So Tuesday has rolled around again and this is the day to which we look forward because we generally meet up with old friends in the Waitrose cafe. Our regular ‘veteran singer’ was in evidence again – this is my sobriquet for her as she was recently part of a choir that sang Brahm’s requiem when she is approaching her ninetieth year and we often find that we can have a chat about things musical. For reasons that will become apparent shortly, I have recently come to the realisation that a full piano keyboard is 88 keys which is the equivalent of 7.25 octaves whereas most modern electronic equivalents make do with a 61 key keyboard which is 5 octaves. The octave are the 7 ‘white’ notes and the five ‘black’ notes making 12 keys per octave – 12 times 5 is 60 with the extra top ‘C’ added to the top to make 61. For many learners five octaves (or 61 keys) are sufficient and I did not know until today that most baroque music and the early Mozart and Beethoven can to all extent and purposes be played on a 61-key keyboard. By the middle of the 19th century, pianos typically had 85 keys. By the end of the century, pianos began to emerge with the now standard 88 keys. It was not really until the late 1880s when 88 keys became standard on pianos. So a beginner ought to be able to make quite a lot of progress on a 61 key piano until he/she meets composers from the mid 19th century onwards. A bit of Googling has revealed that the reason Mozart can be played on 61 keys is because, during his time, there are only 5 octaves (61 keys) on the keyboard instruments of that era. Thus, most of Mozart’s piano pieces are composed using 61 keys. Nowadays, Mozart’s pieces are transcribed to be played on the modern piano keyboard. A bit more research revealed that Mozart did not play on the 88 key piano we have today. The 88 key piano was created by Beethoven when he started writing pieces for the 88 key piano that had yet to be created by the piano manufacturers of his day. Beethoven was such a rock star that the aristocracy pressured the manufacturers into changing the design of the piano so that they could hear the pieces that Beethoven had written. Mozart was born in 1756, 24 years before Beethoven was born and so Mozart played on the 66 key Fortepiano. The keys are thinner and closer together and therefore are more difficult to play. Meanwhile, our friend is off on holiday with her family to mid-Wales so we shall miss her company next week. We discovered, incidentally, that both Meg’s mother and her own mother were excellent seamstresses and so made all of the clothes that their children needed.

So Meg and I made our way home and I then progressed down to participate in my normal Pilates session. There were only three of us this week, supplemented by one extra person on ‘Zoom’ which sometimes happens. Our Pilates teacher is very good and experienced and if any one of us has a niggle which can happen then alternative exercises are suggested to help that sufferer participate fully in the lesson. I suppose that would not be possible if we were part of a group some 20 strong which is what some classes happen to be.

Every so often a news item occurs which tickles the imagination. On the news today was the story of the Aston Martin ‘Bulldog’ designed to reach a speed of 200mph. Only one was ever produced as a sort of prototype and an attempt to run the car ended in disaster when the engine blew up on an initial run in the 1980s. However, today the engine has been restored and a test run performed on a remote Scottish air landing strip. I suspect that the test driver must have been incredibly brave (or foolhardy) to attempt this feat but today the target was achieved with a speed of 205 mph.

In the Ukraine war, the world must surely be shocked with the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam. It is being reported that some 80 villages and communities and some 22,000 population below the dam have had to be evacuated in the light of the flood waters released by the breached dam. Even more serious is the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station for which the reservoir cools reactors and nuclear waste stored at the nuclear power plant. Pumps will stop working if the water level dips below 12.7 metres, an expert has said. The situtaion is said to be ‘stable’ at the moment but the ecological disaster is evident. The Americans are leaning towards blaming the Russians but tonight both the Russians and the Ukrainians are blaming each other.

Meanwhile the tug of way between the COVID enquiry chair and the government is continuing. The COVID inquiry chair insists it is for her to decide what material is ‘relevant’ in the row over Johnson WhatsApps and there are broad hints that she will resign rather than accede to the government’s desire to redact (presumably embarrassing) material. If this case ever gets to the Courts, the government is almost certain to lose the case anyway.

Today was always going to be a ‘car dominated’ day and so it proved. Meg was not feeling too well this morning so stayed in bed for an extra hour or so. In the meanwhile, I gave the car interior a tidy up and then took it down to my local Kurdish car washers who have done a good job for me in the past. There I requested a good clean inside and out but I was informed that I would have to leave the car with them got a couple of hours. The newspaper shop is just around the corner from the car washing outfit so I collected my newspaper and then walked to my local Waitrose. As Meg was not with me, I availed myself of the free coffee that is provided for card holders and bumped into the long established member of staff who is going to leave our store soon and go to her local store which is so much closer to her home. When I informed her that Meg was not feeling too well this morning, a bunch of roses was immediately forthcoming, armed with which I decided to walk home. On the way up the hill, our Italian friend was just leaving the house in her car so she opened the car window and had a good chat. I actually found it easier to kneel down rather than to bend down and passers-by might have regarded this as strange, not that I care a lot. Then our son who was working in our house this morning gave me a lift down into town and I drove my newly cleaned car home and Meg and I had a lighning repast of cheese and biscuits. This was because we had an appointment at the garage from which we buy our new cars and as this dealer was in Solihull, we needed to leave quite early. When we got to the car dealers, there was a certain amount of waiting around but we were supplied with free coffee. We had decided to come to the dealership today because we were informed by a telephone call last week that we needed to get a new car order in because the wait was probably of the order of some four months. We had taken down a file with a variety of documents in it most of which we did not need but I did remember to take with me my driving licence which was needed for the dealer’s system. The replacement car when we get it is going to be a hybrid battery and petrol model and I have never driven an automatic car in my life. But the salesman drove us some miles down the road so that we could appreciate the ride and feel and then we swopped over so that I could drive back with the salesman beside me. This whole experience turned out to be a lot easier than I might have expected. In the first minute or so, my left hand wandered vaguely in the direction of the non-existent gear lever but afer all I am trying to break the habit of more than fifty years of driving a geared car. But I got used to the new system pretty quickly and drove back confidently and safely. When our present car was new, the reviews indicated that the technology and displays within the car had a slightly 70’s feel to it even then. But the new version of the car has a completely redesigned electronic display and SatNav system, all of which looked much more the part. I do not place a great dal of store by car reviews but the one or two I had glanced through showed that the motoring journalists were much more impresssed by the new models ‘Infotainment’ system and I am sure that the new vehicle will suit us down to the ground once we get it. I am pretty sure that I will enter my normal system of being ‘new car neurotic’ when I first receive the new vehicle which always means parking as far away from other vehicles in a supermarket car park as it is possible to get in case a wide flung open door causes damage to one’s new vehicle. But I am very pleased to have got our new car order ‘into the system’ and also ensured that my savings plan will fall nicely into place to cover the appropriate costs.

It was a pretty warm afternoon as we motored back from Solihull so we dived into the house to treat ourselves to some ice-cream. To make this slightly more exciting, we add a sprinkling of apricot halves to which we treat ourselves practically weekly, together with a scatter of walnuts, some yogurt and a little drizzle of honey. All of this might sound a little exotic but we enjoy it. Meg and I had a fairly light tea this afternoon and we only had a rushed cheese-and-biscuits type of lunch but I am sure that a slightly lighter day, foodwise, is probably quite good for us. Our next door neighbours kindly donated some apple pie late on yesterday evening which we accepted and consumed with alacrity, supplemented by a little yogurt of which we always have plenty in stock.

Another Sunday morning dawns and Meg and I spent a few minutes contemplating the week ahead and our various commitments – almost one per day next week. We started to think about the funeral of the brother of Meg’s cousin and how a trip to Bodmin would take some organising as we would probably need to stay in a hotel for two nights. The more we thought about it, the more we came to the conclusion that only having met the brother of Meg’s cousin for a few minutes on the occasion of a birthday party, we thought that we probably send our apologies and give the funeral a miss. As it happens we have some dental appointments on what would be the day of the funeral and these would have to be re-arranged. We both felt a little relieved that we had come to this decision more or less independently of each other as we turned over in our mind the logistics of such a trip. Perhaps in a week or so, we may pay a flying visit to Yorkshire where we can see some of our relatives there, including my sister but a lot depends on what kind of deal we can get from our favourite hotel in Harrogate. After we had collected our newspaper, we realised that there were one or two things that we really did need and that only Asda in town sells so I made a ‘on the run’ visit to the supermarket. Needless to say, since the last time we shopped there, they had rearranged various items on the shelves so to find what I needed took a certain amount of hunting around but they were located eventually and then we made our way to the park. We had prepared some elevenses and we were ready for our coffee when we sat down. As is quite often the case, we were recognised by some acqaintances and had some interesting conversations. The first of these was concerned with the intracies of payroll systems as our acquaintance was working out her last year or so as a payroll administrator. Her view from the inside as it were was that very few people actually understood their payroll and income tax allowance codes must be a nightmare if you have employment split over two or more jobs which will be the lot of many people these days. After this little chat, we met up with another couple who we know well by sight and had another lengthy chat. The conversation tends to start off with the observation that they had not seen much of us in the park these days. This is undoubtedly true as during the pandemic, the park was our lifeline and we visited it every day but as the Waitrose coffee bar has re-opened, we have been tempted away from the park some 2-3 occasions per week. Incidentally, we texted our University of Birmingham friend who is undergoing a bout of illness at the moment but he did not feel well enough to venture out and see us this weekend so we wished him well for the days ahead.

When we got home, it was time to prepare a chicken meal. I fried off some onions, seared the chicken legs and then added a can of chicken soup and some petit pois and cooked in the oven for the best part of an hour. To serve things, I fish out the chicken thighs and throw away the skin, the bone and any gristle – doing things this way both makes the ensuing meal more tasty and also cheapens the cost by up to 50%. This afternoon, Meg and I are going to indulge ourselves with yet another viewing of Paddington of which we never tire although we have seen it lots of times before. Althpugh a children’s film and no doubt enjoyed by many, there is some interesting social commentary smuggled in round the edges as well as some fantastic visual jokes. One of the best, I find, is that when Paddington sees an instruction on an escalotor in the Underground that ‘Dogs must be carried’ Paddington immediately goes to kidnap a dog so that he can carry it on the journey up/down the escalator.

By virtue of some TV watching this afternoon, I came across the concept of ‘eco tourism’ We are mainly used to fellow humans, not least through the tourist industry, helping to trash the environment. But the concept of eco tourism is to encourage interested travellers to view primates, for example, in the wild under the tutelage of expert and dedicated guides. If this is carefully done, then income streams will be generated that can be plouged back into the conservation work itself, both with direct expenses and also the development of community resources. I also discovered that being a dedicated park ranger, looking after the mountain gorillas in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is an extremely dangerous operation. As an illustration of this, Virunga National Park founded in 1925 has been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. It is known for its fauna and landscapes as it is a vast expanse of deep forests, glaciers and volcanos, with more species of birds, reptiles and mammals than any other protected area in the world. But it is also known to serve as a base for a number of armed groups for more than two decades. The armed groups and gangs of poachers kill the forest rangers whom they perceive as a threat.

The spell of fine weather is continuing so Meg and I were more than happy to get ourselves up, breakfasted and prepared to make a visit to the park. We wondered who we might meet in the park today as we have not visited the park quite as regularly as has been our habit during the years as we have tended to make more of a visit to Waitrose over the past month or so. As it turned out, we had a delightful surprise visit in the park. As we were sitting on our normal bench we were espied at a distance from a lady walking her little dog with whom we have often had pleasant conversation in the past – let us call her Molly. She remembered our names and we chatted for quite a time before she told us that she had mentioned our names to her son who had exclaimed to her ‘I know them well!’ Her son was a handyman who has performed several little jobs around the garden for us, the last one being a handrail in which I helped him it (being a two man job) to provide access the lower area of the garden that I have made into my own little private area and which I call ‘Mogs Den’ So this was quite an extraordinary coincidence because we had no idea that our friendly handyman, recommended to us by our domestic help, was actually the son of one of our park acquaintances. I suppose that this is a case of ‘wheels within wheels’

This afternoon was the Cup Final match between Manchester City and Manchester United. This would normally be held about the time of my birthday in mid-May but the World Cup in Quatar at the start of the year has rather disrupted other football schedules. As I used to live just around the corner from Manchester’s old ground in Maine Road, I generally used to support them but once they have moved into the upper echelons of football, I thought that today I would support Manchester United in today’s game as United were the slight underdogs. The game started in a dramatic fashion when the City captain struck a ball from outside the penalty area and scored when the match was only thirteen seconds old. This, for the record books, is the fastest ever goal to be scored in the entire history of the FA Cup. Towards the end of the first half, Manchester United were awarded an incredibly dubious penalty several minutes after the event when the VAR system and the referee adjudged that a City player had handled the ball and this was an automatic penalty. From this United scored although up to that point I do not think that they had had a single shot on goal. From this point on, my sympathies changed completely and I thought that Manchester City had been very much at the wrong end of some refereeing decisions. When the City captain scored again from outside the penalty area early in the second half, then City went deservedly ahead. Despite some very late flurries from United, City just about hung on and the best team certainly won the Cup Final. The best team does not always win if a team scores a breakwaway goal against the run of play but I have to admit that Manchester City were deserved winners and they have now won the double of winning both the League and also the FA Cup. But next Saturday City will attempt to complete a treble by winning the game against Inter-Milan in the European Cup to be held in Instanbul next Saturday.

In the Unites States, economic meltdown has just been averted as the Congress votes through a series of measures to ensure that that the US does not default on the federal debt. Moderates on both the Repblican and the Democrat side have come together to isolate those on the right of the Republican party and the left of the Democratic party who did not wish the measures to pass through Congress. Meanwhile, an ex-White House Chief of Staff under Donald Trump who ought to know a thing or two has predicted that Trump will win the Republican nomination but go on to fail the election. Whilst the Trump supporters are fanatically loyal whatever transgressions the ex-president has committed, Trump will never win over the critical middle ground in any future Presidential race. But whilst the popular vote is important, this by itself does not determine the outcome of the presidential race. Each state is allocated a number of votes determined by the number of senate seats and congressional districts and there are 538 in total. So a winner is the first to achieve or exceed 270 votes in total. The number of votes range between 4 (Alaska) and 54 (California) but each state can determine its own voting protocols (e.g. by postal ballot or not) and even its own technology, many states using voting machines which have not always proved to be very reliable. There are still about 18 months to go before the next Presidential election and it is possible (but not probable) that Trump does not actually get the Republican party nomination or that Joe Biden will secure the Democratic one.

We had our normal extended chat with our treasure of a domestic help who calls around to us on Fridays. We texted our University of Birmingham friend to see if we could meet in Waitrose but did not receive a reply – nonetheless, we still called in there and met with two of our regulars, one of whom was going off to participate in a bowls match and hence she was all in her ‘bowling’ uniform. When we got home, we persuaded our domestic help to join us for a simple meal of sea bream, which is cooked in five minutes or less and then served on a bed of salad. We try to have some capers in store to cook with the fish but I had run out but we had a little spicy sweet chili sauce which is always welcome.

This afternoon, I thought I would try and access Worcestershire Adult Social Care department as I had read recently that as my wife’s sole carer, I am entitled to a certain amount of support on my own account. I always suspected that this process was not going to be especially easy and I was not wrong. Firstly, I tried to access services over the telephone but here the ‘system’ was to indicate that nobody was available to take your call, that someone would call you back and that the message would be repeated five times. Nobody called back although it was still within the normal week’s office hours and then you are cut off and told to ring back later. I did this on three occasions and got nowhere so after 35-40 minutes I had made no progress. I then tried the recommended ‘portal’ service to which the tepehone message had directed any callers but here no progress could be made until the caller had registered with their service and had their registration verified. Having got through this hurdle, I then tried to request a formal needs assesssment using a fairly complicated form and I did this get submitted. If the form is monitored as it should be, then I should have been successful in making an application for a Carer’s Assessment but of course if there is nobody at the other end of the portal to receive and monitor the information supplied, then one is no further forward. It was for this reason that I wished to speak to someone rather than just submitting a form which may just disappear into a ‘black hole’. Of course, none of this was a real surprise to me. Adult social care has been in crisis for years and are struggling to provide even the most rudimentary of services as local authority spending has been savagely cut back over the past decade. I suppose you could call this ‘rolling back the frontiers of the state’ and that local authority services have been cut to the bone. So now we have the prospect of local authorities appearing to be offering help but in practice there is practically no one to man the phones and instead refers callers to websites.

Boris Johnson has now agreed to hand all of the required messages and diaries to the COVID enquiry. But this offer is not as generous as might be thought because after a security leak following the disclosure of Boris Johnson’s personal phone details on a website, he was issued with a new (and presumably more secure) phone. But messages from the early part of the pandemic including some of the early lockdowns may not be available, following advice from the security services. But a certain amount of pure politics is in play here as Boris Johnson is giving unredacted material directly to the enquiry and is thereby bypassing the Whitehall machine which is refusing to submit the entire tranche of WhatsApp messages to the COVID enquiry. Of course, things start to get very murky at this point – should Boris Johnson ignore the advice of the security services to access his old messages? But surely, there is a simple solution to all of this. The old phone, complete with whatever passwords were used at the time, should be handed to the police who can then use their own IT specialists to access the material that they need and they must do all the time when investigating criminal activity. The police could then hand over what material is recovered directly to the enquiry.

There is so much attention being given to the Philip Schofield affair at the moment that I am, quite frankly, bored to death with the whole issue. But when the media starts to turn attention to he media itself, a sort of feeding frenzy seems to take over. There are certainly some questions to be asked such as the extent to which those in dominant positions in organisations can exert illegimate power relationships over others. But this happens in many areas of our social and political life in any case. If I were Philip Schofield, why not retire to a a quiet part of the UK assuming that a certain amount of money has been put by and then develop a new life style and interests totally apart from the media world? This might sound easier said than done but John Profumo after the massive national scandal in 1963 worked in the East End as a social worker and after several years managed to rehabilitate himself.

Today is my shopping day and this all worked as smoothly as clockwork and having left before 8.00am to be there the minute the store opened, I was back on the stroke of 9.00am. Then we had to get ourselves up and breakfasted before we made our planned little trip out to Alcester, a pretty little Georgian town some 14 miles distant. We always eat in the same old fashioned hotel where they do a pensioner’s lunch for less than £9.00 and it is always more than you can eat. I phoned up the hotel to make a booking but they could only manage an ‘early’ or ‘late’ so we chose to eat at 12.15 As soon as we arrived in Alcester, we found a parking spot and then proceeded to our favourite coffee house. Quite close by was one of tbose little hardware shops that seem to be stuffed to the ginnels with all kinds of useful stuff – naturally, I could not resist a little walk round it. It is one of those shops where you think ‘How useful – I could use one of those’ and hence temptation had to be constantly resisted. I did not resist for very long, buying some stationery items that I felt that I really needed and also being tempted by one or two little items. I was on the lookout for some quite wide white tape for which I have a usage on occasions so I bought myself a reel. When I got it home, though, I found it was a specialised packaging tape because it had the word ‘Fragile’ printed along its length. I found this quite amusing and I am sure that there will be occasions when I need to post off fragile items. Alcester is well known for its charity shops which are a cut above those found in Bromsgrove and Droitwich, our usual haunts. We finished off buying two skirts for Meg of a pretty floral design which I am sure she be happy to desport herself in during the summer months. At the same time, I bought a shirt for myself and a clothes brush that was being sold off for 50p. I honestly only buy things that I think I am going to use regularly and this extends to kitchenware as well. And so it was time for an early lunch although I am not sure why we needed to be given this slot because there were a couple of elderly gentleman dining when we got there and, in addition to ourselves, a party of three elderly female friends turned up and that was about it for the restaurant as a whole. Because Meg and I have eaten in this establishment several times before, we are all well aware of how filling their lasagne and cannellonis can be and thse are always served with a wonderfully fresh salad with watercress prominent rather than your limp Webbs lettuce. So Meg chose a beef lasagne and I chose fishcakes but as the lasagne proved to be overwhelming for Meg, halfway through the meal we did a swopsy and finished off each other’s portions. So all of this worked out very well and we were well satisfied with our meal. We made our way back to the car via another two charity shops and then pointed for home. We were were actually home in half an hour but although the day had started off a little gloomily, it turned out to be a pretty warm day and so we treated ourselved to a bit of icecream and yogurt to help to cool us down.

After we had had our obligatory cup of tea, I needed to repackage an item I had bought from eBay and needed to return as the supplied photograph did not match the description and as such, the item was wrongly described and under the eBay rules I am entitled to a return and a refund. So after a repackaging job, Meg and I shot down into town and I took the item to the Post Office where I was quite happy to pay for a ‘signed for’ service and to be fairly confident it would be delivered back tomorrow or the day after. Then when Meg and I returned home, I spent some time putting the Post Office receipt through the scanner and sending this off to the eBay seller. This gentleman had unequivovally misdescribed the item but got pretty tetchy even when I (quite politely) pointed out the error he had made in misdescription and requested my refund.

At 4.00pm this afternoon, the deadline ran out by which time the Government should have complied with the request of the COVID enquiry to release unredacted notebooks, diaries and WhatsApp messages. The government have refused to comply by this deadline and are threatening a judicial review of the request for these documents. This is almost unprecented in that the government has set up an enquiry with wide ranging terms of reference and then will not comply with submitting the available evidence. One can only presume there is either a lot to hide and/or a lot of embarrassing detail that the government does not wish to see aired. So we are now set for a tussle in the courts between the Cabinet Office on the one hand and the official COVID enquiry on the other.

We had nothing in prospect this morning so Meg and I collected the newspaper, after which we went to a local garage to get six litres of the highest grade petrol we can find to appease the mower. I paid a tenner for six litres of fuel and it still contains 5% ethanol rather than the 10% you find in the more regular E10 fuel. But at least I have some Briggs and Stratton fuel stabiliser which is meant to stop the ethanol from oxidising to form water which degrades the fuel and can cause problems in some petrol mowers. There was a bit of a chill wind blowing today and Meg and did not fancy sitting on a windy and cold park bench. But we compromised by driving to the park and then having a walk as far as our favourite bench whereupon, after a two minute rest, we set off for the car again. In the car park I happened to see a Honda Civic which I think is more or less the colour of the car that we may get around to ordering next Monday when we are due to pay a visit to the dealers. Cutting short our walk in the park meant that we could have some decent elevenses at home whilst also watching the Politics programme shown from midday onwards. After lunch, the weather was still fairly bright so I seized the opportunity to get our lawns cut. I used to do this regular mowing job on Fridays but have swopped to Wednesdays which tends to a better day, free of other commitments.

After I had cut the lawns and dragged our dustbins to their collection point by the side of the road, I sat down to a well-earned cup of tea and started passively watching what was on the TV which was still tuned to BBC2. The programme transmitted was one of the history of the corner shop and this turned out to be quite a fascinating watch. At the point at which I started to watch, the programme was focussing on the ‘hula hoop’ which hit the market in about 1958 and most corner shops obtained a supply of them, as the hula hoop must have been one of the first mass crazes in modern history. If my memory serves me correctly, even the PE teachers caught the bug and bought a supply so that schoolchildren could either start, or finish, a PE lesson with a hoola hoop session. From 1958, the programme then moved onto another landmark which was the introduction of the concept of ‘self service’ even from a corner shop. The first self-service supermarkets had actually hit the UK in the late 1940s but by 1961, the corner shops were forced to follow the concept of self service once firmly established. At that time, a system was in place named ‘Resale Price Maintenance’ in which manufacturers tried to dictate the selling price of their goods whether it be in the supermarket or the corner shop. This system eventually broke down as the supermarkets with bulk buying and a mass of customers could allow the kind of aggressive price-cutting that drove many corner shops out of business.

The latest sleaze revelation comes with the news that four Tory MPs have recently been ‘caught’ passing off their speeding fines as expenses thus getting the general public, or at least the taxpayer, to pay for their transgressions. But they have now been found out and are being forced to pay the fines themselves. Some of them had pleaded that this was an ‘inadvertent error’ which surely is an excuse that no-one can believe. The stand off between the Hallett (COVID-19 enquiry) and Downing Street should end tomorrow as this is the renegotiated timetable for the handover of all unredacted diaries, notebooks and WhatsApp messages. There are some fascinating nuances to this story. It is (ahem) difficult to understand how the Cabinet Office could be so strident in its Application in saying that the WhatsApp messages and notebooks contained ‘unambiguously irrelevant’ material and then to admit that, well, the Cabinet Office did not actually possess those messages and notebooks. So there is evidently someone being economical with the truth in these two statements. But the chair of the Inquiry is no fool, and her notice first thing on Tuesday in response is a fascinating exercise in procedural power. Firstly, she granted an extension – not the extension which was being sought, but one just long enough to serve what follows. The extension was of two days, until Thursday, 1 June 2023. Secondly, she says she will accept that the Cabinet Office does not have under its custody or control the requested materials- only there is a full detailed explanation for why this is so – and that this explanation will need to be attested to by officials with a signed statement of truth, that is, under pain of perjury. There is a wider point here, of course. Evidently government must be continued with all kinds of discussions between politicians and civil servants but should these not be on officially approved, and secure handsets with their own software and protocols, so that the information is secure and protected – and retrievable if necessary? For government to proceed using WhatsApp as a principal mode of communication semms sloppy at least if not downright irreponsible.

Today is normally my Pilates day but we have a week ‘off’ this week as my Pilates teacher is taking a half term break as the Bank Holiday was on Monday. So Meg and I made for Waitrose where we met up with our normal three Tuesday friends – the staff have learnt to look out for us on a Tuesday. One of the long established staff told us that one of the staff who we have known for the last six years is leaving today as she is going to work in a branch much nearer to her own home. Naturally, we are sorry to see her go as she has been a good friend to us over the years but we have to get used to times changing. One of our number was going to go to a concert in the nearby Bromsgrove (public) school and she told us that she made a regular donation to the school after which they gave her concert tickets at a special price. The season is fast approaching, now that June is almost upon is, for the Bromsgrove festival. Certainly the large Anglican church which dominates the town (on a hill overlooking it) is always host to a good concert so Meg and I will certainly look out for this. Sometimes, though, the events are not heavily advertised and one finds out almost by accident. I know that our own church is going to host a ‘Bite Size’ Classics at it did last year and it was very popular but I suspect that it is towards the end of the month.

I got a rather unexpected statement from a building society in which I used to have some savings accounts – the statement showed a mass of zeros i.e. no money in it but is was evidently still regarded as ‘live’ So I decided to resurrect it as a pot for odd bits of savings and this led to a merry dance. The credentials that I used years ago were unrecognised so this necessitated a phone call where I was informed that I would have to log in as a new customer. As part of the verification procedures, it wa necessary to get confirmation from a telephone number which happened to be a landline that does not accept SMS messages. Eventually, after several attempts I managed to re-register only to discover that I had about five savings accounts all with about £1 odd in each one. Some of these went back some 15-20 years. It was evident that I had all but emptied then save for £1.00 but tiny bits of interest had accumulated over the years which explained why they all seem to be £1 and then some odd pence. When I have a moment, these will get rationalised and put to a good use.

I read something in The Times today that gave me pause for thought. The newspaper article indicated that the large building firms that had donated millions to the Tory party had gone ‘on strike’ and were refusing collectively to give any more money to the Tories because the present government has got worried about the hostile local reaction to building developments particular on ‘green’sites, even if not technically green belt, in various parts of the country. Locally, Tories on the ground are in a bit of a bind becaus they want to be shown to be providing more housing for local people. On the other hand, we have the development of a site of 390 houses just down the road from us massively opposed by all of the local people who probably took their vengeance across the local Tories who lost their overall majority on Bromsgrove council for the first time in about 25 years. So the large building firms are fulminating against local people saying things such as ‘people who with their grey haired cronies want to draw up the drawbridge because their view is I m all right Jack.’ So what we have here is a massive conflict between large donors who give money at the national level and expect the government to do their bidding and the local Tories on the ground who have to suffer all of the unpopularity. Many MPs are similar conflicted but with a general election not too far off are thinking about the voters who may be turned off them by their approval of local projects against those who may feel more favourably disposed towards them.

At a national level, Boris Johnson and the Cabinet Office have been handed a two day extension to the request by the COVID enquiry chairperson (a respected judge) to hand over unredacted diaries and WhatsApp messages to inform the enquiry. If Downing Street prevails and fails to hand over what might be crucial and incriminating evidence to the enquiry, then its integrity might be threatened from the very start. But a more informed view is that if it comes to a tussle in the High Court between the politicians and a judge-led public enquiry into the lessons to be learnt from the COVID pandemic, then the courts are likly to back the enquiry chairman rather than Downing Street. Incidentally, it looks as though George Osborne, the ex-chancellor, may be questioned whether the austerity cuts imposed upon the NHS accounts for the lack of preparedness of the UK when the pandemic came to strike. Interesting!

The day and the new week dawned bright and cheerful even though it is a Bank Holiday. Reflecting upon the football results of yesterday, I realised that I had lived in the three cities of Leicester, Southampton and Leeds all of whose teams were relegated from the Premier division recently – Leeds and Leicester yesterday and Southampton some days beforehand. As a counter factual, I had also lived in Manchester just round the corner from City’s previous ground and they won the Premier. Last night, Meg and I felt that we wanted to watch an opera but we did not want one that extended beyond two hours. What we found on YouTube was an absolutely stunning production by the Vienna Philharmonic featuring a very young Luciano Pavarotti and Ingmar Vixell. Whilst I was checking the spelling of these names I discovered this Amazon review: ‘This Rigoletto with beautiful tenor Pavarotti, the great Ingmar Vixell and Edita Gruberova is superb. It is an orgy of sound and a rejoice for the viewer’ With all of this I concur absolutely. This production was one of those where the action does not take place in an opera house but in real locations, such as castles, manorial houses, lakes and so on. In this type of production, the camera can also focus intensely on the faces of the singers during important arias, duets and quartets and I think it is fair to say that we were absolutely spellbound by it. Many people regard this as one of the finest productions of Rigoletto ever made.

Meg and I made a venture out into the park today, not wanting to venture too far afield on a Bank Holiday. Whilst we were in the park and chatting with an acquaintance, we received a telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend who wanted to pay us a visit. There was quite a cooling wind in the park today so we did not want to tarry too long. When we got home, accompanied by our friend, he accepted our invitation to stay for lunch and then spent the early part of the afternoon with us. Later on, I consulted my emails and found that one of our University of Winchester friends had read of my ‘adventures’ with my front door key yesterday and emailed me with some very useful tops and suggestions. I have found a good solution to my errant key problem. Firstly, I hunted around in a drawer and located a little leather key case complete with its own little chain. This will do the job but I have also discovered an almost concealed litle leg pocket on my cargo trousers and this is fastened with a Velcro strip. So my key now fits snugly and securely in its own little pocket from which it should never escape.

Boris Johnson has been pursued by British reporters, particularly from Sky News, and repeatedly asked questions asked about the ways in which visits and meetings have been referred to the police to see if any more COVID regulations were transgressed both in Downing Street and at Chequeurs. Johnson’s response is to fulminate and to say that all of these allegations are ‘total nonsense’. Reports in the Sunday Times indicates that Johnson feels that the Cabinet Office is actively plotting against him and, from what one reads, the present government is full of factions who mutually loathe each oher. Some blame Rishi Sunak as the person most responsible for starting the sequence of events that led to Johnson leaving Downing Street. Others believe that Johnson is ‘yesterdays man’ and regards all of the machinations around him as a distraction from the real problems faced by the government at this time.

This afternoon, I thought as the weather was fine it was opportune to give the car a much needed wash. Naturally, I was supervised all afternoon by a lazy cat, Miggles, who sprawled out in the sunshine and made sure that I did an adequate job. The cat is opportunistic in the extreme and if the front door, or even the back door, is open a chink, does not fail to take the opportunity to sneak inside. I am pretty convinced that Miggles has a cunning sort of intelligence because he seems to sense which rooms have not been visited by him before and so makes a beeline for them in order to explore them – curiosity killed the cat. The cat had to be ejected on two occasions today but at least does not object to being bundled up and cast into the exterior. Next week we have an appointment to see the car dealer about a possible updating of our model of car but the supply chains are incredibly stretched with shortage of some key components (chips from China?) so we may have to think about the next car some five or six months before the change. It seems quite difficult to ascertain what colour ranges are available to us this time around but I may settle on a colour called ‘Sand Khaki Pearl’ which is the essence of blandness with nothing about it to particularly like or dislike. However, several cars ago, I seem to remember having a car in a similar livery and, if my memory serves me correctly, hardly shows the routine road grime at all.

This morning was a fairly typical Sunday morning for us as Meg and I got up and then breakfasted in front of the TV watching the Sunday morning TV programmes. It is evident that the TV studios are very close to each other because the same government spokesman seem to appear on the Sky News programme at 8.30 and then immediately pop up on the Lorna Kuennsberg programme half an hour later giving identical answers to what appears to be identical questions. We found nothing remarkable of note this morning so got ourselves ready to go down to Waitrose where we had made an arrangement to meet with our University of Birmingham friend. Once we were parked in the carpark, I left Meg in the car whilst I walked a hundred yards or so round the corner to get a document popped in the post. Once I had done this, I felt in my back pcket to check that my front door key was safe on a little lanyard and keyring that was attached to it. I was dismayed to find that it was missing but I know that this sometimes pops out of the back pocket of my trousers. Whether this pocket is particularly shallow I cannot say but the other day I found that my front door key was missing and as I went to the car to see if it dropped out of my pocket whilst there. But as I went to the car, I discovered my front door key on the driveway outside our house so was naturally was very relieved. But this morning when my key had gone missing again, I immediately drove the car back to the house to see if the missing key was again on the drive or indeed inside the house. Not being there, I drove past our newsagent to see if the missing key was on the pavement near to the newsagent. It was not there either so I went again to the Waitrose car park, left Meg inside the car and walked slowly to the postbox to attempt to locate the missing key. I did not find it but on the way, I bumped into our University of Birmingham friend and I explained to him my quest for a missing front door key. We walked slowly to the postbox and then the two of us walked back slowly to our parked car but taking a very slightly different pedestrian route. And then I found my missing key lying on the pavement where anyone on earth could have picked it up and run off with it – although it has no signs of the house address. To say I was thanking my good fortune is putting it mildly so we immediately repaired to Waitrose for a celebratory cup of coffee. Tomorrow morning, I am going to make it a priority to go to the gent’s outfitters on the High Street to see if I can find a pair of trousers with appropriate zips so that losing house keys is a thing of the past. What I used to do when we were on holiday in Spain was always to have a special wallet which had a chain attached to it so that I could attach it to my trouser belt and never be parted from it. In the context of a holiday, where one is often heaving oneself at a funny angle fron the back seat of a taxi, I found this has saved my life on more than one occasion. Also in the case of a black wallet we have the ‘black on black’ syndrome where a black wallet falling onto the black floor of a car can render it almost invisible. After we had consumed our elevenses, our friend needed to depart for a midday appointment that we had but as we were cooking a nice beef joint, we invited him round to the house to participate in our meal if he felt so inclined. I had bought some carrots and made a parsnip and carrot mash which is a particular favourite of ours when we have a beef meal. I dished up a third portion and kept it warm in the oven and our friend turned up after his appointment and enjoyed the meal and we all further treated ourselves to some ice-cream, enhanced by a few plump apricot halves and a drizzle of honey. The washing up seemed to take quite an age but nonetheless we got this done and enjoyed an hour of a natural history programme on the life of gibbons, filmed in Malaysia.

This afternoon, there are several football relegation battles being played out across the country. I still vaguely follow Leeds United but am regularly disappointed as they seem to make a good start to matches and then throw things away. Today they needed to win and both Everton and Leicester are in a similarly parlous position so the various matches are not only hard fought and exciting in themselves but the fate of one’s team often depends on what is happening in the parallel matches as well as one’s own. Leeds seem doomed as they are losing the match 0-2 which they need to win whereas Everton have scored a very late goal which might just have secured their survival.