communal areas to the front of the house and our own private lawns to the rear. Whulst my trusty ‘Stiga’ (Swedish) mulching mower does a wonderful job, I also bought some years back an extremely light weight push mower (about 7 kg in total). As well as being a backup in the case of a total failure of the petrol mower, I have in the past used my lightweight push mower to cut one of the long borders which can prove tricky when two of the wheels are on the grass and the other two overhang the edge. I have been doing some research on the exact differences between conventional rotary mowers  and the new generation of  lightweight push mowers and this is what I have discovered (from the web) A reel ( or push) mower cuts grass like a pair of scissors. It has blades that spin around a central axis. The spinning blades create an updraft that causes grass to stand up straight for cutting. As the grass meets the cutting bar, a blade comes down to chop it. A reel mower can either be a push (human-powered) or powered (petrol, electric), although push reel mowers are more common around home.  A rotary mower is what most people think of when they think of petrol or electric mowers. It has a single blade that spins around to cut the grass, like a helicopter. The blade whacks at the grass to cut it. When it comes to comparing the actions of these two types of mower at the ‘micro’ level, then the push reel mowers literally cut the blades of grass whereas the rotary mowers just whack it, by rotating a blade at high speed. A ‘clean cut’ is undoubtedly better for the grass than just a ‘whack’.  When I come to clean up the push mower, I appreciate how very sharp the blades actually are and if the mower is properly adjusted (which mine appears to be) then you can actually cut one sheet of paper as though you were cutting it with scissors if it is inserted at the appropriate point between the spinning blade and the base blade. So overall, I was very pleased with my ‘pre-preparation’ of the lawn this afternoon and hope that I can continue to repeat this procedure week by week, time and weather permitting of course.

I have just watched the Sky News interview of Putin’s press spokesperson with Mark Austin and, of course, it is incredible to watch a Russian spokesman so wrapped into their ideological world that they are trying to argue that Ukrainian actors played the part of dead people whilst the Russians were busy patrolling the streets – according to the Russian account, Ukrainian ‘Nazis’ have committed all of the atrocities in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, some breaking news is that the UN General Assembly has just voted to suspend Russia from UN Human Rights Council.  

Today was to all intents and purposes the typical April day with many showers followed by bursts of sunshine. In view of the variable weather conditions, Meg and I decided that we would pay our visit down into Bromsgrove by car. On our way down, we popped off a new wire brush for the benefit of our friend who  was busy restoring one of the pair of flower stands that adorns our local church. Most churches, irrespective of denomination involved, tend to be a blaze of spring flowers with which to adorn the church over Easter and this year, Easter Sunday falls on one of the latest dates possible. Having collected our newspaper, we then paid a visit to Waitrose and, in particular, which has just re-opened fully after bing closed for the best of two years (to be fair, it did open  for a short period in between lockdowns) But now it seems to be one of the few cafes in the Waitrose network that has been reprieved. We were pleasantly surprised  to see the cafe was practically full and we got the last available table. By happy chance, on the next door was our old park friend, Seasoned World Traveller, so we had a fascinating conversation over a whole range of subjects – we spent a good half an hour and perhaps even more in the most conducive of surroundings. Neither of us would have appreciated being rained upon in the park so it was wonderful to be back. One of the staff who knows us particularly well gave us a little ‘Welcome Back‘ present of one of the small Waitrose hessian bags which will prove tremedously useful to us as it just the right size to accommodate our newspapers and one or two small items of shopping. Then we returned home and had extensive chats with our domestic help who has swopped her normal Friday day for today. She and her husband are due to go off to Venice shortly to enjoy a delayed wedding anniversary trip – as they actually got married in Venice, they are hoping to retrace some of their steps and experiences from their wedding/honeymoon days. We are hopeful that they will get away in time as I have just read in The Times that there has been chaos at Manchester Airport with the director resigning and walking out in the midst of airport chaos and the police are having to step in to restore a modicum of order. But as our friends are leaving from Bristol airport and not one of the large metropolitan ones, and so perhaps the omens are set fair for an uneventful trip. We have promised some interesting photos once they are safely there.

This afternoon I thought I would pop out do a bit of gardening, but everytime I was thinking about it, there seemed to be an imminent shower and the subsequent sunshine did not last for very long. Eventually, I decided that even if the sun was shining, the gound was likely to be soggy or even downright muddy so I decided to write off all thoughts of gardening for the day.

The latest Omicron virus figures are hgher than ever and the latest rates show that 1 in every 16 people in the country are infected by the virus. The infection is by the mildest version and some peopke have no symptoms or just the slightest sniffle to indicate that they have the virus. Evidently, we are in the phase of the pandemic where we are ‘learning to live’ with the virus but to withdraw the free availability of  the lateral flow tests appears to be premature by at least a couple of weeks. Whilst the economy can still function as barely infectious personnel resume their work roles, the possibilities seem to be immense that a new variant might well arise. There is no law of biological viral evolution that indicates that one mutation of the virus should prove to be less dangerous i.e. able to generate a severe illness, than another. Therefore it is quite possible that we are living in a ‘fool’s paradise’ and another variant of the virus might be around the corner to bite us severely in the behind.

Tomorrow, whilst it is our normal shopping day, we may take the opportunity to make another little visit to Droitwich is about some seven miles away from us. Droitwich has several attractions for us, not least the Waitrose and Wilko stores both of which we like to visit but also some congenial coffee shops and interesting charity shops.  There is also an ‘Olde Worlde’ type teashop which every Thursday puts on a magnificent roast dinner – these are so popular that space is limited and one has to book to ensure a chance of a meal. So we shall see how we feel in the morning but Droitwich is always a pleasant little toddle for us and has the advantage of being quite compact which cuts down on the amount of walking that Meg has to do.