Yesterday, I had a start to the day I could well do without. I woke up some time before 5.00am and immediately discerned that something was amiss as my clock radio was not showing the time. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that the entire power circuits in the house (but not the lighting circuits) were ‘down’ My first port of call was evidently the RCB in the garage where all of the switches were ‘up’ except one which evidently controlled the power circuits which was in the ‘down’ position. I tried to flick it up but it immediately sprang down again and I thought it was best not to be forced. So I got up myself up and dressed, texted my son with my dilemmas and got a little battery operated radio to work so I could tune into some news and then made a request to an emergency electrician which according to the web was a family owned concern, good quality ratings and did emergency call-out work. Then my son came around, flicked up the switch on the RCB with the requisite amount of pressure and all of my power was restored. My relief was palpable but I think I need a good consultation with neighbours to see if they have a regular and reliable electrician on their books so that I know who to contact when the next emergency occurs. As I was waiting for my son to arrive, the news of the Runcorn and Helby by-election came through after a recount. Reform won this by six votes (it was by 4 votes until the Labour party demanded a full recount) and this must be one of the closest by-elections of all time. The Labour Party activists and canvassers on the ground report dismay at Labour policies with the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance head of the list of grievances and it is no surprise to me that the Labour Party gets a bloody nose whilst the number of Reform MPs has gone up from 4 to 5. Most of the counting of Thursday’s vote will not take place until Friday so the analysis and post-mortems will come later in the day. It could well be that the fine weather is coming to a close today with a risk of a thunderstorm so it is touch and go whether I put Meg outside in her ‘good’ wheelchair to enjoy a breath of fresh air.

In the morning, I popped out for a few minutes to pick up our daily newspaper and some supplies and got back in time for our Eucharistic minister to call around and perform a little service for Meg. This is the third day in which Meg has been asleep a lot of the time and the care workers are reporting this back to their manager. He has sent out a ‘groupnote’ chat so that all carers are aware of Meg’s gradual decline and has been rather appalled by the poor oversight offered to us by our doctors. He has got onto them to ‘suggest’ that Meg should now be an Oromorph routine (for when Meg is in pain when handled onto the bed via the hoist) He has also requested a home visit as he felt the doctors should be prescribing (or in Meg’s case, not really prescribing) adequate pain relief and the GP practice have texted me to say that a request to visit is in the system. I am fortunate, if that is the right word, that one of the middle-aged care workers nursed her own grandmother to her death (by dementia) and is aware of all of the final stages and impending signs for me to look out for. She is a great source of both first hand knowledge and also emotional support and I am very grateful. It looks as though the various parts of the care agency are pulling out the stops to care for Meg and this is really appreciated.

In the course of the morning, I have had the local election results coming through as the vote is counted. The newly formed Reform party (in the past UKIP and then the Brexit party) has made massive gains and even quite sober analysts such as Sir John Curtice are talking about a game-changing election as well as being a ‘turning point’ in British politics. To illustrate this, then in the case of Staffordshire County Council, then at the time of writing this, some 42/62 seats have already been declared in Staffordshire, a traditional Tory run council. Reform taken 33 seats out of the 66 and the Conservatives 9 but this is a dramatic turn around. Reform has been taken votes from the Conservative party (as in evident in the case of Staffordshire and no doubt other county councils) and also from the Labour party where people have been expressing dissatisfaction with the Labour party. One can well understand the disillusionment of the electorate with the Labour party as constantly on the doorsteps, the issues that come up are the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance, the threatened cut back to disability benefits and the trashing of the local rural economies in the case of inheritance tax. One Labour MP has observed that the electorate voted for change when voting for Brexit without seeing any benefits, voted for Boris Johnson with no real change being observed in the lives of ‘ordinary’ people, then voted for the Labour party who advertised ‘Change’ but none of this has happened but Reform does appear that they might deliver some kind of radical change for the electorate who have evidently voted for them in great numbers. It is normally said that local elections are no guide to the next general election, but the large majority secured by the Labour party has been dubbed a ‘loveless’ vote. Lincolnshire has now followed Staffordshire as being won by the Reform party so what seemed to be moonshine only a few weeks ago now seems a real possibility that Reform could challenge the two major parties and even win the next general election. The analysis on the airwaves at the moment is that the Labour party is in a real ‘funk’ as the leadership seems not to be listening either to their own back benchers or to the electorate and seem to many of the electorate, and particularly, the Labour voters to be like some kind of Conservative party and not particular competent at that. This happens when you have a large majority and now that Reform is proving to be so successful, will the Labour Party be encouraged to adopt some form of electoral reform?

Late yesterday afternoon, I participated in my normal late Wednesday duty of making sure that our wheelie bins are pulled to the side of the public highway. As we live on a private road, the bins have to be hauled about 150 yards and yesterday was our brown (garden waste) day. By the side of our communal roadway, there were tall but fast growing weeds which were a real eyesore. In the past, I have maintained this strip of land and my neighbour has done it in the past but yesterday was too good an opportunity to miss. As the weeds are inhabiting gravel they were very narrow rooted and easy to get rid of and so after 10 minutes work the task was done and everything looks so much better, although to be fair I only concentrated on the tall growing weeds like rose bay willow herb and thistles that proved amenable to a rapid disposal. Then in the late afternoon when I was in our newly tidied up study, I thought I would try and see if the ancient IBM Thinkpad was still in operation and was a bit dismayed to see that I needed to supply a password to activate the account. Thinking whether I might have saved the password a year ago, I found a little blue book in which I may have written down some details but as it is about a year ago, I had completely forgotten whether I had written down this critical password or not. Whatever gods of fortune there are must have been smiling on me because when I opened the book not only was it the correct one but it even fell open at the page revealing the forgotten password. So now the little laptop swung into operation and I must say that I found the old operating system, Windows 7 Home Premium was crisp and intuitive to use. Doing a bit of reading, I think this particular operating system was a successor to the much loved Windows XP which is now defunct but was loved by millions worldwide. I detached the little credit card portable drive which the Thinkpad was utilising and took it off into our Main Lounge where I downloaded several downloads of music (principally Mozart) on to it. Then it was a case of whether the Media Player would recognise these .mp3 files. The first few, the media player would not play for whatever reason but I was left with a handful of quite playable Mozart tracks. Now it was a case of whether the hooked up laptop speakers would work. These are powered by a USB connection but the Thinkpad has very few of these and one of this is occupied by the unit for the cordless mouse. The speakers that I have are designed for laptops i.e. not big and clunky but designed to give the laptop a decent sound whilst still being portable enough when necessary. These I reminded myself were a Logitech Z120 and are I think are still available for purchase as the reviews of the sound quality were almost universally favourable. These, once I had plugged in the audio cable correctly, worked like a dream and I utilised some of the online ‘Test my Speakers’ programs to ascertain they were working correctly. To my ears, the sound quality was superb and intrigued, I did a quick browse on the web to gather some consumer views. A generally held view was that these little speakers punched above their weight and one reviewer went so far as to claim that the quality obtained was almost comparable to a Bose (which are generally globally acclaimed for their best-in-class sound and balanced output). My final little act of recommissioning was to charge up a little portable power source which means that the speakers can be run directly from this releasing one precious USB port and generally reducing the clutter on the computer table. So all in all, I had a very satisfactory late afternoon and early evening’s work although it delayed my bedtime a little.

Yesterday was the day when the electricity supply company told us there was going to be a planned electricity shutdown between the hours of 9 and 12. The power went off at about two minutes after 9.00am and once Meg’s ‘sitter’ carer had arrived, I went off to do our weekly shopping. This all went off as planned and Meg had been fast asleep all during the morning, as indeed she has for the last day or so. Even when the carers came to check on Meg in the middle of the day, she was in such a deep sleep that I asked that Meg not be disturbed. I was not particularly hungry today but made myself a meal of fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs thinking that I might be able to get some of this soft food inside Meg. Anyway it was not to be so I just have to leave things until Meg becomes somewhat more responsive. Yesterday was the day of the local elections which included some mayoral elections and a bye-election as well. But many of the councils are not starting to count until Friday morning, so there appears to be little point in staying up at all late as there is precious little to report upon, unless there are some exit polls. On the other hand, the start of the month is when the Premium Bond prizes are announced which is a flutter of excitement for some.

There is some surprise news on Wednesday that the US economy had contracted over the first three months of the year – caused by a dash for imports to beat tariffs – drove a decisive blow to oil prices. They have fallen steadily since Trump 2.0 began in January but the declines accelerated after the ‘liberation day’ tariff bomb was dropped early last month. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 15% in April alone and is currently trading at a four-year low of $60. So all of this may mean that energy prices and petrol prices could see a drop. However, it is wise not to hold one’s breath as a drop in wholesale process like this does not imply that prices to the consumer will drop, the utility and energy companies not resisting the temptation to add to their profits whilst buying more cheaply but not reducing prices to the consumer.

After I went to bed last night, relatively early, I woke up and decided I would treat myself to a cup of tea and a watch of Sky News. The latter was devoted to Donald Trump engaging in a long and vicious rant on the successes he had achieved after his first 100 days in office. His address to the party faithful was as usual full of invective and bile from which we learned that all illegal immigrants into the US were guilty of drug trafficking and the rape of (obviously) white American women which is why they were being deported despite court orders to the contrary. Then I must have fallen asleep and had the most terrible nightmare in which I was lost in a strange American city in which I had no map and nobody would help me. At every street corner and in all of the shops there were voices that appeared to be multiple Donald Trumps and wandering around this city seemingly for ever, I could not escape. I then woke up and it was one of those occasions when one realised it was all just a bad dream and none of it was actually happening. Evidently the rants of Trump on the TV were inserting themselves into my nightmare which why I dreamed that the whole city seemed to be filled with Donald Trump clones. But I read the following on Sky News this morning that Donald Trump on the campaign trail denied all knowledge of Project 2025, a right-wing plan to tear down swathes of the US government. Written by a prominent conservative think-tank, Project 2025 is a plan to fundamentally reshape America. Its 900 pages set out how a president should expand their power by gutting the federal workforce while abolishing the department of education. For some it represents an anti-woke ‘wish list’. For others it is a fundamental threat to American democracy. A copy of Project 2025 held up during the Democratic National Convention last year. The document got a lot of attention during last year’s election, leading to Trump disavowing its contents and saying it had nothing to do with his campaign. But now – 100 days into his second presidency – we see how much of what has occurred since he returned to the White House looks like the Project 2025 blueprint. The architect of the plan, lawyer and political activist Paul Dans said what Mr Trump has achieved in office is ‘beyond my wildest dreams’. The lessons of history teach us that Hitler came to power using the organs of democracy and then promptly removed any democratic sources of opposition to himself as he created the Nazi party. There is quite a degree of debate out there on the web as to whether comparisons between Hitler and Trump are fair comment or whether this analysis misses the point. Trump’s meandering style of address means that observers are constantly wondering whether to take him seriously or whether we are just seeing a series of rants that will blow themselves out. But what is incontestable is that Trump has issued so many executive orders that a liberal opposition to them does not know where to start, particularly as court orders are regularly ignored and American citizens deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador where they may spend the rest of their lives and probably die.

Yesterday being a Wednesday morning, it was the day in which our domestic help calls around and we also expect a visit from a duo of District Nurses to see Meg. I gave our domestic help a nice surprise by showing her our newly ‘turned around’ study that she had not seen looking as neat and tidy for about the last ten years. Needless to say, I have an enormous motivation to keep it that way and she herself was delighted, not least because it is now so much easier to clean. As it was such a beautiful day, our domestic help and I were resolved that Meg should enjoy as much as she could of the fine weather so having been located in her new, ‘good’ and very comfortable wheelchair, we put outside to enjoy the sunshine, not forgetting that Meg probably needed a sunhat so that did not get over hot. I took the opportunity to collect our daily newspaper and also to buy a birthday card for one of my University of Winchester colleagues. When we were employed, which was some 17 years ago now, there were about five of us who all had birthdays in May. So all of those years ago, and I am going back more than 20 years ago, we all had a joint birthday celebratory meal. It made a lot of sense to have it in the middle of May (as two of our birthdays were on successive days in any case) which happened to be very near the date of my own birthday. We called ourselves ‘The Old Fogies’ and the tradition of meeting still limps on but COVID on the one hand and my continued absence looking after Meg on the other has made it increasingly difficult. I know it is remiss of me but the first birthday in our group is on 2nd May and over the years, although I always send a card, it is very often late by a day or so. So yesterday I bought a card from Waitrose which I addressed in the store and then got into a nearby post box from whence it will hopefully be delivered on time. I pointed out in the card that I was trying this year to break the tradition of a lifetime and get a card in the post so that it will arrive on the due date. Upon my return, Meg was still in the sunshine, and I sat outside and had my elevenses with her. Although Meg’s condition varies somewhat from one day to another, she was very unresponsive from the moment when I first work up this morning at about 8.30 just before the carers arrive. The inclination of the two carers were to keep her in bed the whole time which I think would be disastrous as she would be subject to no mental stimulation of any kind such as a concert on YouTube which is a fairly regular fixture in our day (as well as watching the news programmes) The two District Nurses made an appearance in the late morning and after a grumble about the care workers not removing the sling (which happens to be easy but reinserting it is a nightmare) renewed Meg’s dressing and monitored the condition of other pressure points. After they had left, it was a case of back outside until the two care workers arrived for the late morning call. Then Meg was relocated back into her comfortable chair in the Music lounge and I set about preparing the midday meal which was ham, some roast potatoes and fine green beans. Meg had about two thirds of her portion which surprised me somewhat as I had only managed to get about 2-3 spoonful’s of porridge into her this morning. Each Wednesday afternoon, I have to remember to pull the relevant wheelie bills out for emptying which takes place very early each Thursday morning and it was the turn of the green (paper) bin and the brown (garden refuse bin) The green (paper) bin seemed incredibly heavy and it took me all of my time to pull it to the end of our drive. But it contains masses of past papers from the clear-out of the study which explains why it was so incredibly heavy this week.

As we suspected, the Liberal party came out on top in the elections held in Canada on Monday. It is too to soon to say whether the Liberals have gained enough seats to form a majority government but, in any case, the media are dubbing this as the second election won by Trump as it was his intervention, calling for Canada to become the 51st state of the USA, which caused the swing to the Liberals. Last night, as the weather had improved so much and we are undergoing a warm spell, I decided not to bring the electric blanket into use and also dispensed with the use of a hot bottle for my feet. Although it is too early to say, I think I feel a little better for it and perhaps the use of the electric blanket was not doing me any good. Both Meg and I had little medical ‘contretemps’ yesterday putting our Tuesday venture out to see friends in some jeopardy but it is a case of ‘playing it by ear’ and seeing how we both feel after our breakfast this morning. Yesterday afternoon, our son called round and I was mighty pleased to see him as I had been feeling under the weather but he is to call round tomorrow and we will tackle the not onerous task of removing the empty storage boxes from the top of our bookcases. I have similar feelings this morning upon entering the study that I had when I had got our dining room restored to rights i.e. a feeling of relief that all was now neat and tidy and a joy to contemplate. I do have a psychological trait, which some would call a failing, that if I put things away I completely forget about them and leaving them around is a reminder that I have to take some action. But this is not a good enough excuse, actually, and my study now looks like the workmanlike place it is intended to be. Turning out the study has revealed one or two things I had put away in the past and forgotten about. Apart from the large photo I have discovered of Meg and I standing in front of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, my most precious find is the card addressed to Meg and signed by all of the members of the Erasmus linguist’s group in which she appears to have been a really active and much appreciated member in her day. The little electronic clock which displays the current temperature was also another nice find. When we left Hampshire some seventeen and a half years ago, I think we think we filled three skips of stuff that we wished to throw away and, with the exception of some Christmas tree lights which were easily replaced I have not missed anything that was thrown away. But down in Hampshire, the local tip was not too far away from where we lived and although I made frequent trips there, we did rescue from there a cast-iron tree mug and a Lowry print both of which are in use today.

Knowing that I was still somewhat in a recovery mode after feeling unwell yesterday, I had to plan today’s excursion with some care because I thought that the whole 2½ mile trip was probably over-ambitious. So I texted some friends down the road and was delighted that out Italian friend could see us for a few minutes and this had the bonus of only being a third of my normal distance. She was on her way to a funeral in any case and so we chatted for a few pleasant minutes and then Meg and I made for home. As it was such a beautiful day, I parked Meg in the shade of one of our conifers at the front whilst I sat on our garden bench, having made myself some elevenses. So we stayed here until our friendly carer arrived for a Tuesday sit session. I took the opportunity of her looking after Meg whilst I drove quickly down to pick up a newspaper and the carer very kindly folded a basket of clothes straight from the washer for me. To be fair, she is lightening fast at this job and reckons it is child’s play after doing a mountain of washing for her own family. In the days when I used to take Meg out to Droitwich in the car and we visited the Worcestershire Association of Carers, we often picked up some amazing bargains. One of these was a beautiful boxed set of a dozen children’s classics (such as ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Treasure Island’) I bought this hoping that as Meg’s concentration declined with her illness, she would be able to manage the simpler language and shorter length of a Children’s classic. I think many children might encounter these when they are 9-10 years old but in event, the volumes in the boxed set were beyond Meg. But I was delighted when one of the carers indicated that her children would love to read some of these so I gave away the boxed set with a great of alacrity knowing that it would bring a lot of pleasure to younger readers. Even if the books were slightly too advanced, I suggested to the carer that she might store them away in a safe place and release them for example for a birthday or a Christmas present. After the carers departed I started to think about lunch but I was not inclined to cook a hot meal, So I made a salad based on some already de-frosted mackerel, boiled potatoes allowed to cool and served with salad cream, tomato, cheese and some pickled beetroot. I found the meal very enjoyable and managed to get some of it inside Meg as well after a bit of a struggle. Then I had in mind to cut the back lawn which is now 2½ weeks since the last cut and badly showing it. As some of the grass at the edges was so long and lanky, I even adjusted the mower settings to the second highest height but soon realised that this was unnecessary so reverted to my normal ‘middle of the range’ settings. The engine did not baulk (i.e. choke) with this slightly longer grass length and I am now a little more streetwise when I use the mower. In particular I tend to avoid using the left hand side (with the dodgy repair) under low hanging bushes and the slight enhanced engine speed means that even slightly longer grass presents no especial challenges any more.

Yesterday morning, the care workers were scheduled to arrive an hour later than their normal starting time of 8.00am so I gave myself the luxury of an extra half an hour in bed. I did not have a particularly energetic day yesterday but nonetheless, I had completed the tidying of the study and mowed the front lawns so I was pleased with my progress. One does not normally take much notice of elections in Canada but this time around, there is a stunning difference. When Canada goes to the polls, it might be the second election Donald Trump wins in six months. The US president has transformed Canada’s political landscape, and the ‘Trump effect’ looks like it will be the difference between winners and losers. Tariffs, and his threat to annexe the country as the 51st state, have provoked a surge in Canadian nationalism, and it hass made a favourite of the candidate styled anti-Trump. Step forward, Mark Carney: former Governor of the Bank of England, now Canadian Prime Minister. His ruling Liberal party had been written off as an electoral contender. Canadians had turned its back on the party after a decade in power under Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau. The opposition Conservative Party, under the effective leadership of Pierre Poilievre, grew to a 25-point lead in the polls on the promise of change on the economy, crime and a chronic housing crisis. However, his conservative politics are more aligned with the neighbour in the White House and, in Canada right now, it’s not a good look. So it looks as though Mark Carney, actually very well known to us here in England, may sweep to power in the polls. Polls indicate that Canadians see Carney as a stronger choice to negotiate with Donald Trump. He is a veteran of economic turmoil, having dealt with the 2008 financial crisis and Brexit If he wins, and that is looking more and more likely, the swing from Conservative to Liberal will be the biggest swing in the polls in recent democratic history. We have experienced something a little like this in our own political history, though. It is not often appreciated that just before the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular Prime Minister of all time. Immediately after the victory, she became the most popular of all time and could not resist going to the country and securing a massive majority. There is nothing like an external threat to unite a country which is one reason why right wing leaders often pursue aggressive foreign policies as it diverts attention from domestic strife at home.

I have just completed a series of computing manipulations upon the HTML files that I had listed all of the files in my study (all 125 of them) and I have ended up with a completely alphabetical list which is what I wanted to achieve. The trouble is that each of the original HTML files was tied to a shelf location but that ordering is now lost so now that I have an alphabetical list I do not know where anything is! However, I have thought of a simple solution which is to go back to my unordered list, give each filename a suffix with its location number and then do the (online) sort all over again. This I have managed to do in little bits and pieces throughout the course of the morning and now I am happy to have an alphabetical list of each of my files and where it can be located. In the course of the morning. I have not felt at all well so have tried to have a very easy and stress free morning – so I have avoided doing things like reaching onto high shelves as I know that a lot of stretching up and bending down cannot be good for you as one ages. In the morning, I filled in the customary web form requesting some additional pain relief for Meg and also informing them that I felt rather unwell but there has been a marked lack of response. But the other day when the district nurses called around, they seemed to be exercised that Meg sometimes only had the visit from one carer when two were allocated and I think that ‘reports’ might have been circulated. In the late morning, I got a call from the social services area team and i tried to give them as full and account as I could. I indicated that the level of care provided by the individual care staff was of a high order but it was frustrating to the care agency itself, as well as myself, when care workers phoned in sick and the planned pattern of care was disrupted. I think I may have poured oil over troubled waters but we will have to see how things unfold in the next few weeks. The difficulties arise from the fact that Meg’s needs are gradually intensifying by degrees but the care package remains a constant and therefore a lot depends on the care and attention of each of the individual care workers.

In the public debates today, I learn that the replacement for the Ofsted inspection regime of schools (which contributed to the suicide of a headmistress when her school was downgraded from ‘Outstanding’ to ‘Unsatisfactory’) is subject to a great expression of concern. The current system was previously criticised for reducing school performance into a single-word judgement. It was described by ministers as creating ‘low information for parents and high stakes for schools’. The one-word judgement is set to be removed. But critics say the proposed replacement offers little real change. Report cards and a new grading structure have been suggested. But many argue these measures are only cosmetic and they fail to fix and alleviate the intense pressure schools are under. Among the coalition’s demands is the creation of a robust, independent complaints and appeals process. Currently, any complaints procedure is largely absent, leaving schools with little recourse to challenge potentially damaging inspection outcomes. ‘Trust in the system needs to be restored’ a circulating letter reads. ‘The rushed and closed nature of the consultation has only made that worse.’

After the funeral of the late Pope on Saturday, one would have imagined that a photo of the ex-Pontiff would have been splashed all over the media. It is true to say that the newspapers have fallen over themselves to give extensive and occasionally flattering photos of Pope Francis but another image has captured their attention and is well represented by all of them. Trump and Zelenskyy are pictured in St Peter’s Basilica just before the funeral and this is a simple ‘one man to another’ with no advisers anywhere visible. Donald Trump has criticised Vladimir Putin and suggested a shift in his stance towards the Russian president after a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the Pope’s funeral. The Ukrainian president said the one-on-one talks could prove to be ‘historic’ after pictures showed him sitting opposite Mr Trump, around two feet apart, in the large marble hall inside St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday. The US president said he doubted his Russian counterpart’s willingness to end the war after leaving Rome following the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican. Now no one really knows what Trump is thinking and whether he has had a real change of heart but was just taking the opportunity for a bit of political theatre and grandstanding. Now that Trump is back in the USA and surrounded by his own men, then his stance may change again and very probably will. But Trump is anxious to pull off a ‘coup’ to celebrate his first 100 days in office so the rest of the world is looking on anxiously and probably with their hopes falsely raised.

On the domestic front, we are expecting a spell of really fine weather for the next few days so I need to find a way in which Meg and I can learn to appreciate this. The new wheelchair will help in this because she can sit/lie in relative comfort, perhaps at the front of the house to enjoy the morning sunshine. This week brings with it not only the prospect of 1st May but also a planned power outage when the electricity supply company will turn the electricity off for three hours on Thursday morning but we have been well forewarned about this. Our domestic help has also taken her Spring holiday week off so it will be particularly nice to see her after a gap of a fortnight. On 1st May, it is the local elections and the Reform party are expected to do particularly well this time around. People vote differently in local elections than they do in a general election when they are electing. government but this is the first opportunity for the electorate to cast an opinion of the Labour government on the one hand and Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative party on the other. Despite the fact that I am normally an ‘election junkie’ and often stay up for the first results to trickle through, I really think that my time is better occupied getting a better night’s sleep so that I am ready for what the next day is to bring. Sky News is bound to be chewing over the results ‘ad nauseam’ on Friday morning so I am sure I can restrain myself until then. Channel 4, I believe it was, had a very well reviewed program on Donald Trump’s first 100 days in power but having followed all of the news of Trump’s activities day by day, I do. not think I can stomach seeing a review of all of this, however well done.

I need to turn some of my attention to some gardening activities but the de-cluttering of the study with the major part completed has taken a degree of priority. With a sudden burst of activity, I have managed to complete the bookcase de-cluttering part but the last bit was a bit tricky. I had a jumble of cables but they are neatly wound in to coils, secured wit a cable ties and then stored in a cardboard box which I prettified so it didn’t look quite so ugly. The second half of the study should be a much easier job as it mainly involves tidying up but I have set myself the deadline of before next Wednesday when our domestic help will turn up. The final job is to dispose of a lot of storage boxes stored on the top of the bookcases but these are normally empty and subject to taking them apart, should be quite easy to dispose of. In the morning, our University of Birmingham came around as he often does on a Sunday morning to have a coffee with Meg and I. In the course of my tidying up activities, I discovered some papers I had written in which I thought he might be interested and we spent some time discussing these (on the topic of the assessment of student work and the calculation of degree classifications). This work is probably quite dated by now as since we were both in work philosophies and rubrics of student assessment have undergone radical change. But in the afternoon, I managed to complete the tidying up of the study, at last, and only have some empty boxes to clear from bookcase tops. I have discovered various pieces of hardware I had forgotten about and some that needed to be junked. One thing I discovered I had was a DVD USB writer which evidently I thought I was going to need to enhance a laptop but it was never brought fully into use. Something else that turned up was a large A4 photo (probably taken normal size and expanded) of Meg and I standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, when I was there for a conference. Meg and I look pretty small figures but that is because the Lincoln memorial is so very large in comparison. Whilst we were in Washington, Meg and I also went round the several of the museums which, as you might imagine, were world class. I also managed to get the front lawns cut as it was a beautiful day and it seemed a shame not to seize the opportunity, even though I was feeling somewhat tired. The weeds are growing pace in various places so I may need to tackle these in bursts of 15-20 minutes when I can.

The news media today was always bound to be dominated by the live transmission of the Pope’s funeral in Rome starting at about 8.30 in the morning. Around 250,000 people gathered to pay their final respects to Pope Francis. This includes mourners who visited St Peter’s Basilica over the last three days to view the pontiff’s body and those attending the funeral service in St. Peter’s Square. Additionally, up to one million people are estimated to have lined the streets to see the procession from the Vatican to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Some 4,000 police had been detailed for the funeral which was to be attended by hundreds of world leaders. The protocols for the seating arrangements of such world leaders is interesting. The Heads of State are seated in alphabetical order of the their nations according to how their country is called in French. This puts the president of the USA (‘Etats Unis’ in French) sitting between the heads of Estonia and Ethiopia and one imagines that Donald Trump would have precious little to say to either of them. Pope Francis is to be buried in a simple coffin with just the words ‘Franciscus’ (Francis in Latin) and there will be a six mile peregrination across the streets of Rome to reach the Basilica in which he expressed a desire to be buried. It looks as though crowds of Italians and other nationalities will line the route and clap loudly as the coffin passes them. One thing that has been noted on this occasion is that in comparison with the death of Pope Benedict some years ago, non-Catholics have been swept up in the emotion of the occasion and even if in Rome on an accidental holiday, are delighted to be able to participate in the funeral rites. When world leaders gather for occasions such as this, there is also the possibility for ‘brush by’ diplomacy and we learn that the Ukrainian leader and Trump have had a meeting. How much practical diplomacy is possible is unclear but at least it looks as though the two leaders are talking productively to each other. What we appear to have had with the Ukrainian peace plan so far is the USA has almost ‘de facto’ endorsed Putin’s wish list and there is no sign that any pressure is being put upon Russia to get them to stop the daily bombardment and to institute a ceasefire.

After breakfast had been completed, it was time to push Meg down the hill in her new conveyance i.e. the superior specified wheelchair delivered to us last Wednesday. I am delighted by the safety and comfort which the new wheelchair affords to Meg because she now a sculpted seat, better back and leg support and a headrest. The principal enhanced feature, though, that now the relevant framework can be tilted backwards and this eliminates the danger of Meg tilting forward and slipping out of the chair. This chair, the result of superior German engineering, seems to me the BMW of the Mercedes of wheelchairs but the increased size and particularly weight do make it somewhat more tiring to push up the long hill on the way home. The chair is nicely balanced and copes well with dropped kerbs when I need to navigate them. In our journey down to town, we popped into Waitrose to pick a newspaper and some supplies that only Waitrose sells and we then went forward to see our three friends in Wetherspoons. I also bumped into ‘Seasoned World Traveller’ from our park visiting days and we exchanged some pleasant greetings before having pour usual drink and breakfast muffin of bacon and fried egg. After our coffee break, I popped Meg into Poundland where I wanted to see if I could purchase any more of the very useful plastic storage containers I have bought before. Needless to say, the particular item I wanted was no longer stocked but I did buy some more storage containers of an interesting design which I knew would fit the intended purpose. Then, on the way home we called by a new estate agents that was opening in town and they were having an ooening day event involving various ‘freebies’ that were on offer. We accepted the offer of a large bar of chocolate which was being offered free to passers-by in exchange for taking some of their promotional literature. When we got home, though, I was pretty tired from pushing Meg up the hill and promptly fell asleep for three quarters of an hour. Although most of funeral service live transmission seemed to be over, Sky News seemed to have most of it an a repeating loop throughout the day so I heard much of the singing even if I did not watch much of the action. In the late afternoon, my son called me via a video-link so we had an interesting little chat about the things that we both had been doing. I am pleased that even after his retirement, he is still popping around every other day or so to keep an eye on myself and Meg and I expressed my gratitude to him once again for the fact that our daughter-in-law had called around and some so much work tidying up the shrubbery in the front of the house yesterday.

In the afternoon, I filled one of those supermarket fruit and vegetable trays with all of the clutter from the last foot of one shelf. One little find was a cordless mouse which is always useful as spare and which I had forgotten about. Some of the saved items in the clutter will have outlived their utility but other bits and pieces will need to be retained and therefore rehoused in a sensible way. I have had a stroke of good fortune in that several months ago I purchased a set of bamboo socks which came in a beautiful and well made presentation case. I have deployed two of these to house old notebooks which contain some information I really wish to retain and so this has neatened the relevant shelf considerably. There are also some plastic containers with very useful handles of which I purchased several to house my classical CD selection and some of these I might press into use as and when required.

Yesterday the day dawned bright and clear and I hope signals the start of really spring-like weather. The day started off in a little unusual fashion because the workers are arriving about an hour and a half later this morning and this meant that I had the rather unusual activity of a ‘lie-in’ and so I arose at 7.00am rather than the more usual 6.00am. And to compound the problem and make it even worse, I have now just received a message delaying Meg’s getting up time to 10.00am and I have been forced to complain about the unacceptability of all of this which is messing up the planning and organisation of our days considerably. But I needed this lie-in because when I was up for a brief spell in the middle of the night, this spell became somewhat longer when I thought I would just process a few more files to get my study tidy. As I tidy, certain principles have started to emerge. Firstly, I try to ensure that each pile is no more than fifteen files deep. the reasons here are two fold – firstly, fifteen files just sits nicely on the shelf giving space and the ability to search and locate any particular one without undue manipulation. Secondly, in the HTML page that I am devoting to each pile, the number of 15 gives me a nice screenful of information which I can then print off and put in a plastic transparency so I know what is in each pile. I am now just about at the stage where I have sorted out all of the principal groups of files and I have finished up with about nine groups of approximately fifteen in each group. Some of these files have material that is cognate and will not requite much additional relocation. The last group of files is largely IT related content with topics such as HTML tips and tricks I have learnt over the years, quite a lot on file and website protection, some Javascript, some web server (Apache file server) commands which are a bit of a black art and quite hard won knowledge, domain name and website providers and so on. Actually, one of the most useful little tricks that I have developed over the years is to record how to undertake particular procedures such as getting a caption of relevant information onto each photo. I have a fairly large A4 sized notebook called ‘What have I learned today?’ and any new technique I record on the next blank page generally with the day’s date on it. Then I have an index of all of the topics at the back of the book and if I wish to remember how I performed a particular technique which I had learned a year or so ago but had completely forgotten how to do, then I have the procedure all written out for me so I have not constantly re-inventing the wheel. I must admit that with Meg’s illness, I have not had the time to indulge in any of these programming activities recently but my reference book remains invaluable to me. As a very real example, it has taken me quite some time to learn the exactly correct Javascript commands to insert at the bottom of each HTML page telling the viewer the date and time that the file was up[dated and posted. I now have the ‘perfect for me’ code which puts the days into an English format, specifies the day as well as the date, gives the time as well as the date and even self corrects for the operation of BST rather than GMT.

Yesterday morning saw a very attenuated day as one carer turned up at 10.00am and I needed to assist him for some twenty minutes until his delayed second helper partner turned up. But despite this start, we were absolutely delighted that our daughter-in-law turned up and worked like a demon cutting back some of the shrubbery from the front of the house which was becoming quite overgrown and potentially getting in the way of cars visiting the house. I have actually been pretty tired this morning perhaps as a result of being awake for an hour or so during the night. Today, we got to the part of the study where I have stored the papers I have presented to conferences and journals over the years and I threw away a fair quantity of duplicates and one or two items I had saved at the time but could now be jettisoned. I used to take some time and trouble by making my conference papers have an attractive cover by designing covers of an attractive design which were run off on my coloured paper onto a glossy photo paper. These were then covered with plain acetate sheets front and rear and after stapling the spines were bound in a black 2″ wide repair tape to produce a professional looking document. Some of my academic colleagues were somewhat taken aback when I distributed copies of my papers enhanced in this way but one of my foibles was to take a pride in producing a good looking document and I hope that the contents proved to be a as attractive as the covers. The techniques of producing documents were communicated to me by the South African Asian manager of our reprographics department at De Montfort University with whom Meg and I established a firm friendship. New recruits to the university who had not heard of the term ‘reprographics’ for the wholesale production of documents in large quantities would some times mistakenly refer to it as the ‘reproduction department’ which always caused ripples of amusement all round. I now have just one of my four large bookcases left to declutter but I know that in the bottom I used to store things like computer cables and leads of various kinds that will take some sorting out. No doubt, I will discover some junk that can be rehoused and when I have completed this task, I shall have cleared some 72′ of shelving all in all which has taken some doing. The pain of going through lots of material that require sorting and eventual disposal is mitigated by the occasional find of something I thought was lost and is now recovered.

My study de-cluttering activities are proceeding at the rate of one shelf or so of a bookcase at a time. Yesterday, I discovered some duplicates of books (ones in which I had a paper published) so these duplicates could evidently go, releasing some valuable space. Then I started work on the groups of files stored in the bookcase and the procedure follows this routine. I examine the content of the file quickly to see if the whole can be jettisoned and, if so, the actual file envelope retained but with its labels scratched off. In the course of doing this yesterday, I discovered two files with quite interesting content The first was a claim made against an insurance policy for a holiday flight that had been missed. Meg and I were on the M40 flying to Heathrow where there was an evident traffic jam. With police helicopters circling overhead there had evidently been a major traffic incident the upshot of which was that after a delay of more than two hours, the whole section of motorway was closed and the police and road authorities encouraged us to turn around and escorted us off the motorway in a single file going in the ‘wrong’ direction. The flight was well and truly missed but the minute we got home, I booked an emergency flight for the following day. But being stuck in the car for hours on end played havoc with Meg’s back which was in a fragile condition at the best of times and the following day she was in such pain we were in no condition to travel. I claimed against the insurance policy and my claim was refused. Incensed, I went onto the web and found a practically identical case in which, eventually, the insurance company paid out. Armed with this information, I informed the insurance company I was going to take out a claim against them, probably in the small claims court, and armed with the precedent I had found, I would almost certainly win the case. The insurance company agreed but there was a lot of hassle involved with firstly the claim having to be submitted digitally and then again with the actual originals of the documents. I had totally forgotten about this incident, the likes of which I have never heard of before or since. The second interesting file relates to my PhD in which I was reminded that De Montfort University changed its Higher Degree regulations, allowing a PhD to be written around a series of already published papers. The file revealed the information that I made formal application to the relevant committee with approval letters from Heads of School and the Dean on 16th January, 1995. I wrote the PhD and submitted the completed work in December so I had evidently written the whole thing in 11 months. Then followed a gap of three or months or so until the ‘viva voce’ examination in which the principal external examiner was one of the most prominent figure sin the field of public administration in the UK. All seemed to be going well until the examiner made the remark ‘Mike, I looked in vain in your bibliography for evidence of 4th Generation evaluative methodology’- the other two examiners, my supervisor and I looked at each other and it was evident that absolutely none of us had ever heard of this in our lives at all. So I did a bit more fieldwork, incorporated an extra chapter including the afore mentioned methodology, resubmitted the whole and after another three month gap was awarded the PhD in about May of 1997. I was to learn later from another ‘conference buddy’ who was also submitting a PhD late in life that this particular external examiner always made his examinees go the extra mile and do more work so what happened to me was not unusual, after all. But I think the quality of a PhD depends upon the reputation of the external examiner for the thesis rather than the university that awards it so eventually I was more than happy with the result.

This afternoon, I received an unexpected visit from a nurse who, I believe, was sent to us after a referral by the care agency. She needed to check on Meg’s pressure sores and I also gave her the information received yesterday that I help out with manual handling and social care needs if one care worker was present. This I have formally refused to do and the nurse was going to escalate the request that had been made of me as the care agency was not fulfilling its contracted duties of two carers per visit. I fear that there may be organisational consequences that emerge out all of this but I will do my best to pour oil upon troubled waters because I do not want the care for Meg to deteriorate whilst, theoretically, improving the quality. My son and daughter-in-law called round this afternoon – we spent a lot of time discussing the consequences that might flow from the visit of the three district nurses yesterday and a further one today. I think a long telephone call with the care agency manager may be necessary to ensure that any fences are mended because I desperately want Meg to retain the relationships she has made with the care staff over the last year.

A fair spell of warm weather is forecast for the forthcoming week so I must try and make the best of it, whilst I can. Saturday will see the first venture of Meg out in her new ‘super’ wheelchair and whilst I am assured this will be very comfortable and safe for Meg, it might be that the heavier weight is more difficult to push up the hill (going down hill, though, ought to be even easier) Saturday morning is the morning scheduled for the Pope’s funeral, which other things being equal, I would quite like to watch but on the other hand there is a clash of commitments with our visit to see our friends in the centre of town. I showed my daughter-in-law the way in which our dining room had been restored to its former glory ad also the progress I was making in putting right the study. She herself is due to retire at the end of August so is being pretty ruthless about the things to be thrown away between now and then.

After the death of the Pope yesterday, there was no clear consensus on the lead stories of the day yesterday. No doubt, a bit of journalism has hit the popular imagination but Pope Francis is now being called ‘The People’s Pope’ and his concern for the poor and underprivileged will remain his constant epitaph. In death, as in life, the deceased Pope has chosen to be buried in a simple fashion avoiding being buried in the Vatican vaults like so many of his predecessors but instead being buried in his favourite church on a not very fashionable part of Rome with the simple attribution ‘Franciscus’ (the latinised version of his name) If his successor choses to be known as ‘Francis II’, this will be taken as a signal that the reforms initiated by the past will be continued. Nonetheless, some of the ‘vox pop’ conducted both in Rome and in London revealed that some of the Catholic community wish to return to more traditional and probably conservative) forms of Catholicism. On the domestic front, I am now returning to the task of tidying up the bookshelves and removing some of the clutter they contain. The dilemma I face is that in front of the books, I used to have a collection of little but essentially useful things such as receptacles for the receipt of various coins. £2 coins are not as common as they were and I tend to save them these days but always have a collection of £1 coins which I keep in case a coin was needed at short notice for car parking or a shopping trolley – so any new home needs to be both accessible but clutter free. After Meg has gone to bed, I spend a certain amount of time in the study doing things like making sure my accounts are up-to-date, reading emails and so on, I utilise this time to let my mind gradually suggest solutions to storage problems instead of forcing a ‘there and then’ solution. In the days when I was doing a lot of statistical programming, sometimes I used to run into a little problem that needed to be solved. I would literally ‘sleep’ on the problem and it was often the case that the next morning (sometimes whilst having a shower in the morning) my brain had worked on the problem overnight and a solution had suggested it itself. The first time that it happened, I assumed it was just a fortunate solution to my problem but I came to realise that this was one’s brain actually working on a solution overnight. Research suggests that ‘sleeping on it’ can indeed help with problem-solving. Sleep allows the brain to consolidate memories, process information, and identify meaningful patterns, potentially leading to better problem-solving the next day. There is a certain amount of subconscious processing overnight. Some theories suggest that the brain continues to work on problems even during sleep, potentially leading to insights or solutions that might not have been apparent while awake. The subconscious mind may process information and generate new ideas while you are asleep, leading to a more creative solution.

Yesterday morning had long been a date on our planning board when the Wheelchair and Mobility service were due to come along and see how Meg was coping with her wheelchair. The service sent along a technician to work on the wheelchair itself which he did whilst his colleague, an Occupational Therapist who specialised in wheelchair use, engaged herself with getting Meg in her hoist ready to be seated in her existing chair. This pair, who were excellent, understood completely why I had been making ad-hoc adjustments to the chair to keep Meg secure and appreciated how Meg’s lack of body strength meant that her existing chair was not now suited for her needs. They came to the view, fairly quickly, that Meg needed a superior chair and had had the foresight to load an enhanced model on their van. This was a German made OttoBock wheelchair and to my untrained eye seemed like the BMW of wheelchairs. The minute we got Meg hoisted into this chair, we appreciated how suitable this was going to be. It was larger and a framework that enable the whole rear to be slanted backwards (so that Meg could be semi-recumbent if necessary) as well as a sculptured seat, a headrest and generally superior fixtures and fittings. It evidently took some time for Meg to be seated in the new chair whilst assessments were made and some adjustments made as well as giving me instructions how the new chair was to be used. I wheeled Meg down int our Main Lounge to make sure that all angles and doorways could be navigated safely and to cut a long story short, I am completely delighted that this new chair has now been supplied for Meg. It means that I can take her down to town with much more peace of mind and I am happy that if she were to be in the chair for a few hours, which is typically the case on Tuesdays and Saturdays, then she will be so much more comfortable and secure.

In the morning, we awaited the arrival of the District Nurse team and it is anticipated that it will take a couple of nurses to address the increasing problems that Meg is now experiencing. She now has pressure sores in about five or six locations on her body and this is a direct consequence of the fact that she has no body strength or the mobility to adjust her seating positions. The OT who specialised in wheelchairs was very supportive and helpful and all seemed to be well. Then three district nurses arrived in a flurry and, looking at Meg’s newly developing bed sores, declared that they were probably caused by the sling to the hoist which the care workers often do mot remove. They were pretty horrified by this and by the fact that often only one worker turned up when there should have been two. They suggested I phone social services (some hope!) and demand the agency be replaced by a better one. This would have been cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face and just as they were leaving, a solo care worker turned up. The three district nurse vented all of their spleen on this unfortunate individual so this necessitated calls to the manager and a difficult conversation about the care that Meg should have been receiving (and, in the opinion of the district nurses), was not. So it looks from now on as there will have to be a change of procedure so that the sling is removed every time it has been used (which typically it is not, because this is fiddly) and that there should be henceforth a rigid application of the ‘2 carers for each attendance’ for Meg from now on.