The night before last, I decided just before I went to bed that I would have a quick look at some of my HTML (i.e. web-writing) templates to see if there was one I could easily adapt to make a little playlist for my presentation to the Classical Music Appreciation group. Making the initial template was very easy so I thought I would just ‘populate’ the first line of the table which would be Cherubino’s aria from ‘The Marriage  of Figaro’.  This I managed to do fairly quickly, even though it was getting late by then but I did find a good YouTube clip which shows off the youthful Cherubino played in the way that it ought to be i.e. with a light, clear adolescent voice. I should have stopped at this stage, but I pressed on and managed to find a recording of the Countess bemoaning the fact that her husband had seemingly abandoned her in favour of younger women. The recording I came across was that made by Kiri Te Kanawa which I have always regarded as practically definitive. But then, in the course of my researches, I came across a rendition by Renée Fleming which some would argue was the most expressive rendition of this aria. In addition, the clip of video contained several bars before the main aria in which the Countess is expressing her rage and exasperation at her husband’s antics before the much more poignant ‘Dove sono’ which follows. By this stage, I had assembled three clips but  was in full flight by now so added a couple of arias from Don Giovanni before concluding with the magnificent trio from Cosi fan Tutte which is (n English) ‘May the breeze blow softly’ In practice, my progress in obtaining clips of video was delayed because I was trying to find definitive performances or outstanding singers and a setting which illustrated the aria. After all, the whole point of Don Giovanni trying to persuade a girl whom he espies in a balcony window to succumb to his blandishments is lost if the videoclip shows neither the girl nor the balcony! So eventually, I had assembled the six clips together into my programme and I was pretty pleased with the whole. But there was both a downside and an upside to my efforts. The ‘downside’ was that after I had transferred my script to my own webspace, YouTube managed to insert a quick advert before each clip that was played but this was quite a small price to pay under the circumstances. The ‘upside’ was that at the conclusion of each clip, and sometimes after another advert, another  rendition of the same aria was available as a follow-on. This means that members of the group who are interested can watch two performances and then compare and contrast the two and see which they prefer. To cut a long story short, I was up until about 3.30 but was very satisfied with my night’s/morning’s work which I needed to prepare in advance anyway as our next meeting is the day after my return from holiday. I have a little  more work to do which is  to run off some of the libretto and/or write down the screen captions that accompanies some of the video clips so that fellow group members can follow the sentiments being conveyed.

This morning, I did oversleep a little ad had a rather lazy morning as I had so little sleep the night before. So I abandoned my Tai Chi class but did go down and have a coffee and biscuits with one or two of the regulars. Yesterday was the day in the month in which the two community police people turn up and make themselves available for anybody who might need some advice. It was the most beautiful day outside and my son and daughter-in-law availed themselves of it to walk down into town. We all had a mushroom soup for lunch, made in the soup maker and are going to eat a rolled pork joint together in the evening. This afternoon, we spent some time as a family going through past collections of holiday ‘snaps’ working out which to retain and which to throw away. I was pleased to find a photo which a colleague (not myself) must have taken of Meg dancing on a taverna table in Thessaloniki, Greece which Meg knew she would never be in a fit position to do again. Finding some more photos of Meg I her youth was a little painful but this was only to be expected.

Donald Trump’s utterings seem to be becoming more and more bizarre. He says he is not putting boots on the ground in Iran – while seeming to leave himself room to change his mind. In a meeting with Japan’s prime minister, he also took another swipe at NATO – while claiming he didn’t need any help in the Middle East, anyway. And we have the strange situation where Trump would rather like  European ships to possibly bear the brunt of any attacks on the Straits of Hormuz but is unwilling to let American ships get into that position (presumably, the sinking of an American ship would be a loss that was too much to bear) It now appears almost certain, as the war escalates, that a massive blow has been inflicted upon the world economy. A prolonged war could do calamitous damage to the global economy. In just one day and night, Iran has hit energy targets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Israel. So much for its military being defeated, or its leadership decapitated after almost three weeks of bombardment. One attack alone on the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar, using just a handful of missiles, did an estimated $26bn worth of damage and will, we are told, take years to repair. Even less liquid natural gas will now get to market, jacking up prices. The cost of gas for European consumers has already leapt 30%.  Here in the UK, a debate is going on whether it would sensible or not to allow for more exploitation of the oil and as deposits in the North Sea which may be worth a temporary resurrection if the blow to world trade turns out to be as serious as predicted. Or own gas prices are predicted to actual fall for a month or so but after that we can expect see rapidly rising gas and oil prices. The way in which airlines will play out this crisis is interesting as the costs of aviation fuels are bound to rise substantially.

I awoke yesterday morning to a day filled with a beautiful blue sky and wonderful sunshine and, according to the weather forecasters, the day promises to be one of the warmest of the year and is projected to rise to about 17°. I was a little delayed this morning because some of the short-hand links that I use to access some photos and videos were not working quite as they should but I managed to get these working after a certain degree of fiddling around. The day in prospect today is quite a full one because  as well as visiting the Methodist Centre in the middle of the town I also tend to go out and do my weekly shopping. Later on today, I am due to viit a house of a U3A member for a meeting of ‘Classical Music Appreciation’ I have absolutely no idea what is involved in this  group or what our activities might happen to be but, no doubt, I shall soon find out. At the moment, following the advice of my University of Birmingham friend, I am joining lots of groups organised by U3A at the moment and will then whittle these down to a manageable number once I have found the most conducive ones.  The major trip that has been organised for us, and to which I signed up within minutes, was a trip organised to the telescope of Jodrell Bank and this will be the highlight of next week. So far, I am in a Classical Music Apreciaton group, Conversational Spanish, a Curry Club dining group and regular activities organised on Saturday morning each fortnight so that is certainly enough to keep me going. I also go along to church each Sunday morning with the bonus of tea and biscuits after the service and this is an opportunity to meet parishioners who of course a cross section of all ages. Now that the weather is improving, regular grass mowing will start next week and I also need to get out and do about 30 minutes of gardening each day, as there is a lot to be done. The evening before last, I watched the last of the series of programmes on modern Europe presented by Katya Adler – I knew that she had good French and German but her Spanish was equally good. Then the programme revealed that she had lived in Spain for a period so this helps to explain why her Spanish seemed equally as good as her other languages. I am in a slight dilemma at the moment whether to try and get a brief holiday in Spain in the Autumn but in the meantime I am a little tempted by another coach holiday to Scotland in the Autumn because it is only half the price and one gets picked up by coach from the centre of town which  means that a lot of the hassle of travel is cut out for one. The coach company which is organising the trip to Scotland in April seems to be praised by everyone to whom I speak about it and one only hopes that the weather is not going to be dire. One of the trips is a boat excursion on Loch Lomond which I have never actually done before but I used to camp on a large island opposite Balmaha in the days when I went off to scout camp as a teenager.

Later on in the morning but a little later than planned, I went down and did my weekly shop. This turned out to be quite a ‘light’ week not least because I am sharing the meal preparation with my son and daughter-in-law whilst they are staying with me as they having a kitchen re-fit. I knew that I needed to get home and the shopping unpacked and then a light lunch because this afternoon, I was due to attend an inaugural meeting of the Classical Musical Appreciation group, set up under the auspices of U3A. The meeting was to be held in the house of the convenor and there were about a dozen of us altogether almost equally split between men and women and some of whom I knew by sight from the Methodist meeting centre. My daughter-in-law very kindly agree to drop me (and eventually to pick me up again) by car, as we unsure what the parking situation would turn out to be. After a rather tentative start, we soon started to gel as a group by speaking about the influence that had led us towards classical music.  Some of us had been introduced to classical music as a formal part of the school curriculum, others by being played pieces in a school assembly and several of us via the medium of film (e.g. ‘Fantasia’) We decided upon a format in which at our next meeting, there would be three of us each presenting something from our experience that we thought that others might appreciate and enjoy. At our next meeting in a month’s time, I have volunteered to be one of the three presenters and said that I would prepare something on some of the classic Mozart arias. This really will be a labour of live for me because it gives me the opportunity to explain the context of the aria before it is played to the group. I will probably pull the pieces that I need off the internet and then perhaps put them on a website so that I can play them as I need and the rest of the group can listen to them again should they so wish. After a couple of hours we finished our meeting with a cup of tea and upon chatting with one of the other ladies in the group discovered that we had both worked in the same civil service establishment (what was then called the ‘National Lending Library for Science and Technology’) although separated by a space of eight years. So this was an amazing coincidence and is the only the second person I have come across who has worked in the same establishment (the first being a former student of mine) It was fortuitous that I was part of the initial meeting of the Classical Music Appreciation group and I am sure that there is an enormous amount that we can both share with, as well as learn from, each other. One important by-product of the group as well as extending friendships we can also share knowledge of upcoming concerts and musical performances in the area and may even attend some of them as an entire group.

I have a great deal of respect for the journalist Emily Maitlis and I followed her latest podcast on YouTube. Last night she was giving a most informative analysis the purport of which was that most European societies (and particularly European members of NATO) were effectively rebuffing Donald Trump’s call for assistance in helping to main the Straits of Hormuz to allow for oil shipments. Her view was that the Europeans had discovered some backbone and were,in effect, saying to Donald Trump ‘you got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out of it’ Another analysis on Sky News argues that the USA might have made some massive miscalculations. By organising a swift and decisive military operation to decapitate the leader of Venezuela and to install the deputy as an American puppet, Trump may have thought that Iran was more of the same – but the societies are very different. At the time that there were massive street protests in Iran, the USA was preoccupied with Venezuela and its military  forces were focused in the wrong direction. Had they at that time focused on Iran then it is possible that regime change might have been possible but as it is, the Iranians feel they are achieving victory the more they resist the might of the US and can keep the Straits of Hormuz as a strategic weapon. Returning to more mundane and domestic matters, I was somewhat dismayed when my email client found it difficult to load and the problem was identified as an out-of-date browser. So on my principal desktop computer system which is now about 10 years old I have managed to update the operating system to one that is less than two years old and seems to run more crisply than its predecessor. So now I am in a situation where my email client works satisfactorily and my system can limp on for another month or so. But once I have got holidays out of the way, I am going to bet an up-to-date  because once even a MAC gets more than about 10 years old, although still usable for simple tasks, the operating systems do not get updated and security issues addressed so it is time to think about a replacement model. Apple do maintain operating systems for their less than up-to-date versions of their hardware but a point comes at which they do not release further updated  versions of the software and the time is ripe for a change. Later on today, I have my Pilates class and then possibly the AGM of the U3A group to attend straight after my Pilates class so I may make myself a sandwich and see if I can attend the U3A immediately after my Pilates session, even though I shall arrive 30 minutes late. Spring is very definitely in the air at the moment because we are promised quite a warm spell soon. Temperatures in parts of the UK are set to rise close to 20C this week and bring the warmest weather of the year so far.

Later on in the day, I chatted with our domestic help when she called around  and then delayed going into town. Then I picked up my newspaper and attended my normal Pilates session.  Knowing that I was going to try and pull in two commitments today, I had made myself a cheese and beetroot sandwich on sourdough bread which I consumed in the car park of the Methodist Centre. Then I attended the last few minutes of a talk that was being given  to the approximately 75 members who were attending the U3A Annual General Meeting. The talk was given by a local solicitor and was all about the importance of setting up Lasting Powers of Attorneys and Making Wills – both subjects upon which I happen to be informed enough  already, Then I had a coffee with the ‘mid-atlantic’ acquaintance with whom I had a coffee yesterday and took the opportunity give her details of the coach trip  which I am shortly to undertake at the start of April in the off chance that she might be tempted, even at short notice, to join up for the same trip. I know she has used this company before when she took her mother on holiday so she will know what expect from this particular holiday. I also took the opportunity to get my name forwarded onto the ‘Curry Club’ which, as its name suggests, is an outing about once a month to explore the curry delicacies of the area. As I have cooked myself a meal of curry once a week for the last sixty years, I thought this was an opportunity not to be missed. So after this I got home and had a quiet time reading the newspaper until my son and I cooked an evening meal together.

Events are startling to unravel as the lack of clarity over the planning, goals and execution of the Iran war are becoming more apparent to the Americans. Donald Trump is under pressure to explain his motives for starting the Iran war, and the resignation of a senior counterterrorism official will not help, US correspondent David Blevins reports from Washington. Joe Kent was not just director of the National Counterterrorism Centre in the United States but is himself a retired combat veteran. For someone of his rank, position and experience to be questioning the motivation for the war will be a major problem for the president. Trump is likely to be questioned on the matter when he holds several events at the White House later this afternoon. One does wonder what sources of advice are now available  to Trump as in both the Pentagon and the White House, seasoned and experienced personnel with no particular axe to grind have been replaced by Trump loyalists who are not very competent or experienced. On this side of the Atlantic, there is even speculation whether Trump had heard of the Straits of Hormuz and whether he was actually given advice that any attack on Iran would immediately result in Iran deploying the strategic stranglehold that they have over the Straits. Past presidents have no doubt been given military briefings about all of this which is why, until now, a direct attack on Iran has never been seriously contemplated. There are persistent rumours that Trump may have been given some such advice but decided to ignore it anyway but we might have to wait some time to ascertain of this is the case or not.

We awoke yesterday morning to the new geopolitical realities facing us. It is now apparent that the Iranian’s chief asset in the war against USA and Israel is to keep control of the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point for oil tankers. Donald Trump having told the UK that it can send its ships home as there is no point sending naval assets into the theatre of war when the conflict is practically over is now asking, or rather threatening, the NATO alliance to assist in keeping the Straits of Hormuz open. The fact that one Chinese tanker and possibly, according to rumours, one Indian tanker have made their way through the Straits tends to suggest that the area is not mined. However, it is evident that supplies of oil through this route may be reduced to a trickle which implies high prices and possible rationing lies ahead of us. Before nations engage in war, it is nearly always the case that the relevant military planners have made extensive war plans or have ‘war gamed’ likely scenarios but this conflict appears to show that no military planning or preparations were undertaken by the Americans at all. So we find ourselves in a situation in which America having wrought a certain amount of havoc across the Middle East is now calling for help to resolve the situation. But is evident that the geopolitics of the area have been changed irrevocably by the way as the gulf states of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and others who have tried to act as mediators have now had it demonstrated to them that the US cannot be called upon to protect them and is anything other than a reliable ally. But really tricky decisions lie in the path of NATO and other European states as they try to resolve how they can deploy military resources to attempt to keep oil supplies flowing whilst not inviting any retaliatory counter attacks. Meanwhile, Israel has no restraining American arm to restrain it and is embarking upon a dream of avenging and eliminating its enemies which is a dream that they have held onto for the past 40 years. Netanyahu’s popularity is high even on the Israeli left and it seems probable that he will seek early elections to consolidate his own political position. Of course, we have seen all of this before. Margaret Thatcher had been one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers of all time at the start of the Falklands/Malvinas war but her popularity soared when victory was assured which is why she went to the polls to secure a thumping election victory immediately after it. So wars can sometimes prove to be exceptionally advantageous for right-leaning political leaders. But the USA case has its own particular features as Trump is threatened over time with rising oil prices, the revelations from the Epstein and his own failing health and which of these factors will prove to be the most decisive will be interesting for future historians to debate.

Yesterday turned out to be a different kind of day. My son having slept here overnight made a journey back to his own flat to check that the kitchen fitting procedure was proceeding satisfactorily and so far it appeared to be on track.  My son returned from his own house and then the three of us walked down the hill and had a coffee in the Waitrose dispensing area after which we walked home. I had a fairly light lunch of fish-on-bread and then my major commitment of the day was to go down and meet an U3A (University of the 3rd Age) acquaintance who had emailed me (after we had exchanged business cards about a month ago) and we decided to have a catch up in a local coffee bar. My new-found friend had worked for sixteen years in the USA and had travelled extensively across European societies so we had a certain cosmopolitan outlook on life. She is going to attend the same Spanish class as am I in about a week’s time and, of course, the more members a group attracts the more viable it becomes and less liable to fold for lack of support. The following day there is going to be a sort of AGM of the U3A membership so, having attended Pilates I shall turn up half an hour late but till hope I can be squeezed in somewhere. After all the name of the game these days is to maximise our social contacts where we can and I suspect that my new-found friend and I are of a like mind in this respect. So the next couple of days might prove to be quite busy, particularly as my son and daughter-in-law (both suffering from extremely heavy colds!) are I are out quite a lot. 

An interesting stand-off is taking place between the European NATO allies and Donald Trump.  Having insulted the UK and annoyed with Britain for not immediately joining in the war against Iran, Trump is now calling for help to keep open the Straits of Hormuz and indicating to other NATO members that the consequences for them will be dire if other European countries do not fall behind the American war effort. European countries  are saying that ‘it is not our war’ and I would hope and suspect that Europe might be playing a long game. Rising oil prices and Trump’s evidently failing health might prove his nemesis within a month or so and therefore it might be rational for European leaders (including the UK) to play for time in the present conflict. In the evening, I have some interesting TV programmes by way of diversion. Firstly, there is going to be an examination of the pernicious effects of social media which I think is well worth a watch followed by a comedy programme. It is going to be one of those nights when I make sure I have the electric blanket on and then get to bed in plenty of time to watch the programmes I want, knowing that if I fall asleep in the meantime, this is all to the good. I find these days that missing the main new bulletin is not necessarily a bad thing as I much prefer to watch the analysis programs that take place on BBC2 and on Sky News from 10.30 onwards.

After the excitement and tension, not to mention disappointment, in the France vs. England Six Nations rugby match, I watched a little bit of what might be termed the liberal political podcasts available to me on YouTube. There I learned something about one of the first incidents when the conflict started. Evidence is growing that outdated US intelligence was likely to blame for the attack on a school in southern Iran which killed more than 170 people, most of them children. But in the early hours of the near two-week conflict, an elementary school was hit, and outdated US intelligence was likely to blame, NBC News has said.  It is now being sad that intelligence that was ten years out-of-date was probably the root case of the disaster. But it was another aspect to the story which really caught my attention. After operations in both Iraq and the Afghanistan, the American military well understood that killing scores of civilians, even as so called ‘collateral damage’, is not a good idea. Therefore, a specialised unit was formed, the intention of which was to try to minimise the civilian deaths occasioned by the conflict to be called the ‘Civilian Harm and Response’ plan. On Feb. 20, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced, per guidance from the Department of Government Efficiency, an 8 percent reduction to programs not related to 17 priority items he has identified to spare from the downsizing efforts. He emphasised that the department is particularly looking to cut ‘non-lethal programs.’ In accordance with the emphasis on lethality, the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Plan and its associated Center for Excellence have been tagged for elimination. Consistent with Secretary Hegseth’s complaints about overly restrictive rules of engagement, it is possible that the program may be seen by the new administration as a ‘woke’ project that makes the United States soft in war, one that ties the hands of combatant commanders and interferes with U.S. lethality. The TV clip that I saw last night indicated that the unit has lost about 80% of its core staff and had this unit been up to strength and working as intended, then the whole tragic error might not have occurred. So here we can see a direct link between cutting a much needed service  and devoting the funds to a muscular form of conflict. When faced with news of the incident, Trump tried to blame the Iranians themselves even thought they do possess any Tomahawk missiles. After this original attempt to deny responsibly  failed, Trump lied again and indicated that he knew nothing  about the incident. I wonder if another level of explanation will be forced out of Trump’s mouth in the days and weeks ahead. My son and daughter-in-law called around early and we had a light lunch together although we will share a bigger Chinese meal tonight. Before they arrived, I had been to church and had a pleasant coffee and biscuits with some fellow parishioners. Then I picked up my copy of the Sunday newspaper and made a trip round my local Asda, picking up some of the kinds of supplies which are missing from my normal shopping venue.

After a light lunch, we settled down to watch a drama ‘whodunnit’ on ITV whilst simultaneously carrying out conversations about the ways in which universities are preparing their students for a very different world compared to that of their parents. We are now witnessing a generation of students whose school life was disrupted by COVID after which we had the financial and energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Often when we are at leisure, we discuss and compare notes about the ways in which we interpreted our various roles whilst we still employed in the education sector but in my own case this was over 18 years ago and things have changed so rapidly. Students are carrying a huge burden of debt around their shoulders when they graduate and many are forced back to living in the parental home whilst jobs seem increasingly hard to get. A feature of the modern employment scene is that employers do not feel able to make long term commitments to staff any more and hence there is a proliferation of short term contracts. Since we have the end of winter well within our sights, despite a current cold snap, I am taking the opportunity of participating in some U3A (University of the Third Age) activities. In a couple of week’s time, I shall be part of a coach trip to see Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and some of the associated science museums. In the afternoon, the trip takes on a tour of some of the historic buildings of Nantwich in Cheshire and all of this is in about ten days time. I have also joined two other groups and will attend them in week or so. One of them is a Conversational Spanish course and this will be interesting (or perhaps a little disturbing when I discover how my Spanish has deteriorated due to not having been in Spain for about six years now.) Another group that I have joined is a Classical Musical Appreciation group and I have no idea how this will actually pan out. It is being held in a private house so I imagine the group will be quite small. Whether we just listen to music or whether we form a discussion group around it, I shall discover. I may or may turn up to an Easter fair associated with the Horse and Donkey sanctuary which is to be held in a local village hall again in a couple of weeks time. The principal event to which I have to look forward is a five-day tour of some of Scottish lochs but this pleasure will infold in early April. The small and specialised company that runs this holiday seems to have a good reputation and the company owns the hotels so again, this will be an interesting new experience for me. I have recently received  an invitation to go and meet up wit a U3A member with whom I exchanged some business cards weeks ago and we have agreed to meet in a local coffee bar. If all of this sounds like a whirl of social activities, it is certainly the case that I am seeing which of the various  groups on offer seems to offer an interesting experience given that I wish to go out and make/sustain social contacts  each day of the week so long as I am capable of it. No doubt, I will find some activities much more rewarding than others but it is a case of ‘suck it and see’ before I  settle down into a somewhat less frenetic pattern.

So developments continue apace at the birthday party to which I have been invited in Oxfordshire which covers both the anniversary of Meg’s passing and also my birthday the following day. My friend gave me the details of where her birthday bash is to be held and indicated that they had a few rooms left should I wish to stay on in the evening. So  I acted quickly and secured a booking in their last remaining room at which I am delighted. The room is very reasonably priced but without breakfast but it looks as though another friend who is staying at the pub can be joined by a few people who live locally and we can all then have a ‘birthday breakfast bash’ for several of us the day after the main celebrations (which is actually the date of my birthday) I know there is a German tradition to drink champagne at breakfast but I will have to have a think about that! To return to more mundane matters, the other night I was pursuing YouTube on my TV when I came across a wonderful offering by a young UK practitioner of emergency medicine who presents some very informative videos on medical matters. The one that caught my attention was ‘Fifteen foods to stave off diabetes and other related ailments of old age’ so  stayed up late and made notes on the video as a whole. I am probably eating half of these foodstuffs anyway but will now take pains to shop for the other half. Incidentally, I also saw another video on how rubbishy are tinned tomatoes on the basis of which I raided my food store and threw away the two cans of tinned tomato I had in stock) As I has slept in, everything was running late yesterday but I am cooking a meal for my son and daughter-in-law whose birthday it is and then we have some birthday cake with which to celebrate. The next week is going to quite a full one for me as my son and daughter-in-law, who now live 4-5 miles away, are having a new kitchen fitted and as they will have no utilities they are going to camp out in my house until the work is completed  Later on there is the final rugby match n the Six Nations series and together with the rest of the country, I am wondering how England are going to perform against France who ought to beat them easily but who knows?

In the morning, I exchanged several texts with my Oxfordshire friend fine tuning some of the arrangements for the birthday party to be held in about two months time. There are going to be a lot of mutual friends there and I am also very keen to make the acquaintance of even more  of her friends some of whom worked at the University of Winchester but after I had left. Later, I went down by car to collect my newspaper but also had a cup of coffee in Waitrose. Whilst there, I bumped into one of my acquaintances with whom I was familiar from the days in which I pushed Meg up and down the hill in her wheelchair and we exchanged pleasantries about how we were both coping with life after the death of our respective partners. After I returned home, I knew that I was to cook lunch for my family so I parboiled some sweet potatoes which I then finished  of with a roast in the microwave oven, and this was used to complement a ham joint cooked  onion gravy and served with some broccoli. After lunch, we all settled down to watch the Scotland vs. Italy Six nations rugby match which Scotland won fairly convincingly. No sooner was this over when we watched the Ireland vs. Wales match which the Irish won but the Welsh put in a sterling performance which rather belied their position at the bottom of the Six Nations league table. Now we come to the final match in the series that would decide the total as a whole – England vs. France in Paris. After two defeats, England fought the French every inch of the way and when the time was up after 80 minutes were actually in the led by one point. But play continues until the ball goes dead and the French won a penalty n front of the English posts. Once they converted this (in the rugby equivalent of extra time) they score three  points and thus won the match by two points. It also meant that Ireland were denied becoming overall champions by the goal scored by the French in the 83rd minute of the game. After recent performances, the England team could feel very proud of themselves and they certainly won in the ‘clearout’ phases of the game but the goal-kicking by England could not match that of Ramos, one of the best kickers at goal in the world.

The next week or ten days is going to be very interesting for me. My son and daughter-in-law will be with me for most of the time whilst their flat is having a new fitted kitchen installed. My son will go over to the house regularly throughout the week to let the workmen into the house and to pack up after they have left but the next few days is going to be like  camping out for them. Naturally, I shall enjoy some company  and I will share meals with my family for the immediate future. Yesterday, for example, we had a Chinese meal delivered with some duck and spare ribs, the duck being used to provide the filling for some wraps. Also, my family had ordered a meal which was sufficiently large to last for two days so we shall more of the same tomorrow. We were having some interesting family discussions during the day, including some reminiscences of Meg and I was reminded by my daughter-in-law how agitated Meg became when I had to leave the house, for example to go shopping. Of course, this I did not witness (not being in the house) and did not fully appreciate at the time but of course its makes her memory even more precious to me. Meanwhile, the country has the spectre of rising petrol prices with which to contend. It is probably recognised that oil (and therefore petrol) prices will have to rise eventually but this does not explain why the oil which was extracted perhaps months ago and refined weeks ago and then put into garage storage tanks should suddenly attract an increased  price, much to the annoyance of much of the general public.

The latest development in the Iran conflict is a strong possibility that Iran may be deploying, or about to deploy, sea mines in the Straits of Hormuz.  Sea mines are underwater explosive devices designed to damage or destroy ships and submarines. They can be anchored to the seabed, float below the surface, or drift freely with currents. These weapons are triggered by contact or by sensing a ship’s magnetic, acoustic, or pressure signatures. Iran possesses a sizeable inventory of these mines, potentially thousands, and can deploy them using a variety of platforms, from submarines and warships to small boats hidden among civilian traffic. Although sea mines relatively low tech compared to missiles or drones, their impact can be profound. In the confined waters of the Straits  Hormuz, even a small number of mines can paralyse shipping traffic. The mere threat of mines can force commercial carriers to avoid the route, spike insurance costs, and push global oil prices higher due to fears of supply disruption. Experts describe sea mines as tools of asymmetric warfare: inexpensive to produce and deploy but capable of causing significant economic harm and strategic leverage against larger and more technologically advanced militaries. This is especially true in strategic chokepoints where shipping lanes are narrow and difficult to reroute. Reports from defence sources suggest that Iran has already laid a few dozen mines in the Straits of  Hormutz, with the capacity to deploy many more depending using its fleet of small boats and mine-laying vessels. The mines could be moored at specific depths or sit on the sea floor, waiting to detonate when a ship passes overhead. Because commercial ships are not designed to withstand underwater explosions, even a single mine strike can severely damage a tanker or cargo vessel, endanger crews, and halt maritime traffic. In some historical conflicts, sea mines have been responsible for a majority of ship losses, underscoring their effectiveness despite their relative simplicity. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical global chokepoint; nearly 20% of the world’s crude oil and a significant share of liquefied natural gas (LNG) pass through it every day. In a post on social media, CENTCOM confirmed that 16 Iranian mine-laying boats and other naval assets were eliminated as part of efforts to prevent the strait from being effectively blockaded. Even the threat of mine deployment affects global markets. Shipping companies may reroute vessels, increase insurance, or delay deliveries, causing oil and LNG prices to spike. Analysts warn that prolonged disruption could slow global trade, affect energy-intensive industries, and increase costs for consumers worldwide. Two other facts stood out as I surveyed the news from the war overnight. The first of these is the propaganda from the White House which appears to e treating the whole of the conflict as though it were an immense video game.  Trump himself tells the story that he agrees with some of his military planners that sinking Iranian shipping might be ‘much more fun’ than merely capturing them. The other story to emerge that in an effort to moderate the rise oil prices (which I suspect Trump secretly fears) he is lifting sanctions on Russia which, in any case, has just received an enormous boost to its finances as the global  price for oil has sky-rocketed. Although Trump is saying that he can end the war whenever he wants, that may play into Iranian hands if the war is prolonged and Iran benefits from the disruption of the world economy from the hike in oil prices. But that does not mean that Iran is losing the battle in the skies. While the U.S. and Israel are relying on billion-dollar anti-missile systems to protect themselves, Iran is launching hundreds of low-cost drones that are costing its adversaries exponentially more to shoot down than it does to make them. It has been said that the best that Iran can do at this point is try to exploit these asymmetries, put in place as many cheap drones as it can and force the U.S., Israel and the Gulf states to expend enormous sums of money defending against their cheap drones and hope that, over time, that becomes an unsustainable situation. According to an analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the latest missile model used in the Patriot system costs about US$4.1-million.

Every so often one opens one’s email Inbox folder and finds an email which is an instant source of delight. This happened yesterday morning as I had received an invitation to a birthday party in Oxfordshire. By way of background explanation, when I was at work there were a group of colleagues five of whom had a birthday distributed throughout the month of May. As it happened, mine was towards  the middle of the month so we got into the habit, some twenty years ago now, of holding a joint birthday meal for the five of us and my Oxfordshire colleague was one of the five. Now five yeas ago, we were in the middle pf COVID and so she could not celebrate her 60th but had decided to push the boat out, as it were, and to celebrate her 65th birthday in style. I accepted the invitation with alacrity and will probably stay over in the hostelry hosting the celebrations for a night, the following day being my own birthday anyway so  can probably celebrate the day before as well. Our very good friend knew that it was the one year anniversary of Meg’s death so had suggested that even in the middle of her celebrations she was going to take some time out to add a little homily in praise of Meg’s life and to imbibe a glass in her memory. Needless to say, I was very touched by this gesture and accepted my friends invitation to her party with alacrity. No doubt I shall see may of my former colleagues.as well so that is an event which I shall eagerly anticipate. Later I the morning I walked into town and had a coffee in my normal Friday watering hole where I met a mother and her daughter who were keen supporters of the horse sanctuary and had walked into town from a neighbouring village some three miles away. We spent a jolly hour with lots of story telling after which I did a quick tour of the charity shops in the area. In the past I have found some excellent glass butter dishes (decorated with, I think a Swiss cow in the glass) and I used one but have made a gift of the other. Now I feel in need of a butter dish in which to store choose in the fridge and, no doubt, one will turn up soon in one or other of the charity shops that fulfils my requirements.

As the TV schedules did not hold much interest for me the evening before last, I turned my attention to a podcast on YouTube by the two outstanding British journalists, Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel who call their broadcast ‘The News Agents’ Their analysis was startling and, to some extent, counter-intuitive but they asked the simple question ‘Who is winning the Iran war?’ Although America is bombing every facility they can discern flat to the ground and treating the whole war as though it were a huge video game, it is possible to argue that Iran will emerge as the eventual ‘winner’ This is because despite their military prowess and overwhelming superiority, the Americans cannot keep open the Straits of Hormuz and hence the supply  of oil and other raw materials from the Middle East. So the price of oil has broken through the symbolic $100 a barrel pricing point and already even American consumers are having to pay the price at the petrol pumps. This factor alone is likely to make the Americans declare a ‘victory’ even though it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic one. The Americans could no doubt deploy minesweepers to act as a convoy but this would make them vulnerable to attack by missile or drone and significant damage to an American ship would undoubtedly inflict massive psychological damage to the American military. After all, it only takes one or two little fishing dhows to drop a handful of mines overboard to make shipowners frightened they might lose their ship and their cargo and therefore the risk is not worth taking. So via the oil price and the ability to keep the Straits of Hormuz closed, the Iranians possess a huge natural advantage over the Americans over which the might of America is powerless. Those of us with long memories can remember that the VietCong hiding in holes in the ground and using bicycles eventually defeated the might of America in the Vietnam war and the Americans are not very good at learning from history. There are already  clear indications that Trump is particularly sensitive to the price of oil and he has declared that the war will end ‘soon’ but the longer the war persists with the oil price  high and the Straits of Hormuz effectively closed, then the Iranians have everything to gain by playing for time, even though their country is being flattened around them. Later on in the morning, I have my regular Tai Chi class to look forward to and I do appreciate the cup of coffee and chats that I enjoy afterwards. The domestic political agenda is also proving to be interesting with Keir Starmer experiencing a political reverse with the release of the information concerning the Peter Mandelson appointment on the one hand. But on the other, Kemi Badenoch has had to revise her initial stance of complete support for the Americans from the start of the conflict and has been forced, as Keir Starmer has delighted in saying in ‘the mother of all U-turns’

Later in the morning, I picked up the copy of my daily newspaper and then proceeded to my Tai Chi class where I was pleased to see that the old lady whose acquaintance I made the other day turned up and gamely participated even at the age of 95. Afterwards we had quite an extended coffee break involving my banker friend, the old lady who had recently moved back to the UK from Spain, the married couple who have been married for 64 years and are still going  strong and we were joined by one or two others. We had a pretty jolly time amusing ourselves with reminiscences from our younger days and then it was time to go home for lunch.  On my way home, I bumped into my Italian friend from down the road who is scheduled to go and live nearer to her daughter. She was shortly to view a much larger house in which she and her daughter might live sharing the accommodation between them.  I thought I would carry on with the tradition of a lifetime by making myself a curry – as the number of ingredients make this quite a high volume meal, I cut down on the carbohydrate count that rice would convey by crumbling two water biscuits to act as a rice substitute as the carbohydrate count is very low. I am trying hard to have a slight change of eating regime such that my last meal is taken by 6.30pm and I hope not to eat again until at least 9.30am the following day which give my gut an 15 hour gap between  meals. A food gap of 12–15 hours is a form of intermittent fasting, specifically known as time-restricted eating (TRE), where you consume all your daily calories within a 9–12 hour window and fast for the remaining time. This practice is generally considered safe, sustainable, and beneficial for metabolic health and weight management by allowing the body to enter a fasted state and tap into fat stores. After about 10–12 hours without food, the body exhausts its glucose stores and begins to burn stored fat (fatty acids) for energy, a process that can aid in weight loss. While 12 hours is the minimum to see benefits, 14–16 hours is often considered the ‘sweet spot’ for more significant weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, and cellular repair (autophagy). Regular 12-14 hour overnight fasts can lead to weight loss, lower blood pressure, and improved body composition. It may help reduce insulin resistance, lower cholesterol, and manage blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes. Short periods of fasting allow for ‘housekeeping’ of damaged cells, reducing chronic inflammation, and promoting a healthier gut barrier. A 10-hour eating window (14-hour fast) has been associated with higher energy levels and lower hunger. So there is quite a lot of evidence that the potential health gains (or avoidance of illnesses) is quite attainable so long as one consistently tries to follow this Time Related eating pattern. Later on this evening, I shall probably follow my usual pattern of getting into warm bed to watch the 10.00 pm evening news after which there will be the normal weekly edition of ‘Question Time’ The first question or so which relates to an important political talking point of the day and normally succeeds in arousing a sustained discussion after which I do not mind if I actually drift off to sleep before the end of the programme.

The night before last, I watched the Katya Adler program on divisions in modern European states and was absolutely fascinated by what I leaned about Germany. The support for the right wing party (AfD which translates to ‘Alternative for Germany’) is very highly concentrated in what used to be East Germany and AfD is the now the largest Opposition party. Adler does not really try to give an explanation for this so I hunted on the internet and discovered the following post. Who this piece was written by I do not know but it seems a very well-informed and concise  summary of the political makeup of Germany at the moment. The writer thinks many explanations for the rise of the far right discount the accountability that was missing at the west’s side during integration. You can say ‘right wing bad’ all day but you have to understand that people don’t go to these extremes unless they themselves are disadvantaged by the system and therefore seek radical change. Germany spent a ton of money on its social welfare systems to help immigrants, but we see no active push to help Germans who are living in areas with declining industries in the east. On top of that the privatisation of the East after the wall came down happened in a way that massively benefited west German companies but paid little respect to industry workers in the East resulting in mass unemployment and declining economy while the West boomed. Now what is interesting about this explanation is the way that it maps over onto the support that the declining and ‘left behind’ areas of the UK give most support to Nigel Farage’s Reform party and may well be part of a much more common geographical and socio-political pattern affecting many European societies. I am reminded of the ways in which the Victorians in their limited ways by instituting clean water supplies for all of the population (and not just the ‘deprived’ areas) and providing universal education may have helped to stave off revolutionary papers that might otherwise have developed. And to bring the argument back to Germany again, we should not forget that Bismarck’s social reforms in the 1880s introduced the world’s first modern welfare state to Germany, aiming to undercut the appeal of socialism and secure worker loyalty to the monarchy. Key initiatives included mandatory health insurance (1883), accident insurance (1884), and old-age/disability pensions (1889). Key details of Bismarck’s social policies included reforms, known as ‘State Socialism,’ were designed to reduce the political influence of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) by providing benefits that made socialist revolution less appealing to the working class. When Meg and I went on a river cruise from Berlin to Prague going through many of the territories of what was formerly East Germany,  we had the benefit of many lectures on modern Germany and learned that those living in what was the prosperous West Germany were subject to a tax to attempt to bring the East of Germany up to the same living standards of the West. A story that was told at the time was that many factory workers from the East were unused to the rigours of a full 8 hour factory shift because their outdated industrial infrastructure meant that machinery often broke down and workers had to be sent home (short of a full day’s shift work) until it was repaired or patched up. So I found all of this programme fascinating and will look forward to next part, concluding a tour of Spain and turning again to modern day France.

I visited the Methodist centre in town and engaged in a conversation with a Mancunian who happens to be in my Tai Chi class tomorrow. She had brought her husband along (a retired builder) and we shall probably meet again for coffee after or class tomorrow. Although our times in Manchester we exchanged some reminiscences of places that we knew- particularly the domestic science college known as ‘Domski’ which had an architecture suggesting a toast rack with a fried egg paced along side it. Indeed this particular building was known to all of us as the ‘Toastrack’. opposite which were a block of terraced houses, some of them overlooking Platt Fields park and one of which Meg and I bought and stayed in for three years. Before I  went home, I went to a local hardware store to purchase some cleaning materials not available in my local supermarket. After I came home, I made myself a salad lunch which, to be completely honest, I did not enjoy that much and perhaps some of the ingredients did not quite ‘blend’ I knew that I had an ENT appointment in the local hospital so I allowed myself 20 minutes to get there and another 20 minutes to park. But I was fortunate as I secured a place when someone else was just leaving. I was seen by high grade medical technician/audiologist who gave me as much time and attention as was required which turned out to be about three quarters of an hour. The intermittent tinnitus that I have experienced since Meg’s death could well be a sort of post traumatic stress syndrome after the months and years of caring for Meg when I was under immense strain but the audiologist was gong to add me to her tinnitus clinic which she thought might be beneficial to me but I was quite at liberty to stop attendance if I thought that no real benefits were being derived. We actually spent quite a lot of time talking about some scientific issues. One of these was the book entitled ‘The Grieving Brain’ written by a neuroscientist who explores the biochemical changes that occur within the brain when a long standing relationship (such as a marriage, or death of a parent) comes to an end. I also told her about the Hanna Fry series on Artificial Intelligence and we discussed, at some length actually, the ways in which AI was impacting upon the education of the younger generation of doctors and the implications that this may have for the development (or non development) of traditional clinical skills

After my hospital appointment,  I drove back  to Bromsgrove and then conducted my weekly shop which, as it turned out, was quite a light week this week. Then it was a case of getting the shopping unpacked not forgetting that the wheelie bins have to be dragged out to the end of the drive ready for collection in the morning. There appears to be nothing that grabs my attention on the TV this evening, but I dare say that a good trawl of the BBC iPlayer might reveal something that I had missed. Meanwhile, attention is turning in the Iran war to the effective closure of the Strait of Hornuz which represents a real ‘choke point’ for world shipping. It is not just oil which is affected here but also a massive array of raw materials such as helium and sulphur which will have an impact on a wide array of manufactured goods, not least the chemical fertilisers needed in agriculture. So inflationary pressures across the world will soon be given a huge upwards twist unless the war ends quickly.

I watched the second of the Hannah Fry programmes on the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and this edition was particularly scary. It focused on the ways in which the insurance companies in the private American healthcare system used AI to predict the days and even hours of treatment that they would fund after which time you were on your own as it were. Left to the mercy of the algorithm, seriously ill patients were bundled out of hospitals and transported home. Of course, this was all profit (or minimisation of cost) driven and eventually it was revealed that all kinds of assumptions were built into the algorithm the net effects were discriminatory. One such factor was the amount spent by individuals on their own healthcare and this reflected economic hierarchies in which white patients could afford, and did, spend more on their health than ethnic minority  patients resulting in thousands of black patients receiving sub-optimal funding. AI is being introduced into the British healthcare system but, it is said, more cautiously but I wonder if it is only a matter of time before AI is used to calculate treatment times and discharge rates even in the UK healthcare system. Yesterday, as I was walking down into town, I was speculating to myself what could be done about the increasingly self evident lack of democracy in the American political system. My attention had been directed to this matter by watching some of the ways in which prominent members of the American government are not actually held to account in hearings before Congress whereby they can lie, prevaricate or refuse to answer questions without any sanction from an incredibly partisan chairman of the committee. I started to wonder about the power of the electorate in these circumstances given a backdrop in which there is a massive division in American politics and congressional seats do not often change hands. I started to wonder about the number of electors for each Congressional seat and discovered that when the American constitution was written this was of the order of 50,000 per seat but is now 750,000 per seat or fifteen times larger. I suspect (but would have to be more research on the matter) that who wins or loses a seat is as much dependent on demographic factors (people joining or leaving the electorate) or migration factors (people moving jobs or houses) than it is of people who actually change their minds and perform the switch from Republican to Democrat or vice versa. So, to my mind, the extremely tribal nature of American politics  makes one despair whether the idea that America is a democracy is increasingly open to question. It is being said that Trump will almost certainly lose his majority in the Congress come the mid-term elections in November but already there are indications that Trump may try to subvert the result, perhaps by cancelling the elections altogether (as he has speculated that he might) As I keep on reminding people, Hitler came to power using the tools of democracy and then used every lever of power to sustain himself in office. 

Later in the morning, my son called around and as this coincides anyway with the weekly visit of my domestic help,  we tend to have a jolly half hour with each other. My son reminded me of the running conversation he used to have with colleagues at work whether  all fathers, when they got to a similar age, developed the same set of habits such as always collecting odd screws together in any glass jars and keeping them ‘in case they might come in useful’ which is something I always do. I decided to delay my visit into town today but then I set off and called in at Waitrose to buy a birthday card for my daughter-in-law as well as picking up the (last) copy of the newspaper. My Pilates class went off as normal and I think I might have felt a little  better after it, so perhaps I was in. need of exercise. Wen I returned home,  I made myself a dinner of mackerel fillets on some toasted sourdough bread, augmented with a side dressing of tomato and beetroot. As it is practically 3.00 pm when I return home, I prefer to have a quickly prepared lunch in any case. During some of the afternoon, I engaged in the rather pleasant ask of reconstructing the spreadsheet I utilise to keep track of my finances.  Now that I do not have a mortgage to make a great hole in my finances each month, I am in the happy position to make some savings for things that require a once-off yearly expenditure (as I was in the habit of doing in past years) These calls on large expenditures tend to come into three categories of car-related expenditure, vacations and house maintenance but by keeping all of my savings in one pot as it were, I can always  transfer money from sub heading to another if necessary. Tomorrow  is going to be quite a busy day because as well as the weekly shop, I have a routine  hospital appointment in the afternoon so I may try and have an early night tonight. Later in the evening, there is going to be the second in a series of programmes on European identities presented by Katya Adler, who has a renowned expertise as a foreign correspondent. Last week she looked at regional identities in Italy and in France whereas this week she is going to concentrate on Germany and on Spain. In many if not most, European  societies the population will very strongly identify first and foremost with a region and its cultural identity and central government is often seen as remote and lacking in relevance. My wife and I used to see this a lot when we travelled to various parts of Spain where people would proudly identify as being an Andaluz, a Gallego or a Catalan for example and only after this would they identify themselves as Spanish. Of course, in Spain there are a variety of languages apart from Castellano the principal ones being Euskara, the language of the Basque country, Catala and Gallego as well as variations of these spoken on some of the islands such as Valenciana. So with federal or semi-federalised political systems, it comes as no surprise that we see the rise of the right wing parties that often an expression of regional identities as well as the response to the economic uncertainties such as globalisation and migration. These regional identities were often forged in opposition to fascist dictator of which the prime example is the bitter struggle between Franco and the Catalans (around Barcelona) in Spain.