Today was the day when our previous set of carers were due to take over again and one of them, a Polish lady who we respect very highly, duly turned up just before 8.00am as planned. Between us, we got Meg up and ready and just then the ReAblement duo turned up, no one having told them that their contract had finished the evening beforehand. Today was always going to be a bit of a funny day because the lights were flashing on our BioDisk system, meaning that there had been an interruption of power supply to the unit. We had phoned up the maintenance company last Friday and the lights had been flashing for at least a day before I notified the company – in the event, they turned up today at about 2.00pm and found nothing wrong of any significance, I was glad to be told. It might have been that we had a power outage and the unit had failed to reset itself but all seems fine now. However, Meg and I did not feel that we could go out anywhere until the engineer had called around and done his stuff and hence we were reconciled to having to stay in for most of the morning. However, the morning did have a compensation which came from a most unexpected quarter. Meg and I tuned into ‘YouTube’ and watched a performance of Beethoven’s 9th (the so-called ‘Choral’ Symphony) As a follow-on, a programme was advertised called ‘A World with Beethoven’ which I think is one of a series of three films made about four years ago to celebrate an anniversary associated with Beethoven. This film turned out to be one of the best pieces of television that I have watched in years and both Meg and I were enthralled. It was presented by a French horn player, Sarah Willis, and she posed the question of what the world of music would have been like if Beethoven had never lived. The film took a series of themes, the first of which might called the development of the ‘riff’ or the motif beloved of guitarists and rock bands. The argument ran that the iconic first three notes of Beethoven’s 5th is recognised the world over and the notes can be represented in Morse code as dot. dot.dot. dash or a ‘V’ and were used as a shorthand of ‘V’ for Victory deployed extensively during WWII. The argument then developed arguing that Beethoven’s music led to the development of the concert hall as we know it today, that it was first used to propel a political agenda, that it created a bridge between the traditional and the innovative, that it broke new ground by getting music to evoke specific images (as in Beethoven’s 6th symphony, the ‘Pastoral’), that it pushed forward the concept of exact timings by utilising extensively the timings of the recently metronome and finally that the use of complex rhythms (think of the left hand followed two beats to the bar and the right hand three beats to the bar) were a precursor of syncopation and some of the melodic forms that were to be fully developed in the jazz era.

I was reflecting upon the crisis that the world as a whole faces in the Middle East with Iran and Israel. The terrible paradox here is that Israelis think they are ‘strong’ by retaliating hard against Iran and ‘weak’ by doing nothing i.e. not retaliating. But the rest of the world, led by the USA, thinks that Israel would show strength in a policy of non retaliation and weakness by lashing out at all and sundry. I remember one or two key things from my undergraduate days and one that sticks in my mind is a book by Lewis Coser called ‘The Functions of Social Conflict’. Coser made the point over half a century ago that right wing governments always pursue aggressive and belligerent foreign policies in order to try to ‘unify’ the nation that would otherwise be rent with internal conflict as a result of their policies. So right wing leaders (and in the case of Israel) extreme right wing leaders such as Netanyahu will automatically hunt for enemies. As one military analyst said on the radio this morning, it is hard-wired into the DNA of the Israeli military that after any blow the only response is to fight back hard. For this reason, I am not hopeful that Israel will refrain from further military action against Iran or its proxies which will almost certainly ensure a ‘tit-for-tat’ and so the conflict will escalate, possibly completely out of control.

This afternoon after Meg had a bit of a doze and as we had not had the opportunity of a walk this morning, we decided to go for a spin in the car. We popped down the road to see if any of our friends were around and then went on to our favourite charity shop located in a street some distance from the High Street. Quite unusually, there was nothing there that took my fancy so I contented myself with buying a glasses case and then we returned home and watched some of the Parliament channel to guage the reaction of MPs on the strike on Israel.

The last time Meg and I went to the Age UK club, we were seated next to a lady who hails from Leeds and who was attending as a carer for her father. We exchanged email addresses and have exchanged some practical tips and hints with each other as to how to cope with our caring functions. These kinds of mutual support friendships are incredibly valuable and I am a firm believer in the principal that ‘1+1=3’ i.e. that we can always learn something from each other. I am hoping in the fullness of time and if the weather remains anything like fair, we can tea together in our garden and I can share our list of notes (and useful contacts) with each other. We are also looking forward to another meeting group like the one organised by the AgeUK charity but to be held in the Methodist centre down the road, of which we are patrons generally on Wednesdays of each week.

This morning being Sunday, we saw the last of the carers who attend Meg in the morning. In some ways, this was a sad occasion because the male carer who I dubbed ‘Mr. Teazy-Weazy’, as he had been a hairdresser in a past life, we would not encounter again. Similarly, when we see the carer this evening, this will probably be for the last time as well. But tomorrow morning, we will re-establish contact with the previous team so we are looking forward to this as well. We breakfasted watching the Lorna Kuennsberg ‘Sunday’ program where evidently the news and the program was dominated by the launch by Iraq of some 300 drones and a goodly number of Cruise missiles against the state of Israel. It is evident to all of the players that the Israeli ‘Iron Dome’ missile defence system, supplied and maintained by the USA, would stop the vast majority of these attacks ever reaching their target. The Israelis themselves claim a 99% success rate in shooting down the drones and the missiles and the Iranians probably realised that this was going to be the case, almost giving the Israelis advance notice of an attack and allowing the Israelis to get their defences in place. The really big question now is whether the Israelis are going to offer a retaliation or whether both sides now tacitly agree that a ‘tit-for-tat’ has taken place. What I think was a genuine surprise was that British jets were in action overnight, apparently shooting down some of the drones as they progressed over Jordanian airspace. But one commentator who was a supporter of the Labour Party expressed some misgivings given the intensity of the conflict on both sides of the Gaza conflict should be seen as so evidently taking sides. A fuller picture may emerge tomorrow morning when surely there should be a statement before Parliament which should be reassembling after the Easter recess. But I suspect that Britain’s military planners should exercise the most extreme caution before any involvement in the cauldron of Middle East conflicts.

After breakfast, as it was a beautiful day, we decided to go to the park which we have not visited for about a month now. Some of the flowering cherries in the park were at their absolute best and the weather was sunny and quite mild. We had taken along a flask of coffee and some biscuits and reflected upon the fact that this was a daily occurrence during the height of the COVID pandemic. As we taking our repast, we were approached by one of my Pilates fellow class members (plus dog) and we had a pleasant chat for a few minutes. I explained that, all being well, I should be able to attend the class this Tuesday as we ought to have someone available to sit with Meg so that I can attend the class. When we got home, we finished off our viewing of one of the ‘Pilgrim’ series, courtesy of the BBC and this particular one is following a group of pilgrims in their journey to Fatima, Portugal. We realised that we had forgotten to get our copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ but this was soon remedied by the swiftest of visits down to Waitrose where I knew that they would have plenty in stock. For lunch, we had one of those chicken crowns which are already in their tin and ready to be popped into the oven. This we ate with the baked potato (what else), primo cabbage and a tomato. I try to ensure that Meg has a doze immediately after lunch and today as soon as she was settled and in at least a deep doze, I set about cutting the lawn at the back of the house which had gone twelve days without a cut. Fortunately, I got more than half of this done before Meg started to await from her after dinner sleep and so it was quite easy to finish off the lawn, clean up the mower and be assured that a much needed job had been done. We decided to view an opera as a mid-afternoon treat and so we selected a version of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni‘ but Meg did not enjoy this production very much and so we abandoned this. What eventually we settled upon which engaged Meg’s attention was some Rick Stein’s programmes on the cookery of Spain. These are part travelogue as well as pure cookery and they were visiting San Sebastian and the coast of Cantabria, both of which we have actually visited.

Last night, after Meg was soundly asleep in bed, I started idly watching a ‘Royal Palaces’ programme which actually features several ‘things you do not know’ about our royal family. One fact that emerged was so extraordinary that I could scarcely believe it and had to check out its veracity but true it was. George V was dying perhaps of lung cancer but his physicians decided to give nature more than a helping hand. One physician let it be known that the ‘King’s life was drawing peacefully to a close’ whilst another administered a huge and lethal dose of cocaine and morphine straight into the dying king’s jugular. This meant that the King was dead within the hour but the motivation behind all of this was not the alleviation of suffering – rather, it was that the death could be in the evening so that it could be announced in the columns of ‘The Times‘ the following day. Any later, and the death would have to have announced in the evening newspapers which were judged not to be a suitable vehicle in which to announce the death of a monarch. So here we had a process of undoubted euthanasia, not to say murder, performed in such a way that the time most judged to be suitable could be chosen. Even the editor of the ‘The Times‘ was pre-alerted and requested to hold the front page so that the ‘news’ of the king’s death could be properly announced. All of this was kept a secret for fifty years but eventually the facts leaked out in a biography of one of the physicians concerned when all of the other interested parties had been long since dead. Even in 1986 the Palace when approached would only comment that it was a long time ago. Whether this euthanasia of a monarch is well known in the general population, one can only speculate but it quite a story.

Today being a Saturday we pop into our weekend routines. We had two carers this morning, one an old faithful but the other one new to us but we shall only have two more days left on this ReAblement contract until the previous firm takes over on Monday. We generally can rely upon bumping into two of our regular Tuesday crowd on Saturday mornings and indeed we did meet one or two of our regulars as we were making our way into Waitrose. But then our routines were to be sadly disrupted because the local Waitrose management had decided not to open the coffee bar section because of staffing difficulties. After a rapid consultation, Meg and I got our newspapers and one or two other things that we intended to purchase and then we decided on a local coffee bar in the High Street. This turned out to be pleasant enough and the coffee was reassuringly hot and so we had a pleasant chat with one of our friends (the other one deciding to give this coffee shop a miss) At the end of our stay, we had an amusing little episode. My friend and I were seated on a very low couch whilst Meg was in her wheelchair. When it came to it, it took me all my time to get my friend out of the low slung settee – we had noticed it seemed a long way down when we first sat down in it but the moment of reckoning came when we came to clamber out of it. After Meg and I returned home, we adjourned to the kitchen listening to ClassicFM whilst I assembled the various ingredients for a salad I was preparing. I dare say that I was a little ambitious because the salad finished up with some slices of German ham, potatoes which had been previously cooked, a carrot-walnut-sultana mixture, tomato, boiled egg, beetroot, grated cheese and a pickled onion all dressed with a garlic mayonnaise. As this dish was so full of different flavours, I was pleasantly surprised when Meg ate up every bit of it so this must count as some kind of success. The weather is due to drift colder in the next few days so I am not liable to repeat my salad venture for a little while.

After lunch, Meg seemed fairly sleepy so I got her settled and decided, as the sun had come out, to try my luck and see how much of the front communal lawned area, I could manage to get cut. My preparations were interrupted a little by what I think was a cold call to sell me house insulation – as the caller asked to speak with the householder this aroused my suspicions. Only later, did I remember the classic response to this type of cold call which is quite rare these days. This is to give a response along the lines of ‘You have called the the regional office of MI6 – can I ask how you obtained this number?’ When I have tried this tactic in the past, the phone gets put down within about half a second but I am afraid that I thought of it a little too late on this occasion. I managed to get the first half of the first cut done and popped in to see Meg was still asleep. As it happened, she was waking up but I still persuaded her to keep dozing until I had finished the first cut completely. Then I came in for a bit of a break and Meg was still a little sleepy. As she now knew that I was just outside giving the grass its second, quicker transverse cut, this would only take a quarter of an hour and, in practice, a few minutes short of this as I do not hang around. Then I came in, made Meg a cup of tea and I gave myself a 5 minute break before a clean up of the mower until it gets put away for another week. Our principal viewing this afternoon was always going to be the excitement of the Grand National. We watched a little bit of the England women thrashing Scotland at Rugby until it was time to switchover for the big race. The racing authorities are sensitive to the carnage that can sometimes occur in what is always termed as the greatest steeplechase in the world – two horses had to be destroyed yesterday. So several measures had been put in place to reduce the levels of danger somewhat and towards the end of the race, it looked as though any one of about five horses could have won it so this must make this year’s Grand National one of the most open in years. When a horse has won the race, I always wonder whether they know it has won and it always faintly amusing to see buckets of cold water thrown over the flanks of the winning horse to help it to cool down. On a slightly offbeat note, it is known that after a certain distance a horse’s muscles will lock up with lactic acid and the horse will be reduced to a walk and then eventually to a dead halt. Some bright soul had the idea to pit a man against a horse and if the distance is carefully calculated (but I do not know what it is) then a man can just about beat a horse.

A rather amusing political story was to be found in the columns of ‘The Times‘ today. Apparently, Liz Truss who was Prime Minister for just over 40 days complained that she had a very uncomfortable time in the Downing Street flat which she was argued was flea-infested, the fleas having been provided by the Johnson’s dog. I suppose that this story has some foundation in truth and she says in her recent book that the Downing Street had to be especially fumigated to stop her perpetual itching. On the other hand, she did seem to have been quite fond of Larry, the Downing Street cat who looks for all of the world as though they could be the parent of Miggles, the cat who has adopted us and came around to see us when Meg and I decided to sample a little of the late afternoon sunshine.

It sounds strange to say that your day starts in the middle of the night, but so it was last night. I got up in the middle of the night (not an unusual occurrence) and consulted my emails. My close friend from Hampshire, am ex-university of Winchester colleague, is caught in the middle of a most horrendous bureaucratic nightmare as he is in the basis of arranging long term care for his wife. His email to me was really a tale of woe which was quite upsetting to receive – as though carers do not have enough troubles of their own without bureaucracy on top. So although it was the middle of the night, I immediately sent a fairly full reply and we have arranged that I phone him this evening for a good old heart-to-heart. Whilst on the subject of carers caring for each other, I had given my email address to the lady sitting next to me at the club meeting last Wednesday and I showed her some of the tips and hints I had put up in a one page website. She had replied with a series of tips and hints of her own which I was delighted to receive and, hopefully, we can continue to be of assistance to each other as our careers as carers progress. Although I was up for about an hour during the night, both Meg and I had a pretty restful night which helps you to face the forthcoming day with a bit more fortitude. We had anticipated that our domestic help would arrive this morning in a session postponed from Wednesday which was the day when her beloved pet was sent to his maker. Our carer had got some of the way to us but was a bit to over-wrought with grief still to contemplate a morning’s work in our house so she was gong to take the morning off to give herself a period of restoration. I can quite understand the grieving process after 17 years with, in effect, an additional family member suddenly not being there. I did suggest that she might meet us for a coffee in Waitrose to help to take her mind off things but she intended to stay at home for the morning. Meg and I made our way down to Waitrose not really expecting to see anybody but glad if we did so. We were delighted to see our nonagenarian (90 year old?) chorister in the store this morning and we had a very pleasant chat, made all the more so because we shall not see her tomorrow as she is being taken out for lunch by family members. After our visit to the store had come to its natural conclusion, I remembered one or two things that I had forgotten to buy in my whizz around the Aldi store yesterday afternoon so Meg and I went to the big Aldi store in town. The car park was teeming but it is free after all but whilst Meg stayed in the car I managed to dive in and get some of the forgotten items from yesterday. As soon as I got home, Meg has her cup of tea and I progressed to cook our Friday lunchtime meal with was a haddock pie, complemented by some left-over vegetables from yesterday but complemented with some carrots, parboiled and then glazed with honey and finished off in the oven. I started thinking about the meal which we might have tomorrow, Saturday, because I have generally tried something a little out of the ordinary on Saturdays. We have sometimes treated ourselves to some really good sausages (which I know are not particularly healthy) or some liver which is quite hard to find these days. But as the weather has turned a it more spring like, I think I have all of the ingredients to put together quite a nice salad which we have not actually eaten during the winter months. So I am reminding myself to buy a bit of greenery whilst we are in Waitrose for our Saturday morning coffee.

I was pleased to receive a schedule of planned visits from the private sector care agency that provided carers for Meg before the hospitalisation episode and which is due to resume on Monday morning. I have a good relationship with the owner/manager of this care agency and there is a bit of give and take on both sides. Some of the timings for the evening visit may need to be adjusted if all of the logistics will allow but in return I am ‘making do’ with one rather than two carers in the mornings in the next week. But the allocated worker is a Polish lady with whom I get on really well and she really gets stuck into every task with no hesitation so it will be a joy to work with her again in the mornings ahead. I am hoping that apart from the days off that she must have that a pattern establishes itself such that she becomes a regular ‘morning visit’ person. So we are in the business of finishing off the ReAblement package of care which will finish on Sunday evening whilst the new package will start again on Monday morning. This afternoon, Meg and I are quietly relaxing to the sounds of ClassicFM and I am convinced that they put on a more interesting series of tracks on a Friday afternoon when they know that people are starting to unwind ready for the weekend. For example, we have just enjoyed the piece of Brahms ‘A German Requiem‘ which is a constant favourite of ours.

The Post Office Horizon enquiry is proceeding apace with past CEOs coming under the microscope. My son was telling me with some glee how the counsel for the sub postmasters at the end of each session actually ripped apart the facade displayed by these CEOs who tried to maintain that they were ignorant of what was going in the Post Office despite an audit trail that showed that they were in receipt of all of the reports and minutes. The quality of the top management teams at organisations like the Post Office appears dire and perhaps it is no wonder that the UK economy is in the state that it is when senior management in some of our private sector institutions is so poor. Of course, they have hardly been held to account for anything like these enquiries in their professional lives and hence constantly stumble and flail around under questioning by the Enquiry’s QCs.

Today has been a very interesting, and quite a full day for a variety of reasons. We had a couple of new carers this morning, one male, but everything worked out according to plan so we got Meg up, washed, dressed and breakfasted as part of our normal routine. Yesterday, we had received a text from the outreach organiser inviting us to the inaugural meeting of the activity which the Methodist church in Bromsgrove is going to put on starting a week on Friday so we accepted this invitation with alacrity. This morning, we thought that we would visit the Methodist Centre in Bromsgrove where we have not been for a week or so with Easter intervening but got ourselves installed on the ‘chatty table’ which is a feature of the centre. There we soon got into conversation with a couple of other patrons both of whom we knew slightly by sight. Talking about the roadworks and traffic jams in Bromsgrove is always a good conversation opener, not least because one of the main thoroughfares through the town has just started to display a notice to indicate that work is due to start next Monday and we should expect disruption for at lest the next 26 weeks. In our seventeen years of living in the town, we have never known so many and so disruptive a pattern of roadworks making life one great hassle all day long. We then got onto the conversation of selling houses, having drives ripped up to accommodate new gas mains and eventually the topic of antiques that may have passed through our hands. We had a pleasant chat but eventually, it was time to go because we needed to prepare a fairly early lunch to prepare for the afternoon in front of us. I prepared a vegetarian lunch of a quiche supplemented by a mixture of onions, peppers, petit pois and mushrooms with a good dollop of fruity sauce. All of this was very tasty and I put into my effect my new policy of not giving Meg oversized portions because I calculate that Meg is 70% of my weight and her energy needs are a lot lower so I should not be dishing up equal sized portions any more.

This afternoon, my daughter-in-law had reorganised her work schedule so that she could come and sit with Meg whilst I went off to do the family shop which os a normal activity for a Thursday. When I got to my local Aldi, I thought that the carpark seemed quite unusually empty but at the door of Aldi I was greeted by one of their employees who informed us that the store was closed, Apparently the whole of the street had been affected by a massive power outage which did explain why the traffic lights were not operating. I wonder if Aldi and other businesses have a claim against the utility company in circumstances like this? So I had to turn around and make my way to my normal, and smaller Aldi store where I got everything that I needed. I also indulged Meg in buying her a new pair of pyjamas that will supplement the additional nightdresses that I have also bought in the last few days so that we do not run of nightwear again with things stuck in the wash or the dryer. As soon as we had done done the shopping and got it all unpacked, it was time to go across the road, as it were, to have tea with our newish neighbours. They were kindness personified to Meg and myself and we had a wonderful natter about things Asian and not so Asian as well.They have been away on a cruise quite a lot of the time since they moved in and we do not know them particularly well, until this afternoon. They plied me with a most magnificent red wine from Aldi which I am determined to go and buy and drink in copious quantities.

Tomorrow, we expect to be quite an emotional day. Our treasured domestic help has had to have her Jack Russell of 17 years finally sent to his doggie heaven so I am expecting that we shall have lots of tears and hugs in the morning. After all, pets do become part of the family and 17 years is quite a long time. I do not know if anyone has made this calculation but the amount spent on pets as part of the national economy must be massive.I thought that the British were crazy about their animals but seeing Ukrainians flee their houses at the height of the war with miscellaneous animals around them makes me wonder if the Ukrainians take op first place. I seem to have read somewhere that private equity firms have bought up vets’ practices and are regarding them as massive money makers. From casual conversations that we have had in the park with a variety of dog owners, it seems that hundreds of pounds can easily be spent on a pet and I am sure that some of the private equity firms have cottoned onto the fact that is a magnificent money earner for them. But I must admit that the only two dogs that my family very owned cost about 10s 6d from a pet shop window, the ‘parvo virus’ was not well known and we never had occasion to take our pets to the vets ever in their lives until the end (which in Spanish is called ‘sacrificio’ which has quite a brutal ring about it) A quick internet search reveals that in the UK about £10 billion is spent on dogs each year and £8 billion on cats. To put this figure into context, the government pays around £22 billion to fund the education of each cohort of English-domiciled full-time undergraduate students studying in the UK. So the two aggregate figures (£18 billion on pets, £22 billion on students) are not too far short of each other. They may be comparable if to the ‘cats and dogs’ figures, you add in all of the other pet creatures owned in the UK.

There is quite a lot to comment upon today what with one thing or another but I will start with the results of some of the internet searches I made last night. Trying to ascertain some of the provenance of the tapestry I purchased yesterday at a knock-down price and am having currently re-framed, I have discovered the following. The story is considerably condensed but the starting point is that the outstanding weavers in the middle and late middle ages were undoubtedly the Flemish. The best of these were charged with the opening of the Gobelin factory, actually started by Louis XIV but coming into its heyday during the reign of Louis XV (‘Louis Quinze’) Under this monarch, there was a massive flowering of the decorative arts and the legacy to this day is Louis Quinze furniture. The Gobelin factor produced tapestries on mediaeval and classical themes and its output was used extensively at Versailles and at manorial homes throughout France. The established court painter was Boucher and a tapestry was made, in the style of Boucher, of ‘Jardin de Louis XV’ which depicted 18th Century aristocrats, some dancing, others painting, to the sound of music being played in the garden. (As you might have guessed by now, the tapestry I purchased yesterday was one of this genre.) Tapestry making was extremely expensive and took a lot of skill and gradually the use of tapestries fell away with the rise of paint and wallpaper – but the tapestry-making skills were still deployed in restoration work. The Flemish weaving tradition was still strong and one of the famous of these enterprises acquired the rights to all of the Gobelin as well as Jacquard designs. Then in the 1960’s, the skills of the weavers was deployed to make modern facsimiles of some of these classic designs. This was not like a photocopy or even a print but was a skilful adaptation of century old skills. The resulting output, although made on a machine and not hand made as in the original, were then put on the market at prices ranging from £160-£200 upwards. So the binding on the back of the tapestry I purchased although it says ‘Made in Belgium’ should really have read ‘Made by Flemish weavers using traditional skills’ So this the condensed back story of the tapestry I have purchased which is still best described as ‘Jardin de Louis XV’ but, if it were an absolute original, would sell in the hundreds of thousands and be in a museum (or stately home) somewhere.

This morning, after breakfast Meg and I went out to the AgeUK Club which we attend on the second Wednesday of each month and the morning turned out to be far more entertaining than we would have imagined. A troupe of female ‘Morris Men’ had been engaged and they engaged in some traditional dances made resonant by the clogs that they were wearing. They were accompanied by a little band comprised of a guitarist, an accordionist and a concertina or squeezebox. Some of the tunes originated from the locality and some from the North where the wearing of clogs in the mills was quite widespread. This really does not sound like everyone’s cup of tea but was actually immensely enjoyable and the morning just flew by. To make life a little more interesting, one person attended the club for the first time with her father and this lady was a teacher in Leeds, so we actually had quite a lot to talk about. This particular lady was being faced with the prospect of moving her father from a community in which he had lived for decades to a brand new environment so that she could continue to provide care and support for him. This must be a very difficult to make and I do not envy her lot – but I gave her details of a webpage I had put up some time ago that might offer a few practical tips and hints. I had hoped that more people might contribute to these pages so that we could information share but I guess that we are all too busy actually caring than to have time reading websites.

In the middle of the afternoon, I received a phone call from the daughter of Meg’s cousin. Yesterday, although very frail this cousin had celebrated her 88th birthday yesterday and had a really wonderful day with members of the care staff baking a birthday cake and with all round celebrations with the two daughters. This turned out to be a sort of swansong because early this morning, Meg’s cousin had slipped peacefully away having had the most enjoyable day yesterday. The family have been under immense pressure coping with the illness of her mother and so today their inevitable sadness is tinged with relief and almost a certain amount of happiness that their mother had experienced what in my youth used to be described by my religious studies teachers as a ‘good end’ The significance of this phrase was lost on me at the age of 14 but I appreciate the sentiment more fully today. Whilst one inevitably mourns the passage of a loved one, the age of 88 is not a bad age at which to pass on – in the meanwhile, we are still thinking about the practical arrangements when we can meet again, funerals notwithstanding, so that life can go on.

Just before we got the phone call from Meg’s cousin, we had received another one from the member of the NHS ReAblement team who had made an assessment of Meg some two or three weeks ago and was now checking that all would be in place for a hand over (or rather a hand back) to the care agency which we were using before Meg’s recent stay in hospital. This will be a case of picking up the pieces again and there is a certain amount of sadness involved as we move from one band of carers to another. Almost inevitably, one enters into a sort of emotional relationship with the personnel involved in providing care for a loved one and we may be in a situation where we will be sorry not to be seeing some of them again. This afternoon, though, has been one of those really wet and gloomy days and one wonders when we are going to get a glimpse of more springlike weather.

Today started off wet and blustery and these conditions persisted for most of the morning. Although we generally look forward to our Tuesday morning ‘get togethers’ in Waitrose, we suspected that today was going to be a little different because we knew that one of our number had a meeting scheduled with a social worker and was going to miss this morning. We thought that the weather might act as a deterrent to another of our regulars and so it proved, so Meg and I had our coffee alone. On leaving the store, I realised I had left my hat behind so I went back to retrieve it. Upon reaching the car, I realised that Meg was no longer holding the loaf we had purchased inside the store so we traipsed back again and one of the really friendly shop assistants retrieved the loaf for us which had been dropped outside the store. Then, as it was not too late, we decided to go back to Droitwich in order to visit the Worcestershire Association of Carers shop which we were in yesterday. When leaving yesterday, I had noticed a rather fine tapestry of a lute player in a rural scene and at a very quick glance I suspect it is an 18th century theme even though it may have been made a century later. I thought that I would make an offer below the asking price if it was still available today and then it was pointed out that the frame was damaged (which I had not noticed yesterday) and it was offered to me at a discount. The volunteer within the store thought that the tapestry might have been an original which, if so, would make it pretty valuable but she thought that the frame was reparable. I left it for the moment but then called in at our local picture framing store here in Bromsgrove to ask their advice. The store actually had in stock some ornate frames more or less in the spirit of the original but not as ornate as the original frame and I asked for a quick quote as to what a re-framing might be. I explained my dilemma to the very knowledgable assistant who encouraged me to ‘Go for it!’ (Well, she would under the circumstances) So I am still rather conflicted. not to say torn, but the factor which is weighing quite heavily is the fact that the theme (a lute player) would actually be quite an enhancement to our Music Lounge as presently constituted. The dilemma is whether to spend money that I had not anticipated but to acquire something which is not only beautiful but probably with a value way in excess of the offer price, even after I have it re-framed. So I am still in the contemplation mode about this one. I have consulted the web and picked up some clues as to how to discern a genuine and handmade tapestry rather than a machine produced version. Eventually, by the late afternoon, I had made up my mind and so Meg and I raced back into Droitwich where we picked up the tapestry at the negotiated reduced price. I then dropped it off at our local picture framers in Bromsgrove who confirmed they could not repair the damaged, ornate gilt frame but they could do a tasteful and suitable replacement. But this will take them a couple of weeks as they indicated how busy they were at the moment. In a fortnight’s time, or a little over, I can contemplate my purchase as a sort of birthday present and I trust that it will maintain its function as adding a touch of class to our Music Lounge. At the picture framers, we did discern that it was produced in Belgian and some internet searches reveals that the theme (lute players, aristocratic ladies dancing and the mandatory Greek temple in the background) was a popular depiction of the Georgian period and used in many Belgian designs. The tapestry, though, looked as though it was machine produced and not an original tapestry (which was unlikely but would have made the potential value of it shoot upwards considerably)

Last night, we received an email from one of Meg’s second cousins (well, the daughter of a cousin) suggesting some dates when the sisters who are second cousins and ourselves might meet for a family meal. This Friday was one possibility but the next alternative was a date in May which happened to be the day before my birthday next month. So I suggested that the date in May might be a good occasion for us to meet up. not least because it would enable me to have a bit of a birthday bash at the same time. We also received the very sad news that after a lot of heartache, our domestic help had decided that it really was time that her beloved Jack Russell, who seemed to be falling apart in ways a bit too graphic to mention, really needed to start a journey to his doggie heaven and our domestic help wanted to share one or two days with her pet before the fateful day. So we now expect to see her on Friday rather than on Wednesday for the most understandable of reasons. Last night, in a slightly restless period before Meg settled down for good, I got onto the internet to buy some items of night attire that I thought were needed as well as some additional aids to help Meg and I to have a better nights sleep.

The enquiry into the Post office is continuing today and the evidence of Mr. Bates, although we know a lot of it already, is going to be revelatory. I could actually watch this all day but one bit of the evidence that I say just before I prepared lunch was the long and revealing letter sent to Ed Davy who was then part of the Conservative–Liberal coalition government and whose short, not to day curt, reply to Mr. Bates was to the effect that he thought that ‘No useful purpose would be served by such a meeting’ In the light of the ensuing scandal, this must surely rank as one of the greatest dereliction of duty by a serving minister although it may be that he was advised in this course of action by his civil servants who want to keep the ‘lid’ on things.

So the start of another week and two cheerful carers turned up, absolutely ‘on cue’ as it were. One of these carers, is a male I call Mr. Teazy-Weazy as he was a hairdresser for at least a decade in a previous life and I allow him to do his best on Meg’s hair once she is all washed and dressed. I think he achieved a kind of ‘urchin style’ look this morning but the results are always very pleasing. Under the arrangement that we have with the ReAblement team, we might have one more week of their regime and then we revert to our previous (private sector) care providers organised by Worcestershire Council with contributions from ourselves. After we had breakfasted, we thought we would go to Droitwich as, with Meg’s recent hospital stay, we have not been there for the best part of a month. Have visited the ATM and W H Smith’s (next door to each other!) to pick up our newspaper, we made for the ‘old’ Wilkinson’s store which has been taken over by Poundland. Here I bought some socks as I seem to developing holes in the heels of my current stock, some underwear for Meg and some of those little bits and pieces that you see in hardware stores that you know are going to be incredibly useful, even if you started off with no intention on buying them. We popped into the coffee shop that we used to frequent but every single table was taken (quite a frequent occurrence in this particular shop) and thence to an Oxfam charity shop where nothing took our interest. We made our way to our regular coffee house where we indulge in a pot of tea and a bacon butty and finally called in at the Worcestershire Association of Carer’s shop which is always stocked with interesting goodies. Here I did buy quite a few things, amongst the items purchased were some children’s books that were on sale for 50p each. Rather disappointingly, two that I would have readily purchased are already in our possession but I picked up six more, carefully chosen so that the illustrations are superb and that I can read aloud to Meg and she can follow the text as well as admiring the illustrations. Then I espied on a top shelf in the store the rather fine litre sized goblet that I suspect is actually Murano glass for the famous factory in Venice. I had seen this piece once before and rejected it because the designers have seen fit to encrust a band containing what I think are coloured pieces of red glass. To my eyes (and the store assistant agreed with me) this cheapens the look and appearance of the whole thing and almost makes it look like the kind of thing you would win at a fairground. But today, I had another long hard look at it and decided to purchase it (even though the price had risen since I first saw it) because the idea occurred to me that I might be able to ameliorate the effects of the red glass by the judicious application of some modeller’s gold paint. After lunch, I gave it a good wash in some warm soapy water and then decided to display it in a shaded corner of our Music Lounge. To my utter delight, in that particular position, the red glass ornamentation seems to practically disappear leaving only the traditional intricate gold design etched or applied to the amethyst of the original. So I may leave the way it is without running the risk of spoiling it but in any case, I shall certainly take the advice of my style consultant aka our domestic help who will call around on Wednesday and whose judgement on these matters I trust implicitly. Tonight, when Meg is safely asleep, I will photograph it and pop the photo into the Google app which identifies images to see if I can ascertain anything of the provenance of this piece.

Just to show what a dangerous world we are now living in, there is a report today that one of the nuclear reactors in the Ukraine have been subject to a drone attack. Russia has control of these reactors but the Ukraine has denied any involvement in the attack. It may take some days to investigate from which territory the drone was launched but when nuclear power stations were designed and then operated, I do not suppose that the civil designers ever had a thought that they should be made bombproof. The motivation behind the attack seems bizarre – would the Russians attack a nuclear power plant under their control and then try to blame it on the Ukrainians? And surely the Ukrainians themselves would not attack a plant they regard as ‘theirs’ and are trying to liberate? The full truth behind all of this may never be known but seeing the trail of destruction wrought by Chernobyl, one would have thought that all sides to a conflict would keep nuclear plants out of their sights. There is quite a lot of excitement growing in the US at the moment concerning the total solar eclipse which will be seen across some of the eastern states of the US as well as parts of Mexico and Canada. The very earliest partial solar eclipse that I witnessed was in about 1961 then a partial eclipse was visible in the UK. One of the masters at the school I attended had rigged up a telescope which was then focused on a piece of card so that we could an observation of the eclipse without the risk of damaging our eyesights. The authorities are rightly full of warnings about the damage that can be done by observing an eclipse with the naked eye or without suitable optical equipment but I wonder how many of these warnings are actually heeded?

One hope it is not a false dawn but there is a glimmer of light in a resolution of the Israel/Gaza conflict. It looks as though the killing of the seven aid workers was an ‘inflection point’ in the war but it is perhaps a sad refection that 33,000 Palestinians have died. many of them women and children but the West only tries to exert some influence upon the conflict when seven of their number have lost their lives. But by my calculation, the kill ratio of 33,000 Palestinians compared with 1200 Israelis is of the order of 27.5 to 1.

After I had made Meg comfortable in the middle of the night, we eventually settled down and had a good night’s sleep. Meg’s carers turned up on the dot of 8.30 and we had got this organised so that they could take over the minute I had got Meg up and prepared for them. They see her downstairs on the stairlift and ensure that he is comfortably installed in her favourite chair before I go off to prepare our breakfast. After we had breakfasted, we received a visit from the Eucharistic minister from our local church and commiserated with her as she had being having a torrid time recently, firstly with a brother-in-law and now, in the last week, with a sister-in-law. The story is an all too familiar one these days which is a fall at home, followed by a long wait for the ambulance followed by an even longer wait in A&E whilst their relative was being attended to. The lady in question had initially refused to go to our local hospital and, in view of our recent experiences, perhaps she was wise not to go and knew a thing or two that we evidently did not. We will not see our Eucharistic minister again for a week or so whilst a family holiday intervenes but we keep a little calendar specifically reserved for the purpose of recording the next visit. After our visitor we left, we departed and made our way to an almost deserted Waitrose which seemed exceptionally quiet even for a Sunday. But we picked up our copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘, the reading of which is a treat that I reserve for myself over a cup of coffee whilst Meg is having her post-prandial sleep. Once we returned home, we flicked the various channels on the TV and stumbled into the last third of the film ‘Call of the Wild’ which I seem to remember was actually written as a book by Jack London. When I picked up the story, there was a deep bond between a Yukon gold trekker, Thornton and a dog which is a mixture of St. Bernard and Scotch Shepherd called Buck but in the course of their lives together, they run across a pack of wolves. Evidently, the plot revolves around the bond between the gold panner and the dog and the eventual pull of meeting with the wolf pack and hence the title of the film (which rather gives away the ending) I was a bit intrigued by how the film would work out and had to break off the watching of it whilst I went off to get lunch but eventually I learn from a synopsis on the web that Buck does get attracted to a white wolf with whom he eventually mates and then becomes leader of the wolf pack. I have to say that I found the CGI stunning for the facial expressions (anthropomorphism?) on the face of the dog but the film as a whole got rather mixed reviews and eventually only got box office receipts that recovered only about half of the production costs. But I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the 20 minutes or so of the film that I actually viewed. Lunch today was a fairly conventional affair of ham (originally cooked a month ago but half saved in the freezer) augmented by some onion gravy, baked potato and broccoli. Meg ate up every scrap of hers which is always a source of satisfaction and seems to be enjoying a deep doze as I write.

Donald Trump’s shenanigans on the other side of ‘the pond’ are always the kinds of things that one follows with a kind of fascinated horror. Nonetheless, I read something today which I found genuinely shocking. This is an account of the hold that Trump holds over the current Republican party in the US. The article I read reminds us that most current Republican members of the House, including Speaker Michael Johnson, refused to certify the outcome of the 2020 election. In fact, Johnson helped organise 138 Republican House members to dispute that outcome, despite state certifications and the nearly unanimous rulings from state and federal courts that it was an honest election. And so the argument runs – if Johnson and his cronies had so few scruples then, why should we assume they will have more scruples in the weeks following November’s elections?

The Labour party should perhaps be rejoicing in the fact that a landslide victory for them is still completely on the cards – and many Conservative MPs are secretly resigned to their fate. But the Labour leadership is being cautious in the extreme and is taking nothing for granted. Having made very few specific pledges and with a large majority in prospect, there is no reason why the pledges made by the Labour party should not be fulfilled quite speedily. It is not fully appreciated that Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister on the basis of quite a mild manifesto that was designed not to ‘frighten the horses’ as they say. Those well versed in the arts of ‘realpolitik’ argue that political parties should aim to get elected by making as few and uncontentious promises as possible but then to have up their sleeve a ‘real’ agenda that they would put into effect if elected by sufficiently large majority. But many political commentators are of the view that if the Labour Party were to be elected, then after the initial pledges were fulfilled, there would be no real vision as to what to do with the political power that they so crave. After all, we did see that in 1966 when a Labour government was elected with a very workable majority but any opportunities for more radical reform were frittered away in the absence of any real vision. I remain of the view that any non-Conservative government in the UK always has to face three real sources of opposition to its very existence. The first of these is the undoubted hostility of the Main Street Media which is predominantly in the hands of those advocating a right wing agenda. I have referred before to the secret Tories who always seem to be around when needed to bail out a Conservative government, however dire it might be. Finally, of course, the right will always mobilise and play the ‘race’ card (or the overtly ethnocentric card’) in order to garner support.

I really am not sure how carers keep themselves so cheerful when they have a multiplicity of clients and are probably on the minimum wage but the two we had this morning, one of whom we knew already, were true to form. I often ask carers about their own families because they always seem very happy to talk about them and such was the case today. Once we had got Meg ready and downstairs, I showed one of the carers our weighted blanket which she thought might be useful to help one of her grandchildren who was on the autistic spectrum. Actually, as I talk to carers, they all do have families and problems of their own which, of course, they are having to cope with as well as their jobs as carers. I remember once having a conversation with one of my (mature) students who I was teaching on a part-time degree at Leicester Polytechnic. These students were all having to juggle their full-time jobs, various domestic responsibilities as well as the demands of a degree course. When I made enquiries of one of my students, she explained that she could cope with her husband being ill, her children being ill as well as normal work and domestic pressures but when she herself felt under the weather, she felt as things were starting to get on top of her. During my professional years, I nearly always ending up teaching part-time, mature students often in the evenings and I never ceased to marvel how supportive they were to each other and how they coped with the multiple demands of home, work and an academic course. After we had breakfasted this morning, we made our way down to Waitrose where we made contact with one of our ‘old faithfuls’ and spent a happy half hour chatting. Then it was time for us to go home and I started to think about preparing the lunch. As we had already bought our copy of ‘The Times‘, I consulted the schedules and found quite an interesting programme being broadcast on Radio 3. This was Jooles Holland in conversation with a Radio 3 presenter and presenting his choice of classical music. One track that was played was the Elgar Cello Concerto and I suspected that the recording was the famous one by Jacqeline Du Pré who was regarded as one of the finest cellists of all time and who died tragically young of MS at the age of 42. I then pressed on with a simple lunch of quiche and some of our left-over vegetable mixture of a day or so back.

After lunch, I had it in mind to attempt to get the front green communal area cut, which normally takes me about 40 minutes, although I do cut it twice, once in one direction and once in a transverse direction., For this I dearly want Meg to be asleep after lunch and although she obliged me with a deep doze she did not actually fall asleep as I would have liked. So I cut the grass in ten minute segments, checking on Meg regularly so that she knew where I was. Whilst last week, I cut it on the highest cut I tried to start cutting on a medium cut (position 3 of the 5) so the mower tended to baulk at this so eventually I choose the better option of choosing a medium high position for the first cut but dropping it to the a medium cut for the transverse. The mower seemed very easy to clean up today with hardly any grass clogging the underside of the hood so perhaps the liberal spraying of the underside with WD40 had done its magic and helped to prevent the build up of grass. These days, it is probably a better idea for me to cut the grass in two tranches (the front lawns on one day and the back lawns on another day) So, as the gardening books always say, we will ‘choose a fine day’ for the second round of grass-cutting so we will probably attempt this in a few days time.

After I had come in and had a well-earned cup of tea, the sun came and out and it seemed to be shaping up for a beautifully warm and sunny afternoon. So I thought it would be a good idea for Meg and I to pop out in one of our transit chairs so that Meg could admire my handiwork of the cut lawn, the timely cutting of the privet hedge around the BioDisk which my son and daughter-in-law did yesterday and I could also take the opportunity of showing off our plum tree to her which is in full blossom at the moment. We did intend to sit down and enjoy the sunshine but it did prove to be a little too chilly for that. But our little trip outside did generate a bonus for us as our neighbour was just getting ready to go the park to have her constitutional walk and she took the opportunity to invite us round for a cup of tea next Tuesday afternoon, which invitation we were happy to accept.

We have news this afternoon that one of the Israeli hostages has been discovered dead and indeed already buried. This news is fuelling the considerable opposition to Netanyahu within Israel and the families of the hostages are calling on the Israeli Defence Force to make release of hostages their top priority. So it could be that public opinion within Israel is not convinced that trying to bomb Hamas out of existence is the best way to secure release of the hostages and so we have a situation in which both external and internal pressures on the present Israeli government are increasing almost by the day. Next Monday those living in the USA, Canada and Mexico will be able to witness a total eclipse of the sun and even a partial eclipse might be visible from some parts of the UK. Sky News has indicated that it will be showing the whole of the eclipse process ‘live’ and I think this will be from about 7pm-10pm next Monday evening. Depending upon what time Meg goes to bed on Monday, we may be able to witness some of this together on TV and these natural events are always rather exciting to behold.