Meg and I always look forward to Tuesdays because it is the day when we usually meet friends in the Waitrose café. Having picked up our newspaper, we braved the rain and the car park was absolutely teeming for no apparent reason. But later on, we noticed part of a funeral party so we wondered if the local undertakers had advised members of the funeral party to park at Waitrose becaue once we set foot inside the store, things were pretty quiet. We met up with our practically 90 year old chorister and, as we had not met for about three weeks with holiday and other commitments, needed some updating with my various keyboarding activities. She was very supportive and encouraging even though she herself cannot play as well as formerly as an arthritic finger is getting in the way. Another regular friend brought along more than the normal punnet load of strawberries to share between us. We gave these a rinse, de-stalked them and then put on a light scattering of sugar and had them with vanilla icecream for our tea this evening- and they were delicious. I said I would bring along some of my own gooseberries that I picked and topped and tailed the other day so that the pleasures of our own produce can be shared around a little. When we departed, I needed to buy a few provisions in the store and then we repaired to home so that I could get ready for my Pilates class later on in the day. This class went as normal with the regular four of us (this particular class is quite small and select) and then I got home to prepare our meal of fishcakes. Apart from a smattering of rain between 9am and 10am this morning, it has been cloudy and hence gloomy practically every hour of the day. Sometimes days start off like this and there there is a burst of late afternoon sunshine but not today where we experienced unremitting gloom.

Today, it has been Matt Hancock’s turn to give evidence to the COVID enqiry. As he was Health Secretary during the most critical parts of the pandemic, his evidence was more than especially important. According to Sky News, families who lost loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic have turned their backs on Matt Hancock as he tried to apologise to them at the COVID inquiry. In fact, the cry of ‘Murderer’ rang out when he tried to approach bereaved families. The former health secretary approached the public gallery after giving evidence, and admitting that the UK’s approach to planning for pandemics was ‘completely wrong’. Matt Hancock was forced to resign when he was shown in a clinch with a lover (for whom he had wangled some employment) in complete contravention of the COVID lockdown rules. Some of the soundbites from the Hancock evidence is notworthy. He admitted it was a ‘colossal’ failure to assume the virus spreading could not be stopped. Under questioning from Covid Inquiry counsel member KC Hugo Keith, Mr Hancock stressed that the ‘attitude, the doctrine of the UK was to plan for the consequences of a disaster’. He said the government was focused on different questions, such as whether they could buy enough body bags and where the dead were to be buried.

The ramifications of the attempted rebellion in Russia are gradually come to light. In the midst of several claims and counterclaims, it does appear that the Russian military suffered losses of aircraft at the hand of the rebels. One large military plane and about six helicopters had been downed by the rebels which is quite a feat considering that the Ukrainian forces could not inflict similar damage upon the Russian miliary machine. Meanwhile, the Wagner group, with their leader, seem to have relocated to an abandoned military base in Belarus and one can only wonder how two authoritarian leaders and their respective armies will co-exist. We have seen in Sudan what happens when groups of armed militia roam the streets whilst the warlords fight it out for some kind of supremacy. Whether Putin feels safer than he was, now that potentially rebellious forces happen not to be in Russia itself but in a client state such as Belarus, is an interesting question. It could be that if Putin is overthrown, then the consequences for the Ukraine and other states such as Moldova and Latvia are not particularly good. In this very volatile situation, almost anything can happen and all that the West can do is to sit back and watch with a kind of fascinated horror.

The NHS disputes are rumbling on. The latest ballot of nurses failed to produce the majority required by law for further rounds of strikes. On the other hand, it looks as hospital consultants themselves are shortly to take strike action arguing that even with their relatively high level of pay, the erosion to their salaries in real terms over the past few years is even more severe than that of the nurses. It might well be that those medics who are on the verge of consultancy status may themselves feel very tempted to emigrate to the old ‘white’ commonwealth countries where rewards for their efforts seem so much higher (and probably work less stressful as well)

Today turned out to be quite a full day, what with one thing or another. This morning after Meg and I had breakfasted and then picked up our newspaper, we made our way to a local centre called ‘New Start‘ whose niche in the market is to recycle furniture and white goods. We have in the past donated excess household goods to this project and have occasionally found the right small piece for which we have a need. Today we were on the lookout for something that would serve as a piano stool but we knew that the height was a critical value because to play a keyboard one needs to be absolutely at the right height. We did find one piece that was delightful but too small and another piece of furniture that would serve but was just slightly too large. We received some useful advice from one of the volunteers who works there that they have a huge turnover of stock and that Monday mornings are quite a good time as the delivery vans that they have have not been loaded up and sent on their way, so the choice is good and things are generally quiet. We made a mental note of all of this and may well return next Monday to see if we can find something to fit our needs and decor. On our way home, we decided on the spur of the moment to see if some of our church friends were at home. In practice, the husband was in and his wife turned up a few minutes later. We did see them at church and at the concert last Saturday but only had time for some brief snatches of conversation. But we took the opportunity this morning to catch up on a lot of our news as we had quite a lot to impart what with one thing or another. Naturally, we told them about our keyboard experiences and they were telling us about an instrument they had had for years and eventually passed it to their son. We also got some news about a local gym which had just been sold for some millions and I think it had been bought by Bromsgrove School (a large private school) as the gym was fairly adjacent to one the school’s campuses. It looks as though some of the long serving staff had been kept in the dark until the very last moment but it all seemed a very tangled tale to those of us on the outside. When we got home, we had a ham joint cooking in the slow cooker, held over from the weekend as we have been having salads whilst the weather has been so warm. But today was a fairly conventional meal in which the ham was served with a baked potato, some broccoli and a cooked tomato.

After lunch, there was a little gardening job that badly needed doing. Just around the corner of the house and a little hidden from us was a little area in which the weeds had gone absolutely mad with some tall thistles amongst other weeds. Fortunately, these weeds were of the kind that are quite tall and discrete and easily removed so I spent a half hour getting this corner of the garden tidied up. Then it was a sunnny afternoon but a littl blowy so Meg and I thought we would have a quick spin in the park, having missed out this morning. Fortunately, we had taken along some snack bars and a bottle of water and located ourselves on our normal bench for a little repast. The clientele of the park changes quite a lot in the afternoon compared with the morning. The very young and pre-school children are probably at home and the dog walkers have usually done their turn as well. But the park has got a lot of school girls in it after school and there are normally mothers with babes in prams who often form a twosome and are chattering as they go. We bumped into one of our ‘park friends’ who we have not seem for some time and she seemed to be suffering quite a lot with her legs that seemed to be heavily bandaged and evidently causing her some grief. We enquired about past acquaintances who we used to see regularly but who well now be moving in a different orbit as we do not seem to coincide as much as we used to.

The aftermath of the rebellion in Russia is playing out in the media. The general consensus seems to be that Putin has been weakened by the whole episode. But what is delighting commentators in the West is that Putin’s whole narrative as to why the Ukraine war was necessary and how it is actually being prosecuted has been shot to pieces by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin who in theory has been banished to Belarus but who has not actually been seen recently. One can imagine that quite a lot of double crosses are being played out at the moment. In the midst of all of the speculation, it may be that this is the beginning of the end for Putin and the military equivalent of the ‘men in grey suits’ may be deciding in Russia that Putin is becoming more of a liability to them than an asset.

Today proved to be an interesting day. As is the norm for a Sunday morning, Meg and I got ourselves and breakfasted and then settled down to watch the Politics programs on a Sunday morning. We have grown to appreciate the Sky News more than the BBC contribution over the months but generally government ministers flit from one channel to the next. The talking point today was a Government Treasury minister who would not now commit himself to honouring the findings of the pay review boards for public sector workers.It is being put about that many of these pay review Boards are suggesting a pay increase of about 6% (when past inflation has headed north of 10%) and in the past, ministers have always replied that we should wait until we get the report from the Pay Review Boards but now that they are recommending answers that they do not like, they are trying to wriggle out of the implications. This seems to be a recipe for more discontent over the months ahead and one wonders if some disputes will be settled before the next election takes place. Meg and I went for a brief walk in the park but it was even too hot and sticky for some dog owners. Instead, the park seemed to be filled with pre-school kids on their scooters and joggers. On the subject of children’s scooters, there is a very simple design that seems to be popular with children aged about 3-4 years old. Basically, it is a two wheeled bicycle but with no particular pedals or means of propulsion as such. I decided to go on the web to see how these are described and I now find that they are called ‘Balance Bikes’ They did not exist in my day but I think they are a great way for very young children to get used to the feel of a bike. Basically, one sits on the seat and propels the bike using your own feet. Nonetheless, the children that we have seen seem to be very proficient and I would imagine that it makes the transition to a normal ‘pedalled’ bike so much easier. I suppose the bike is then handed on to the next in the family or one’s extended family. As a day, though, it was not particularly conducive to too much sitting in the hot sun so Meg and I made our way home because we were expecting some visitors just after midday. When I got home, I got the ingredients for a salad all organised such that we could get quickly get our lunch together when needed. Our visitors duly arrived and we were delighted that they had brought along a little present for us – or rather quite a big present. These were people whose acquaintance we have just made and I had told them the story of how they I was learning simple tunes on the keyboard that I had just acquired. Our visitors very kindly donated a whole series of what you might call ‘piano tune books’ with a whole range of popular tunes and some classical pieces as well.These booklets are evidently designed to help youngsters (and the not so young like myself) acquire some simple keyboard skills in which just the tunes (i.e. right hand only) are supplied in suitable little fragments such that they fit easily onto a double sided page and are of the order of only a few bars long. But for the likes of myself, these are fantastic learning aids and we were absolutely delighted to be made a gift of these piano tune books by our acquaintances who were evidently having a clearout and wanted them to go to a good home. All in all, we were made a gift of some seventeen of these booklets and we were both delighted and very grateful to receive them. We gave our visitors refreshments of tea and biscuits which is all they wanted before they were on their way. So Meg and I had a little delayed lunch after which, after all of the excitement, Meg needed to go to bed for a couple of hours which probably did her some good. We have resorted today to drinking lots of cold drinks, opening windows where necessary and generally trying to keep both hydrated and comfortable. It may well be that we have a thunderstorm soon which will help to clear the air. In anticipation of this, I tied up our ‘Lavatera’ (also known as ‘Mallow’) so that it does not get battered down by a heavy rain storm which is quite likely in the days ahead.

I got a little absorbed in the early evening by a Channel 4 film basically tracking down the documentary evidence that shows that the Duke of Windsor (the last Queen’s uncle who abdicated) was at least a Nazi sympathiser and perhaps even worse. Some evidence has been found in the archives in the form of a letter which found its way into Nazi hands that the Duke of Windsor thought that a bombing campaign was the best way to subjugate the English. There is quite an evidence trail that were the Nazis to have been successful, then Duke of Windsor would be installed as a ‘puppet king’ and this was his secret desire.

This morning, after a slow breakfast, Meg and I went on the road and first we collected our Saturday newspaper. After that, we went round to Aldi where I noticed when I did the shopping the other day that they were offering some bags of a decorative garden stone which went by the glamorous name of ‘Cotswold Cream’ The little border that I resurrected the other day could benefit, I feel, from a little beatifying and I had these white/cream stones in mind with our domestic help confirming my view that this would be a good idea. It should take a minute or so to get these little stones into position and when there is a fine spell tomorrow, I will seize the opportunity. When we eventually got home, I purchased a couple of items on eBay and then started to think about an early lunch. In view of the heat, this was a salad with quite a lot of ingredients and we certainly felt more than satisfied after it. We had a reason for an early lunch, because the church we attend each Saturday evening is playing a host this afternoon to what is known as a ‘bite size’ classical concert. This is part of the Bromsgrove festival which started today and carries on for the next month. There are a series of artistic and cultural events but the whole is not particularly well publicised to date. This afternoon’s concert is a repeat of last years in which a local violinist of some repute and her father as accompanist put on a program that lasted for an hour. It started with some Elgar and contained some Stravinsky but practically all the pieces bar one or two were known to us, probably having had a play on ClassicFM. The concert was very much appreciated by the patrons, many of whom were regular attenders at the church in any case. On the way out, a collection was taken for a local project which caters for the needs of young, homeless adolescents and it looked as thougb everyone had been generous in their contributions. After the concert, there was a general invitation to have tea and cakes in the parochial hall. Meg wobbled her way to a table and there we were joined by another couple who also normally attend the Saturday evening service and in the course of the conversation, it transpired that the husband had been a lecturer at Coventry University. We exchanged some pleasant reminisciencies about the kinds of issues we both faced in our times of university employment and then it it was time to go. We had a few spare cakes put in our direction and we went home for about half an hour before returning to the church for our normal Saturday service.

As we watched some of the lunchtime news reports, it appeared that a military coup was taking place in Russia. One of the pecularities of the present conflict in the Uraine is that the Russians have practically subcontracted some of the hardest fighting to a group of mercenaries in a faction known as the Wagner group and led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. The latter commanded a group that was small compared with Russian forces but very much battle hardened. It looked as Prigozhin’s convoy was heading towards Moscow and one could anticipate a coup in progress. But when we got back from the concert, the situation has completely turned around. Prigozhin had reversed his troops’ onwards march towards Moscow on the reasoning that there no reason to shed Russian blood. The mercenaries. and Prigozhin himself are relocating to Belarus. The bloodcurdlng threats or proseuction for treason made by Putin seem to have been dropped and we have now what is a classic stand-off. It also looks as Alexander Lukashenko, often described as Europe’s last dictator, is the disputed president of Belarus. He has led the country as president for nearly 29 years, assuming office in July 1994. But it looks as thougn Putin may have had a narrow escape and we shall just have to wait and see what unfolds over the next few days. Whether the Ukrainians can profit from all of this confusion is hard to say but certainly Putin is starting to look quite vulnerable. As always, tomorrow’s newspapers may be relied upon to give more analysis in depth to this rapidly evolving international scene.

Last night, I received quite an unexpected phone call from my sister who lives in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. We now have a new addition to the family as the daughter of one of my nieces (does that make her a grand-niece?) has given birth to a baby boy and although the baby arrived a few days early, all the indications are that the child is healthy. It could be that in a few week’s time, Meg and I will journey to Yorkshire for a few day’s holiday as we feel in need of a little break and all around us, family and friends, seem to making holiday plans. Whenever we go up to Harrogate where I spent most of my youth until I was about 18 years old, I wonder if I will ever bump into anybody that I ever knew at school but it has not happened yet and perhaps it never will.

Today is the day when our domestic help calls around and it is always nice to see her and to have a chat. She had celebrated her birthday recently so we got news of the pleasant day that she had experienced. As it was a Friday, Meg and I hoped that we might bump into some of our regulars in the Waitrose café but it was not to be. But I did take the opportunity to have a quick dash up and down the High Street in Bromsgove to get some much needed supplies. One thing I did need to buy was a new pair of what are called ‘cargo’ trousers – the previous pair were five years old and the zip had finally given up the ghost so it was time to buy a new pair. I was amazed to see that the price had only gone up from I think about £17 to a current £20 so these were snapped up with alacrity and fitted me straighaway without the need for leg shortening which can be a perennial problem with trousers as we get older and shrink somewhat! Then I got some other supplies but was frustrated when a simple item that I wanted and needed – a tape measure – was out of stock with no indication when they would be getting new supplies back in again. I had left Meg in the car whilst I did a quick dash along the street to complete my purchases but the weather was a little hot and humid so I got Meg home, gave her a cooling drink and activated a fan that we acquired last year and this made her a little more comfortable. Then it was a case of cooking lunch which in the case of Meg and myself was very simple because it was a quick pan fry of some sea bass served on a bed of salad. In the meanwhile I had saved one small portion of last weekend’s boeuf bourbignon for our domestic help to sample and for her to give it her seal of approval. In the afternoon, I busied myself with getting some of my finances available to me on a mobile phone app as well as online on my computer, which is the way that things are going these days. As it turned out, neither of the two transactions went entirely trouble free and I finished off with having to wait for bits of paper to be posted to me as the authentification procedures did not go smoothly. But these days, I am amazed when anything goes right first time without an additional bit of hassle so a few extra days is neither here nor there.

There is a lot of commentary about the failure of the submersible and the loss of the lives of the five on board. A former submarine captain has commented to Sky News upon the failure. When asked if the ‘unusual’ design of the Titan was reckless, Mr Ramsey told the news channel that disregarding standard ways of building these types of submersible in pursuit of innovation has huge elements of risk and in this case that risk has been realised in the loss of people’s lives. The former captain of the nuclear attack submarine HMS Turbulent, said that the industry will likely tighten regulation and close the possible ‘loophole’ that existed in the case of Titan. It has also been revealed that the youngest member of the crew at the end of his first year in University was terrified about the potential dangers of the trip in the submersible but has wished to please his father as a father’s day present. It has also been revealed that the United States Navy probably knew about the fate of the craft just after it occurred as some top secret sonar (listening) devices had recorded the probable implosion but if the US Navy had revealed this earlier, then it would no longer have been top secret. A lot of people are being very wise after the event and it does look as though labelling the craft as ‘experimental’ so as to avoid normal certification procedures seems to have been folly in the extreme. Perhaps it is a trait of very rich men who engage in financing and operating these kinds of venture that they do not think that normal procedures apply to them.

To cope with an imminent mortgage crisis, the Chancellor of the Exchequeur has agreed some measures with the major lenders in the mortgage market. Thee are to delay repossessions for about a year and to offer that those worst affected should be able to have an option for an ‘interest only’ option on their mortgages. These are likely to be the most flimsy of ‘sticking plaster’ solutions and if the higher interest rates persist for a few years will only delay the eventual day of reckoning. We have not seen the end of the interest rate rises yet and it may be that the Bank Rate increases from 5% to 6% and over in order to ‘squeeze inflation out of the system’ But there are some economists who argue that using the crudest of weapons of interest rate rises, which is about the only realistic weapon in the Bank of England armoury, may not by itself achieve the desired result in any case.

Thursdays, of course, mark my shopping day and I was delighted to get to my favourite supermarket when the doors open at 8.00am. Today was a fairly conventional week’s shopping and after I picked up our newspaper, I arrived home by 9.00am. After that, it was a case of cooking breakfast, unpacking the shopping and then getting ready for the day. We could tell that today was going to be a wonderful fine day for a walk in the park and ventured as far as our normal park bench. We go to the park a little less regularly than we did at the height of the pandemic when the park was the only venue available to us. Occasionally it happens that we bump into people that we had not seen for some time and we were told that our absence from regular walks around the park had been missed somewhat. So then we got home and I cooked lunch with a little culinary experiment. I had bought some celery last week but not used it. Today, I wondered about ways in which I could prepare it and make it a little more exciting. So I parboiled the celery with some carrot batons and then tried an experiment with the celery. I popped the drained celery into a vegetable dish, gave it a good serving of butter and finally just a tad of a hot chilli sauce to make it all a little interesting but not to overwhelm it and then microwaved it. This worked out pretty well, really, so I think it is a little culinary experiment that is worth repeating.

This afternoon, I thought I would download and activate a Barclays app for an account we have just opened. I must say that the security provisions to supply credentials to the app were a little daunting. Having entered my account details and chosen a password, I was required to allow the app to take a photo of the critical page of my passport. Then, a special oval appeared where I had to center my own image within it and the app took a snap of me. Then I had to repeat a series of numbers so that the app had recorded a sample my voice. Then when I tried to access app the message came through that the app was still trying to reconcile these series of identity checks with each other and to try again later. So I gave the app about 15 minutes after which I was mightily pleased to say that I had successfully passed all of the required ID checks. When I did get through to my account details, I was both pleased and relieved to see all my account details were properly up to date and accurate. Once these security details have been set up and passed, I am sure that accessing and operating the app is going to be a breeze from now on but certainly the set up details were a little daunting.

This afternoon, starting at 4.00pm, there was going to be a showing of Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility‘ with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Hugh Laurie, Robert Hardy, Imogen Stubbs, Imelda Staunton just to name a few. Emma Thompson herself directed the film and I think it made a fine production. This absorbed us until practically 7.00pm in the evening but the production was quite enthralling. As I have seen this production before and quite some time ago and had not read the novel as a teenager, I was unsure how it all ended so it made the whole film very enjoyable to watch. Tonight, although there is still some verification to be done, it looks as though the fate of the missing submersible exploring the site of the wreck of the Titanic is becoming clearer. It looks as though a debris field has been found and two particular items (the sub’s landing frame and the rear cover) had been found. Therefore the craft might have imploded and catastrophically broken up up in the course of the descent. The craft has been dubbed ‘experimental’ so as to avoid the normal stringent certification procedures that apply to crafts of this type. But there are still International Maritime Organisation’s rules that needed to have been followed and one wonders if there will be any any legal sequelae once the fate of the craft has been determined. Stories are now coming to light of others who had provisionally booked a place on the craft at a cost of thousands of pounds but who had then pulled out once the essentially risky nature of the whole enterprise had become more evident. Certainly, the media have been full of the progress of the search for this missing craft but the point is being well made by some in the media that much more attention had been paid to the fate of five, very wealthy men who had perished whilst ignoring the plight of the dozens of indviduals probably dying each day as they attempt to cross the Channel and other European waterways.

Today the Bank of England raise interest rates a full 0.5% to 5% and this will prove a real financial blow to those whose cheap fixed rate mortgages are ending. The rates may well go up another 0.5% and even more before the ‘battle’ against inflation is won and I suspect that they may drift down more slowly than the speed with which they were raised.

Today is the longest day/shortest night and I am quite happy to go around telling everybody that Autumn starts tomorrow! I know this is not climatologically correct but the equinox seems to have crept up on us incredibly quickly this year. It is the birthday of our domestic help today and so Meg and I were happy to hand deliver a couple of birthday cards for her. We knew we were going to have a fairly foreshortened morning because our hairdresser was scheduled to call round at 11.30 so we had our elevenses at home. We just started to watch PMQ (Prime Ministers Questions) but our hairdresser called, a little late, so we missed this. Mind you, so many of the questions are pre-prepared and/or rehearsed that PMQ is only a shadow of its former self.

To assist me in my very slow attempts to improve my keyboarding skills, I have managed to locate and to download a free virtual keyboard for my smart phone. I did install one app until it was evident that ‘free’ meant for a few days before the standing order kicked in so that this got quickly deleted before it could even see the light of day. But the app I have managed to locate is free in the sense that it is advert-supported which I can live it if I never click one of the buttons. The app does have quite a pleasant long lasting piano sound together with a guitar and another strange instrument option. But more to the point, it extends for two and a half octaves from the ‘C’ on the ledger line below the normal treble clef to the ‘G’ which is located four ledger lines above the treble clef. This I think will suit my needs perfectly as I can just whip my phone out and have a quick practice and of course this means that I can translate quickly onto the full keyboard when I am in serious practising mode (generally a few minutes either just before or just afer breakfast) So with one thing or another, I have got nearly note perfect and committed to memory the ‘Largo’ from the Dvorak ‘New World’ Symphony and this is only about 16-20 bars long which is more than enough to convey the essence of the piece. After the hairdresser had turned up and made us both a little more presentable, I threw together the elements of a lunch from the remains of the beef meal from the weekend and then my thoughts started to turn to lawn cutting. My weather app told me that there was a 50% chance of rain in the next hour and a 40% chance in the hour after that so Meg and I decided to have an icecream and eat it on the bench at the front of the house. It was particularly hot and humid this afternoon and no rain was in evidence at all but I did eventually start to cut the lawns at about 4.00pm and got them all done before the end of the afternoon. Then it was the ‘bins’ day when our domestic bins have to be dragged to the kerbside – I tend to take both my own and my neighbours and he reciprocates by delivering them back again.

Tomorrow interest rates are predicted to rise yet again and today’s 8.7% year-on-year inflation rise is a painfully long way from the governor’s 2% target. Core inflation is rising in the UK, but dropping in the US and Germany, making it harder to maintain this is all a global problem. There is no doubt some Tories are looking for a scapegoat in the face of a looming political nightmare. Yet it is also true the charge sheet that many cite against Bailey is long: the Bank starting interest rate rises too late, not raising them fast enough, doing too much unnecessary quantitative easing during the pandemic and for too long, and for not being clear enough in his communications. The anger felt by some Tories towards the governor is palpable. Having said all of this, as a General Election comes into sight, probably at the end of next year then raising interest rates is about the only weapon that the Bank of England and the Government can deploy. Of course, there are at least two if not three or four by-elections to be held in July and a massive rise in mortgages is enough to make many otherwise committed Tory voters stay at home. Part of the problem is that we had low interest for so long that there is a generation of mortgage holders who did not fully appreciate that interest rates could not carry on being low as this for ever.

We got a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend whose company we have missed whilst he has spent some time in hospital. But it now looks as though discharge day may be on Friday so we are making some tentative plans to see if we can see each other over the weekend. On Saturday, as it happens, we are having a concert of ‘bite size’ classics in our church starting at 3.00pm – this is part of the Bromsgrove festival and we enjoyed the contributions made last year. This is to be followed by tea and sandwiches in the parochial hall and then our normal Saturday evening service.

Tuesdays are a day to which we look forward because it is the day when we tend to coincide with our friends in Waitrose. But when we got up, there was a fine and gentle rain which I am sure will do the gardens an immense amount of good. According to the weather forecast, there is a band of rain sweeping up the country so we expect that by this afternoon, the weather might be quite fine but, we suspect, humid. Meg and I got to Waitrose but were somewhat disappointed because none of our usual coterie of three friends were there and we speculate that the poor weather was deterring some of them from venturing out. Nonetheless, Meg and I returned home and enjoyed a little of the midday Politics program with the aftermath of the Committee of Privileges vote. We suspect that the Tories were trying to avoid a vote but it looks as though the Labour Chief Whip shouted ‘No’ when the proposition was put to the vote which was sufficient to trigger a division. In the event, despite much huffing and puffing, only seven Tory MPs voted to reject the report. It looks as thougb 250+ Tory MPs took the easy way out by abstaining but Theresa May (ex Prime Minister) and I think about eight members of the present Cabinet voted that the report be accepted i.e. Boris Johnson is officially branded as a liar. Incidentally, the word ‘lie’ and ‘liar’ are judged to be unparliamentary language and may not normally be used but Mr Speaker had ruled that in the context of this particular debate and the conclusions of the Committee, a dispensation was awarded so that these words could be used – which they were, liberally, on the Labour side. Rishi Sunak has come in for a great deal of criticism by abstaining whereas, as the current prime Minister, he should really be reaffirming our democratic standards of accountability by endorsing or at least voting in favour of the report. So I set off for my Pilates class but just before I went, I took a quick snapshot of my new keyboard and its two ‘side-by-side’ seats so that I could show it to one of my fellow Pilates class members who had kindly dropped the recently acquired bench at my house last week, saving me the problem of lugging it home a mile in last week’s heat. After Pilates, I popped into our local Asda because there are a couple of items I wished to purchase. The first of these was some beet juice which few supermarkets seem to stock but Asda have traditionally had a good supply until today. I looked in vain through umpteen varieties of not particularly ‘good for you’ fruit juices and it looks as though my local store have now decided not to stock beet juice (which, of course, has various health giving properties as opposed to the rest of the more junky stuff). Nor could I find some grapefruit juice which I recently saw in Waitrose but they, too, had none in stock. So I scored a blank on both items and trudged home to cook our Tuesday dinner of fishcakes.

This afternoon, if the weather was fine, I thought I would go out and pick our crop of gooseberries. I bought a stock of (if I remember) Japanese gooseberries which always mature in mid-June. The goosberries looked nice and plump, particularly after the recent rain but I was anxious to get them picked before we had a spell of stormy and windy weather which causes all of the crop to fall off the bushes. Whenever, I collect fruit like this I inveditably count the number successfully picked and once I had negotiated the long spines on the goosberry branches, altogether I picked 577 goosberries. This, when I got them inside the house, weighed in 2.5 kg (about 5.5.lbs) so I reckon we had a good crop this year. Of course they all need ‘topping and tailing’ before they can be cooked but I prepared about 10% of cour crop which I then stewed in a modicum of boiling water and just a little brown sugar. This only took about fine minutes or so to stew and was served with some vanilla icecream for our evening meal. The flavour was just as I had anticipated which was very delicate but with just a hint of sharpness (acidity?) on the palette.

The first Test match between England and Australia is taking place just down the road in Edgebaston and Australia wre set quite a challenging target for a 4th innings score. But when I heard that the Australians had got to within 37 of the required total and with two wickets to spare, I suspected that they would actually win the match, which of course they did. Their captain who is noted for his fast bowling batted fairly low down the order but once he was in, it would have taken some incredibly sharp play to remove him. At one stage, the English captain (Ben Stokes) caught a difficult ball but then the ball popped out of his hands when he hit the ground. But we always knew that this match was going to be decided by the finest of margins between these two teams and so it proved.

Today we had an appointment at the eye clinic for Meg timed at a rather unfortunate time at 1.30 in the afternoon, so this rather dictated how the rest of the day panned out. This morning after we had breakfasted, we merely went out in the car to collect our newspaper and then made back home to have our elevenses in front of the TV. Later on today, we knew that there was going to be a debate in the House of Commons on the Privileges Committee report into the behaviour of Boris Johnson but we were not sure at what point in the day this was going to take place. What we did see, however, was David Cameron, the ex-Conservative Prime Minister giving his live evidence to the COVID committee of enquiry. This seems as though it is going to be quite a thorough affair as each significant person called upon to give evidence has already submitted a dossier of their own testimony and relative portions of this are then played back to the enquiry for further examination and commentary. All of this seems well and good except the Committee are going to take evidence for about three years and goodness knows when an official report will be written and then published. If lessons are to be learned, then one hopes that another pandemic or great national emergency does not strike us in the next few years. The Swedes can certainly teach us a thing or so because they have not only started but also concluded their own investigation into their government’s reponse to COVID before we have even started our own national investigations. So to manage today’s business, we had an early biscuits and cheese to act as a lunch for us and then set off in plenty of time to get to the hospital well in time. We managed to get parked quite easily which is no mean feat given the pressure that the hospital carparks are generally under and arrived in time for our appointment. Meg then needed to have two sets of opthalmic tests before these were fed through to the doctor who is monitoring Meg’s eye condition. The conclusion was that we need to persist with eye drops for the next three weeks and then we will have another appointment so that the monitoring can continue. All in all, our appointment slot in the hospital lasted for the best part of two hours which is better than the three and a half of last time. It was a beautiful afternoon and so we quickly drove home and teated ourselves to a strawberry trifle which we had left over from yesterday’s meal. This was a wonderful little treat to have on a hot summer’s day and I appreciated for once having some supplies left over from yesterday.

The debate on the Privileges Committee is starting late this afternoon and it looks as though the debate may be quite short but also a little bad tempered. Rishi Sunak had conveniently discovered another pressing commitment in his diary so that he can avoid either attending the debate or casting a vote which would commit him either to condemning Boris Johnson by voting to adopt the report or perhaps even condoning Johnson’s behaviour by deciding to abstain. The Tories are in a terrible bind about all of this because to the public at large, they must surely vote to endorse the report. But were they to do so, there are rumours that their constituency associations will try to deselect them as MPs if they vote to adopt the report. The debate is proceeding in rather a rancorous fashion and it is by no means certain that a vote will actually take place. The diehard Johnson supporters may seek to force a vote but to many centrist Tory MPs they just hope that Boris Johnson would just slink away and the easiest way to avoid adverse consequences from their constitutuents is just to abstain, as Michael Gove indicated that he was going to do when interviewed on the TV channels over the weekend.

Sky News this afternoon is showing a photograph of thousands of pieces of PPE that have been abandoned in a field in Hampshire. A report from the council meeting said the packs were discovered following an investigation by New Forest District Council into use of land at Little Testwood Farm Caravan Park. The interesting thing is that nobody knows how this equipment got there and whether it has been legally dumped (in which the local authorities ought to have known about it) or totally illegally dumped, in which case some waste disposal company has been taking the worst of short cuts. If the latter, one hopes that the firm are identified, made to clear up their own mess and finally given the most appropriate fines afforded by the legislation. At the end of the day, though we know that billions of pounds of public money were spent to providing PPE, often of substandard quality and massively inflated prices. The officially stated estimates from the Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) are that it lost 75% of the £12 billion it spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and kit that did not meet requirements – including fully £4 billion of PPE that will not be used in the NHS and needs to be disposed of.

Well, what a day turned out to be. As is normal for us on a Sunday, Meg and I got ourselves up and parked in front of the TV for the Politics shows starting at 8.30. The great talking point today was the video clip which appeared on the Daily Mirror website of a party going on in the Tory Party HQ at the height of the lockdown with drinking, dancing and doing any other than observing social distancing rules. Michael Gove was the govvernment minister sent out to defend the indefensible this morning and naturally he condemned what he saw (and repeated his condemnation on two channels) The Tories say that some of the people concerned had been ‘disciplined’ (whatever that means) but even more sigbificant is that of the people in the party were awarded honours by Boris Johnson. You would have thought that that there was a good case for rescinding the awards once given but apparently this is hardly ever done. Meanwhile the police are ‘investigating’ and I wonder if they will issue the sort of standard fine that applied to the partygoers in Downing Street. The whole of this sort of episode is the attitude in the governing party that rules are ‘not for us, just for the little people’ and that they themselves are not subject to the same rules as the rest of us. After we had our fill of politics, Meg and I jumped into the car in order to collect the Sunday newspaper and then got on with the serious business of cooking for our cousins due to arrive later on this morning. I had already had the base boef bourbignon cooking in the slow cooker overnight but what I needed to do was to fry off some shallots and mushrooms and then add this mixture to the pot, thickening things with a little cornflower. All of this worked out OK and I busied myself making sure that the mashed potato, small new potatoes, carrots and broccoli were prepared and in most cases parboiled and ready to be finished off in the oven. Our starter today was going to be a really innovative one that our domestic help had told us about but I had never done it before. It involved lining some ranekins with smoked salmon, putting some chunks of smoked salmon in the bottom and then adding a mixture of eggs yolks and cream to each ranekin before all four of them were out into an improvised ‘bain marie’ (actually in my case, a deep square frying pan which held a good inch of water) and then baking in the oven for 30 minutes. I put this lot in the oven 15 minutes before our guests were due to arrive and they turned up just on time. This was ideal because by the time they had got themselves into the house and we had demonstrated the facilities of our new ‘music room’ to them, it was time for the salmon to be taken out of the oven. I have to admit that as a starter, this turned out to be brilliantly successful and I will certainly try it another time. Meg’s cousin helped me to dish up the meal which actually was extraordinarily helpful as the beef plus four veg and the starters took some doing. We finished off with a strawberry trifle complemented by some actual strawberries courtesy of Waitrose and cream and, although thrown together, this too was very successful. We would have liked a longer time together as the husband of Meg’s cousin had to fly from Birmingham to the Paris Airshow and so had to leave us on the dot of 3.00pm. Nonetheless, we had a lot of family news to exchange with each other, including the condition of our cousin’s mother (Meg’s actual cousin) whose health problems seem to be deepening although the rest of the family are wonderful in the support they are giving.

Meg rather crashed out this afternoon and spent the afternoon in bed. Perhaps it was a bit of a strain for her interacting with her cousins over several hours but nonetheless she has just about recovered in time to come down and join me for the finals of Cardiff Singer of the World which is on BBC4 this evening. I must say, I have worked pretty hard this afternoon and the washing up ws not completed until 6.30 this afternoon. As is always the case, I seem to have a mountain of food left over but a lot of it will be eaten up during the week and I have promised our domestic help some of it to sample as she has following my culinary efforts, giving me encouragement and support along the way. Although today has been a busy one, I have rather enjoyed myself. Our son delivered a highly appropriate Father’s Day card yesterday and I was pleased to get the bit of tidying up done in the garden (which in the event was not really needed because there was a sudden rainstorm so we could not get into the garden anyway) But I used a blower to whisk away some pesky holly leaves from the holly trees that we have, so this was another another bit of tidying up which had needed doing for some time.