Today has turned out to be one of the most interesting of days. We knew that we were going to see our University of Birmingham friend later in the afternoon but in the meanwhile, this meant that we were free for our own devices in the morning. This was the weekend upon which the clocks get turned back by one hour and given that I have lost some sleep over the last few nights, this was truly appreciated. This morning we decided after we had breakfasted and seen some of the Lorna Kuennsberg show that we would make a trip to the park which I must admit we have not visited in the last week or so. During the pandemic and when Meg’s mobility was so much better, we did visit the park practically every day and it was an absolute lifeline to us, as well as to regular dogwalkers who seem to be legion in Bromsgrove. Accordingly, we made up a flask of coffee and took along some nibbles, occupying our normal park bench which did require a little drying off with the requisite sponges but we always carry these in the supplies bag in any case. In the last week or so, we have not visited the park much as we tend to see groups of friends in cafeterias of various descriptions but today was a lovely bright day with interesting autumnal colours so it seemed to be a shame not to make another visit to our old favourite. We had not been sitting down for very long before Inveterate Octogenerian Hiker strode into view -or rather flopped onto an adjacent bench, which is quite understandable as he tends to walk anything between 7-9 kilometers a day, even at his advanced years. Whilst engaged in this conversation, another couple that we know quite well and who are regular park visitors stopped by for a chat. Then we were joined by a magnificent labradoodle named Alfred hove into view together with his owner so that was the third acquaintance we had met within only a few minutes. Finally, we decided to return home as Meg was getting a little chilly (I must remember to take out a little blanket for when to take the wheelchair into the park) and on the way back to the car were hailed by yet another couple with whom we have been out for meals in the past. So I must say that Meg and I felt that slightly guilty as we had neglected the park somewhat and it was enervating to meet four lots of our park friends within the space of less than half an hour. When we did get home, it was all a bit of a race around because we had some beef cooking in the slow cooker and on occasions such as this, there is always the onion gravy to prepare and the slow cooker dish itself needs a certain dgree of cleaning out. Nonetheless, the dinner turned out to be prepared relatively swiftly under the circumstances before it could be eaten and everything washed up and put away before our friend was due to call around at 2.15 in the afternoon.

The afternoon did not quite turn out as planned – but that was not necessarily a bad thing. We had intended to go along to visit the Webbs Garden Centre cafeteria thinking that it might be less busy in the afternoon rather than Sunday mornings. This turned out not to be the case and we turned up rather anticipating tht we could utilise one of the wheelchairs that they make available for the use of patrons. But when we got there, all of the wheelchairs were in use (i.e. none available) so we had to swing onto ‘Plan B’ We decided to return to our house where we entertained our friend to tea and biscuits in our Music Room. We were intrigued to learn of some new friends that our friend had made recently and who we may meet ourselves in the weeks ahead. But we spent a good time chatting about some TV programmes that we had both seen and thoroughly enjoyed – our friend was intrigued by the ‘Birth of Israel’ documentary which we had viewed recently and which was so informative. I was also explaining to our friend why we found ‘Outnumbered’ so enthralling so we played our friend a ten minute segment of this so that he could get a flavour of it. After our friend had left, we knew that we were keeping an eye on a piece of furniture that was being sold locally and which we hope to collect in the next day or so. This was a ‘captain’s chair’ and what we found so enthralling and intriguing was what the eventual selling price would turn out to be. The bidding process started out at £10.00 but in the eBay recently viewed section, there was an identical one that had evidently been professionally restored but was selling for practically £1,000. Intrigued by all of this we entered the auction with about 40 seconds to spare and did, in fact, secure the item at £1.30 more than our initial top limit but about a 20th of the antique dealers price we saw adjacent to it. I am just waiting for the seller to get back to me with details of the collection address and a convenient time for us to call around to collect said item. Once we get it home, it will require a certain amout of TLC to expended upon it to bring it into a nice looking condition but it seems basically sound and a wonderful shape which will complement our existing chair perfectly.

Dawn came as a blessed relief after a night with hardly any sleep, the reasons for which upon which I shall not elaborate. But Meg and I were buoyed up by the knowledge that we would meet up with some friends in the Waitrose cafeteria this morning so we progressed with our morning ablutions and a light breakfast. We had got ourselves geared up for our little venture out this morning when disaster appeared to strike. On attempting to start the car engine, the motor resolutely failed to start and I was left with a strange symbol of what appeared to be a cirle of gears and what may have been a representation of fuses. In some desperation, I decided to phone the specialist RAC line for help and the telephone number directed me to a website from which I had to supply details in order to receive some assistance. Fortunately, the first option was to tick a box saying ‘at home’ and then we got prepared for a wait of anything up to an hour and a half. I needed to go back into the house for something, felt in my pocket and then realised that I have left my remote car key inside the house. So it was no wonder it would not start and I now understand that the symbol I thought was a string of fuses was meant to be a keyboard. I might add that the graphics on the model of HR-V that we have has a remarkably clunky 1970’s feel to them and I am fairly hopeful that when we pick up a new car in some week’s time that the graphics and explanations will have been radically improved. I think my absence of sleep had contributed to my memory lapse this morning as it is the first time I hve ever attempted to drive the car without the keyfob and I had evidently left the car unlocked anyway to gain access to it. So we arrived to see the Saturday gang about 20 minutes late but were immediately rewarded with some little chocolate slices to accompany our coffee, this being a delayed birthday cake from one of our number who celebrated a birthday in her 80’s last Sunday. We have made an arrangement to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend tomorrow afernoon rather than tomorrow morning, and of course the places to have coffee on a Sunday are a little limited. Our friend is going to call around for us in the early afternoon tomorrow and so we shall ensure that we shall lunch a little earlier. This should not be at all problematic because this weekend the hour goes back (‘Spring forward, Fall back’) so apart from the hassle of altering all the appliances (including the ones that I sometimes struggle to rmember how the time setting mechanism works), we should be in plenty of time. We lunched today on the risotto that I would normally have prepared yesterday had we not eaten our fill of bacon butties yesterday morning.

I try to make sure that the afternoons when we are resting have a degree of predictability about them – this is particularly, because I am encouraging Meg to have a really good rest in the afternoons because I am sure that her body needs it even if her mind (apparently) does not. So after we had cleared up after lunch, we have our daily ‘fix’ of ‘Outnumbered’ after which I had got something lined up to watch in the mid afternoon. I had previously noticed on the BBC iPlayer tht there was a documentary by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, on ‘The Birth of Israel’ I had started to watch this the other night and it looked fascinating so we saved it for a viewing this afternoon. You might have thought that we would have had a surfeit of news about the Israeli-Arab conflict in Gaza but this program was fascinating in the historical archive and interviews that were deployed. The most fascinating part was the way in which during the ‘war of independence’ the Jewish settlers had been populating Palestine from the 1920’s onwards (at first, peacefully) Eventually, under Israel’s first premier, David Ben Gurion, it was documented how the Jewish settlers (not yet Israelis until 1948) had fought both their Arab neighbours and the British who held a United Nations Mandate to govern the territory. Just prior to 1948, there were groups of Jewish settlers who rampaged through some Palestinian villages bombing them and shooting man, women and children on sight (e.g. the ‘Stern’ Gang, as well as Irgun) forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee their native villages and to make for territories such as Gaza. Naturally, the British labelled these fighters for independence as ‘terrorists’ and when you come to think about it, the British have often subjugated a people and independence has been forced through the barrel of a gun (MauMu in Kenya, Eoka in Cyprus/Greece and so on) What is remarkable is that the pattern of violence exhibited by Hamas today echos that of the Jewish settlers prior independence in 1948.

Last night, I watched England secure a narrow victory to snatch the ‘Bronze’ i.e. 3rd place in the Rugby World Cup. But it was very close fought and the Argentinians would have drawn level, had they not missed a crucial penalty – and they could well have won on extra time. Tonight, of course, is the almighty class between New Zealand and the South Africans which will be a mighty tussle and decided by the finest of margins, one suspects.

We got going eventually this morning after a somewhat delayed start but are always pleased to see our domestic help arrive on Friday mornings but we suspected that we might well be out later in the morning. Once we had got breakfast out of the way, we set forth to pick up our daily newspaper and then to make for Droitwich some miles away. The normal route was blocked by roadworks – whether routine or a consequence of the latest bout of bad weather I cannot say – but eventually we got there. However, we made a stop en-route to our local Age Concern charity shop because our domestic help had tipped us off that they had a practically new light wheelchair available for sale at a very reasonable price. Thinking about my back and whatever I can do, both now and in the future, to minimise the strain upon it and thinking that there may well be occasions when Meg will need to resort to a wheelchair around the house, we decided to make a phone call to see if it was still available. It was, and I promised to get round there by 11.00am this morning to pick it up. Naturally, these light wheelchairs are designd to fold almost flat to get them into the boot of a car. Talk about the kindness of strangers – someone I did not know wandered over from his car and, observing me struggling a little with the newly purchased appliance, showed me how the handles came off and how it folded flat to get it into the boot. Naturally, I thanked him profusely but did not want to bring the chair into commission in Droitwich if I could help it as I felt I needed to get it home first and give it a good examination and ‘once over’ before bringing it into regular use. We were very fortunate in finding a parking space quite near to our favourite cafe and this meant that I could walk Meg into the cafe with the minimum of effort. Once inside, I enquired whether that actually did any bacon butties (which I quite fancied) On being told that they did I ordered two, on for Meg and one for myself but this turned out to be somewat optimistic as they were enormous and came on great chunks of brown bread. In practice, and we shall know next time, one of these would have been quite sufficient but we consumed these with gusto and a huge pot of tea to go with it. After we had left, I was keeping an eye out for Worcestershire Association of Carers charity shop just down the road because I have always been impressed by the quality of their offerings. I did not leave empty handed either as I came away with a pair of boots with a kind of furry top of a kind I had years ago and these were just my size. I also picked upm a smart leather/leatherette type briefcase (always useful if you have to take a bundle of documents along to a hospital or a solicitor) and finally a cushion for which I think I can find an immediate use. So all in all, it was a very productive morning.

The latest Middle East conflict is causing all kinds of tensions in the body politic. For a start, the United States looks as though it is trying to restrain the Israelis from all out ground offensive into the Gaza strip. If such an full-bloodied offensive takes place, it is going to be bloody in the extreme on both sides. The Hamas fighting units have a whole series of tunnels in which the Israelis will have to engage and fighting may well be hand to hand. Every mission is fraught with danger. If the Israelis attempt such an assault then some of the 200-odd Israeli captives may well have been placed in the tunnels to prevent an incursion. And, of course, there may well be booby traps everywhere. The Americans will be equally anxious to not ignite a wider regional conflict but they have already bombed positions in Syria so one can imagine that not only Israel but Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq could be drawn into a regional conflict. So far, the Israelis have confined themselves to a couple of deep incursions into Gaza rather than a full scale incursion but the world is watching and waiting and one feels that it can only a question of time. Meanwhile back in domestic politics, the Labour party leadership is getting itself impaled upon a terrible hook. By defending to the right of the Israelis to defend themselves, does this give a green light to the indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population in Gaza of whom some 40% are estimated to be children? It is quite possible to endorse Israel’s right to self defence but at the same time to condemn a bombing of the Gaza population which looks as though it is an act of collective punishment even if this not the intention of the Israelis. But the UN Secretary General and other influential actors regard the actions of Israel as a war crime. Meanwhile, the initial assault by Hamas is also a war crime but where do we go from here? The Qataris are trying to broker some kind of hostage release in return for a moderation of the ground offensive into Gaza but the negotiations are tortuous (and may not get anywhere)

Today dawned as an indeterminate type of day – one that frequently gives way to showers with intermittent burst of sunshine. As we had a pleasant experience yeserday in the Methodist coffee house, we decided to repeat the experience as the patrons seem quite a friendly crowd. Today is the day when the PCSO (Police Community Support Officers) generally make their presence felt by sitting on the ‘Chatty Table’ and making themselves available to anyone seeking thir advice. I think they have a little bag with ‘goodies’ in it such as the kind of stickers that you can display on or near a front door to deter cold callers. Meg and I are fortunate not to be troubled by these but I feel fairly sure that the main Kidderminster Road is probably fairly well worked over. One of the PCSO’s remembered me and my tall stories from the last time we met which was probably a fortnight ago and I became emboldened to ask her a semi-personal question, namely what it was that she were wearing that accounted for her bulky appearance. The PCSO officer responded by saying that she would show me and promptly took off her outer garment which was protected by the Kevlar material which tends to be stab proof but in its heaviest versions can stop a bullet as well. I must confess that it is the first time that I have ever had a female police officer disrobe in front of me, but I suppose there must be a first time for everything. She handed me the outer garment she was wearing and it was amazingly heavy – it felt as though it had ceramic plates built into it but I surmise that the PCSOs might have have the lighter of the several grades of Kevlar allocated to them. After we had enjoyed some banana cake and teacake for myself, we departed some time after twelve and, of course, ran into huge traffic jams through the centre of Bromgrove so had to make a detour. I paid the briefest of visits to our favourite AgeConcern shop wondering if they had any cushion covers or anything else that took my fancy. However, on my lighning tour of the shop, nothing stood out so we made it home and then got on with cooking the lunch.

After lunch, we indulged in our daily ration of ‘Outnumbered’ after which time our chiropodist called round. She has been coming to us for some years now and can be quite a useful source of health advice. I mentioned my bad back and she promptly suggested a ‘Yoga for sciatica sufferers’ website that I think she has consulted and found useful in the past. In her job she has often to bend at a particular angle whilst ministering to the feet of her clients so I suspect that her advice is well worth taking. Later on today or probably this evening, I shall look at the website that she recommended to see if there are useful exercises and stretches that I might perfom. Normally, of course, I would have my weekly Pilates session each Tuesday to help to keep me in good trim but that has had to be abandoned in the last 3-4 weeks which I regret but I cannot see myself working around at the moment. Later on this afternoon, we stumbled across a wonderful concert filmed in Halle’s Marktkirche in 2009 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the death of Handel. Given that Handel was practically an adopted Englishman, I think that similar concerts were held at about the same time in the UK. I did not have much time to sit down and enjoy this particular concert but it can keep for another day as a telephone call came through as I was sitting down to enjoy it. The telephone call was from one our fellow Catholic parishioners who we know quite well (force of habit means tht we often occupy the same pews from one week to another) and, as we had exchanged Christmas cards with each other in the past she had got our telephone number. Not having seen us last Saturday evening, our Geordie friend was telephoning to ensure that all was well with us. It is rather a wonderful experience to be missed in this particular way and we had a pleasant chat with each other, after which having now got her telephone number, I said I would return the call in a few days time. Our friend had nursed her own husband to his death so is fully ware of the pressures and strains of looking after a partner when their health declines.

After last night’s political news that Peter Bone, a Tory who has held junior ministerial office had a six week suspension from the House of Commons (perhaps followed by a recall election in which he would forfeit his seat), another scandal breaks upon the Tory party. Today it is Crispin Blunt who has revealed that the police have charged him with rape, which charge he vigorously denies. Nonetheless, Rishi Sunal trying to conduct a serious debate about the potential and dangers of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is faced with two distractions from the ranks of his own party. It used to be said that Conservative politicians are prone to sex scandals but Labour MPs to financial ones – however, we seem to have had a real run of sex scandals in the modern Tory party which is not really helpful to them when we are in this critical pre-election period.

As the week progresses, we settle into our routines one of which is to attend the Methodist Centre coffee bar on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. We aimed to get there before 11.00am which we did and found that we could occupy the one disabled parking space that they have allocated. Once we got inside, the ‘chatty table’ was already full up and although people volunteered to make space for us, we did not want them to disturb themselves on our account so settled instead for another table where one of Waitrose friends was keeping a table free for us. We enjoyed the tea and toast but got into conversation with a very interesting patron. In the course of the conversation, it transpired that he was part of that generation of science students for whom it was felt to be a good idea that they learn some German in order, presumably, to read scientific papers in German in the original. The person with whom we were chatting was telling us that this was no real problem for him as he had studied German in school but it did for some of his contemparies. He told us that in one of the examination papers, a compulsory question was set in German – whether you had to reply in German I did not round to asking him. When Meg and I were at university, two of our flatmates, one in the main part of the University and one at ‘the Tech’ (later to become UMIST) were subject to this routine where acquisition of the rudiments of German was a requirement but how this was assessed, I am afraid I cannot now remember. Another lady came to have a word with me because her husband had been a Professor of Statistics and she was intrigued to have learnt from our mutual Waitrose friend that I had taught statistics as well. In the course of conversation, it transpired that this couple had lived in Oadby, a twin town to Wigston in Leicestershire and had actually lived in a road which we knew quite well which was probably less than a mile from the first house that we bought in Wigston. So we could well have passed each other in the street whilst we were both resident in Oadby/Wigston (adjacent suburbs, eventually forced into one borough council) but obviously without knowing each other. So it is a small world, as we remarked to each other.

This afternoon after catching up with the latest Sky News headlines, we treated ourself to a Christmas edition of ‘Outnumbered’, which we enjoyed enormously. After this, we followed up with a concert of Mozart and Bach playd by the Netherlands orchestra which we have accessed before and which always seem to produce performances that are both stunning and moving at the same time. We were so absorbed by this that we did not hear the doorbell ring but we did discern a shape and a noise outside the front door. We had been expecting a visit from Severn Water to replace our water meter at some time in the afternoon beween 1.00pm and 6.00pm which was the time period given. All of our houses tend to have a little rubber ‘reading point’ outide the house so that the water meter readers can get a reading without going inside a property but we were told these tend to fail over time. So we have a new meter fitted inside the garage and I think this is constructed in such a way that a signal is sent that can be read externally from this point on, making the little rubber reading socket now redundant.

Later on this afternoon, our hairdresser called around as she does every 4-5 weeks and made sure that we were both duly shorn. Our hairdresser has been coming to us for years and knows exactly how we like our hair to be done. The only very slight downside of this arrangement is that as we have our hair cut in the kitchen, we have to immediately use the vacuum cleaner to clear away the clippings. We always discuss matters of local interest with our hairdresser as she always seem incredibly well informed with new housing developments, road works and the like. Before she arrived, I completed the restoration job that I started yesterday on our captain’s chair. This is fairly simple as it involves rubbing the legs over with beeswax loaded onto a 0000 steel wool carrier, then left 20-25 minutes and finally polished off. The whole chair is now complete and I suspect has not had a good polish for about half a century as I think we have had it for about 55 years as far as I can remember. Like yesterdy, I am quite pleased with the results which are best viewed in daylight rather than an artificial light. I suspect that for the next day or so, I shall continue giving the spindles in the back as well as the legs the ocasional little tweak before I present the results to our domestic help on Friday to guage her opinion on it.

The former Conservative minister Peter Bone has been suspended from the Commons for six weeks. This follows a long investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and bullying after a long investigation by the Commons authorities. These events have taken place at least five years ago and it is an interesting question why the allegtions have taken so long both to surface and also to be resolved. Another by-election may well be the outcome if the local electorate so decides.

Tuesday is the day when, traditionally, we turn up to the Waitrose cafeteria to have coffee with the regulars. These days, I park in our usual spot and transport Meg into the cafeteria on her wheelchair, coinciding with three sets of friends at the same time – in other words, the regular Tuesday crowd. We had a jolly time and I dredged up a couple of amusing operatic anecdotes the most famous of which happened, I think, to Dame Nelly Melba. In the final scene of Tosca, Floria Tosca having killed the villanous chief of police, Scarpia, in order to evade capture flings herself over the battlements. In real life, of course, singers do throw themselves over the scenic representation of a battlement but in the case of Dame Nelly, a whole series of extra bouncy foam was put into position to soften her fall whereafter, having thrown herself over the battlements, she kept bouncing up and down to the general amusement of the audience. After our little session, I felt so much better than I did before I entered the store and wondered how much weight to give to the argument that laughter releases endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, and whether this is ultimately better for you than all manner of pills. We returned home in time to watch the daily Politics Live program which gives airtime to the issues of the day. Top of the agenda today was whether the shouting of ‘Jihad’ constitutes an offence as, according to the government, the police ought to ‘do their job’ and arrest and charge the offender. Meanwhile, the Met. are advised in real time by the Crown Prosecution Service that no arrestable or chargeable offence has been committed and therefore refrain from action. One has to feel for the police under such circumstances because the politicians have one agenda, appealing to what they believe to be public clamour and sentiment whilst the real professionals (the CPS in this case) are advising against. We then had our conventional haddock fishcakes and microwaved vegetables which we really enjoyed. The fishcakes have a quick ‘zing’ of Thousand Island dressing and some sweet chilli sauce to add a bit of zest. After lunch, we watched a bit of the latest news headlines, treated ourselves to the latest outrageous episode of ‘Outnumbered’ in which Pete is castigated by his head and the Chair of Governers for massaging the statistical data of the exam results (as he was encouraged to do in the last episode) One of the killer lines is the swarmy head declaimimg ‘That I take full and complete responsbility for a transgression such as this, performed by my incompetent staff’ We then followed this up with a Youtube video of the Bach B-Minor Mass which was a sort of follow on from yesterday’s programme of Bach works.

I had a little project in mind for this afternoon. When Meg and I were students and sort of setting up house together, we needed to furnish the whole of our maisonette (two of the rooms being ‘paid for’ by rent from our two former erstwhile flatmates) We were considerably aided in the task of furnishing a house on a student income by making extensive use of the Richard Law auction rooms, located about a mile away from the maisonnette. Richard Law himself was a kindly older gentleman ably assisted by his daughter and, of course, we wused to pay visits to the auction rooms to see what was on offer before the weekly auction night itself. Mr Law looked after his customers and made sure that one way or another, his gavel would come down so that customers could generally get a piece that they had set their hearts upon. This is how we acquired the ‘Captain’s Chair’ which, if it were made with leather upholstery, would sell on eBay for anything between £100-£200 but the wood only version is probably only a third of that. I seem to remember that I paid 25 shillings for this (£1.25) and I did a sort of re-upholstery, not very expertly, in some red velvet type material. So this has been part of our household since it was purchased in about 1967 and has not really had much attention, apart from my own reupholstery, since then. Today I decided to give the top half of the chair the Grade0000 steel wool plus beeswax treatment, which is probably the first polish it has received for over half a century. I am quite pleased with the results I have achieved today and tomorrow I will finish if off by doing the legs of the chair. The spindles, in particular, have polished up to a beautiful lustre and the back and the arms look more than presentable which is more than can be said for the back of the chair (not really noticeable in any event)

We have been anticipating a ground assault on Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force almost every day now. But the Israelis face a massive dilemma because any such venture is fraught with risks. One of these is that there are still something like 200 plus hostages held throughout Gaza and their lives would be put at risk by an Isreli assault. In adition, there are likely to be booby traps and hidden dangers all over the place. Hamas are arguing that they will release hostages if the Israelis, for their part, agree to cease their bombardment of Gaza. But, all in all, an attack at some point of time is more likely than not, whereupon a bloodbath will ensue (with blood spilled on all sides)

Today did not did not bring the start of a new week that one would have either liked or hoped for. Not to put too fine a point on it, weeks of caring for Meg including raising her from prone positions when she has slithered to the floor on numerous occasions has finally wrought a toll upon my back and hip. I awoke in severe pain at about 3.00am in the morning and did what I could to alleviate it without any pain relief that I had available to me in the house having much effect. Our son who had called around to do some work from our house shot off to the pharmacy to get me some additional pain relief. Meanwhile, a call to the GP practice elicited a telephone call back from the doctor who recommended more powerful painkillers and these will take a day or so to work their way through the system. In the meanwhile, I am being incredibly careful not to do anything that might exercerbate the condition of my back/hip and this has meant that it has been enjoined upon Meg that she must do everything possible to help herself because my ability to assist her in the ways in which I have been doing over the last few weeks is now severely compromised. But now for some more positive news – the over-the-counter painkillers my son managed to obtain have kicked in to moderate the worst excesses of what I have been suffering earlier this morning and I have tried, with some success, to undertake a regime of very light and moderate walking around which seems to be having the desired effect. I managed to get myself turned around sufficiently to get into the car and obtain a copy of the daily newspaper but any further ventures, particularly those that involve hauling a wheelchair in/out of the boot of the car, are clearly out of the question for the next few days. Having picked up the newspaper, Meg and I had some ‘quiet’ elevenses at home and then having watched some of the political news on Sky News, started to turn our thoughts towards lunch. This turned out to be a very simple affair of baked potato, some fine beans, microwaved tomatoes and slices of the ham in onion gravy that were prepared yesterday. This turned out to be an incredibly tasty meal and we enjoyed it immensely.

After lunch, Meg fall into a little routine as follows. Firstly, we looked at the news headlines on Sky News (rather more ‘on the ball’ I feel rather than the BBC thse days) and then treated ourselves to the next episode in the ‘Outnunbered’ series. This was the episode in which the rather glib-talking headmaster asked, Pete (the husband in the family) who is a history teacher being interviewed for a possible promotion at school and being asked to take the dossier of the schools results and to ‘process’ the data to ‘remove anomalies’ In other words, Pete was asked to either fiddle the figures or put a gloss on them by removing those data sets that did not present the school in the best light. All of this reminded me of an episode that did occur when I was undertaking the fieldwork in preparation for my PhD in the general field of ‘Quality Improvement in NHS Outpatint Clinics’ I was a lone researcher but there was a hospital team of which I read that was doing similar work to myself. We got into contact with each and agreed to share our data sets with each on a reciprocal basis as researchers often do. A few months later, I noticed that the hospital in question had received a European Gold Award for their quality improvement regime and some of the data upon which the award was granted was published. As I had access to the same data, I noticed that the quality improvement quoted for each year was actually the best quarter for that year – in other words, the award was to some extent based upon ‘massaged’ statistics. I made sure that this incident eventually found its way into the PhD suitably anonymised and desguised such that the hospital in question could not be identified. Of course, playing fast and loose with data sets still goes on in the world around us. Only this weekend, the Sunday Times revealed that the costs of HS2 were consistently reported on the low side in order to enable the flow of billions into the project (and the rewards for those managing it) to continue.

This afternoon, Rishi Sunak made a statement to the House of Commons concerning diplomatic efforts to secure an aid corridor into Gaza. It struck me that the Prime Minister made a more nunanced statement than complete support for the Israeli side of the conflict. On the strength of this, Meg and I continued watching the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement on the Parliament channel where, as you might expect, MPs were engaging in the kind of rhetoric that would go down in their respective constitutencies. Nonetheless, the tone of the House of Commons was quite restrained, not to say sombre, because I think there is a realisation on all sides that the Middle East is a tinderbox in which a spark could very easily ignite the whole region. There are some indications that the powerful and well-armed position of Hezbollah in the North are causing the Israelis to pause lest they face a situation in which they are in conflict on three fronts (Gaza, Iranian-backed Hezbollah based on Israel’s northern border in Lebanon as well as the occupied West Bank itself)

Today being a Sunday, Meg and I switched into a slightly lower gear and took our time to get up, dressed and breakfasted. Then we texted our University of Birmingham friend to arrange a rendez-vous for later in the morning. Earlier this the morning, I tumbled across a cultural phenomenon of which I was ignorant. After undertaking a quick perusal of the various scatter cushions that we had lying on chairs and settees in our lounge, I discovered that we had four cushions which one way or another incorporated elephants into the design – from where we had acquired them, I cannot now remember but it was certainly not an Asian source as such. I can remember quite vividly that when you enter the mediaeval style market immediately adjacent to the cathedral in Granada in Southern Spain, there are several sellers of stunningly designed tapestries and cushion covers which we have often bought as occasional presents and then given away. These are probably made in Morocco or the Spanish ‘possessions’ on the North African coast but that is by the by. I went onto the web and with a search term of ‘cushion covers-elephants’ discovered that there seems to be a huge and thriving market in cushion covers with an elephant motif. There was even a website advertising that one could purchase cut-price elephant design cushion covers from them. All of this was absolute news to me as I evidently had not realised that these items were so popular in a certain section of the public. Now elephant bookends I can well understand because they convey elements of strength and solidity and are liable to be made out of more substantial material sufficient to hold back the weight of a row of books but cushion covers are another thing. After we had breakfasted, we met with our University of Birmingham friend in the Waitrose cafeteria and, as usual, spent an interesting hour talking about this and that. We had both been in the East Midlands yesterday as our friend was accompanying his local rugby team and the coach driver had to detour around floods.

We lunched today on some on some gammon, cooking in the slow cooker whilst we were out. After lunch, we accessed the full i.e. paid for version of Amazon music and came across (or had selected for us by the Amazon algorithm) an absolutely magnificent concert of mainly Bach pieces played by Dutch musicians. What was so wonderful about the performances, which were all superb, was that the Dutch musicians had evidently just come along in their own casual clothing i.e. not in formal concert attire and in some ways this enhanced the quality of the music they were performing. The camera focussed on the faces of the performers who seemed to be singing with the utmost concentration and dedication to the import of the music. In many ways, that is a very ‘Dutch’ way of doing things as we know from Dutch friends and our trips to the Netherlands. A quick reference to Wikipedia about the performances on Amazon music revealed following. The Netherlands Bach Society is the oldest ensemble for Baroque music in the Netherlands, and possibly in the world. The ensemble was founded in 1921 in Naarden to perform Bach’s St Matthew Passion on Good Friday and has performed the work annually since then in the Grote of Sint-Vituskerk (Great Church or St Vitus Church). The ensemble is now 100 years old. Due to the 100 year landmark, the Society is publishing a new and freely accessible recording every two weeks, including HD video of all 1080 works of Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by members of the ensemble and guest musicians under the title ‘All of Bach’. Meg and I found the performances absolutely absorbing and there were several things that were completely new to me. One of these was a performance of a concerto for four harpischords (and orchestra) which is a piece of Bach absolutely new to me. The harpischords seemed to have two manuals (keyboards) and this, too, is new in my experience. Many of the instruments played appeared to be baroque e.g. wooden rather than metallic flutes which give a much more mellow rather than glittering sound. It also struck me that many of the performances in the YouTube video were evidently taken place in churches with the audience in (hard) wooden benches and, typically, with the minimum of clutter around the walls. It struck me that this is an ideal environment in which to play Bach and other early baroque such as Vivaldi as the reverberations of the sound were much more likely to add tone and colour to the performance whereas in a modern (spacious) concert hall, a lot of this would be lost. Every year, we attend concerts organised by the Bromsgove society in our own church and the local Anglican church (the largest in Bromsgrove) and here again I am convinced that the performances, often just a solo violinist with keyboard accompanent, will give a higher quality of emotional and acoustic pleasure than would be the case in a modern concert hall.

Yesterday came the sad news of the death of Sir Bobby Charlton. Both he and his brother Jack died of dementia (too much heading of the leather ball?) and Sir Bobby survived the Munich Air disaster in 1958. There were 23 fatalities and 21 survivors – eight of the Manchester United team died including Duncan Edwards regarded as the finest player of his generation. Bobby Charlton survived (found trapped in his seat some distance from the wreckage) and he helped to pull two other surviers from the wreckage. I was at school in Bolton, Lancashire (just north of Manchester) at the time and the whole school ws left in profound shock.

Meg and I were up slightly late this morning but we had both had a decent night’s sleep so we were quite looking forward to the day ahead. Once we had got ourselves up, we knew that we would pop down into the Waitrose cafeteria to make contact with our normal Tuesday-cum-Saturday crowd so we even forgot about breakfast, thinking that we would probably treat us ourselves to some porridge and blueberries as part of the breakfast fare. We collected our newspaper and enquired after the health of our newsagent. He is going to have two hospital appointments next week, one of which at least is a discussion with a surgeon about a lung biopsy which is going to be performed. I can see that his wife is very worried about all of this going on (as indeed are we) but the least we can do is to hope that once within the hands of the medical profession, the diagnosis is not a poor one. I got Meg into the cafeteria with the aid of the wheelchair and met two of our normal friends there. The young assistant who is very friendly towards us and we engage in a light banter over her ‘gooing’ over a baby but when we teased her about this, it turned out to be one of her own relatives as members of her own family had come into the cafeteria for a Saturday morning treat. We thought that we stay having our breakfast and then start off our journey to Sutton Cheney which is a village about 45 miles away fom us but only two thirds of the distance into Leicester. We have an arrangement to see some long lasting friends that we have not actually seen since just before the pandemic so we know that we have lot of catching uo to do. The journey substantially involves a trip around Birmingham on the M42, followed by a stretch on the A5 and then roads off from that. Our Sat Nav indicated that should get there about half an hour before our lunch appointment which seemed fine to us as our friends in all probability would be there early and we knew we had a lot of catching up to do. But the journey around the M42 was nightmarishly slow and a lot of the time we were crawling along at a speed of some 15-20 mph. Apart from roadworks which always seems to be present somewhere long the M42 (including the preparations for HS2 where a lot of preparatory work is being undertaken) we think that an exhibition at the NEC might explain some of the delay- we did notice traffic wizzing along in the opposite direction. We did find out that this week is devoted to a Camping and Caravanning show which apparently is enormously popular. We noticed that the estimated time of arrival crept up from 12.35 to about 12.53. We did get that on time but were not surprised when our friends were not already there. In the hotel, there was evidently a huge wedding party in process so we had to make sure that we did not get entangled into it by mistake. Whilst we were waiting, though, and all of the guests dashed off to their special wedding breakfast meal, Meg and I kept the wolf from the door by snaffling some of the pre-dinner canapies evidently left over from the elebrations. Eventually, the friend who was the daughter turned up and we had some excited conversations waiting for her mother who eventually turned up half an hour late.But when she did arrive, we had so much to catch up on tht we did not sit down for our meal until 2.30 which is when the chef was ready for us even though, technically, the lunch date was 1.00pm. I dined on belly pork and Meg on cod – the food portions were not over large but the food itself was quite delicicous. In actual fact, we did not find the wait for our food at all irksome as we had ordered ourselves some drinks, snaffled some of the canapes and both informed the other of the important events in our lives in the last few years. In the case of our friends, it was principally job changes whereas for Meg and I it was healh-related issues. We carried on eating and chatting until it was time to go and it was now 5.00pm in the afternoon. The journey back, though, was so swift and uneventful that what had taken us an hour and a half in the morning only took about an hour on the way back home.

Once we had got home and had some high quality soup for our afternoon tea, I prepared Meg for bed and we settled down to watch England vs. South Africa in the World Cup semi-final. England were almost universally regarded as the underdogs but outplayed the South Africans leading by about 12 points to 6 at half time. Englnd were still about ten points ahead some 10 minutes before the end of the match but the South Africans scored the only try of the match some ten minutes before the end reducing the deficit to some two points. But the South African scrummaging was technically superior to the England team and they were awarded a series of scrum penalties in the last 20 minutes of the game. Wth two and a half minutes to go, the South Africans were awarded a scrum penalty from which they scored giving them victory over England by a single point. Nobody would have predicted some weeks ago that teams like France and Ireland would be knocked out in the quarter finals and that England would come within an ace of ending up in next’s final which will now be New Zealand vs. South Africa. So complete heartbreak for England but they could scarcely have played better.

Today was the day marked on our calendar when we were due to travel up north, mainly along the M6 to attend the funeral of Meg’s cousin, Gywneth, who died recently. Last night, Meg and I aimed to have a nice quiet evening so that we we were well prepared our today. But events rather conspired against us. Meg had a rather disturbed night last night which did not give us the sound cushion of sleep that we needed in order to prepare ourselves for the day ahead. But much more seriously, there was a huge storm sweeping northwards across the country and the Met office had issued an amber alert. Looking at the map, there was a huge bump in the weather map which just seemed to coincide with the Manchester and Bolton area that was our destination today. So on the advice of both our son and other friends with whom we were in contact, we had to conclude very reluctantly that it was probably foolhardy to make a journey today however important the occasion and we had better call off our planned journey. We texted the daughter of Meg’s cousin who sent us a sympathetic response as she was concerned even about the travel arrangements of her own brother. So this makes two funerals recently that we have ideally have wished to attend but the distances involved and other events conspired against us. Meg and I consoled each other by going to Waitrose where we treated ourselves to a good serving of porridge served with blueberries, which were quite delicious.

This afternoon, Meg and I enjoyed a quiet but very pleasant afternoon in our Music Room. The afternoon was started off by a daily ration of the ‘Outnumbered’ series on the TV (liberal minded Mum and Dad being outnumbered by their diverse and precocious children) which we always find agonisingly amusing. After that we played a selection of classical music, courtesy of Youtube but with the output from Meg’s iPhone ‘bluetoothed’ over onto the little CD player we acquired recently and which acts as a ‘de facto’ speaker system. The large box in which our new Toshiba TV was delivered had been covered in some white lining a paper (of which I always have a supply for occasions such as this) and then covered in butterfly illustrations canibalised from a colouring book I had bought months ago. I have now created a screen which sits in front of the TV cabinet donated by our son and which houses the broadband router. My new butterfly screen now hides some sunsightly cables and is a joy to behold from a distance. Finally, when we were university students and furnishing our first house, we acquired what I think is called a ‘Captain’s chair’ for either 15 shillings or 25 shillings and I had reupholstered it with some red velvet decades ago. I do not care for this colour scheme these days but we have now adorned it with two quilted cushions that Meg’s talented cousin, Margot, had made for us some years back and they go beautifully on the Captain’s chair, now made available in the Music Room for occasional visitors. Finally I rigged up a little desk lamp on an adjacent bookcase so that when Meg is sitting in her favourite, comfortable armchair, she has a much better source of light with which to read. These appear to be simple pleasures but all help to enhance our little environment.

As might be imagined, the political airwaves today have been dominated by the Labour Party’s success in the two by-elections, one held in Tamworth and the other in Mid-Bedfordshire. I suspect that many analysts thought that Tamworth, which has returned a Labour MP in the past might do so again but true blue Mid-Bedfordshire was another matter. I think that most analysts thought that mid-Bedfordshire was too close to call as there may well have been a three way split btween Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat. But he Liberal Democrat vote did not live up to expectations so this seat, and Tamworth were both won with majorities of over 1,000 and a swing that was 25.9 in the case of Tamworth (the second biggest swing in history) and 20.5% in mid Bedfordshire. Of course, it is not a sensible exercise to predict General Election results from by elections in which normally loyal supporters do not come out and vote. It has often been noted that there is a large ‘secret’ Conservative vote that does not reveal itself to pollsters but who in the context of a general election, do come out of the woodwork as it were and vote Conservative. The interesting theoretical question is how large this ‘secret Conservative but stay-at-home’ vote actually is and how many might actually be persuded to vote for other parties, Liberal Democrat being more typical but sometimes a direct swich to the Labour Party itself. Of course, it must be remembered that both of these by elections were caused by the malfeasance of the incumbent Tory MPs. In one case (Chris Pincher) there was a history of sexual antics involved, whereas in he other, Nadine Dorries, a fervent supporter of Boris Johnson absented herself from the Commons and her constituency peeved that she was not offered a place in the House of Lords by the outgoing Johnson administration. Is it any wonder that the electorates take their revenge at the earliest opportunity?