Tuesday, 19th September, 2023 [Day 1282]

Tuesdays are a day to which we always look forward because it is the day when a little gaggle of us meet up in the Waitrose cafeteria for a chat and some mutual support, also including some very mordant black humour. Today, we got onto the eternally jolly topic of funerals and several of our funeral stories were exchanged with each other. One that I contributed to the discussion when on the occasion of the funeral of a beloved aunt of Meg’s, her (brain-damaged) son not being fully aware of the fact that he was at his own mother’s funeral started off the proceeedings by shouting out ‘Goood old Millie’ when his mother’s name was first mentioned. The rest of the proceedings, conducted by a very adept Methodist minister, ended with the son shouting out, at the end of he service ‘Well prayed, Vic’ The old congregation was in tears, some because of genuine grief but the other half because they were helpless with laughter. After we made our way home, I had already made the decision that I thought I would need to give my Pilates session a miss today because of other priorities within the day. We needed to have an early lunch, which we did, of fishcakes and steam-in-the-microwave veg which was absolutely aequate for our needs. Then after lunch and our post-prandial drink, we watched some of the news headlines and then I started what I thought was an important routine for Meg this afternoon. The hairdresser who has been coming to us for years is scheduled to come to us at 4.00pm this afternoon and it is not uncommon for her to be late as appointments overrun. This afternoon, she is due to give Meg a perm which is rather a lengthy procedure so I thought that it was important that Meg had a good rest well before her visit. So I got Meg sertled down on the settee and encouraged her to have either a doze or a sound sleep whilst, courtesy of YouTube, we can observe some stunning images, accompanied by some soothing music. Under the circumstances, I trust that we will get into a routine similar to this most afternoons and I think this will help Meg to manage her frailties somewhat better.

One of the news stories breaking today is that Birmingham City Council is, in effect, being put under special measures as it is effectively bankrupt. The immediate claim upon the city’s finances has been the fact that female staff have been underpaid for years, if not decades, and the bill to remedy this is of the order of £1bn. A compounding factor has been the failure of a big IT system and the fact that tthe local authority has to endure some swingeing cuts to its budget over the years. This sitution is most acute in Birmingham but not unique to it and several other local authorities are said to be in a similar plight. Of course, from the viewpoint of a Tory central government, all of this is like ‘manna from heavan’ as they can argue that it is is Labour incompetence and financial mismanagement that has brought about the present situation and thereby hope to generate much political capital over this. There are also hints that incredibly valuble assets such as Birmingham International Airport and the National Exhibition Centre might need to be sold off (to the sharks no doubt waiting and circling in the water) and this could cripple Britain’s second city for years, if not decades.

It is not often that a government minuster gets a real roasting on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme but this does happen occasionally, including this morning. On the programme this morning, Nick Robinson told Barclay (the Health Secretary) that the move to practically ban junior doctors and consultants from he picket line ‘risks worsening already bad industrial relations between ministers and medics’. The health secretary insisted the new law was necessary in the interests of patients, and said the doctors’ union the British Medical Association (BMA) would face fines if its members still went on strike in defiance of the rules. Nick Robinson said: ‘You didn’t plan to do this just a matter of weeks ago. You didn’t think it was a reasonable thing to do then and you’re doing it now. So presumably you’ve changed your mind about the BMA. Have you decided this is a battle to the political death, that one side or the other is going to win and you’re determined to fight them?’ Barclay replied: ‘It recognises the fact that there has been an escalation from the BMA.’
But Robinson told him: ‘It’s recognition of the fact, Mr Barclay, that you have no answer to the strike 181 days since you had talks.’ A clearly-irritated Barclay was clearly annoyed about being taken to task in this manner but one has the suspicion that when the dispute is eventually settled, which indeed it must be eventually, there will be ‘blad blood’ between Tory Ministers and the BMA that might take many years to resolve. The longer this dispute rumbles on, a fight to the death will continue but the Scots solved this problem by coming to a workable agreement weeks ago. Of course the very heart of the dispute is how much of a pay cut the doctors are willing (unwilling?) to accept, given the past rates of inflation and the below inflation pay settlement that has been proposed.

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Monday, 18th September, 2023 [Day 1281]

Monday morning is always the start of a new week to be sure but we do not have a routine associated with it. I am sure that a century ago, it used to be the case that one wore one’s Sunday best and consequently Monday was often ‘wash day’ so that items could be washed, cleaned and ready for the next weekend if need be. Last night, whilst Meg was in bed during the later evening, I came to watch the rugby and also explored some of the facilities available on our newly acquired second TV. But, first of all, the rugby. It should never have been in doubt that England should eventually beat Japan in a game of rugby but the Japanese put on an extremely spirited performance. In fact, by half-time, if memory serves me correctly, England were only leading by a single point. As the BBC Sports channel revealed, England edged closer to the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals, but did little to impress in a scrappy 34-12 win over Japan in Nice. Lewis Ludlam forced his way over from close range for the only try of a first half littered with England errors. Early in the second half before a fortuitous try from captain Courtney Lawes, after the ball had bounced off the head of Joe Marler, gave England some breathing space. This was a truly remarkable incident and one I have never witnessed before in the years since I have been following rugby. As England were making advances towards the try line, there was a very evident ‘forward pass’ and this was so self-evident that both teams seemed to stopped playing for an instant. But what had actually happened is that a backward pass had bounced off the head of Joe Marlar and this is not regarded, within the law of the game, as a forward pass. An England player touched down and after consultation with the video referee, the pass was awarded. After this bonus try, England really did seem to play some more imaginative rugby to the extent that they actually secured a bonus point for scoring a total of four tries, the last in the dying seconds of the game. So we have now had our fill of rugby until Wednesday at the earliest. The second feature of the evening was a degree of experimentation with what is now available to us on our new (and for that matter, existing, telly) I had initially resisted all thoughts of taking out a subscription to YouTube in order to get rid of adverts but was then tempted by the fact that one could get a ‘free’ month before taking a subscription which then amounted to about the equivalent of one cup of coffee a week (which is how I measure things these days) One thing that YouTube does, probably as it is owned by Google, is to keep a record of recently watched programmes so that they can be accessed again. High on the list is a really outstanding Glyndbourne production of Mozart’s ‘Marriage of Figaro’ with some outstanding singers such as Benjamin Luxor, Ileana Cotrubas, Kiri te Kanawa and Frederica von Stade who I always think of as the absolutely definitive ‘Cherubino’. I have discovered some comedy programmes (and stories behind comedy programmes) and am currently playing one of those really ‘relaxing’ slow videos of beautiful countryside vistas whilst a soothing piano is being played in the background. I am experimenting a little with this to see if Meg can have a sleep each afternoon because I am petty sure that her body needs this and anything I can do to induce a state of relaxation and natural rest can only be a bonus.

I must say hat I particularly enjoy the contributions of Ed Conway on Sky News who often reports on economic issues but whose official title is something like ‘data analyst’. Certainly, his reports are data rather than opinion led which is surely a good thing. Today, the ex Prime Minister, Liz Truss entered the political fray again arguing that getting rid of Boris Johnson was surely a bad idea. But the Ed Conway analysis runs as follows and is certainly more nuanced. The economy was still recovering from the pandemic, from lockdowns and the supply chain disruption that ensued. The public finances were in a particularly weak position, with the national debt having rocketed higher to finance the furlough scheme. Britain, in other words, looked vulnerable. There were bombs buried throughout financial markets. But here’s where things get less flattering for the former PM, because there’s little doubt that what pushed the UK over the edge was the behaviour of Ms Truss and her team. Tonight, though, we are due the second instalment of the Laura Kuenssberg series ‘State of Chaos’ (and yes, I quite like the ‘double entendre’ in the title) This is detailing the Brexit imbroglio and the second episode is broadcast today. Although not a great fan of Kuennsberg, I thought she did an incisive job in the first episode which whets the appetite for the second. She interviews many of the key players which includes advisers, civil servants and several others regarded as key players and although one has already lived through these times, it is still quite revealing to understand how events unfolded, even though it is all still quite recent political history.

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Sunday, 17th September, 2023 [Day 1280]

Today being Sunday, we pop into our Sunday morning routine. What with one thing or another, we had a rather disturbed night but no matter because we needed to face what today has to bring. By the time we had got ourselves up, dressed and ready for breakfast, we popped into our newly equipped Music Room where I got Meg some cereal to have for her Sunday morning breakfast. Meg was eating her breakfast and watching the Lorna Kuenssberg politics program where she was interviewing the Foreign Secretary. The only real thing that I remember from this interview was that the Overseas Aid budget had been cut from £15bn to £12bn a year (and one suspects that to many on the right of the Tory party, they would prefer it to be nil unless, of course, it was aid with strings attached to the ultimate benefit of the British economy). Expenditure on overseas aid has been reduced as a result of the pandemic from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP. In addition, the current government has raided the overseas aid budget to the tune of about one quarter (£3bn) to finance the migrant and refugee crisis. This means that in the last few years, the amount of aid being given to the poorest countries has been reduced from £15bn to £9bn which is a dramatic fall. Eveen the Foreign Secretary was forced to concede that this cut in the aid budget would have consequences but his counter-argument was that the money that was being spent was now spent in a much more effective and targetted way (which sounds like a ‘civil service type of argument) Apart from this item, I must confessed that I dozed throughout the rest.

We had agreed that we would meet with our University of Birmingham friend at a kind of outdoor sports centre in which people engage in canooing, kayaking and similar pursuits but in which there is a cafe overlooking what I suspect is an artifical lake. This is called the Aztec Adventure Centre and spectators are welcome – in practice, most come along just to have a coffee overlooking a local stretch of water. When we arrived, the café was not yet open and our friend had forgotten our arrangement, until prompted by a quick phone call. I took Meg along in her wheelchair, the better to negotiate the walkways to access the cafe which was not actually open at the time at which we arrived. There was quite a cold wind blwoing across the water, so after our coffee we went inside to escape some of the colder blasts. Our friend and I then engaged in a long and some might say, arcane, discussion about the role of statistics in researches presented in the typical PhD. In particular, I knew that one of my erstwhile colleagues at De Montfort University had been failed his PhD because it was argued that he had used the wrong statistical test and in this long and protracted argument he came off the loser and was failed his PhD which, I suspect rankled with him for the rest of his life particularly as he subsequently wrote a statistics primer for students. There are two very broad classes of statistics – one being called ‘parametric’ statistics where the population assumes the shape of what is known as the ‘bell shaped curve’ and the other broad class being known as ‘non-parametric’ statistics. The whole argument revolved around the extent to which could depart from the assumes of ‘normality’ for the parametric statistics still to be legitimate and to be valid or, at what point, the departure frm ‘normality’ is such that a non-parametric category of statsitics should be deployed. One can see that there an area for disagreement and debate about how far, and to what extent, a departure from ‘normality’ is to be tolerated to invalidate the use of parametric statistics. Meg very widely dozed off throughout this particular discussion but our University of Birmingham friend and myself had very similar thoughts and approaches to this problem. We both concluded that the degree of understanding of this issue could be quite small, even amongst supervisors of PhD students, let alone their supervisors and examiners, and from this discussion, we went on to share our experiences of the PhD examination process.

In the rugby World Cup, the match of the day was Australia vs. Fiji (Fiji had recently in the warmup matches beaten England and Wales only beat them narrowly in the World Cup). Fiji beat Australia for just the third time in their history as they blew Pool C wide open with a thrilling win at the Rugby World Cup. It really was an entertaining match and I think it fair to say that the Fijians seemed to outplay Australia in every department of the game. It was the first time they had ever beaten Australia in the World Cup as well and the celebrations around the stadium, and I imagine in Fiji itself, was something to behold. So after the thrilling match this afternoon, this evening it is going to be England vs. Japan. England ought to win this game but nothing is certain in this World Cup as the smaller nations are often playing well above what their world rankings might suggest. I speculate to myself whether the Japanese being such a rule-governed society will infringe the laws of rugby less than the English – we shall see.

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Saturday, 16th September, 2023 [Day 1279]

So we run into a Saturday morning routine this morning and, having washed and breakfasted, it was time to make our way to the Waitrose cafeteria to meet up with our friends (as we did last Saturday on the celebration of our wedding anniversary but here we are one week further forward) We met up with our regular meeting with the three older ladies. After our customary chat, we bought som lime and mint cordial which Waitrose have on offer and to which we have become a little partial. Then it was a case of getting home and starting to think about our Saturday midday meal. Today, we were finishing off the remains of a large family pork and apple pie to which we added some broccoli and a special mixture of my own. The mixture was one onion, one sweet pepper and one tomato and once this was nicely softened and blended in the saucepan, I added a little tomato source and just a tad of sweet chilli sauce to add a little piquancy to the whole. This all worked out creating a very tasty meal and although Meg thought she not be able to manage it all, in fact she did.

Now that we have our new TV installed and Alexa activated, we are now starting to enjoy some of the other services on offer. Having got ourselves logged into YouTube (eventually), we then started to look at some of the relaxation videos on offer. These are generally of the mountain stream/forest/seaside nature but some are based upon the concept of the ‘Cosy Cafe’ whilst many of them seem to feature campfires (one of them being the sort of campfire you might have at the entrance to a cave in millenia gone by) Many of these are quite interesting, not to say relaxing and no doubt if you found one on one’s laptop you could bookmark it and return to it time and again. Although I although I seem to have seen a variety of these on the TV, the selection seems to alter each time I switch on an I can never seem to get back to the ones that I particularly liked (but no doubt there is a way which I shall discover). But the highlight of the middle of the day was that we just happened to be tune into YouTube when they were broadcasting a live performance of ‘The Messiah’ direct from the Sydney Opera House in Australia. The performance really was of the highest quality and I must say tht I enjoyed it tremendously both in the bit that we saw before lunch and its continutaion afterwards. There were three little moments that stood out in my mind, the first being a beautify rendition of ‘He was despisèd’ which Kathleen Ferrier almost made her own. I said to myself that it was a case of beautiful contralto singing but when I looked at the images on the TV, it was actually a counter-tenor. The second thing that I noticed was what appeared to be an exceptionally small sized trumpet, smaller even than he cornet. I did a little investigation on Google and discovered that this actually what is known as a ‘piccolo’ trumpet (being to the trumpet, I suppose, what the piccolo is to the flute) I discovered that the piccolo trumpet is recognisable for its small size and high pitch, making it a very specialised instrument that is mainly used in Baroque-era music. Distinguished by its shorter tubing length, its compact design produces brilliant and piercing tones with a bright, crisp sound. So now I know. I also saw what I now know to be a renaissance lute with the neck turned at sharp angle to make it more playable I suppose. After the performance ended with the traditional ‘Allelujah Chorus’,it looked as though there was going to be an encore of some kind and, indeed, one of the solists came out to give a rendition of ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’. Then there was a modern harpischord continuo and some oher arias followed for which we did not stay tuned in. I found this to be very enjoyable as I could simultaneously read my weekend copy of ‘The Times’, listen to the music and occasionlly glance up at the TV as the occasion demanded.

Wales met Portugal in the World Cup this afternoon. Actually most of the Portuguese players seemed to play for French clubs but some as low as in the 4th division. The game went the way that many of these type of fixtures seemed to go in this tournment. There was no doubt that Wales was going to win (but they only secured the bonus point for their fourth try after he clock had turned ‘red’) Wales played very much below their their potential whereas the Portuguse played the game of their lives – and in many ways played the more enterprising and entertaining rugby (which was a pattern that we also saw in the France vs. Uruguay match) This makes the whole tournament so much more entertaining – and the interesting thing is that the ‘best’ rugby seems to come from the minnows of the game rather than the well-established rugby nations, who you would have thought should have performed very much better than they did against inferior opposition.

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Friday, 15th September, 2023 [Day 1278]

We always look forward to Fridays and with good reason because it is the day when our domestic help does her weekly cleaning duties and, as we have not seen her for two weeks as she was taking her summer holiday, we had a lot of news to catch up on. Last night, I got ‘Alexa‘ activated on our new TV. Our domestic help showed us to access what I think is technically called ‘slow TV’ which are generally tranquil scenes of lakes, campfires and cafes which you can watch until what we really want to watch is scheduled. I think we shall use these quite a lot whilst having a cup of tea if there is nothing else on the TV to occupy one’s interest. Last night, Meg went to bed a little early and I watched the France vs. Uruguay game which was so entertaining. It was never in doubt that France would emerge the winners of this particular game but the French played somewhat below themselves and the young Uruguay team played excellent and exciting rugby making the whole match a delight to watch. Later on tonight it is going to be New Zealand (All Blacks) against Namibia which really is a David vs. Goliath type contest. Nonetheless, it should be entertaining and one wonders by how many points the team from Namibia is going to lose.

This morning, whilst our domestic help was keeping an eye on Meg, I was charged to go to a local hardware stock to get some replacement LED type bulbs as, until today, I did not the opportunity to get the types of bulbs required by some of our lighting units. Some of these have been failing but I have not had the opportunity until today to get out of the house and purchase some. The assistant within the store was very friendly and made sure that I good supply of what was needed and then they got fitted the minute we got home, which was all to the good. Outside the hardware store, I bumped into one of my fellow Pilates class members who had offered to pop by one afternoon for a chat and this is something to which I am sure that Meg and I will look forward. I am going to return to do another half session next Tuesday so that I can keep my participation in the group going, albeit at a somewhat reduced level for the time being.

Today, Meg and I had our by now traditional Friday lunch of a haddock and cheese pie, eaten with some mange-tout and baked tomatoes. We then tuned in to what is becoming a daily treat which is the James Martin culinary programme which also acts as a mini-travelogue for various parts of the Spain. James Martin always focuses upon that which is the regional speciality and today he was visiting Extramadura (a part of Spain practically unknown to most Brits) and, naturally, spent some time extolliong the virtues of the ham which comes from acorn-fed pigs, often adjudged to be the finest ‘jamon’ in the whole of a country noted for the quality of its ham. When this program finished, Meg felt as though we needed a breath of fresh air so we thought we might make a journey to Droitwich and walk by the side of the canal there, as it was a beautiful fine afternoon. But getting to the car, I had forgotten to pack the wheelchair and the late afternoon rush-hour traffic was particularly heavy in any case, so we cut our losses and made for a very short walk in the park, availing ourselves of the nearest park bench to the car and the only one that Meg can now manage if not in a wheelchair. I am thinking of ways to help Meg’s frailties, such as they are – many elderly people in practice have a doze as they are in their 70’s and 80’s. I am still coming to terms with the practical steps that I can undertake to help Meg as she is now quite frail. One thing which is relatively easy to organise will be to make sure that she always has a good nap, if not a sleep, on an almost daily basis. In theory this should be easy to organise if I can make Meg comfortable on our settee with the lights off, blinds drawn and some soothing music in the background. Another practical measure is making sure that Meg gets into bed in the correct orientation i.e. North-South versus East-West. I think I may have found a solution to this because I am going to organise a ‘step stool’ that I happened to have in another part of the house. Then with some judicious use of some intermediate steps, I think I may be able to get Meg into bed much more easily than proved to be the case last night but tonight may be a critical test whether my adaptations will work (as they generally do)

Sky News is reporting tonight that after years of strife, weak and corrupt governance, corruption and negligence, the Libyan authorities were simply not up to preparing for or coping with a disaster of this magnitude – and it is the Libyan people who have been killed, or left displaced in their thousands. It is being reported that this is a disaster of biblical proportions with an estimate of 11,000 deaths in the Libyan city of Derna alone.

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Thursday, 14th September, 2023 [Day 1277]

Last night, in the middle of the night, I wrote a long and detailed account of Meg’s frailties for the benefit of social services from whom we were expecting a visit later on in the day. Meg and I have been anticipating this visit for several days, not knowing exactly what was going to be in store for us, later on in the day. But, as it is said ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’ Thursday is my shopping day and so I relieved the ATM of some cash and popped into the Morrison’s supermarket which was practically deserted at that time in the morning to buy some knee-high socks for Meg. I was quite fortunate in obtaining the supplies that I did and then I returned home at just after 9.00am with Meg still soundly in bed. THen it was a fairly leisurely case of getting Meg up and dressed before breakfast. THen the shopping needed to be put away and all of this took some time so it was all fairly late by the time we came to contemplate a trip onto the road. It was all a bit rainy and miserable so I wondered if I could find a coffee shop open in the suburban street where the AgeUK shop is located. I popped into the shop and bought a couple of really inexpensive items but they did not really have in stock what I was actually looking for. Then we shot back home and had our delayed elevenses at home, not managing to find a little coffee shop with adjacent parking. We then cooked a lunch which I suppose is best described as a chicken fricasée starting with an onion, peppers and peas and concluding with some bits of fried chicken seasoned with a peri- peri sauce. This turned out to be a nicer than might have been expected and Meg ate most of hers.

We got lunch eaten and the washing up just about eaten when I received a mobile call from the social worker who we were expecting in half an hour but actually turned up half an hour early. She tried her best to be helpful but, at the end of the day, I am not sure what we quite got the assessment that we had anticipated. I gather she was a bit appalled that we had the brush off from a unit that should have been able to get Meg some better medication. One suggestions were made for services for us to try out but at the end of the day, I am not convinced that there was anything on offer which really fitted our needs. So at the end of the day, it might be that Meg and I try some of the suggestions offered to us but without being convinced that they might turn out to see more trouble than they are actually worth. A further reference was going to be made for some physiotherapy but the last encounter that we had in this direction was not particularly helpful as we had some exercises recommended to us on a worksheet which I do not think addressed the core issues of a pattern of repeated falls. I do not wish to sound unduly negative at this juncture but perhaps I was hoping for a little more than was actually on offer.

The Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, is trying to ‘sell’ a new policy on the perennial problem of migration. Basically, he is going to have a robust policy on the people-smugglers by regarding them as terrorists. But to put this policy into effect, he needs to ‘nudge’ the Labour party policy so that it aligns more with an EU approach., This may involve a trade-off where the UK accepts a certain European quota of migrants in exchange for robust, collective action against the people smugglers. The liberal press such as ‘The Guardian‘ are regarding this as going to war with the people smugglers whilst the right wing press is portraying this as giving the green light for even more migration from the shores of the EU. I have a feeling that this issue will rumble on and on and will become practically the sole focus of the general election campaign which has practically started already months early. In face, the EU referendum campaign as I remember the closing stages was nearly all about ‘hordes’ of migrants from or via EU countries and there was the famous poster which tried to imply that the entire population of Turkey, not even an EU member, was eligible to enter the UK.

Now that we are through to this part if the week, the rugby World Cup is starting again with a vengeance. Our son phoned up giving me details of how the rugby is being broadcast tonight but on rather an obsscure ITV channel but as I had half forgotten about it, this has brightened my evening somewhat. Now that we are at this stage of the week, then I can look forward to several more nights of rugby – the last match that we watched which was Wales vs. Fiji turned out to be really exciting and let us hope that more is in store.

There is a hint tonight that the Government are considering scrapping the final leg of the HS2 project (broadly Birmingham to Manchester via Crewe) and, if this proves to be the case, it might prove to be the worst of all possible worlds with only one half of a high-speed line to the North actually built making a mockery of the whole project.

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Wednesday, 13th September, 2023 [Day 1276]

You can never be quite sure what a day is going to bring and today was no exception. Meg and I had a fairly lazy start to the day but we knew that our University of Birmingham friend was due to pick us up at 10.30 in order to undertake a pre-planned little trip out to Droitwich. It was a beautiful day today and a nice one to be out on the road. After a brief trip to pick up our newspaper, we made our way to the cafe in Droitwich that we had planned to visit – and were greeted almost like long last friends once we stepped inside. This independently-run cafe does work very hard to ensure that the ingredients for its offerings are shopped for freshly each day. We treated ourselves to cappuccinos and toasted teacake and were joined half way through our repast by the very friendly assistant who had been so helpful helping Meg into the car the last time we called. In the course of our conversation, it emerged that she knew Anne Jones, the previous women’s Wimbledon champion, who occasionally was a patron at the same club of which our University of Birmingham friend is a member. Somehow or other, we got talking about refugees and it emerged that the cafe assistant had befriended a young Afghan refugee and helped him on the road both to a legally settled status as well as further education and training so that he could make his own way in the world. Eventually, the young Afghan refugee told the assistant that he had actually known her for longer than he had known his own mother and regarded her now as his newly adopted family. When you hear the rhetoric coming from members of the government, it is really quite inspirational to be told stories such as this. We introduced our University of Birmingham friend to the cafe assistant and as well as the Anne Jones connection, it transpired that we both knew Harrogate quite well as that was the town in which I spent my youth and where the assistant attended the Great Yorkshire permanent show ground in order to sell some of her wares (skin preparations) As we were leaving the cafe/restaurant, a little container was pressed into our hands containing three buttered and jammed scones for us to enjoy as afternoon tea. I suspect that we will now be turning up as regular customers if we get treated as well as this every time. Not being part of a chain and not on the immediate High Street, we do get the impression that the cafe works hard to greet and retain its regular customers so I suspect that our allegiances will now start to transfer. This cafe also has the facility for me to pop Meg inside whilst I go and get the car parked so this is an additional recommendation.

Meg and I have discovered a series on TV which we think we are going to enjoy tremendously. It is on for an hour most weekdays and is really a culinary programme but is called ‘James Martin’s Spanish Adventure‘ Although the programme is not meant to be a travelogue, it is really very informative and stimulates all kinds of memories of Spain for us (some of them a little painful as it is not at all clear if or when we shall return). We then started watching half way through a film of ‘The Young Winston‘ which we did not watch through the end because afternoon tea beckoned. As we had been given some scones by the cafe this morning, we thought we would eat them up whilst listening to ‘Choral Evensong‘ I have lodged in my memory this is typically broadcast on Wednesday afternoons at about 4.00pm and I remembered about it in time this afternoon. After our tea, I judged that Meg was getting somewhat over-tired and out-of-sorts so I took her down to a darkened room where I am encouraging her to have a doze. I think that many people in the mid-seventies and onwards have a little doze in the afternoon. I wondered what the bulk of evidence suggested about such naps and discovered the following. ‘For most people, napping in the early afternoon when your body experiences a natural circadian dip, is the best way to catch a few winks without disturbing the sleep-wake cycle. There is no consensus on how long you should nap. Some experts recommend naps should last no more than 30 minutes‘. Having said that, excessive napping is probably not a good idea but I think that perhaps I need to get Meg into a more regular napping mode.

I have been considerably saddened by the loss of the hardware and household store, Wilko, in the last few days. But a list has been published of the stores that Poundland intends to take over and I am half pleased to discover that the Droitwich store is on the list. What is not clear at this stage is whether Poundland are just acquiring extra High Street presence and will only continue to sell the cheap, plasticky goods for which Poundland is noted. An alternative is that they attempt to take over many of the ‘Wilko‘ lines but somehow I feel that this is probably not going to happen.

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Tuesday, 12th September, 2023 [Day 1275]

This morning I awoke to the sound of gently falling rain which was pleasant to experience. It reminded me of an app I once accessed which was an audio track used as an aid to relaxation or sleep of heavy tropical rain which I also enjoyed. Last night, I watched the first part of Lorna Kuenssberg’s history of the Brexit adventure which was called ‘State of Chaos’ in which she interviewed many of the leading actors, including civil servants and advisers. I found it quite enthralling, as it happens, with some memorable quotes and I am going to look forward to the next few parts when they are broadcast. Even the ‘Daily Telegraph’ was quite complimentary about the series which is interesting in itself. Of most interest to students of political history, is that Brexit tested our constitutional checks and balances almost to destruction and it is interesting to reflect how close we actually came to a melt-down of the UK’s constitution.

As I was listening to the ‘Today‘ programme on Radio 4, there was a really disturbing account of a recent investigation. This showed that in the last five years, two thirds of female surgeons had experienced episodes of unwanted sexual advances, often in an operating theatre whilst a third had actually experienced instances of a sexual assault up to and including rape. This points out the massive asymmetry in the gender balance in surgery and the fact that female surgeons are often having to be in in a position to learn their craft from senior surgical colleagues who are typically male. This assymmetry and imbalance across the genders evidently led to a rampant culture of abuse. One does not have to be particularly ‘woke’ not to be horrified by this story.

Today being a Tuesday, Meg and I made our usual trip to the Waitrose cafeteria where we made contact with one of our regulars – our other two regulars had been rather deterred by the showery weather. As usual, we had a jolly chat about this and that and I amused our friend with the story about friend’s disappearing (and reappearing) hat, the other day. Then we did a bit of shopping for essentials before we made for home and I started to prepare for my Pilates class where I hope that I may be able to make a half rather than a whole session. Once I had made Meg comfortable, I made haste by car to my Pilates class which is the first I have managed to attend for two to three weeks. I informed my tutor and fellow students that I would only attend for half an hour and, I must say that each exercise seemed doubly precious to me as I knew that my time was limited. After half an hour, I got home as fast as I could and found Meg waiting for me with some trepidation so I had got home just about in time. We had our ‘normal’ Tuesday lunch of haddock fish cakes and easily cooked steamed vegetables, after which we settled down for a restful afternoon.

Half way through the afternoon, we received a visit from one of my fellow Pilates classmates who indicated that she might call round to see us. Our friend brought a beautiful bunch of gladioli for Meg and we then entertained our guest in the music room, after treating her to a rendition of a couple of the pieces that I have been practicing. Then we had a very pleasant chat for about an hour and discovered that we had some aspects of our respective biographies in common as we both had experiences of working in quite specialised libraries – the National Lending library for Science and Technology in my case which had a name change into the British Library Lending division. We were very grateful to receive this visit from our friend and I hope that it helped Meg to pass the afternoon with something other than the TV with which to entertain her.

Sophie Ridge is presenting a programme called the ‘Politics Hub‘ on Sky News which, as it happens, is competing directly with Channel 4 News at 7.00pm which Meg and I used to watch. Sophie Ridge is making a pitch for viewers at the moment with some interesting observations on the political scene. She is making the point that in the run up to a General Election, practically all government policy will be ‘bent’ towards that which please voters, both core supporters as well as marginal voters, but this is a terrible way to run a country where long strategic economic decisions are ditched in favour of that which is politically expedient. This is felt in a particularly acute form considering the ‘triple lock’ whereby pensioners are guaranteed whichever is the higher of the annual inflation rate, the rise in wages or 2.5% This year, it looks as though the triple lock will give pensioners an extra 8% on top of the 10% they received as a result of the last year’s settlement. Most politicians would argue that it is time for the triple lock to go but in the run up to an election, there is no way that any government is going to disadvantage such a large part of its core support and so the ‘triple lock’, which may well have outlived its usefulness, is to stay with us until the next election is won and lost.

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Monday, 11th September, 2023 [Day 1274]

So it is Monday morning and the start of another week. We are having a slightly different ‘getting up, washed and dressed’ routine this morning which seems to be working as we intended. Basically, it involves Meg sitting in a chair whilst I bring the washing materials to her instead of Meg having to catch onto a washbasin whilst washing and this small change to our routine actually does yeild benefits. Last night,Meg and I watched the Wales vs. Fiji rugby match and it could fairly be described as pulsating. The Welsh built up a lead, though, in the second half which looked as though it might be impregnable but Fiji scored two quick tries and when the clock went ‘red’ i.e. full time, were only 6 points behind. In a magnificent move a long kick (or was it a pass) was sent to a Fijian player lurking on the wing and had he taken it cleanly, he would almost certainly have scored and if the try had been converted, then Fiji would have won by one point. But the player fumbled it knocking the ball forward and so Wales won the match by six points, leaving the Fijians to wonder what might have been.

This morning, Meg and I decided to go to our local Morrison’s superstore in Redditch as we know that they normally had a supply of wheelchairs for the benefit of customers. Just outside the store, we received a call from one of Mike’s Pilates class mates who had been intending to pay us a quick visit. But she had gone to take the dogs a walk and had been caught in a huge shower and had got soaking wet so we thought we would meet on another day. On the way out of the store, we were caught by the same shower and got thoroughly wet whilst getting into the car. Within the store, we particularly wanted to buy some ‘knee high’ socks for Meg but Sod’s Law ensured that they were out of stock. We bought some other things whilst we were in the store but then beat a hasty retreat home. Once we got home, we cooked a meal of chicken thighs (cooked on the bone but with the skin and leg bones removed) when we were dishing up the dinner. This afternoon, we entertained ourselves with some quite decent natural history and travelogue type programmes, knowing that we had had a glut of rugby and would have to wait until Thursday before we could indulge ourselves again.
It now looks as though all 400 of the Wilko stores are going to close with the loss of about 12,000 jobs. A planned takeover by a rival store has failed to materialise after some initial hopes that about half of the stores/jobs could be saved but his proved to be a false dawn. It looks as though the job losses will take by October, according to one of the unions involved.

Normally on the second Wednesday of every month, we are invited to a special meeting for the frail aged run by AgeUK. We received a reminder about next Wednesday but I had to take a very difficult decision in replying to them to the effect that I considered Meg was too frail to be able to attend the event. For example, the last time we went everyone else walked to their cars but Meg fell over in the lady’s loo and, since then, her mobility has reduced somewhat. We are finding that the new TV with which we are delighted and which is situated in a good position in our Music Room means that we are tending to spend more of our time in this part of our accommodation. We are looking forward to seeing the social worker on Thursday next but needed to supply some additional documentation before Thursday. When I got into contact with the relevant unit to furnish them with updated information, I turned out to No. 10 in the queue and was subsequently informed that a reply might take up to 15 working days to resolve i.e. 3 weeks. This, of course, is a symptom of a service under severe resource constraints, not surprising after so many years of austerity.

Just when we thought that we had COVID-19 behind us, the new variant which contains a lot of mutations, is causing scientists some concern. There is even some advice that we should get used to wearing face masks again. Meg and I got booked into the combined fle and COVID booster jab but it is not until mid-October which sounds quite a long time away. I suppose we shall just to exercise caution from now on but face mask wearing sounds the option open to us. On the weather front, it seems that the hot spell is well and truly over and it is certainly the case that I got well and truly caught when Meg and I visited the supermarket this morning. It seems that a band of rain is stretching across the Midlands from the South West up to the North East and we seem to be right in the middle of the band. So far, apart from keeping windows open in the evening to help hot air to blow through the house, we have not been too badly affected but I shall be quite keen to experience a cooler days from now on.

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Sunday, 10th September, 2023 [Day 1273]

Meg and I watched the England vs.Argentine rugby match last night and it was one of the strangest matches we have ever seen. For a start, there seemed to be no free flowing rugby on either side. The whole tone of the game was not helped by the sending of the England player, Curry, whose yellow card after a collision of heads was upgraded to a red so that England played for most of the time with only 14 players on the pitch. England won fairly easily after a succession of opportunistic drop goals by the English fly half, Ford, who actually scored the total of the England score which were all penalties or goals. Still, a win is a win and perhaps after the recent spell of poor form, it was good to see an English team with a bit more discipline (much more than the Argentinians) and sense of purpose.

After we had breakfasted and seen the Laura Kuennsberg politics program, we received a very welcome telephone from our University of Birmingham friend which help, as it happened, to resolve a huge mystery for us. Yesterday, after our friend left our little party to go in search of his lost credit card, I rescued his hat and brought that home, together with two slices of chocolate cake. These I put on a brick plinth in our porch whilst I was helping to get Meg out of the car and rescue other things.Later on, I searched in vain throughout the house for both the cake and the hat which I knew I had brought home but I could not find anywhere. What had happened was this. Our friend turned up to the house whilst we were having our family meal, saw the cake and his hat outside the door and assumed they had been left there for him to collect so he took possession of them without ringing the doorbell and shot off home. So when I looked all over the house thinking that in a moment of abstraction I must have put the items somewhere, it was no wonder that they could not be found. So today’s phone call cleared up a mystery for us. In view of the fact that it was either raining or threatening to rain, we decided to meet our friend in the Waitrose cafeteria is where we spent a very happy hour if not longer.

When we got home, neither Meg or myself felt particularly hungry so we threw together a salad from bits of pieces and some pork pie donated by a neighbour (who works in Webbs and sometimes gives us food items that would otherwise be thrown away) So we actually had a very satisfying lunch and then settled down to watch a variety of TV programs before we start watching rugby again. In the afternoon, we received a very welcome FaceTime call from my niece who had called in on my sister in Yorkshire and we had a long session updating each other of the various little tribulations with which we both had to deal over the last week or so. The video call was wonderful to receive, though, and was a source of great emotional support to us.

This afternoon in the late afternoon we were starting to watch the Scotland vs. South Africa rugby match with low expectations of Scotland given the world rankings of South Africa. But by half term, they were behind by only 6-3 so it will be an interesting second half. There is still a lot of discussion whether the red card given to England’s Curry was justified or not, one school of thought being there was no malice forethought but another being that head contact has got to be a ‘red card’ with the present interpretations of the rules and the desire to protect all players from head injuries. It was no surprise that in the second half of the game, the Springboks cut loose and scored a couple of tries against which the Scots had no real answer. The major contest this evening is going to be Wales vs. Fiji. As Fiji recently beat England, then this might be quite a mighty contest and I would not like to predict at this stage who might emerge as winners.

We have had several days of pretty hot weather which is so unusual for early to mid September. In fact, all of our married life I cannot recollect a period in which in the week in which we had our wedding anniversary, the weather should be so hot. We have rather got used over the years to a period of quite gloomy weather, as it was indeed on a wedding itself in 1967 when it threatened to rain the whole of the morning but then the sunshine broke through just at the point at which we were heading for our wedding reception. We have made a provisional arrangement with our University of Birmingham friend that he might pick us up and we all enjoy a coffee in the cafe/restaurant which we visited in Droitwich last week. Here we know that we will be able to get a table as it never too crowded and the staff are particularly attentive which as Meg gets a little more frail is actually quite important to us.

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