The evening before last was another meeting of the Curry Club and I arrived at the large car park in plenty of time before our meal was scheduled to start at 6.00pm. I had a pretty good evening’s chat with the people around me and one of my fellow diners reminded me of the next meeting of our Classical Musical Appreciation group where we needed to do some preparation before  the event. This involved listening on BBC Sounds to the First Night of the Proms which we are going to discuss and then we will follow that with a discussion of the life of Bach. The lady informed me that she was shortly to go with a friend across the three Andaluz cities of Granada, Cordoba and Sevilla and I expressed my envy at her trip which I have myself made a couple of times before. I am pretty sure that I have some travel books in my ‘travel’ bookcase so I said that I would try and hunt these out and lend them to her when I see her next Wednesday. She is going with ‘Riviera Travel’ which is a well known travel company for this type of tour so I am sure she will have a great time. At the end of the meal, I got into conversation with a couple who had just recently joined U3A and this was their first Curry Club outing. They hailed from mid-Wales so I informed them about the Dylan Thomas I had heard at the weekend and I could inform them about Meg’s Welsh relatives from both the North and the South. The man in the couple explained he used to run the Bromsgrove Rambling group so evidently he knew the Lake District quite well. After a few minutes conversation, he said that he recognised me from the ‘Chatty Table’ discussions we typically have each Wednesday when the Methodist centre is not closed for a summer refurbishment and so we had probably met before without realising it – wheels within wheels! I think I will try and sit next to them at our next Curry Club do because I am sure we can explore some fascinating items of mutual interest. I got home just after 8.00pm and followed the European Athletics competition being run in Birmingham but with sparse crowds in the evening. This is not surprising  because it involves a journey from a Birmingham suburb after 10.00pm at night and I imagine this is enough to deter many from attending. However, I was rewarded by witnessing GB take first and second place in the last event of the evening which was the Men’s 100 metres. These two black sprinters were predicted to run well, and securing gold and silver helped to pin the GB team to the top of the leader board. Upon consulting my phone when I got home, I received some more good news. I had sent out text messages to some of my nephews/nieces telling them about my stay in Yorkshire in just over two weeks time. One of them had responded very quickly and my American friend and I are going to dine with him and his family in a restaurant booking he had made for the six of us the day after we arrive. I think this restaurant is only recently opened and specialises in authentic Andaluz (Spanish) cuisine, and I think that eating there will make us imagine that we are actually eating a meal in Spain. As a bonus, the restaurant is only 2-3 minutes from our hotel as well so this is a real treat to which we can look forward, as well as the pleasure in connecting again with my Yorkshire family. In the evening, we have the eclipse to which to look forward so my American friend is to come round shortly before six and we can experience the eclipse together probably on the TV as we do not have the special glasses to view it directly.

Immediately after I had breakfasted, I hunted through my travel bookcase and was pleased to discover some guides that I could loan to my fellow U3A member who I shall see next week at our Classical Music Group. I find I had a guide to both Granada and also to Cordoba but not to Sevilla which has perhaps gone missing. But I did have  a very comprehensive and copiously illustrated guide to  Spain, one being a Baedeker and the other being published as part of the DK ‘EyeWitness’ travel guide series. These last two guides have many pages devoted to Seville and to the pile I have added a Spanish-English dictionary and a guide to Lille which my friend may be visiting in the not too distant future. This will certainly be sufficient if she can find space in her luggage for them but better the books be used than mouldering in my bookcase. After the morning had progressed, I ventured forth and picked up the last copy of ‘The Times‘ from the petrol station before doing my weekly shopping. This weekend, we are going to have some fillets of fish so I purchased both some salmon and also some trout so that we try a bit of each. I read that teriyaki sauce is fantastic on salmon as the sweet, salty, and savoury glaze cuts through the rich, buttery fat of the fish. When cooked, the sugars in the sauce caramelise into a sticky coating that seals in moisture. On the trout we can try some simple seafood sauce, or even some 1000 Island sauce or some horseradish sauce. I read that horseradish is a fantastic pairing for trout. The sharp, pungent heat of horseradish cuts right through the rich, oily texture of the fish. It works especially well with smoked or cured trout, typically softened into a creamy sauce using yogurt, crème fraîche, or sour cream. So after I cooked the two lots of fish next Sunday, I will have the various top dressings available in little finger bowls so that we can experiment and try out what works best for us. After I returned from shopping, it was so very hot that I merely helped myself to some scoops of recently purchased chocolate ice cream. As I had eaten so well yesterday, I am giving myself a lighter day in terms of meals and will cook a cheese omelette for myself accompanied by some salad which will be more than enough. Thinking ahead to my our Yorkshire trip my family is quite large but how many of them we will eventually meet is uncertain. But, in theory there are my sister’s four children, their collective total of twelve grandchildren and two great grandchildren. So in discussion with my American friend, we are going to fill the pages of a little hardback book so that she can work out who is who when we meet.

Domestic political news seems to be dominating the news headlines as the new day dawns. One of the most important tasks facing the government is to find a way in which the offenders convicted of the manslaughter of a policeman can be removed from the ‘Early Release’ scheme. This was NOT murder (as intent was not proved) as the young policeman was dragged along the road by a car speeding to get away from the interventions of the police but the public campaign to release him is enormous. Andy Burnham has instructed the Justice Secretary to ‘find a way’ to prevent the early release and the legal difficulty is that there is no special offence in law for the killing of an emergency worker. This will no doubt to be remedied in further legislation but this cannot be enacted retrospectively. Last night when I returned from my nightly peregrination in the park with my American friend, I settled down to watch the European athletics competition which is being hosted in Birmingham (but with disappointing crowds so far) There is no doubt that the Norwegians are a dominant force in European athletics at the moment and one of their stars returned from injury to win the 5,000 metres with an astonishing sprint over the last 100 metres. The event to which I was looking forward was the mixed (i.e. men and women) 4 x 400 metres relay race and this was very exciting. The Norwegian quartet won the race but the Brits turned in a very creditable silver and were in contention until the very end. The evening concluded with a brilliant run by a young rising star, Amy Hunt, who won the 100 metres spring final at the very end of the evening. This young athlete has been tipped for great things by those in the know but it was a wonderful sight to see her triumphing on her home soil. One has to feel sorry for the young British shot putter who has come 4th for the fourth time in a major competition. This position, without a medal obviously, is said to be the hardest to bear in all athletics as it is just outside the medals. The weather continues to be hot without even the hint of rain. One of the latest fires to devastate the countryside is in the New Forest where the vegetation is crisp but satellite photos of the UK show that that the whole country has turned from England’s ‘green and pleasant land’ to an orange-brown crisp. I am amazed that we have not yet any disconnections of the water supply because supplies must be running critically low – ironically enough Chopin’s ‘Raindrop Prelude’ is being played on ClassicFM’s play list as I type. Andy Burnham, having returned from a brief holiday, is turning his attention to Britain’s High Streets and is said to be contemplating a crackdown on the vape and betting shops which seem to be the only parts of the urban scene showing a profit at the moment. Labour has crept ahead of Reform by a couple of percentage points with the ‘Burnham bounce’ and we have the interesting by-election on Thursday night in which the principal contenders are Nigel Farage on the one hand and ‘Count BinFace’ on the other. In this farcical election in which there are 34 candidates, BinFace may just garner 20% of the vote but a win seems out of the question.

Having been to Pilates in the middle of the day, I returned and had the lightest of salad lunches because I must leave space for U3A Curry Club  dinner this evening which is being held in a village not too distant from here. One my long standing Pilates friends seemed somewhat morose in the class today and I suspected that I knew the reason why because her dog and life companion had been very ill. She had previously sent me wonderful messages of support whilst Meg had been ill so the least I could do was to offer her some similar comfort in her hour of need. Her dog had been in a veterinary hospital for a couple of weeks and will have a blood test in about a week to determine what if any further courses of treatment there are to be. Fearing the worst and knowing that we have no Pilates class next week, I have given my Pilates class mate an open invitation to come and spent an afternoon having tea and/or ice cream with me and my American friend in the garden. Whether she will accept or not I cannot tell but I wanted her to know that she has friends around her and she will not be forgotten. I viewed some of the video footage of the terrible earthquake in Colombia. Sometimes these quakes occur in the middle of the night and can, of curse, strike at any hour of the day or not but normally any video images are of the extensive damage after an earthquake. But many images are circulating of buildings seconds before their collapse and then their subsequent collapse into streets full of terrified and screaming people. The number killed in yesterday’s 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Colombia, the strongest quake in the South American country in the 21st century, has risen to more than 220 but I fear that it will number in the thousands once the full scale of the destruction becomes known. My energy supplier which is the  UK’s biggest energy supplier urges people to use less electricity between 6-8pm tomorrow. Octopus Energy, the country’s biggest household energy supplier, is urging customers to use less electricity during the solar eclipse tomorrow. The window from 6-8pm is expected to have an impact on the electricity grid. Solar generation will be hit as 95% of the sun could be obscured across parts of Britain. Air conditioning, fans and refrigeration are all likely to push electricity use higher. Octopus Energy is incentivising customers to delay using appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers. Those who avoid unnecessary electricity use during the eclipse can earn a free hour of power to use the following weekend. The scheme is known as ‘saving sessions’. Octopus says even a small shift in household demand could help the grid cope with the loss of solar power and reduce the need to bring additional gas-fired power stations online. I am probably going to observe the eclipse on the TV as I do not feel in the least attempted to stare at the sum which, we are being  warned, is so very dangerous and can permanently damage one’s sight but there are warnings a-plenty to the population at large.

Yesterday evolved into a wonderful day. After my normal weekend routines, my American friend called around  and then we cooked a special dish of pork ribs with a red-eye sauce that we had purchased together in the Alcester branch of Waitrose that we visited last Friday. Red-eye gravy gets its name from its visual appearance. When black coffee is added to hot ham pan drippings, a layer of golden-red grease floats on top of the darker liquid. In a round bowl or plate, this pool of fat resembles a bloodshot human eye and hence the name. We served this with some purple sprouting broccoli, sprouts and a stir fry mixture I had prepared earlier and it was absolutely delicious with the meat just dropping off the ribs after half an hour in the oven. After this wonderful meal and a bottle of shared Asti Spumante that we have both come to enjoy with our shared Sunday meal we indulged in a little post-prandial snooze (although I took the opportunity to read most of ‘The Sunday Times’) We rounded off the afternoon with a delayed sweet of custard pies accompanied by some strawberry ice cream I had purchased earlier on in the day. But the highlight of our evening was yet to some. We viewed the J B Priestly film of ‘An Inspector Calls’ which lays bare the pretensions and class privileges of a middle class family at the turn of the century, each member of the family in turn having been exposed (by the Inspector) to a role in the death of a young women in a  horrible suicide. This play is gripping in its psychological intensity and always worth a further viewing. After that the iPlayer ran onto the next item which was a dramatisation of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’. This is not everyone’s cup of tea as it is really one long extended ‘sound-fest’ in the day of a small Welsh fishing village. In Dylan Thomas’s famous 1954 radio play ‘Under Milk Wood‘, the fictional Welsh seaside village is named Llareggub—which is famously ‘bugger all’ spelled backwards. This cheeky hidden joke reflects the quirky, earthy, and humorous tone of the town’s eccentric residents. For this production, the BBC had assembled the cream of Welsh literati who contributed little sound clips including Michal Sheen, Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Sîean Philips and many more besides. In fact my friend has asked me to look out the complete cast list so that we can identify more of the characters. There is some vicious black humour contained within the work of which that ticked my fancy was the case of the downtrodden Mr. Pugh who frequently imagines poisoning his nagging wife while reading Lives of the Great Poisoners, a book he hides under a brown-paper cover and pretends to be reading a Theological text. These murderous, often comedic, plots remain purely in his imagination rather than being carried out. So after our wonderful evening’s entertainment, we planned out our week together  as  I have a Curry Club U3A meal out on Tuesday and on Wednesday we have plans to observe the 90% partial eclipse of the sun together (probably on the TV, given the danger of looking directly at the eclipsed sun). Having my February holiday in mind and asking my son if he would schedule taking us to the airport, I noted the following disturbing news item which is the airport parking change that is catching Britons out – and landing them £100 fines. Anyone picking up or dropping off at some UK airports this summer is being urged to avoid a costly mistake. Birmingham, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester and Stansted are among the airports now using automatic number plate recognition to track how long you park for and how much you owe. That means there are no barriers prompting you to pay, so you’ll have to remember to pay online or by phone, with the deadline being midnight the following day in most airports. If you do not pay on time, you’ll get a parking charge that could range from £80 to £100 – though is reduced if paid in 14 days. In the late morning, I walked down into  town to pick up a newspaper and to have a coffee in Waitrose. I ensured that I sought out the shade whenever I could which covered at least half of the journey back 

This afternoon I stumbled across a program on the Sky Mix channel detailing the ways in which customs officials in Australia deal with contraband  entering the country which includes not only drugs but seeds, meat products as well as people attempting to enter Australia on a tourist visa and then seeking work. After due process, may of these infractions resulted in the visas being withdrawn and the miscreant put onto the next flight back to whence they came but apart from drugs, importation of banned substances was typically met with confiscation and a huge fine. In the late afternoon, the sight of some huge brambles in our back garden got too much to bear so I went and cropped the worst offenders but this entailed a lot of chopping of extremely long tendrils into shorter lengths so that they would fit in the wheelie bin (which is now full) There is a bonus to all of this which is a big crop of blackberries amidst all of the prickles  but I will leave this for another day before I attempt to pick a supply. After my walk in the park, I have the European Athletics championships to enjoy and they are actually held in Birmingham this year. There promises to be a host of interesting events between 8.00pm and 10.00pm and the women’s 4 x 400 relay should be exciting and interesting to watch and probably a more exciting watch than the football. An unfortunate record has been set in the wee small hours of the morning as a boat carrying 230 migrants made it across the channel and this easily exceeded the last ‘record’ of 165. It looks as though the people smugglers are changing their tactics and relying upon a smaller number  of crossings but in bigger boats. That having been said, the battle against the small boats is gradually being won as a total of 15,049 people are known to have crossed the Channel illegally on 224 small boats so far this year but as of 9 August, the number of small boat arrivals is down by 42% compared to the same period in 2025. The fine weather we have been experiencing must be working in favour of the small boat crossings because they diminish in the winter months and when the weather is stormy.

Yesterday would have been the 115th birthday of my mother but she did live to the ripe old age of 95. It is interesting that we never forget the date of our mother’s birthday as I suppose we learnt this as a young chid and then never ever forget it. For this reason, software developers might ask you to specify the date of your mother’s birthday as one of a set of questions as a clue to unlocking your password should you forget it. Last night, I went out as usual just before 7.00pm to meet up with my American friend and whilst we were strolling around, my friend swore that she saw a parrot. As it turned out in further conversations with dog walkers, my friend had indeed seen a parrot which we discovered to be a macaw. These birds  can live up the age of 50 or even longer if kept as pets and are very intelligent, even managing a few words of mimicking English speech. As we advanced on our walk we stopped to stare in some wonderment as the macaw was evidently being exercised by its owner and would make a number of soaring circles before coming to alight on the owner’s shoulder. We only know it to be a macaw because some of the other dog walkers had witnessed the same bird exercising and had evidently got some of the inside story. My friend and I always find that at this time of night, apart from the runners and trainers, many people are prepared to stop for a chat (usually on the origins of their dogs which is always a conversation opener) and I remarked to my friend that this would be a good training for the early evening ‘paseo’ which no doubt she and I will undertake when we are holidaying in La Coruña next February. I have informed one Spanish friend but not the other as yet as I only received the final confirmation of our flight details the day before. We have a particular event to which to look forward on Wednesday  and this  an almost total eclipse of the sun, starting at about 6.00pm and as its maximum at about 7.00pm. In Cornwall, some viewers may experience about 96%  of the totality of the eclipse but it will be about 90% elsewhere.  My friend in Northern Spain should experience 100% of the eclipse and we ourselves will not experience another total eclipse of the sun until about 1990 so we had better make the most of it. The media is full of advice concerning not viewing the eclipse except with special eclipse glasses (which Amazon are selling for about £7 for a pack of 2) For most of the population, though, it is either a case of constructing one’s own ‘pin-hole’ camera of of viewing the whole event on the TV which might actually be the safest thing to do. If Wednesday is to be a cloudy day, then this will spoil the effect for millions of us. Apart from the eclipse, I have a ‘Curry Club’ to which to look forward on Tuesday evening and I have SatNaved all of the details as it is to be in a restaurant in a nearby village about a 20 minute drive from Bromsgrove. The enjoyment of these events though is highly dependent upon the table talk of one’s nearest dinner companions so I generally approach these events with some mixed feelings.

My normal Sunday morning was attenuated this week for a couple of reasons. The parochial church hall in which we normally enjoy a cup of tea and a chat was closed for its annual refurbishment so after the service, I shot off to collect my newspaper. But the car washing facility that I normally use each Sunday was closed, no doubt as a sensible precaution in these drought-stricken conditions but the Sunday supermarkets were yet to open by 10.00am. So I came home, made myself a cooked breakfast of poached eggs on rice cakes and then scurried out in the car to pick up some ice cream as I had practically ran out at home. When I retuned, I tuned into the last 40 minutes of the ‘Pilgrimage’ programme which I generally enjoy on a Sunday morning even though I have seen all of them at lest twice before. The formula is nearly always the same as they collect together some minor celebrities and generally manage to put together a Catholic, an Anglican, a non-Conformist, perhaps a Jew and a Muslim and a follower of an Asian religion such as Jain and an agnostic or two. Then the ‘pilgrimage’ is both a physical journey along well known pilgrimage routes (this one being North Wales ending up on Bardsey Island) but also a spiritual/emotional one. The pilgrims chat along the way and nobody tries to convey anyone else but they do mutually  discover what they believe and how it has influenced their lives. Towards the end of this pilgrimage, the pilgrims call in an ancient chapel dedicated to an Anglo Saxon saint dating from the fifth century. There they participate in a local tradition for pilgrims which is to find a smooth stone of which there is a plentiful supply on the nearby beach. Then they dedicate the stone to a loved one or write a message upon it. Then holding their stones, the group is blessed by the minister and then the stones are solemnly added to the pile at the entrance at the ent rance to the church. Each year, the stones are gathered up and returned to the sea where they will be gradually washed away. The symbolism here is immense and it moved many of the pilgrims to tears (including the male Muslim, remembering his mother). Afterwards, a sense of release and fulfilment sweeps over the group and although the weather conditions were such that the crossing to Bardsey island would have been too dangerous, nonetheless the pilgrims all felt that the ‘ceremony of the stones’ was a fitting end to their long journey. After this TV viewing, I have two more treats in store. My American friend and I cook a Sunday lunch together and this is always a good idea because cooking for two means that you can try something a little more adventurous than merely cooking for one. Later, we are going to indulge ourselves in a viewing of J B Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls‘ (incidentally, a favourite amongst amateur dramatic societies) which I know is readily accessible on the BBC iPlayer and will be a highlight of our Sunday evening viewing.

We can tell how dry the UK summer has become when one of the most iconic rivers in the country – the River Wye- has started to run dry. We may become accustomed to this in the future and, in the past, Meg and I have parked our hired car in the dried up bed of a river which runs ‘wet’ during the winter but is used as overflow car parking space in the summer. Meanwhile, we have got some news from the US that being forced to display all of his financial dealings to demonstrate his financial ‘loss’ after his dispute with the BBC, Donald Trump had decided to abandon this part of his claim and to claim just an amount to reflect his ruined reputation. Hence the $10 billion claim against the BBC is already faltering and may in the coming weeks be withdrawn completely. The Americans do not take as many holidays as the Europeans but I imagine that soon there will be a holiday season of sorts  during the remainder of August when Congress will not be in session and then, in the Autumn, the battle for the mid-term elections to be held in the first week of November will intensify. These elections will be doubt interesting because any gains that the Democrats make, which is increasingly likely, will be fought with every kind of legal challenge possible by the Republicans and there is every prospect that Donald Trump will become the traditional ‘lame duck’ president for the last two years of his tenure of the White House. I got up a little late this morning, after allowing myself the luxury of a little lie-in but my son is due to call around later which will be a pleasure. The country as a whole is still crying out for rain of which there seems to be little prospect as the spells of warm weather keep following each other. At some stage, surely we will be asked to moderate our use of water across the whole country and I notice that in my the car wash that I use regularly, one of the two units that are available for use is being put out of use so I wonder whether this is a voluntary or a forced restriction. I keep expecting the sale of salad crops to be impacted in the local supermarkets but such is the strength of supply  chains, I have not noticed any impact just yet.

As I picked up my newspaper this morning (an early morning chore at the weekends as the papers replete with supplements tend to sell out early) I bumped into an ex-park friend of mine with whom I used to chat when she was exercising her little dog. I discovered that she was actually the mother of a handyman who lives around the cornet from me and who we have employed in the past for little odd jobs around the house and the garden. I raced back home and found  my son who I was knew was calling around hard at work chopping back some of the buddleia which had grown enormously in a plot to the front the house. Strangely enough, you often see this plant growing vigorously in abandoned railway sidings and spare land attached to the railway estate and its popular name is the ‘butterfly bush’ for the pollinators that it attracts. After my son and I had exchanged a pleasant hour with each other, I studied the TV listings for intimation of any special programmes that were a ‘must watch’. I found that ‘The Times‘ media pages were giving a star billing to a re-run of the BBC production of J B Priestly’s ‘An Inspector Calls‘ and I quickly checked this would be available to me when we wanted to watch in on the BBC iPlayer. So this psychological drama in which J B Priestley ‘plays’ with time is always an intriguing watch and I never tire of watching. repeat of it. So, this will provide some marvellous evening entertainment for us some time later in the day. We intend to have consume a special dinner of red eye pork ribs. These are pork ribs prepared with a barbecue sauce or rub that incorporates brewed coffee, inspired by traditional Southern ‘red-eye gravy’ which mixes ham drippings and black coffee. The coffee adds a deep, smoky, and slightly bitter complexity that balances out sweet barbecue ingredients like brown sugar, honey, or molasses. Normally August TV viewing is pretty dire as the programme schedulers assume that everybody is away on holiday and there are plenty of daylight hours left to enjoy the day so TV takes on a low priority. But I have noticed that quite decent films are showing with repeats of some of the early Bridget Jones films but these are shown quite late so I am taking a note of it so that I can watch it on catchup in the next day or so. I finally received the confirmation from Expedia (for which I was waiting) that our bookings for the holiday in Spain, flying with Air France for next mid February were now firmly confirmed  on their systems. To get to Coruña, though we are having to change both in Charles De Gaulle, Paris and also in Madrid but there is a two hour gap between each flight leaving room for refreshments. Although this sounds a little ‘chewy’, at least the flights are at a reasonable time during the day both there and back and, of course, we do not have to travel to London and then cope with car parking at the other end so I think the double change of leg is a price worth paying. I idly wondered if we would be fed on each leg of the journey but believe that Air France led the way in abolishing ‘free’ in-flight meals for short haul flights so we had better take our own comestibles with us. Finally, I have come across a story which seems to be in the ‘incredible but true’ category. It looks as though the USA may have depleted some of its missile strike capacity quite badly in its conflict with Iran. It is said that the number of Patriot missiles (effective against incoming antiballistic missiles) may have been reduced from 2,600 to 800 and the Tomahawk attack missile may have been reduced from 3,000 to 2,000. It is reported that Trump reacted furiously at Camp David, laying the blame upon his Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth who, in turn, has blamed his deputy and so on down the line. It could well be that nobody has the courage to tell Donald Trump ‘the truth’ and news of weapon depletions just seems to have leaked out. The big political question is whether the US military are nervous about further depletion of their stocks and this may have the effect of actually bringing the conflict in Iran to an end. This is bad news for the Ukrainians as well as the US will not have any ‘spare’ for the defence of Ukraine even it is felt so inclined. Incidentally, the costs per missile are enormous- a single Patriot missile costs roughly $4 million to $7 million, depending on the specific interceptor variant and whether it is a domestic U.S. procurement or an international military export.

The evening before yesterday, I did my usual turn around the park but was unaccompanied because my normal walking  companion, my American friend was feeling a little wearied after a couple of hours swimming earlier in the day. Being on my own, I decided to measure the distance of a circuit around the artificial lake in the park. I know that a double stride of mine is 5’6″ or 1.67 metres and each circuit of the lake was 500 steps and I did two complete revolutions last night. So this made 1000 steps at 1.67 metres for each step so evidently, I had walked 1670 metres which is 1826 yards and therefore exceeds a mile (= 1760 yards) Actually I was pretty tired when I got home and did not sleep particularly well when I did get to bed later in the evening so perhaps, I had overdone it all a little. In the day, the rail network had suffered a catastrophic power failure leading to delays in traffic across much of the North and the Midlands. Although there was a back up system this took some time to kick in and in the meanwhile schedules were disrupted across a lot of the country. All of this points to a lack of investment in critical infrastructure and just adds to the national malaise that the whole country is suffering a long slow decline after years of adverse events (financial cris, period of austerity, COVID, the recent oil crisis following wars in Ukraine and in Iran). I learn this morning that most teenagers will simply ignore any newly introduced guidelines into the use of social media. Most teens will opt out of government’s planned social media curfew, new polling suggests Most teenagers intend to opt out of the government’s planned social media curfews, according to new polling. Former PM Sir Keir Starmer unveiled plans for a voluntary curfew for 16- and 17-year-olds in his final weeks in office, which would prevent teenagers from accessing social media sites between midnight and 6am by default but could be turned off. The poll by Censuswide found 84.6% of 16-18-year-olds said they would opt out of the proposed curfews. The poll, conducted on behalf of the Online Responsibility Network, found 45.2% of teenagers said they would turn the curfew off to allow them to speak to friends or family, while another 37.2% would turn it off to watch online content. Leanne Proctor, regulatory lead at the Online Responsibility Network, said the research suggests a curfew is ‘unlikely to be enough on its own to prevent online harms’. What seems extraordinary is that any government thinks that making use of the social media voluntary was going to curb its almost complete university on the smart phones of the young. Australia have already legislated for a ban on the use of social media by I believe the under 16s and th majority of Australian youth has found a way round this by deploying VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) the software for which is easily downloadable. So the timid government efforts to curb social media use are likely to prove ineffectual and perhaps no one should be surprised by all of this, I wonder if the government were frightened of losing the teenage vote once they have lowered the voting age but the thought that the government thought they could effect profound social change of this nature by relying upon voluntary action rather than legislation is laughable. So the big tech giants have been appeased once more and the government may have feared a massive social backlash (paradoxically on the social media) were they to have legislated.

So in the morning, my American friend and I went on to a littls day trip to Alcester, a delightful little Georgian own. We managed to park easily and after our morning coffee, we went to visit the precious Anglican church which dates back to mediaeval times but had been remodelled along Georgian lines in the eighteenth century. Then we made a way to our fabourtite hardware shop which sells all kinds of sundries and then through a selection of charity ships (for which the town is famous) until we finished up at the hotel in which we had pre-booked our lunch. We both had a beef lasagne served with salad and it was as delicious as always. We called in at a local Waitrose to purchase a joint for our m=by now customary Sunday lunch and I made enquiries after a member of staff who used to work in the Bromsgrove branch but had transferred a year or ao ago to this one. When we got home, we enjoyed a quiet ice cream in the garden for which we both felt the need as the sun was blazing hot this afternoon. I read this afternoon some good news emanating from the USA. The US appeals court has blocked Donald Trump’s $400m (£297m) White House ballroom. The federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration to stop ‌construction of the ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. The Washington-based US Court of Appeals for the District of ​Columbia Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Last year the non-profit sued ​after the administration tore down the East Wing and began building ‌a 90,000 sq ft (8,360-square-meter) ballroom without authorisation from Congress. Although Trump has been proclaiming this as a ballroom, in practice it was going to be a cluster of facilities including a hospital and a secure and well-guarded ‘bolt hole’  This facility was to be so well  guarded that in the event that Trump lost the next election and buried himself deep within the confines of the new structure  then it might not have been possible to force him to leave.. There are some cynics on the Democratic side who are convinced that this has been part of the Trump plan all along as he will argue (after the event) that he lost the  election because it was improperly conducted. Of course, Donald Trump will try to appeal against this conviction by any means open to him and powers of the presidency are not insubstantial. But the destruction of the whole of the East Wing of the White House and a rather hideous and gaudy replacement for it must surely rankle with many Americans. It also demonstrates that Trump had a complete disregard for the law and any planning process when the proposed ballroom was planned and perhaps he will just completely disregard the law and carry on building his whole monstrosity regardless.

In ‘The Times‘, there was a feature recently in which a variety of diets and approaches to food was compared and contrasted. In the article I was reminded of the mantra of the food author Michael Pollan’s whose famous seven-word mantra—’Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’—is introduced in his books ‘In Defense of Food’ and ‘Food Rules’. It means you should eat real, whole, unprocessed food, keep your portion sizes moderate, and base your meals primarily on vegetables, fruits, and grains. I read this book several years ago and I am sure that it is worth a re-read if I can lay my hands on it again although I am pretty sure that the copy I read belonged to my daughter-in-law. I remember being particularly impressed by his argument that modern margarines are little better than plastic bags processed into slivers and I have never eaten the substance since. But this mantra is easier to say than to put into practice but I was reminded of it because the naturalist Chris Packham has been urging people to avoid both bacon and sausages which, of course are enjoyed as part of the traditional UK breakfast. Then I went shopping recently, I discovered  and indeed bought, those trays of foods which consist of the off-cuts of chicken, pork and beef. Now these products (particularly the ham-based ones) will consist of processed product full of nitrosamines which are not good for you, particularly if there is a history of colonic cancer in the past. Nitrosamines are chemical compounds that can cause cancer over long-term exposure. They form when nitrites react with amines, often during high-heat cooking of cured meats, tobacco use, or via manufacturing flaws in certain medications. You can lower your exposure by changing how you cook, what you eat, and how you manage products . The advice given is to eat cured meats less often, limit bacon, hot dogs, and sausages, avoid high heat for processed meats, do not fry, grill, or char protein-rich foods preserved with nitrites and to choose lower-heat cooking methods instead of frying. One should also eat foods rich in vitamin C or antioxidants with meals to block nitrosamine creation in your stomach. I must admit that I had not realised that frying such foods was so bad for one but my reason for buying such trays of food is to provide myself with a small quantity of protein which I can then add to an omelette, a stir-fry or a curry. Last night as part of my regular routine, I met my American friend in the park where we have a walk and a chat and this is always a very relaxing part of the day, not dissimilar to the Spanish habit of ‘paseo’ and is, of course, made so much more pleasant when one wishes to cool off after the heat of the day. The population of the park at 7.00pm falls into quite predictable patterns of which the most prominent are the dog walkers. This is followed by the joggers and exercisers and there are also a smattering of teenagers on their bikes. Finally, we have the staid older couples who are our to enjoy the evening air (like my friend and I) but if we have a light repast at about 6.00pm then a walk at 7.00pm is a good way to round off the day, both physically and psychologically. Apart from anything else, there are always items from the days news to discuss and I was keen to discuss the exemplars of rampant American racism which I discerned in the film which I watched the day before.

This morning turned out to be quite an entertaining one. I attended my normal Tai Chi class  which  is carrying on as normal throughout the summer months. Afterwards, I walked into town with my banking friend and we went for our normal coffee in our ‘Gifts of Love’ charity outlet and serving in the shop was a volunteer who I did not know. It turned out that she as a native of Alcester, the pretty little Georgian town to which I am going to make a trip tomorrow with my American friend  and she gave us some useful hints as to which coffee shops made the best coffee in town. Then she knew several of the Lancashire towns quite well so we chatted on this subject before alighting on the subject of holiday  destinations and we both happened to know and to enjoy some of the resorts in Devon. After this, I returned home walking along the High Street but picked up a coffee jug which has been mysteriously marked down to 50p and was too good an offer to miss, so I bought this not for myself but as a little present to give away. Tomorrow, when we visit Alcester, one of the ‘must visit’ locations is one of those little hardware shops that is stuffed to the rafters with all kinds of kitchen and hardware products that you never knew you wanted until you step inside the shop. We are booked into a hotel on the High Street where they serve a home made lasagne in pensioner size portions which is full of home made ingredients and absolutely delicious. We have learned on the news this afternoon that  two people have been arrested after a second night of violence in Norfolk saw a female police officer ‘seriously bitten’ and another hit with a rock. Police condemned the attacks directed at officers who responded at about 9.30pm on Wednesday night after a group of demonstrators in a residential road in Thetford were trying to get into a house. Some people inside were dragged from their homes and properties were vandalised, the local MP said. The unrest in the town reportedly followed rumours the properties were being used to house asylum seekers. One resident of the property claimed a group of between 30 and 50 people were trying to get into the house, while others were shouting and stopping a workman from leaving. These kinds of occurrences are happening up and down the country but the undoubted and legitimate concerns that might be raised in a local community are nearly always heightened because unverified information is spread abroad widely (and believed) on social media and there are always right wing activists who can speed to an area and fan the flames. Sometimes, it is pure ignorance that takes hold and I remember well the case of a German born paediatrician who established a private businessIn Portsmouth as a paediatrician and put up a brass plate outside her house/clinic advertising her business. The women and the premises were attacked by a baying mob who did not know the difference between a ‘paediatrician’ and a ‘paedophile’ and this is indicative of the type of misinformation that is often broadcast and amplified by today’s social media.

This morning after I awoke and gazed out of my bedroom window, I noticed it had rained during the night and the tiles on my garden patio were still glistening from the rain. How prolonged was the rainfall I cannot say but it was probably just of the order of a passing shower. I imagine that the ground is so hard baked that any lying surface water would soon evaporate and not reach down into the soil where the vegetation is crying out for water. I consulted the longer range forecast and it dies appear that apart from a few isolated showers, we can expect the low pressure across the north of the country and Scotland to move away and another high pressure area (warm and sunny) will approach is from the South East. for the record, England has recorded its driest July on record, in a series since 1836, with just 6.5mm of rainfall recorded – just 10% of its long-term meteorological average for the month, and less than half of the previous record of 13.4mm set in 1911. One particular story is dominating the political agenda, and it is the early release of some prisoners to ease the overcrowding in our gaols. This may well spell the end of Andy Birnham’s honeymoon period in government and although the Prime Minister is himself taking some holiday, the issue will rumble on. On particular case is being kept in front of the public and this is where a police officer dies as he was dragged along the road by a car he was trying to apprehend, Although the lack of intent meant that that the conviction was for manslaughter rather than for murder, this nicety is rather lost on the public and we now have the bizare spectacle of even a chief police officer threatening to take the government to court in an effort to get the decision in this particular case reversed. There is one way out of this dilemma and this is to perform a ‘U’ turn in government policy and to add the murderers serving police officers to the list (along with rapists and child sex offenders) to the category of prisoners where the early release provisions o not apply. But this is the point at which pure politics start to apply because a ‘U’ turn in policy would make the government appear weak and indecisive and the frequency of ‘U; turns in government policy was one of the reasons why the Burnham government succeeded  the Keir Starmer government in the first place. Last night, I viewed a very convincing video which argued that Argentina was shortly to be banned from the 2030 World Cup competition but of course this would take the immediate Number 1 spot in the news bulletins so I concluded that it must be a sophisticated AI fate. But it remains the case that the FIFA disciplinary will undoubtedly sanction Argentina for two major transgressions (displaying of political slogans and the brawl after the match) but whether they will receive only a cursory slap on the wrist after a gap of some weeks remains to be seen. Incidentally, the facts in this are clear and well caught on video constantly re-run throughout the world so who a disciplinary decision is so long delayed perhaps tells you everything that you need to know about FIFA.

This was my normal shopping day and this was conducted easily enough but I had to hunt around to find a copy of ‘The Times’ which I did on the third  outlet I visited. Once I returned home, I lunched on some quiche  accompanied by some salad and felt a bit better after the eating of it so perhaps my blood sugar level had dropped a litle low. I spent the afternoon a way most unusual for me. Tilm4 were showing a western entitled ‘Siege at Red River’ and I remembered that the name ‘Red River’ had features n a movie clip  had seen as casual  Although the American viewers of the time witnessed the deaths and unthinking American racism. So I viewed all of the film and the movie clip I remembered did not feature in it. But towards the end, hundreds of native Americans were slaughtered when the recently invented Gatling Gun that they had acquired was captured and turned against them. It says something of the sensibilities of conservative American society in 1954 that although audiences were exposed to the killing of hundreds of North American peoples, the final kiss between the female and male characters  which  formed the romantic interest in the film was shielded from viewers eyes by the neck of a horse! Wondering whether I was suffering from false memory syndrome, I did do some Google searching and found the clip of film depicting casual American racism In the 1948 western Red River, the ‘Don Diego’ scene depicts Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) forcefully claiming land north of the river that belongs to a Spanish landowner named Don Diego. When Don Diego’s Mexican wranglers object, Dunson shoots one of them dead and sends the survivor back as a hostile messenger. While the scene portrays ruthless land-grabbing and casual violence typical of frontier expansion, critical discussion of the movie more often points to its depiction of Native Americans later in the film as a product of mid-century Hollywood stereotyping rather than this specific encounter with Don Diego’s men. What is interesting to our eyes, though, is that the shooting of a Mexican emissary in cold blood as they were concluding a conversation would have been regarded as not worthy of comment and even the Wikipedia entry pulls its punches and does not mention the inherent racism. After the film had concluded, I knew it was the day before our green garden waste wheelie bin gets emptied and so I chopped down the remainder of the lava tera bush (which had grown to tree-like proportions) and used a saw to cut it into disposable pieces. For good measure I threw in some of another bush that had died as a product of the heat in the front of the house  but only managed some of this. At the same time, I managed to sweep  a goodly portion of the dead holly leaves that had been shed on the back path into the garde and these, too, went into the wheelie bin. I am aware that there are a lot of other things that needed to be cut back and disposed off but I did not want to overdo it. I managed after several attempts to get through to our favourite eating place in Alcester (pretty little Georgian town with some excellent charity shops) to secure a lunch time booking as my American friend and I are going off to treat ourselves to a little ‘jolly’ at the end of the week.

Every so often you read a story that is genuinely shocking and so it proved the day before yesterday when I was perusing the columns of ‘The Sunday Times’ for press cuttings. The story relates to an entrepreneur in Israel who  was giving access to a piece of land which presumably he owned which overlooked a portion of the Gaza Strip. This individual was hiring out binoculars so that people could gaze upon the devastated landscape in the Gaza Strip to observe first hand the devastation that Israeli military action has undertaken. The latest estimate is that 71,000 people (many women and children) had been killed in the bombardments and the Israelis had moved their ‘yellow line’ so the Israeli defence forces now occupied 60% of the territory of the Gaza strip. What I found shocking was the account that an Israeli citizen had driven forty miles in order to observe first hand the destruction of Gaza and then admitted to his disappointment that there were any buildings left standing at all, rather than the vast majority of them destroyed by missile attacks. The displaced population are now living in rat-infested tents as they do not have any habitable homes left to which to return whilst a ‘cease fire’ is theoretically in operation. Of course the world’s attention has been diverted from these wars in Iran, Ukraine and Gaza and one is reminded of the Roman  tradition of ‘bread and circuses’. ‘Bread and circuses’ (panem et circenses) originates from the Roman Poet Juvenal, who used it in his Satire X around 100 AD. It describes how leaders gained public approval not by good policies, but by giving citizens free grain (bread) and massive entertainment events like chariot races and gladiatorial games (circuses). Roman society was subject to periodic revolts by slaves and the dispossessed and ‘bread and circuses’ was one way to divert public attention from their present day concerns. So I believe that the World Cup served this function as reporting of conflicts were pushed aside. There are some cynics that argue that here in the UK we put on similar shows of pageantry to divert public attention elsewhere when things get tough politically. There is much public disquiet about the ‘early release’ schemes in which some prisoners are being released after only a third or a half of their sentences in order to release capacity in the prison system which is running at about 98%-99% full. During the age of austerity, the building of new prisons took on a very low priority and although new prisons are under construction, they take time and money to build. Andy Burnham has bowed to public pressure and halted the early release scheme for some categories of crime (such as rape and child sex offences) but there are some notorious cases in which early release will sill apply. Victims claim that it is they themselves that are subject to a permanent life sentence as the effects of the crimes persist in their lives whereas offenders may be  released back into the areas in which the crimes were committed within a period of a few years. There is no easy solution to this problem and all that the government can offer is a more stringent tagging regime. Meanwhile, we read that American oil and gas giants raked in massive spring profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments and consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages. The conflict, now in its sixth month, halted most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that previously served as a delivery route for a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas. With global supplies constrained, prices for Brent crude, the international standard, soared from about $70 to above $100 a barrel for much of March, April and May, and at one point reached $126. So oil and gas has been extracted at one price and then sold for a much higher price so this strengthens the case for a windfall tax upon the profits of companies like BP who have similar profited.

Before I attended my weekly Pilates class, my son and daughter-in-law called around and it was lovely to see them after a gap of over a week. After exchanging family news and gossip, my daughter-in-law took on the business of tidying my food shelves and ensuring that I am not hanging onto any out-of-date food. After I returned from my Pilates class, my family had very kindly made a salad out of some mackerel which I provided and other salad ingredients which they had brought along. Then I had a delicious mackerel salad, made all of the nicer for the fact that I had not prepared it myself for a change.  We brought each other up-to-date on family news and then they returned to their own flat whist I had a doze. Looking at current news items, the following caught my eye about living costs in Spain. If a British person wishes to live in Spain on a permanent basis, one has to apply for a non-lucrative visa and demonstrate that you have an income of about £2,500 per month and pay for some health insurance, but after that costs start to fall rapidly. It is 32% lower than in the UK, at almost £400 a month less, making Spain the cheapest nation among 11 top foreign destinations analysed by Overseas Home. It was the fourth cheapest for groceries (22% less than the UK), second cheapest to run a home (-32%), sixth for travel (-21%) and top of the leaderboard when eating out and other leisure activities (-44%). You can enjoy a fantastic menu of the day, three-course lunch with wine for €12 – €15 (£10 – £15) in a local restaurant. A nice dinner for two with wine costs around €60 – €80 (£52 – £69). In the shops, fresh produce is significantly cheaper than in the UK. Property in Spain is considerably more affordable too, with a square metre up to 50% cheaper, according to Blevins Franks. €120,000 (£104,000) gets you a good choice of nice apartments, not obviously on the beach, but in those popular areas of the Costa Blanca or Costa del Sol. If it’s something really nice, then you’ve got to be looking at €200,000 (£173,000). Drive an hour inland from the Costa del Sol and property prices halve. Obviously, people don’t necessarily speak English. I am not tempted but it is starting to make my Spanish holiday booked for next February look attractive. Some British people spend the winter period for extended periods in Spain and one can see the attraction.

I got up pretty late this morning as I knew that I would oversleep my normal getting up time. My American friend and I stayed up late to watch the marvelous rom-com film ‘Shakespeare in Love’ which deployed the whole range of British acting talent and we really enjoyed it but it did not finish until after midnight and hence the lie-in. But I really got some really good news this morning after I had transmitted a text to one of my nieces. At about the same time each year, she attends a large religious religious convention for young people which takes place in the West Country somewhere. She has to make the journey back to Yorkshire which is a very long way but my house is not far short of the M5 so this represents a wonderful opportunity for us to have a quick together although I shall be seeing her in just over three week’s time in the trip to Yorkshire. So hopefully she will be with me/us just before midday so I need to do a certain amount of prep, not to say tidying up, before she calls around. We are at the start of a new week and the weather men tell us that there is going to be one tremendous stab of really hot weather with a movement northwards of some Saharan air  but hopefully this will represent the last day of really hot weather this summer. Politically, there is a fascinating by election to be held in about 10 days time. Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, resigned as an MP in order to fight his Clacton constituency and hopefully, secure a new mandate. But the main political  parties are refusing to stand in what they regard as an electoral ruse so that Farage may escape some parliamentary scrutiny of the funding streams he has enjoyed from millionaires over the past few years. The by election has attracted 34 candidates which is a record for British politics and the candidate list is over three metres long which has created some difficulties for the way in which the election is actually run. Farage’s chief opponent is actually ‘Count BinFace’ who is a joke candidate who has a dustbin for a head. By any of the normal rules of politics, the election ought to be walk over for Farage and the Reform party. But this is not a ‘normal’ by-election and if the Labour, Liberal, Green and a few other supporters vote for Count BinFace then Farage might have quite a fight on his hands. Even if Farage wins but by a small margin, this could be regarded as a type of Pyrrhic victory and strange things can happen in by elections particularly if the turn out is small and held in August which is normally the ‘closed’ season for political activity. So the results of this by election will be keenly awaited and certainly discussed and a recent opinion poll; shows the following. A fifth of voters could back Count Binface over Nigel Farage in the upcoming by-election in the Reform UK leader’s constituency, new polling has suggested. A new survey by Survation for Mandate Research suggests Mr Farage would win 73 per cent of the vote on a low turnout when constituents head to the polls later this month. But his main rival, Count Binface, could sweep up an estimated 20 per cent of the vote. When options are reduced to just the two candidates, Mr Farage’s vote drops to 69 per cent, while support for Count Binface surges to 31 per cent. The poll, seen by The Telegraph, also suggests that Mr Farage would gain 56 per cent support in the next general election, with the Conservatives on 10 per cent and Labour on 8 per cent. But, of course, we shall have to wait and see and a surge of support kin the last few days of the campaign are always possible. Will Labour and Green voters be keener to vote for Count BinFace than Reform supporters are to vote for Farage? Returning to more prosaic issues, my only extra-normal commitment this week is a Spanish U3A group meeting on Thursday for which I need to undertake a modicum of preparation.

Just after midday day, my niece arrived, breaking her journey up to Yorkshire. I was delighted to see her and introduced her to my American friend who I had invited around so that the two could get to know each other. Previously, I had stripped the pieces of meat from the carcase of the duck which provided our main meal yesterday and thus ended up with a rich duck stew.  I had popped a tray of oven=roast vegetables into the microwave oven so basically lunch was prepared and could be eaten at any time. My niece stayed for about an hour and a half and over cups of tea we exchanged family news with each other before she needed to resume her long trip northwards and my American friend and I consumed the ‘duck stew’ lunch (which, incidentally, seemed to taste just as nice if not nicer than yesterday) This afternoon, after a doze, I have several back issues of the newspaper to scan but later on in the early  evening, there will be a trip to the park to undertake our daily constitutional walk.  Yesterday when I went to church I learnt the details of the funeral of a fellow parishioner with whom I enjoyed more than a nodding acquaintance as we served on the Parish Parochial committee before and my American friend agreed to accompany me to this which is just over a fortnight’s time. If any of us needed more proof of Donald Trump’s declining hold on reality, one only has to witness the bizarre AI generated images that Trump is posting of himself on his own ‘Truth Social‘ outlet. President Donald Trump spent a chunk of his weekend posting weird artificial intelligence slop images of himself in various situations ― and it concluded with one of his most baffling pics yet. It depicted himself seated at a table with Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Trump in the image is wearing clothing almost identical to Lincoln’s, and the three are shown signing an upside-down U.S. map. Some of Trump’s weekend images included him gazing at a younger version of himself in the uniform he wore during his time in a private military academy as a teen, as well as one of himself as some kind of Revolutionary War hero. Trump, however, never actually served in the military. Trump was of draft age during the Vietnam War, but received four deferments for college and one for bone spurs in his heels. He later infamously told radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was ‘my personal Vietnam.’ Trump’s other weekend images included one calling Venezuela the ’51st state,’ one of him looming over Greenland ― which he has also wanted to make into a U.S. state ― as well as him as Elvis and him kissing a figurine of Jesus on a cross. Trump’s critics slammed him for obsessively posting AI slop images of himself instead of focusing on the war in Iran, affordability or any other issue far more important to the American people.