Meg and I were looking forward to today for several reasons. Our domestic help was due to call around today instead of last Wednesday which was her usual day – she had swopped in order to keep a doctor’s appointment which is quite difficult to arrange these days. As I was preoccupied with a hospital visit yesterday morning, today I did my delayed weekly shopping,managing to get to the store just before the appointed opening hour of 8.00am. It was then when I studied the ‘Easter Opening Hours’ (much the same as every other day apart from being closed on Easter Day) I realised that Easter Day was only two weeks away this Sunday. Easter seems to have crept up on us somehow this year, even though it is not particularly early. We were pleased to have a chat with our domestic help but then our University of Birmingham friend phoned up to arrange a coffee date in Waitrose. As soon as we got there, we bumped into one of our pre-pandemic friend who is now in her 80’s but still going strong. She has been rehearsing, as part of a 60-70 strong choir, to sing Brahms ‘A German Requiem’ which is a particular favourite of hers as well as ours. We wished her well for the performance which is due to take place tomorrow afternoon – I wonder if the choir will have a big celebratory ‘afternoon tea’ after the weeks and week of rehearsal which they had been undertaking. We were both appalled by the fact that the BBC Singers who seem to have going since the word ‘dot’ are threatened with being disbanded as part of a BBC economy drive. We both agreed that this must be an act of cultural vandalism. The latest news this afternoon, though, is less gloomy as it appears that the BBC has paused its decision to close the BBC Singers, after ‘a number of organisations’ came forward to offer alternative funding. The group, which is the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir, was targeted by budget cuts shortly before celebrating its 100th anniversary. We chatted awhile with our University of Birmingham friend before he, too, had to dash off for a lunch engagement in central Birmingham. As the showers were coming along as though on a conveyor belt (a phrase actually deployed by the weather forecasters) we had to judge when each of us needed to make a dash for the car to avoid being rained upon. When we got home, I realised with some dismay that I had forgotten to buy my usual fish pie for our Friday midday meal. Nonetheless, I raided the freezer and liberated some smoked haddock fillets which were delicious (when carefully wrapped in foil and then baked in the oven) and served with a baked potato and some mange-touts.

After lunch, Meg and I had a quiet read and a sort of some old newspapers which we gut for really interesting articles we wish to retain. Then as the clouds had rolled away this afternoon, we made a lightning visit into town to see if we could purchase a nice looking little corner occasional table which I had spotted in the Age Concern furniture shop the other day. Fortunately, it was unsold so we were pleased to get it into the car which was parked not a great distance away. After our, by now, well-deserved afternoon cup of tea, I set to work giving the newly acquired piece of furniture a clean and polish up. Fortunately, for us this was quite easy as it was only slightly dusty and we now have it installed in our ‘music room’ alongside the other pieces of renovated furniture.

We have by now got used to the lighter evenings which is so welcome to us in the spring. This is the weekend when the clocks go forward so we have to look forward to it being temporarily a little darker in the early evenings although this will soon not be that noticeable. In the pre-Brexit days, there was a proposal to adopt ‘double’ Summer Time in which we put our clocks forward two hours and are then in step with the rest of Continental Europe. The argument at the time was very much related to the extra trade opportunities afforded by being in step with our continental neighbours but in the present political climate, one would imagine that a similar idea would be sunk with trace within minutes. Nonetheless we are certainly into grass-mowing season by now which I will attempt the minute the weather gets just a tad warmer and less showery.

In the United States, the Manhatten District Attorney is on the brink of bringing charges against Donald Trump. He is responding with blood curdling threats and practical appeals to a violent resistance. Trump has said of his potential arrest ‘Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!’ This may be an interesting test of the American concept that they are have a ‘government of laws not of men’ because what we have in prospect is the possibility that an arrest warrant is not capable of being served if the recipient is rich, powerful and an ex-President of the USA.

Well today has turned out to be an interesting day. It was the day when I was scheduled to have a routine checkup at the hospital after the surgery I had nearly five years ago and I don’t intend to bore anyone with the details of all of this apart from the fact that it was necessary for our son to stay with me and bring me home after the sedation I received. Everything went well and we were home soon after 10.00am after a very early start. But it was a day when I needed to keep fairly quiet for the rest of the day and fortunately, I had a treat planned for the afternoon. We made a lunch of rice and some of the left over chicken stew from yesterday and then we settled down for our treat. This was a delayed viewing of Dr Zhivago, first seen by Meg and I in Leicester Square some 55 years ago and watched regularly about once a decade over the years. Almost the last scene of the film is incredibly poignant as the aging and sick Zhivago thinks he espires Lara (one of the two loves of his life) when aboard a Moscow tram. Zhivago struggles to get off and runs to catch up with Lara but he dies of a heart attack in the street before he can get reunited with her. So what with ‘Brief Encounter‘ the other day and ‘Dr Zhivago‘ today, I have had a full ration of poignant film endings for quite some time.

Now that all of the shenanigans of yesterday’s political events are over, it is a possible to have a degree of reflection on the two events together. One view if that the respective bandwagons of both Brexit on the one hand and the Johnson era on the other hand are disappearing over the horizon. This is not to say that there will not be the occasional squirmish and last-ditch stand within Parliament in the months and years ahead but there is now a feeling that we are moving on towards a new era in politics. One factor is undoubtedly the fact that there will be a general election in the not too distant future and both parties are trying to make sure that they look forward to a period when internecine debates have to be a thing of the past and policies are adopted that may appeal to the wider electorate. Attention may well shift to the American political scene because Donald Trump is facing multiple legal challenges of various kinds – these generally started off some months ago but some may be coming to fruition. In the next few days, it could well be that Donald Trump is arrested for making illicit campign contributions to buy the silence of a pornstar with whom he may (or may not) have had a relationship just before he started to run for office. Some of his madder supporters are even arming themselves with rifles so that if the police come to try and arrest him, they will attempt to shoot police helicopters out of the sky.

Now that spring is practically upon us, we have the ritual of putting the clocks forward one hour this weekend. As usual, one hour less in bed is not a great tribulation but we seem to have a fair number of clocks to adjust which is a job for Sunday morning. Normally, on the weekend around the last week of March, my thoughts turn to grasscutting and related activities. But the weather forecasts are indicating that we might have a run of cooler and windier weather which does not sound ideal for grass-cutting, particularly as the first cut of the season is a bit longer and more troublesome than subsequent cuts. I may well get the petrol and oil all in place but delay the actual cutting for a day or so until the weather warms up. Over the weekend, though, we now have the women’s 6-Nations Rugby competition to which to look forward, so now doubt this will occupy Meg and I for Saturday afternoons for a week or so.

I am not a great fan of the BBC TV programme ‘Question Time‘ these days and nor have I been since the Brexit debates. However, it can still be an interesting spectator sport to see a government minister occasionally howled down or jeered by a Question Time audience. I think that tonight’s broadcast might prove to be partiularly interesting because those who lost relatives and could not be present at the death of a parent or other relative may feel particularly anguished and may well vent their anger when a ‘Johnson’ type question appears at the top of the agenda this evening. As these events are live, there is alwaays an unpredictability about how a live audience is actually going to react, so I think I shall look forward to tonight’s broadcast with a fair degree of anticipation. Public opinion can be fickle and difficult to guage at times. It could be that the public have generally made up their minds about Boris Johnson and want to move one and find other things to concern them. On the other hand, the recent well publiicised committee proceedings may be igniting a slow burn of resentment against the evident breaking of the rules whilst the rest of us were observing them.

Today was an interesting day, dominated as it was by the committee appearance of Boris Johnson about which much more later. Knowing that the afternoon might be quite engaging, Meg and I seized the opportunity to have an excursion into the park after which we had picked up our newspaper. It was a fairly fine day and we made our way to our normal bench to have our coffee and elevenses. It is true to say that our ventures to the park are somewhat less these days because we tend to frequent the Waitrose coffee bar on about three occasions per week, once on our regular Tuesday meeting with friends and on two further occasions over the weekends when we met up with our University of Birmingham friend. Today, though, in the space of about twenty minutes we actually had conversations with four acquaintances that we have come to know over the past few years when we have made regular walks in the park. The first person that we came as was Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who we do not seem to have met for some weeks now. The latter has a special app on his watch which takes the steps that he is undertaking and maps these over onto a simulated walk somewhere in the world. Today, our friend was two thirds of a trip through The Rockies in the USA, after which he could no doubt claim a medal to add to his extensive collection. Then we met one half of a couple who we know live in The Lickies and quite regularly come for a walk in the park. Then we met up with a man who regularly walks his Labrapoodle dog who, we know, comes to the park most days of the week and is always a fund of good stories. Finally, we were joined by a Police Community Support Officer who knows us all quite well from the days when she used to semi-patrol the park at the height of the Covid pandemic. So what is remarkable about this morning was that in quite a sporadic appearance in the park, we should bump across so many acquaintances.

And so we came to the main entertainment of the day which was the Boris Johnson appearance before the Committee on Privileges of the House of Commons. I think that a fair summary of the whole afternoon is that Boris Johnson gave quite a feisty and combative performnce, maintainly doggedly to the line that he thought that all of the ‘parties’ held in Downing Street were within the guidance and the rules as they were ‘workplace events’ in which, on more than occasion, he was giving thanks to staff on what was a ‘leaving do’. But although there were three places in which Boris Johnson might be said to have really difficult time. Firstly,trying to maintain consistently that every single party was an absolutely necessary in order to maintin morale and to give thanks to staff who were leaving strained credibility to the utmost. There as no reason why staff could not be bid farewell in a ‘Zoom’ call or with a personal letter. A second, but related point, is that according to the guidance in force at the time, all work colleagues should maintain a distance of two metres from each other – however, this distance of two metres could be reduced to one metre if there is ‘mitigation’ e.g. a perspex screen. Johnson maintained that staff tried to keep within the guidelines at all times but the distances that were kept were approximate at times. A more ludicrous point was that mitigation measures such as perspex screens were deployed but not actually in the rooms where the social events took place but ‘in the rooms next door’ A third point, when Johnson was pressed on who proferred the assurances that the guidelines were kept at all times, the sources of advice seemed not be civil servants or lawyers but party political appointees such as a communications director. The committee will now take weeks to make up its mind and I do not expect a result until mid-April i.e. way after the Easter recess. To the principl charges, Johnson may well get away with the charge that he ‘knowingly’ misled Parliament as proving Johnson’s state of knowledge must be almost impossible. But on the charge of being ‘reckless’ then the committee would be on much stronger ground on the basis of written evidence already received and some of the revelations that came out of the committee hearings this afternoon.

Half way through the committee hearings and as expected, MPs needed to take a vote on the ‘Windsor’ agreement (a new protocol for Northern Ireland trade, post-Brexit) Labour voted with the government and there was a rebellion of 29 MPs, 22 Tories, all of the six Democratic Unionists MPs and one independent. So this was quite a small rebellion as the total number who support the ERG is about 34 MPs so it looks as though one third of them did not follow the ERG line to vote against the government but followed a fairly large number of MPs who abstained. Incidentally, as the attention of the political class was focused upon Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak chose today to release the details of his tax returns when the hope was that nobody would be watching i.e. a good day to bury bad news.

Today is the first day of Spring and it did not feel particularly spring-like as there was a bit of a blustery wind coupled with some pale sunshine. Nonetheless, one gets the feeling that the year is definitely ‘on the turn’ as the various flowering cherry trees are on the verge of bursting out all over. Meg and I were looking forward to what our local Waitrose staff call the ‘Tuesday morning glee club’ which is a fairly accurate description. We were delighted to meet up with two of our pre-pandemic friends in what is looking like a regular Tuesday morning fixture and we exchanged gossip on a variety of topics until it was time for us to do our little bits of shopping and then go on our way. When we got home, I ensure that Meg had her fair supply of food, drink and medicines before I changed into my Pilates gear and walked down into town. The class went as normal with only three class members altogether but we had a relaxation period at the end of our session as we typically do half way through and at the end of our six weekly group of lessons. Getting home in a blustery wind proved a little troublesome as I was manipulating a rucksack, my Pilates mat, my hat and two light bags of shopping but all’s well that ends well. When I got home I prepared my typical Tuesday lunch of fishcakes and quick-cook vegetables and then settled down for a newspaper read and a rest.

The Boris Johnson dossier has at last been published so now the battle lines are drawn for the mammoth committee meeting tomorrow afternoon. In the dossier there is an admission that Parliament was misled but the whole thrust of the Johnson defense is that this was not done knowingly or recklessly and that all his statements were made ‘in good faith’ It is also argued that he always followed the advice offered to him and to suggest otherwise is to impugn the integrity of anyone who advised him. As Johnson himself argues in his written evidence to the committee, published today, it was ‘unprecedented and absurd’ to claim that relying on assurances from ‘trusted advisers’ was ‘in some way reckless’. So the stage is well and truly set for a piece of remarkable political theatre which will occupy our TV screens for about four hours tomorrow afternoon, starting at 2.00pm. No doubt, each side is incredibly well rehearsed and all of the arguments are well known by now but will there be one damning moment of truth revealed tomorrow afternoon? We shall all have to wait and see.

The Johnson affair was totally outshadowed this morning by the Casey report into the Metropolitan Police, whose findings are about as damning as it is possible to be. Baroness Casey was appointed to review the force’s culture and standards after the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens, in 2021. During the course of her review, another Met officer, David Carrick, was convicted of a series of rapes, sexual offences and torture of women. The 363-page report condemns the force as institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic, referencing racist officers and staff, routine sexism, and ‘deep-seated’ homophobia. Some of particular findings of the canteen culture make one’s jaw drop. For example, a fridge which contained samples which were critical for the successful prosecution of rape cases was lost when the fridge was not maintained and the samples were effectively lost. In addition, some of the initiation rites described were enough to turn one’s stomach, such as urinating on new recruits as an initiation ceremony. Young female police cadets were regarded as fair game and as ‘easy conquests’ and hence hd to repel repated advances from fellow officers. Both the Commissioner of the police and also the Home Secretary though have distanced themselves from Baroness Casey’s view that the racism, sexism and homophobia were ‘institutionalised’ and the failure to accept this word may well mean that any root and branch reform of the Met is doomed from the start. The Met was also accused of institutionalised racism at the time of the Stephen Lawrence enquiry (black teenager killed by a white gang decades ago) so nothing much appears to have been learnt in the meantime.

Now that the meeting between Putin and Xi is over, the analysts are busy examining the sequelae of the meeting. The two leaders are both frustrated with America. Putin has felt betrayed by the US for a decade since NATO’s intervention in Libya. President Xi is fed up with America’s decades-long dominance of the world order and eager to replace it with something more congenial to China’s interests. But although there was a lot of carefully orchestrated bonhomie on show between the two leaders, there is now an acknowlegement that Putin is in effect a vassal state of China and that Xi undoubtedly holds all of the aces. There is some evidence that the Russians are seeking a supply of Chinese weapons but the Chinese are sitting on their hands at the moment, conscious that they have to play quite a careful political game, appearing to support Russia but not actually doing very much.

So Monday morning dawned as a generally gloomy day but we thought we would get ourselves up and breakfasted before we made any more explicit plans for the rest of the morning. Eventually, as it was inclined to drizzle, we decided to make the best of the morning and a little trip out by making a visit to our local Morrisons. This is a store that we used to frequent before the arrival of the Aldis of this world and it is still worth the occasional visit for the variety of produce and household goods on sale there. Once we made our way there, we bought a few food items that we know are not stocked in our normal shopping haunts and then came home to have some elevenses at home. It was soon time for the Politics show that is broadcast on BBC2 after midday and one of the items dominating the airways was the forthcoming appearance of Boris Johnson before the Privileges committee next Wednesday afternoon. Boris Johnson has submitted a dossier of evidence and I have heard stories that it is both 50 and also 500 pages long. Assuming it is 50 pages long, it is said to contain the text of various WhatsApp messages which appear to reinforce Johnson’s claim that he was acting ‘legally’ at the various parties that he undoubtedly attended. But this claim might not be all that it seems as the context of the WhatsApp message is significant. It has been mentioned that one of the messges indicated ‘the line to take’ which is scarcely the same as the strict adherence to the lockdown policy. The Committee of Privileges has said that it intends to publish the Johnson evidence in full but this has not been done so far and may not even happen until tomorrow. No doubt, members of the committee and perhaps even the lawyers advising them, will ensure that the document is well and truly perused before they contemplate releasing it to the public. Although Wednesday’s hearing will no doubt be compulsive viewing for many of us, it is predicted that the whole hearing which is televised live may well be 4-5 hours in length altogether. This is evidently going to be quite a marathon session for Johnson who will no doubt have his legal advisor (Lord Pannick) sitting by his side but the responsibility for answering the questions will be Johnson’s alone. One of the contributors to the BBC2 Politics progrmme this morning made the observation that Johnson is notoriously poor in mastering the details of a brief. It may well be that his, by now traditional, tactics of bluff and bluster may convince some of the committee for some of the time but in the course of a 4-5 hour examination by MPs which will be quite unlike the exchanges found across the floor of the House of Commons that Johnson may well make a crucial slip or, at least, display a lack of openness and integrity. In all probability, Wednesday may well be a bit of an anti-climax unless a real ‘smoking gun’ is revealed because the committee may well spent some weeks of discussion and wrangling before a decision emerges. There are three factors that may work to the eventual undoing of Boris Johnson. The first of these is that the committee may not wish that it is guilty of some kind of whitewash, particularly after it has published an interim report indicating that there may well have been four occasions when Johnson misled Parliament (whether intentionally or not remains a matter of conjecture) The second factor is that in the country as a whole, Rishi Sunak is generally reckoned to be doing a reasonable job having secured the Windsor agreement on the application of the Brexit conditions to Northern Ireland. By contrast, Boris Johnson’s star is fading and it is probably the case that apart from fervent supporters, he is losing support for his cause overall. The third factor is one of the mot interesting. This is that Rihi Sunk is going to allow Tory MPs a ‘free’ vote (i.e. unwhipped) which means that MPs can vote according to their conscience. This factor, along with the votes of all of the opposition parties, is likely to be the undoing of Johnson.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump appears to be in more than a spot of bother. It could well be, that as he warned his supporters the other day, he will be liable for arrest next Tuesday because of payments long denied to ex-pornstar with whom he may have had a brief fling – if that is the right word. Trump’s supporters have indicated that they might surround his residence to attempt to prevent any arrest being made. There is also news on the street that Trump supporters are arming themselves with the type of rifles that would enable them to shoot down any police helicopters that may be brought in to arrest the ex-President. In view of the mob that ran amok through the Capitol building about two years ago, this seemingly mad activity might yet come to pass. The legal authorities are still to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant and how it is to be served so the news from across the Atlantic may (literally) be explosive.

Today proved to be an interesting day for a variety of reasons. After listening to the obligatory Lorna Kuenssberg politics programme whilst having our Sunday morning breakfast on our knees (a Sunday morning ritual), we were in two minds about our Sunday morning excursion. One option was to prepare a flask of coffee and go the park if the weather was quite fine whereas the second option was to frequent Waitrose. Our dilemma was solved for us by a timely telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend inviting us to meet with him at Waitrose which invitation we readily accepted. Altogether we spent a couple of hours in each other’s company and one of the topics of conversation was to the extent to which languages with which we are familiar have words within them that are not susceptible to a ready translation whereas some other popular exressions may well be misinterpreted. The prime example of the former concept is the German word ‘schadenfreude’ whih is best rendered into English by the phrase ‘a malicious delight in other persons misfortune’. The second instance we heard on the TV the other day when the French president Macron met with Rishi Sunak and called him ‘mon cher ami’ A literal transation of this, word by word, would be ‘my dear friend’ which would apper to imply some degree of intimacy which should not be conveyed by the words. A good translator would translate ‘mon cher ami’ as ‘my good friend’ which could well be used by friends all over the world. And, of course, the example sprang to my mind when one of our former Spanish students asked us what the English equivaent was of the political concept ‘coup d’etat’ only be told that we use the French phrase in English as we do not have an exact equivalence. By the time we got home, it was all rather late to cook our chicken legs which I always prefer to be well-done to keep any potential salmonella infection at bay, so we raided the freezer for a quiche which we had instead with carrots glazed with honey and some broccoli.

After lunch, I sat and read the Sunday newspapers at my leisure but we had on in the background the classic film, Brief Encounter, shot in black and white in February, 1944 (i.e. before the end of WW2) but premiered in November after the war was over. Whilst I listened to the dialogue in the background, eventually I allowed myself to watch the last fifteen minutes which are emotionally intense and riveting. I think critics will argue for years about the characters and the scenarios captured within the film but I will admit that it is always worth watching from time to time, even if it has been seen before. We have a good prospect of natural history films, not to mention Rugby catchup, which is going to keep our attention until well on into the evening. One way or another, the Ireland vs. England match did not get recorded on our PVR yesterday afternoon so I will enjoy the summary a day later.

All eyes will be on Westminster on Wednesday afternoon when Boris Johnson will appear live before the Committee on Privileges. The interesting question is whether Boris Johnson, in David Cameron’s words, will eventually escape ‘like a greased piglet’. First of all, this committee has already, in an interim report, concluded that Johnson ‘probably’ misled the House of Commons i.e. lied. But Johnson is Houdini-like in his ability to escape from almost impossible political situations. He is likely to be helped by the fact that Sir David Pannick, a top lawyer funded by us, the taxpayers, has produced a large dossier with several counterclaims. The Sunday Times reported he will point to a series of previously undisclosed WhatsApp messages from senior civil servants and members of his No 10 team showing that he had relied upon their advice when he made his statements to Parliament. He will also publish messages which show that other senior figures in Downing Street believed the gatherings were covered by the ‘workplace exemption’ in the lockdown rules. By itself, this may be enough to allow Johnson to escape. An important actor is not whether Johnson misled the House of Commons (which he did) but whether he ‘knowingly’ misled and this is incrediby hard to prove. The committee may try to have it both ways by finding Johnon guilty, as it were, but by issuing sanctions which fall short of the expulsion for the number of days necessary to trigger a potential recall by the electorate. I still think that on the balance of probabilities, that this will be the most likely outcome.

We may be on the verge of another banking crisis. Credit Suisse is being taken over by UBS, another giant Swiss banking group, but given the inter-connectedness of the banking sector, one always gets the feeling that there are several other banks feeling the pressure but keeping their heads under the radar as it were. A number of small banks in the USA have already gone under but once a contagion starts and investors in banks panic, where does it all end? I fear that there is quite a lot more to this crisis that the authorities are desperately trying to contain.

Today was one of those days when we knew we did not have to dash out for anything in particular, so we each had a leisurely shower followed by our normal cooked breakfast. The weather looked gloomy and a little rainy so we decided that it might be a good idea to make a lighning visit into Droitwich to Wilko, my favourite hardware store. After we picked up our Saturday newspaper, we did make a trip into Droitwich and the fates must have been smiling upon me because the little tray/table that I knew that Wilko stocked and of which I needed to make use was in stock. So this was one of those occasions when Meg stayed in the car whilst I made a quick dash to get what I wanted from within the store and then it was a case of getting home amd having our somewhat delayed elevenses at home.
After this, I gave my newly acuired little tray/table a quick dab of polish and then installed it where I wanted it to be and it slotted into place exactly how I intended and wanted. We knew that today was going to be the final day of the 6-Nations rugby and the two critical matches were Wales against France during the afternoon and Ireland vs.England in the early evening. This latter match only starts at 5.00pm in the afternoon so we have decided that we would not even start to watch it but we would rely upon the PVR recording the match in its entirety and we will watch it when we get home after church. I had temporarily forgotten about the earlier Scotland vs. Italy match and after we had made our ourelves a pasta/ curry lunch, we thought we would watch the last 10 minutes of it. Italy were only five points behind Scotland and in the closing minute or so of the match, the Italians were only inches away from the try line. If they had scored a try under the posts and then made a simple conversion, this would have been the first match that Italy had won in the 6-Nations championship. After being awarded a series of penalties and then deploying the tactic of ‘tap and go’, the Ialians assaulted the Scots try line again and again but eventually a technical penalty went against them. From this, although the clock had gone over the 80 minutes but in Rugby, the match does not end until the ball goes out of play, we saw the spectacle of a Scotland breakaway try in which the backs and wingers ran the full length of the pitch and scored a try at the oher end. So the final score did not reflect how close the Italians had come to actually snatching their first victory. As I remember it, something rather similar happened in the Italy vs. France match as well.

As I flicking through the channels, I noticed that on BBC2 they were showing the film of Dr. Zhivago. Now alongside Amadeus, this is absolutely our favourite film of all time. I think we first saw it in about 1967 in Leicester Square in London so the film is now over a half cntury old but still compelling in its story telling, cinematography and the quality of the acting, not least from Omar Sharif, Julie Christie and Tonia Chapman as I remember them. So this is going to be a real treat for us to watch tomorrow afternoon. Before lunch, there was a ring on the doorbell and it was our friendly next door neighbour, just popping round to see how we were were doing. We have a long standing invitation for them to pop round for an afternoon tea but so far, things seem to have happened for both of us to get in the way of this happening. Our neigbour had one of his wife’s relatives staying with them for a few days, but we promised ourselves that as soon as their little engagement was over, we would both really try and find the time for our long planned cup of tea and a chat. Tomorrow, if the weather is as fine as it turned out to be this afternoon, Meg and I will make a visit to the park which has been a little neglected by us these days. If however, the weather is really wet and rainy, then we shall see our University of Birmingham friend in the Waitrose café as we often do on Sunday mornings. In the last few days, we have noticed that two sets of bloom can be witnessed. First in the hedgerows, there is plenty of white blossom of what I think is hawthorn but when I mentioned this to friends in Oxfordshire the other day, she thought that in that part of the world it was probably blackthorn. But there are several flowering cherries up and down the Kidderminster Road and this is really a sign to us that spring is well and truly on its way. Next weekend will see a combination of the clocks going back, the start of the lawn mowing season and my son’s birthday all of which almost coincide with each other. I must remind myself to get some freshly drawn petrol so that the lawnmover gets off to a trouble-free start as well.

Today we leapt up relatively bright and early even though we still felt a little tired after the journey of yesterday, but it was not a stressful one. As we had not done our normal weekly shopping yesterday, I went off and did it this morning. After this was unpacked, we cooked our breakfast and then received a mobile call confirming that we were due to meet our University of Birmingham friend in Waitrose at the usual time this morning. So we made our way there and sent a very happy hour or so, discussing amongst other things the contribution that radio has made to popular culture. There was a reason for this because our friend goes off to a French discussion class once a week and this week he had been designated to lead a discussion group, in French naturally, on this topic. Of course, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of any one medium historically but in discussion we did the best that we could. I suggested that one might start to address this topic by looking at the continuum that can be observed when we had a monolithic broadcaster and only a few channels to listen to (the early days of the BBC) whereas today we have a multiplicity of stations, methods of listening to them and massively divergent messages emanating from each. Then when we returned home, we cooked a bought fish pie complemented by some vegetables and cooked in the oven.

This morning as I did my weekly shop I bought some plums, shipped from I know not where, but evidently what the supermarkets tend to somewhat coyly declaim ‘Ripen in bowl’ which means that the fruit was picked unripe and they hope that within the passage of time and the absence of a cold store that they may, with a bit of luck, ripen sufficiently to be edible. To be honest, the plums were reasonably edible of the one we tested so the rest might turn out OK. When we were students, we rented a maisonnette on top of a row of modern shops, one of which was a Spa supermarket. Evidently, we did not have to go far to do our shopping but in those days, in the mid 1960’s, one used to await the very earliest potatoes of early spring which I think were sourced from Egypt. Then we progressed as the crops came to fruition first from the Canary Islands (off the coast of Africa) and then I think to Cornwall and the Scilly Isles and eventually these would give place to our own ‘First Earlies’. Of course, nowadays the potatoes are kept in a cold store, sprayed with a chemical to inhibit early sprouting (or ‘chitting’ if you were a gardener) before they are released on an all the year round basis. So being nostalgic, I did prefer the days when fruits and vegetables were only available in their own season and not all of the year round.

Some interesting news about the settlement of the NHS unions and the government have emerged today. Yesterday, the story was being put about that the whole deal would cost £2.5bn. But today Downing Street has admitted that the one-off payment offered to frontline workers on Thursday will cost £2.7bn, while the 5% pay rise will cost £1.3bn. It is also being said that a 3.5% pay increase had already been factored into the existing budget before a new deal was put to health unions, leaving ministers scrambling to find the rest. When asked where the money will come from, the PM’s spokesperson said ‘areas of underspending’ had been identified but I would expect that the NHS will squeezed to fund some of the settlement via so-called efficiency savings. As a result of the talks yesterday, the same model is being used in the teachers’ pay negotiations so it looks as though after weeks of refusing to come to the negotiating table, the government have already concluded that inflation is on the way down and therefore they can afford to actually start talking to the unions after some weeks of delay.

There is also news this afternoon that the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin on the grounds of the illegal transportation of Ukrainian children into Russia itself. It may be years, if at all, that Putin is ever brought to trial but there are some practical implications. The most important impact of the warrant is that Putin could, in theory, be arrested as soon as he leaves Russia, although countrries to which he travels may be reluctant to actually hand him over. No doubt, the ICC is hopeful that the issue of a warrant and therefore the labelling of Putin as an international criminal may be a litte lever to assist the Russian people in ejecting him as President. But given the hold of the media and the absence of meaningful ‘normal’ opposition to Putin, such a hope may be a vain one. The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, is to visit Moscow shortly but as China does not recognise the ICC, then this warrant will not trouble the Chinese in any negotiations they have with the Russians. So far the Chinese have supported the Russians but it is possible that their support may wear a little thin.

Today was a day to which we had been looking forward for some time because we were scheduled to visit our close friends in South Oxfordshire for a lunch time appointment. We picked up our newspaper and then made steady progress along the M40 and A34 towards the point at which we pick up the road tht runs close by our friends. But then I missed the ring road link around Oxford which always a little tricky to negotiate. So then we had to have recourse to our SatNav and finished off with a detour around Dicott until the SatNav route coincided with one that we already knew. So we were not delayed by much either in terms of miles driven or time elapsed but only our coffee break was a little delayed and was taken only a few miles short of our destination. Our friends were as friendly and welcoming as always and we had a wonderful meal of chicken. But the thing which is always interesting to observe is that friends live in an area where some red kites are often to be seen. They have quite a large conservatory built onto their farm house and as well as being delightfully restful, it is always possible to observe the local wildlife. So after each meal, the left over bones are left out on a bird-table and the sharp eyed red kites note this and then swoop down with unerring precision to avail themselves of the bones with hardly a pause in their trajectory. After a wonderful lunch and chat, it was reluctantly time for us to start our journey home but our friends very kindly donated to us a couple of lanyards for which we will now have a use. In the course of our post-prandial chat, it emerged that our friend had written a biography of his own father and I was lent a loan copy of the book. This I am sure I will find fascinating because I already know a fair bit about my friend’s interesting life but his father was (literally) a ‘closed book’ until now. Whilst on the subject of artificial intelliegence, our friend demonstrated the use of his Google smart speaker. I have never used one of these before but my friend let me have a go. I asked for the salient features of Wittgenstein’s philosophy only be told that, regretfully, the system could not understand my question. The journey home was uneventful and fairly straightforward apart from the fact that half way through the journey, the rains started and this intensified as we proceeded northwards. We arrived in Bromsgrove almost on the dot of 6.00pm and it was really raining hard when we got home. Nonetheless, our arrival home was greeted by one bedraggled Miggles (neighbourhood cat who has adopted us) and who no doubt thought that a lttle titbit might be forthcoming.

As we drove home, we heard the news on the BBC4 PM programme that a settlement had been reached with the health service unions. The offer consists of a one-off payment of 2% of their salary plus a COVID recovery bonus of 4% for the current financial year 2022/23, and a 5% pay increase for 2023/24. It will apply to key NHS workers including nurses and paramedics but not junior doctors, who are involved in a separate dispute over pay and conditions. From the government point of view,framing the offer of a one-off payment has the advantage of ths sum not being consolidated into the worker’s basic pensionable pay. It also means that it is possible to disguise what has actually been paid in settlement of this year and therefore allows the government a certain degree of face saving. But tonight, on the Channel 4 news, we learnt that a settlement had been agreed between the Department of Health (as quasi-employers) and the unions. On the other hand, it has emerged that despite the fact that HM Treasury was present throughout the negotiations, they have not agreed to fund the £2.5 million that this will cost. There is some talk that the NHS itself might be asked to cough up some of the money (even though it cannot be afforded) but it is also possible that the Treasury may be able to fund some of the bill from ‘departmental underspends’ at the end of the current financial year. This does rather sound like the Treasury equivalent of finding some money that has fallen down the back of the sofa but the fact that a settlement has been agreed at all cannot be unrelated to the fact that we had a national budget yesterday. Sky News reports that the walkouts in the NHS have also created a very specific political problem for the prime minister who has made reducing waiting lists one of his five key pledges – a target he will not be able to hit whilst workers are on the picket line. So, it is no surprise that this is the area that has been the focus of the most intense negotiations. There is also the prospect that a similar deal can be negotiated with other groups of workers such as teachers and, in the fullness of time, striking junior hospital doctors who are just ending their three day strike the impact of which must have been traumatic.

Today was the day before we made our little trip down to Oxfordshire tomorrow so we picked up our newspaper and then called in at Waitrose to take along one or two little offerings for our friends. We settled upon a bottle of liquid sunshine and some interesting succulents in a very original (heart-shaped) container. Then we journeyed on to the park where we were determined not to stay too long, even though the weather was not particularly unpleasant. We stayed on our usual bench just long enough to have a swift cup of coffee from our flask and then immediately struck for home. We know that today was Questions to the Prime Minister immediately followed by the Budget statement so we ensured that we were sitting in our places, warmed by a cup of chicken noodle soup, before proceedings kicked off at 12.00. PMQ was fairly unexceptional with the usual knock-about with the sequelae of the Gary Lineker affair still rumbling on. The Budget statement had been well trailed and so did not contain many surprises as the provisions for extra support with child care costs had been by and large released to the media for a day or so now. In years gone by, it used to be the case that the Budget was kept well and truly under wraps until it was delivered on Budget day. But a practice seems to have grown up over the years whereby any news that was considered to be ‘good’ is comprehensively leaked a day or so beforehand. I suspect that all of this is part of a deliberate strategy to make a budget more attractive by making the same announcement in effect more than once so that the government can get the credit several times over. One of the features of Budget day is that a very full and detailed document, full of graphs, diagrams and statistical tables, is made available online as soon as the Chancellor of the Exchequeur gets on his feet and starts to deliver the Budget. There are some MPs, and an army of other analysts, who are well used to burrowing away into the ‘small print’ and the fine detail of Budget statements and there are often little time bombs ticking away that somehow did not get included in the full speech delivered to Parliament. Sometimes this news can take hours, or even days, to trickle out when MPs and others have had the chance to read and digest the full import of the Budget statement. For example, the Chancellor had made great play of some of the measure deployed to get people back ino work. But the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) has published figures that show that over five years, some 110,000 people may be encouraged to rejoin the labour force. But given the amunts of money that are to be spent, this policy may prove to be a case of spending quite a lot to achieve only a little and there may well be similar instances of this type that get slowly revealed. As you might expect, there was one provision which is already exciting some attention. By abolishing the limit on the size of pension pots (the current limit being £1 million!), then there will certainly be a benefit to quite well paid hospital consultants. On the other hand, the extremely wealthy will benefit enormously from this as the numbers of people who can accrue more than £1 million in their private pension pots must be extremely small.

Meanwhile, there are some economic storm clouds that are gathering as a result of the failure of the American bank, Silicon Valley Bank. It looks as though a certain amount of contagion is spreading across the Atlntic already. The FTSE 100 and other major European stock markets have taken a beating as concern over the health of US banks crosses the Atlantic. London’s blue chip index lost £75bn in combined market value by the close after suffering its deepest fall, on a points basis, since the early days of the COVID crisis. One would hope that our banking system should be sufficiently resilient to withstand these shocks, but we can never be quite sure given the interconnectedness of financial institutions these days.

I see from a display stand in the newsagents that next Sunday is the day when the nation is to celebrate ‘Mothers Day’. Over the years, I have thought that the whole impetus behind this day was largely driven by an unholy alliance of greetings card manufacturers, chocolate makers and florists. However, if I think back to my childhood in the 1950’s, we lived in a largely uncommercial environment but our primary schools encouraged us to make our own Mother’s Day cards. Also we were encouraged, particularly if we lived in or near the countryside, to pluck some early spring flowers (if there are any) and to make a small bouquet and this I am sure we did. Towards the end of the month, though, we have the Eastertime sporting events which tells us that the year has turned. I think that on very rare occasions, it was quite possible for the Boat Race and the Grand National to fall on the same day but this a pretty rare occurence.