It really was quite bitterly cold when I got up this morning, but nonetheless I thought I still persist in my usal routine of walking down early to collect the Sunday newspaper. I did take the precaution of wearing at least two jumpers and an extra pair of socks and I put on my boots rather than my usual walking shoes. When I got back, it was time for the Laura Kuennsberg politics show which was focused almost entirely on the ‘Online Safety Bill’ which is being introduced back into Parliament tomorrow, having been several years in the drafting. The bill is likely to have a rocky passage through both the Commons and the Lords because some of its provisions smack of censorship and are bitterly opposed by the libertarian lobby whilst others feel that provisions that have been dropped to make internet companies responsible for ‘harmful but not illegal’ have certainly weakened the bill as a whole. So, we shall have to see how this bill progresses and whether it will prove to be a toothless tiger.

Meg stayed in bed whilst I was getting the newspapers this morning and slept in somewhat so the rest of our morning was a bit delayed. Whilst Meg was eating her breakfast in front of the TV, I was busy trying to stitch together some music .mp3 files into a composite whole. I had prevously downloaded some bits of Mozart piano sonatas which I assumed would play as a group once I had the files highlighted and put in the direction of the Mac’s Music Player but for some reason, the list of files stopped playing after the first. I tried two online resources that advertised that they would ‘stitch’ together .mp3 files into a composite whole and both of these appeared to fail (i.e. they did produce a composite file which did not actually play). But my efforts were rewarded with the third source that I chose so I now have achieved what I wanted, which was a continuous play of the sonatas. We then pressed ahead with cooking the Sunday lunch of gammon, cavolo nero and baked potato and settled down for what I thought might be quite an entertaining afternoon. I had seen a 1940’s film advertised which was ‘The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp‘ and we thought that this might be quite entertaining – in the event, it was completely ‘missable’ and we abandoned the TV altogether and had a search for some films tht we could watch during the afternoon. I should add that most of the population are in effect waiting for the England v. Senegal match which starts at 7.00pm this evening (and where I have some foreboundings that England might be dumped out by a more innovative style of play)

This afternoon, we have been watching some clips from the ‘Yes, Prime Minister‘ series which is still funny despite being made years ago. There is a story that many of the episodes which are the most memorable for this series have more than element of truth about them. Apparently Marcia Williams, later Lady Falkender and another policy wonk whose name I have forgotten used to meet with the scriptwriters over a liquid lunch each Monday morning. The guts of the story having been communicated to the scriptwriters, they then wove a story around them and the rest is history. One of the most famous, of course, is when there was a visit to a middle eastern country where alcohol was banned – but the civil servants kept a secret supply of ‘hooch’ hidden away in the outer office. When the occasion demanded, they would burst in on the British minister explaining that the Russian Ambassador wanted an urgent interview – a Mr. Smirnoff. Another favourite was to say that an aide-de-camp sought an urgent interview with the Prime Minister and when asked about his name, the PM was told that a Mr. Walker, a Mr. Johnny Walker (or additionally, A Mr. Gordon) was available outside the office.

We learn from the weather forecasters that there is going to be a sharp drop in the temperature next week with cold blasts of about -8 degrees in the middle of the week. I must say that I am not looking forward to this with a great deal of enthusiasm but if the temperature falls to this low level, then it might be too cold to snow which is a sort of bonus. Of course, we have had cold winters before and I remember 1963 because at that time I was travelling on a scooter between Leeds and Boston Spa (near Wetherby) and came off my bike almost everyday. In fact, one got quite used to sliding down the road and then picking up the pieces and proceeding on my way. The first house that Meg and I bought was a terrace house in Fallowfield, Manchester and that had no central heating but we did have a sort of coke stove in the kitchen downstairs and, I think, a couple of gas fires downstairs. The upstairs bedrooms had no central heating at all but we did have a stone hot bottle which regularly dropped out of bed in the middle of the night, waking us both up.

Today as soon as we woke up, we realised that the weather had drifted somewhat colder, so we had to ensure that we had lots of warm clothing to face the day. We picked up the newspaper and then made our way to the park, wondering whether it was too cold to actually sit down. On our perambulation through the park, we met with some of our park friends we had not seen for a few weeks and we chatted about her neighbour who we both knew. The neighbour had been widowed just before the pandemic struck and we went along to the funeral of her husband to whom we tried to give some advice and consolation about the cancer which killed him all too quickly. Anyway, the neighbour had met a soulmate in the golf club which she attended regularly and despite the 16 year difference in their ages, we were informed that they were to be married in the spring. We carried on our way and eventually decided to brave the park bench but it was decidedly cold so we kept our sit on the bench to a minimum, gulping down our coffee and then walking quite rapidly to seek the comfort of the car. As soon as we got in, we made ourselves a ‘cuppa soup’ of some packet soup we already had in stock and this was very welcome and filled a gap before lunch.

Just before lunch, I made contact with the Bank with whom we are having dealings and (eventually) got through to a person who was quite helpful and who promised to send me a link to submit the documents that the Bank still needed. No email arrived which I thought was suspicious but we broke off to have a lunch of largely curried vegetables (well, my mixture of onions. tomatoes, peppers and petit pois) served on a bed of low-calorie rice. Once I had a hot lunch out of the way, it was back on the phone to the Bank to enquire why the promised email failed to arrive. After negotiating all of the security protocols once again, eventually I got through to a person who after some serching located my details and it became evident why the promised email had failed to arrive as a mistake had been made in the email details I had supplied to them. So whilst I was on the phone, I checked that the email had now arrived and, fortunately, it was quite a simple job to upload the various documents that were still needed. Then they had to be electronically signed and all seemed to be safely transmitted. I also sent an email to our contact in the bank, telling her what documents had been submitted and that we were loooking forward to our forthcoming appointment in the middle of next week.

After getting all of this necessary task completed, I thought I would treat myself to watching the second half of the USA vs. Netherlands match in the World Cup. I tuned in one minute before the end of the first half and said to Meg that I would watch until the end of extra time before I made a cup of tea as things ‘often happened’ the the last minute or so of a half on a football match. There happened to be one minute of extra time and about 45 secods of the way through it, as I thought might happen, the Netherlands scored a second goal, doubling their lead. I then thought I would watch the whole of the second half, knowing that the USA would have to score three times to win. In practice, the USA did get one goal back after the Netherlands had played a little dangerously but then the Netherlands scored a third goal and that sealed the fate of the Americans (I am pleased to say)

We hear tonight that the footballing legend, Pele, is in hospital after the chemotherapy he was having to combat colon cancer was failing to have much more effect. Although he reports that he is feeling strong, nonetheless it looks as though he will now be receiving end-of-life palliative care in a Brazilian hospital. He is receiving good wishes from all over the world, including the English captain (and, no doubt, many others) This reminds of me of a story that I read in a book called ‘Great Footballing Anecdotes’ which was being remaindered in a local bookshop. In a local football match, one player received a blow to the head and was being treated by the side of the pitch with about two minutes left to play. The manager was desperate to get the player back on the pitch to either win or save the match and urged the trainer to get the player back on the field. The trainer replied that the player had only just recovered consciousness and didn’t know who he was, to which the manager had responded by saying ‘Tell him that he’s Pele and get him back on the pitch‘ To true footballing fans, Messi has just appeared in his 1,000th game and won the game for Argentina (against Australia) with what is being descibed as a moment of true magic.

So here we are at the end of the week with a typically gloomy day – the weather was best described as ‘raw’ in that it was cold with a bit of a damp edge to it to add a little bit of extra discomfort. As I was getting ready this morning, the telephone rang and it was the service engineer who had come to attend to the flashing lights on our Biodisk, which normally indicates a fault on the system. The service engineer who called round, though, was unsure how the electrical control panel worked so he was managed to indicate that the mechanical bits of the system seemed to be working correctly but he was not sufficiently knowledgeable or trained to deal with an electrical malfunction. We encouraged the service engineer to photograph and then consult with his base for technical support but to no avail. At the end of all this, and despite the gratefully accepted mug of tea, it was concluded that the servicing company had better send around someone who did know how their own unit worked (and which we assumed was all covered by our maintenance contract) So the day did not get off to the best of starts. Meg and I eventually made it to the park and we had prepared some elevenses which we consumed on the park bench, once it had been suitably dried off. We did not stay too long as it was getting a little cold and miserable but we did bump into some of our church friends and spent a few moments chatting, until the damp cold encouraged us all to move on. Once we got home, we had a meal of sea bass served on a bed of salad and then settled down for some afternoon jobs.

This afternoon proved to be one of those frustrating ones, as it turned out. I needed to gather some documents together before a visit to a bank which my son and I are due to make next week. One of the documents entailed a visit to the Teachers Pension Agency which required an email (OK) and a password (now forgotten) Several attempts to use it and then use these credentials led to the website locking out with a ‘website error – please contact us’ So this then involved a telephone call, going through several protocols to establish credentials and so on, just to get a link to reset the password. But after a frustrating hour (it seemed a lot longer) we got the link we needed and therefore the document we needed so now we all have all that is required. However, the last time we did this, the bank’s own upload facility was about as friendly as a cornered rat and we succeeded in doing this by hook or by crook but need to make to do it once again before we meet face-to-face.

Last night’s football was incredible (as was todays) It was the last matches to be played in the ‘group’ round where only the first two of the four teams go through. Germany was playing Costa Rica whilst Spain were playing Japan and, at one stage, about ten minutes before the end of both matches, it looked as though both Japan and Costa Rice would go through. In the event, Japan beat Spain who failed to equalise but they still both qualified as the ‘top two’ whereas Germany beat Costa Rica but neither of them made it out of the group stage. Whether one got through this round was often dependent not just one’s own game but what was happening in the other game, being played at the same time. Germany felt particularly robbed after an incident where a ball in the Japan v Spain appeared to all of the naked eye observations as if it was over the dead ball line. But apparently the technicalitie are such that of the VAR can prove that the finest sliver of a ball’s curvature is judged to be not over the the line, then the ball is judged to be ‘in’ and this proved to be critical. The last few minutes of both games proved to be so exciting that we were flicking backwards and forwards across the two matches to see if a last gasp goal was possible (which it often is when both teams are playing their hearts out to score/prevent a goal). We had similar histrionics this afternoon when Uruguy were beaten by South Korea who now progress to the knockout stage. In summary, we are witnessing a situation in which long established, often European, teams are being defeated by Asian up and coming footballing nations. Hence we see Germany, Belgium, Portugal out of the competition, their places taken by the likes of Japan and South Korea. The other massive talking point is the role of VAR which is now causing as many problems as it appeared to solve. We are arriving at a situation such as the infamous Japan ball (in the ball ‘may’ or ‘may not’ have been judged to have crossed the deadball line) that would have been called ‘out’ by 99% of referees, linesmen and casual observers is now being being ruled ‘in’ with devastating consequences. But it does make the whole of World Cup both interesting and unpredictable.

Last night and first thing this morning, I decided to align the tuning on two DAB radios and our new music centre. I preset 10 stations on each radio with four national BBC stations, two local BBC stations, two music stations and finally two talk stations. I have been meaning to try out one of these talk stations (‘Times Radio‘) for some time now and spent a few interesting minutes listening to some discussions of the issues of the day whilst I was waiting for Meg to get herself ready.

Today is my shopping day and I get to the supermarket front door about 30 seconds before it opens which is fine. After my ‘normal’ food shopping, I always allow myself the luxury of a little trip up and down the famed ‘middle aisle’ of Aldi which features a variety of household and other goods not immediately associated with supermarkets. Last week, I was tempted to buy Meg a spare pair of pyjamas and this week, as they were on special offer, I treated myself to a pair of men’s pyjamas. Having said this, I had to hunt through a pile of stuff to find a pair (the only pair?) of the appropriate size. After the shopping and as I am in that part of town, I return via the newsagent to pick up my copy of ‘The Times‘. On the front page, there was a photograph of the singer/songwriter Christine McVie not particularly well known to me who had died yesterday and worthy of the front page of the newspaper. The newsagent’s wife informed me that she used to meet with her quite often when she visited the restaurant they use to run in California – so it is a small world. Then it was a case of getting home and a slow unpack, after which we made our normal trip to the park. We had our elevenses sitting on a park bench which was raw but not bitterly cold but did not tarry too long as we knew we had to be home in time for our hairdressing appointments. As this was at 12.00pm, I busied myself getting some of the loudspeakers attached (occasionally) to my laptop to receive some attention. For a start, I was not sure which speaker was ‘left’ and which was ‘right’ so needed to access a program on the web which allows you to access a test to ascertain which is which. I had got my units the ‘wrong’ way round and so this necessitated some reorganisation of the cabling involved to make sure that everthing would stretch to where it was intended. Having got my speakers in the right position, I was then able to access some tests which are designed to make sure that things are set up correctly. Whilst I was doing all of this, I bookmarked the sources for the speaker tests so I know where I can find them and copied the whole of the Bach folder from my pendrive onto a 128Gb flash memory drive which was only about 50% full. The memory manufacturer, Sandisk, sell some of these little ‘thumb’ drives that fit into a USB port and which only project 7mm from the edge of the computer. As such they can be left in place and act as a useful additional memory source for laptops. So all of this means that whilst I use the computer, I can now have a gentle ‘flow’ of Bach playing in the background whilst I write or email.

As the hairdressing for both of us rather got in the way of our normal lunch times, by the time we had both been done we were feeling pretty hungry and in need of a quickly prepared lunch. We tend to always have a tin of chicken and a tin of steak in our pantry that we can rustle up a quick meal on occasions such as this. So we made a meal in little more than 5 minutes by adding our (heated) tin of chicken to some instant rice supplemented by some microwaved petit pois. After lunch, I spent some time putting to rights the parts of furniture disturbed whilst I was adjusting the cabling to the loudspeakers. As I was doing this, Meg popped round to see our next door neighbours to return some little dishes in which they had treated us to some spare desserts (cherry pie and custard as I remember it). I followed Meg to next door and we learnt the sad news that there had been a death in their family as one of their in-laws had succumbed to cancer. The death was not unexpected and in some ways was a blessed relese but it did explain why our next door neighbour’s house looked a bit ‘closed down’ in the last day or so. When we returned home, we tuned into the closing minutes of the Croatia vs. Belgium World Cup match. As the score finished 0-0 at the end of the day and despite the frantic attacks that the Belgians made upon the Croatian goal, Belgium did not survive to enter the knockout stage. As they are the team ranked as No. 2 in the World, this is a considerable blow to them and, as you can imagine, the Belgian players were utterly ditraught at the end of the game, although it must be said that they missed several chances fronm which they could have scored.

Last night, I remembered how I used to play music on an pendrive through my little portable – it was just a case of connecting up the speakers and inserting the pendrive into a ‘spare’ USB port. The trouble is that although I have a variety of little USB extenders they are always a little messy and I try to avoid too many things hanging off the computer at once. Still, my newly rediscovered pendrive with 60+ Bach tracks on it was recognised by the computer (not always the case) and I can now play Bach as loudly I like in this corner of the room. This is unlikely to happen often but it does complement the adjacent DAB+ radio as well as the Boombox so in this corner of the room I have the choice of four input sources (radio, CD, Bluetooth and now a USB pendrive)

This morning our domestic help arrived and, as always, we seem to have a lot of family news to impart to each other. She arrived fairly early in order to leave promptly so that could take her husband for a medical appointment and we evidently wished them both well. After that I urgently needed to get my accounts up to date, something I like to do as soon as my pensions are paid into in the middle of the month but a little delayed this month. This delayed us somewhat so we stayed in to watch Prime Minister’s Questions which is a bit of a Wednesday morning routine and then we set off to collect our newspaper and just have a quick tour of the park minus elevenses that we had already had. So it has been one of those days when we have been a bit like a dog chasing its own tail as we overslept a little this morning and his has rather put pressure upon the rest of the day. We returned home for a lunch of quiche and then a quiet afternoon. We decided to forego a bit of TV watching this afternoon in order to enjoy some of the CDs which we have recently rediscovered and this little experiment worked out well for us as well as I found that I could do some routine emails whilst listening to music in the background.

The World Cup football which I vowed to boycott might become somewhat more interesting in the days ahead. Last night was the England versus Wales and it had all the elements of a boxing match. After a few rounds of ‘softening up’ i.e. the whole of he first half, two ‘killer punches’ came quite early on the second half when two goals were scored in very quick succession with a third goal somewhat later (and almost a fourth towards the end). So England have won their round and then go into the last 16 to meet Senegal who are a bit of an unknown quantity to the England team. I think that one can expect surprises as happened in the France v. Tunisia game where Tunisia expectedly (and controversially after a late VAR decision) beat France 1-0. Whilst, no doubt, many England supporters may mistakenly believe that Senegal is a walkover, I would not be astonished if England were to come a real cropper. Afer all, we have a clash beteen European football styles (slow patient build up) versus a much more adventurous and free-flowing African style of football. On Sunday, we shall see which style prevails.

Prince William’s godmother Lady Susan Hussey resigns from palace duties after asking black visitor about her origins. Lady Susan Hussey, 83, quit after asking Ngozi Fulani, chief executive of Sistah Space, where she ‘really came from’ during a reception at the palace on Tuesday. What is extraordinary about this story is that we have a very detailed, not to say practically verbatim account, of the questionning and answer. Lady Hussey was forced to resign on the spot and to offer an immediate and fulsome not to say abject apology but Buckingham Palace have acted with the necessary degree of rapidity. This story has a certain degree of ‘backwash’ as the several (black) invitees were made to feel uncomfortable and not as genuine ‘guests’ at the reception. Additionally, it tends to add a layer of credence to all of the complaints that Meghan Markle used to make of the Buckingham Palace hierarchy and one suspects that this story will cause the monarchy a degree of harm.

We are in for a few days of quite cold weather over the next few days as really cold air is being sucked in from the Artic. As a strategy, I am trying to get into the habit of wearing a thin layer of clothing (a thin jumper) before a heavier one. The same policy is being applied to feet (two pairs of socks) and I am encouraging Meg to wear multiple layers as well. I am sure the Scandinavians have been doing this for decades and, of course, the trapped layers of air between inner and outer garments is a wonderful insulator. Gloves are also coming to play because although I dislike wearing gloves, I dislike the cracks in my fingers even more if I do not wear them.

Last night, as I now have a perfectly functioning little music system in our kitchen (useful when I have to do a lot of food preparation and/or cooking, let alone eating) I decided to turn my attention to our main living room. Here when I surveyed a little bookcase that we have underneath a window, I realised that we were still storing a clutch of operas recorded on VHS for which we have absolutely no use as we do not have the technology to play these upon, so they were just occupying some valuable shelf space. Once the shelf was cleared, I found that it would just neatly accomodate the Boombox (CD player with integrated radio) I had acquired recently and was very impressed by its sound quality. A few experiments, though, revealed that although the Boombox plays CDs beautifully and in the kitchen the FM radio could pick up and play our three favourite radio stations (including ClassicFM), this was not the case for the lounge. Here, the unit could pick up and play ClassicFM, the little inbuilt aerial for FM could not pick up either Radio 3 or Radio 4 in this particular location. I was not too distressed by this, however, as the Boombox plays both CDs and the 200 classical tracks from my old iPhone and I only paid £15 for it about a month ago in any case. I then relocated a DAB radio which I had purchased over four years ago and scarecely used – there was a type of logic behind all of this as after a serious operation some four and a half years ago, I imagined that I would spend a lot of time recuperating in the garden and I would probably value the companionship of a portable DAB radio. But I made a much more rapid recovery than anticipated and hence the radio was underutilised. Now, though, I am bringing it into much more constant use as I can use it together with the BoomBox as a ‘de facto’ little music centre, located at the other end of the lounge to our main HiFi system and the TV. Also, the little bookcase contains some boxed sets of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart (the latter a collection of some 40 CDs) so we not only have another little music centre but also all of the music that we would want to play in a proximate location. To finish off this little reconfiguration of our audio within the household and did a little hunting around and found a pendrive (USB stick) which I had just labelled ‘Bach’. When I examined it on the computer, I think there are about 60+ tracks which I think is the equivalent of about three or four music CDs. I then tried this out on our new little Panasonic music centre in the kitchen and found that it played this beautifully. So this wonderful little system, can now play music from four sources (the DAB+ radio itself, the CD unit, Bluetooth from wherever (my old iPhone) and now a pendrive. So this makes this little sysem incredibly versatile. Now that I have rabbited on so much about all of this audio, I suspect that I won’t mention it again – once you have little systems set up that functioning well and need no further enhancement or improvement, you can just forget all about them)

Meg and I went down to Waitrose this morning where, quite unusually, we only bumped into one of our usual Tuesday morning crowd. Undeterred, we had our midday coffee, did a little shopping and then made for home so tht I could get ready for my Pilates class later on in the day. When I walked down into town, I bumped into our Italian friend with whom I chatted for a brief 4-5 minutes and then passed one of our Irish friends and then later on passed some of our older Irish friends, to all of whom I could only make a quick ‘Hello and Goodbye’ as I did not want to be delayed for my Pilates class. The class contained the usual five members including myself but one of our number is a regular horse rider and had experienced quite a disturbing, not to say frightening, incident the day before. She had been out riding when a dog let off its lead shot in front of the horse and barked its head off – the horse took fright and bolted, with my classmate hanging on for dear life until it had calmed down from its gallop to escape. I asked her how long she had been hanging on and she replied that it was for about a mile! Fortunately, she had not fallen off but was a little sore in various places having been astride a bolting horse and I think may have been experiencing a little delayed shock. We all expressed our concern and relief that she had not been injured but had come of this little incident completely unharmed. After that, it was return to home, a lunch of fishcakes and ‘instant’ vegetables and a quiet afternoon waiting for the all important England-Wales match in the World Cup this evening.

Today seemed pretty cold when we woke up and got ourselves going so it was one of those days when an extra jumper went on at the start of the day. After breakfast, I took a few minutes to tune the DAB on our newly installed music centre into Radio 3. Some radios make the tuning process very easy but this one does not – however, once you have pressed the appropriate buttons and got the station that you desired, it is then not too difficult to put it into your list of favourites. The left and right double arrow keypad key then sends you backwards or forwards through your pre-selects which is as simple as it could be. The fact that this is not really explained in the sparse instructions in the manual but is something that you discover after a few days of use is something that is a joy to discover. After we had picked up our newspaper, we called in at Waitrose because we needed to pick up some supplies and then we made our way to the park. It was quite a fine morning although fairly sharp and cold. As usual, the bench which is our favourite was deserted but we do come supplied with a variety of sponges, kitchen paper and the oldest of old tea towels which we use to wipe the bench dry so that we can sit down on it. We never really expect to see many people in the park on a Monday and,indeed, we had to get our skates on because I had a dental appointment at the rather awkward time of 1.30. After we had got home and had another hot drink, I got busy preparing a ‘quick’ lunch so we could have this in plenty of time and then get washed up before I departed for the dentist. The visit to the dentist was actually in two parts and the first one was a visit to the hygienist. This all went well and I got seen the minute that I arrived. After this treatment, I was then going to have a permanent crown replace the temprary crown affixed some three weeks beforehand. For this, I had to wait about 40-45 minutes and I even got up from seat in the waiting room to enquire whether or not I had been forgotten in the system but it was just a case of running late. The actual procedure of affixing the new and permanent crown only took some 5-10 minutes and I soon returned home after the procedure.

There are all kinds of ‘off-the-ball’ events surrounding the current World Cup, of the sort that one has never seen before nor expect to be seen. One of the latest is that the USA have taken the Iranian flag and ‘doctored’ the image so that the emblem of the Iranian Republic is actually removed from the flag before it was posted on social media. The Iranians are incensed (as any other nation be, I imagine, if the image of their national flag is altered). They are demmanding that the USA be kicked out of the World Cup or subject to a 10-match suspension which is a penalty laid down in FIFA regulations. Evidently, FIFA will not act in any meaningful way against the USA (which I am sure it would against a small struggling third world country who particiapated in flag desecretion) I am just left open-mouthed at the arrogance of the Americans, who feel that they can perform actions like this with impunity.

A much more significant and serious story concerns the current actions of the Chinese authorities who are trying to stem the most recent outbreaks of COVID-19. The Chinese have practiced a policy of ‘total lockdown’ whenever and wherever an outbreak of COVID-19 is identified. The population in several parts of China is starting to react very strongly against this policy and protests were to be found in several Chinese cities where the crowds were chanting ‘Down with the Chinese Communist Party’ as well as ‘Down with Xi Jinping’ These are the greatest protests since the time of Tiananmen Square in 1989. I had not fully appreciated that the vaccines that have been developed in China do not work particularly well and that levels of vaccinations in the society as a whole are below the comparable figures we have achieved in Western Europe. This then means that the level of immunity in Chinese society also fails to match those in comparable western societies – of course they could import ‘better’ vaccines from the West but of course the Chinese, for political and ideological reasons, would never go down this route. Meanwhile, many in China have watched the World Cup on TV and wonder why the rest of the world is getting on with life, gathering unmasked in large stadiums, while they risk being locked in their homes at short notice or having their businesses shut down and unable to trade. The Chinese are even showing the World Cup with censored images of crowd scenes so that the Chinese viewers do not see unmasked crowds enjoying the football as otherwise, the population may ask serious questions of the ruling Communist Party.

Today being Sunday was a day upon which I leapt out of bed fairly early and then walked down into town in order to pick up my Sunday newspaper. As I walked down into town, I was turning over in my mind why my newly acquired little mini hifi system which I have recently brought into use in our kitchen seemed to give such high quality sound. One little thing that I did last night was to tidy up the masking tape which held the aerial in place and the whole thing now looks quite neat. But listening quite a lot to ClassicFM I am very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sound I am experiencing. Thinking about this and pushing aside completely subjective factors for the moment, I suppose the quality of the sound in a system must be a combination of the design and quality of the individual components in which the loudspeakers are critical and the quality and positioning of the aerial/antenna. I then noticed that the front of the unit referred to DAB+ so I did a bit of research to discover what the ‘+’ element stands for. I now appreciate that DAB has evolved over the years since its introduction in the 1990’s and DAB+ ought to deliver more stations and of higher quality than its predecessor. I wondered how many broadcasters are actually transmitting in DAB+ mode and I think that some of the bigger players are not in the market such as the BBC and ClassicFM itself. I suppose that the broadcasters are nervous about cutting out part of their market as many of their audience may only have the older version of their technology, including myself. As I purchased the Pure DAB radios that I do have, this was on average about ten years ago and only radios purchased within the last year or so will be DAB+ radios. So one of my initial hypotheses about why I should be getting the sound quality that I have on my new hifi system bit the dust as ClassicFM is not transmitting in DAB+ mode insofar as I can tell. But just to satisfy my curiosity, I found a website that aggregates evaluations of my little Panasonic system and I noticed that about 60% of nearly 300 customer reviews all specifically mentioned the quality of the sound produced by the system. The terms ‘excellent’ and ‘amazing’ were very prominent, so it is not just my own subjective opnion that the system produces a quality sound. Many people seem to have purchased this system not as their ‘main’ hifi system but as a smaller unit which is ideal for a teenager’s bedroom, a kitchen, a conservatory or even a garage. One or two brave souls even mentioned that they were so delighted with the system they were going to purchase a second one to utilise in another part of their house.

The footballing World Cup is transmitting matches during the morning, afternoon and evenings and this is playing havoc with certain of our well known television broadcasts. So, for example, some of our favourite programmes such as the Andrew Neil show are transmitting half an hour earlier than would otherwise be the case. However, there is one football match which even for those only mildly intererested in football such as Meg and myself is a clash that is well worth watching. That is the match tonight between Spain and Germany, neither of them the footballing giants that they used to be but nonetheless, probably well worth a watch. I tend to support Spain whichever opponents they happen to have but one is always fascinated to see if the Germans might be beaten. Several years ago, I was in Spain on my own, as it happens (I think part of an exminations panel for a PhD at the University of La Coruña) and Spain was playing in, I think, a European cup match. I went to a bar that I knew quite well here they served an excellent dark beer. The bar owner, seeing I was on my own, beckoned me towards the front where I could have a seat next to the bar and with a good view of the TV. As it happened, the Spanish scored first and the bar went wild and I think their opponents then equalised. I had a chat with some of the fellow drinkers about what good goals they were and then the Spanish went on to have nightmare of a match where they eventually got defeated about 4-1 or a similar margin. When the second goal was scored against the Spanish, after a collective groan the bar went quiet – but this was to be followed by goal after goal as the Spanish were being soundly beaten. The bar got more and more quiet and when I turned out to go at the end of the match, I realised that most of the audience could not bear to watch any more so they had abandoned their drinks on the table and walked away in disgust. So a bar that had been full of joyous, gregarious Spaniards at the start of the evening just emptied as the evening wore on. I suppose this was an understandable reaction but it makes me wonder why may happen this evening?

Today was an interesting day as it turned out. Meg and I treated ourselves to a special little extra at breakfast as we added some chorizo that we had left over to our breakfast poached egg and this made it extra special. When we eventually got to town, we picked up our newspaper and then navigated toward the park where we bumped into one of our park regulars and we had an interesting chat this morning about the friendship groups (and the parties) in which we had participated when we were so much younger. We were all getting a little bit cold so we bade each other farewell and headed home for lunch. However, we had a special little mission to undertake because I needed to make a trip to the one and only Radio/TV and audio shop in town to see if I could get some advice, and possibly even purchase, an aerial of the correct type for my newly acquired little music centre. I had taken the precaution of taking a very detailed photo on my iPhone on the type of aerial connector on the back of the music centre as I felt that if I had tried to make a guess and purchase something over the internet, this would probably be the wrong thing so I needed to seek some advice from a really knowledgeable person. Fortunately, the technician on duty in the shop upon looking at my photo immediately recognised what I needed and was able to supply both it, and a more specialised little adapter, the two of which should work together to give me a functional aerial. This turned out to be an ‘Indoor FM VHF Aerial FM Radio Hi-Fi Dipole Flat Ribbon Antenna’ and I also had supplied an extra little adapter which screwed into the aerial fitting on the back of the music centre and also accepted the new cable. I was very pleased to part with my £5 as I was assured that that it ought to work absolutely correctly. As soon as I got it home, I put it into the approximately correct position and found that it gave me a good signal. By hook or by crook and with a not very helpful manual, I managed to get the DAB+ to locate ClassicFM (whih is nearly always all that I would ever want) and then left everything whilst I went off to cook a lunch of chicken legs.

After lunch, I set to work getting the aerial installed. My music centre is on a work surface in the kitchen immediately next to a power supply and a tall kitchen cupboard. As the aerial is a ‘T’-shape, I figured that I could put the ‘T’ section on the top of the kitchem cupboard where it could occupy two sides, here it would be out of sight if not out of mind. Then, in order to keep the whole thing stable, I used some ‘map’ pins to make sure that the cable did not stray from the top of the cupboard surface and then had to turn my attention to the vertical section. Again, I used some map pins of an unobtrustive colour to hold the aerial in place but the trouble is that the ariel had a few slight kinks in it and getting the map pins into position was not easy and I could only manage the slightest of taps from a very lightweight hammer. Having got the ribbon antenna vertical in the corner formed by the back wall and the cupboard side, I them prettied it up with some masking tape to make the whole thing look as neat and unobtrusive as possible. Obviously, I had ClassicFM playing the whole time during the installation to make sure that the signal did not degrade with any change in position and when I had finished, the whole was firmly in position and fairly (but not very) unobtrusive. At least using the masking tape which was the same as the wall colour was an improvement on the bare cable. I must say, I was absolutely delighted with the quality of the sound I was getting from ClassicFM broadcast on the DAB+ system. When the installation was complete, the presenter of the ClassicFM slot played an excerpt from Mozart’s Clarinet concerto and I also played the same using the Pure radio that I had on the opposite wall – this gave me the effect of sound coming from three speakers and was incredibly good. So I was very satisfied with the late morning and afternoon’s work.

This afternoon, whilst idly looking at the TV transmissions, I realised that ‘Dr Zhivago’ was being shown – this was ‘our’ film and I think that Meg very much identified with Tonya played by Geraldine Chapman at the time (and had a very similar hair style). Of course, the film is very emotionally compelling as Yuri Zhivago is torn between the two women of Tonya (Geraldine Chapman, a brunette) and Lara (Julie Christie, a blonde) I only saw about the last third of the film as we missed the first hour and I was busy with my aerial fixing for the second hour but I really enjoyed the snatches of it that I managed to see (for the umpteenth time, I think)

This morning Meg and I had company for breakfast as our Hampshire friend had stayed with us overnight after a very pleasant time yesterday evening with general chat about family matters and some of our reminiscencies from when we were work colleagues together. Because our friend had a drive and quite a long day in front of him, I cooked a breakfast of ham and eggs followed by some toasted fruit loaf, all of which was very satisfying. Then we had a brief session on our computer where I managed to show him the photographic evidence that some of my forebears on my father’s side of the family were bicycle manufacturers located in Wolverhampton. A distant family cousin in Australia has devoted years of work to trace some of our common ancestry as far back as he can and he has actually traced back to an ancestor whose dates are 1531-1601 and then the trail runs cold! However, to get back to the best part of 700 years is a considerable achievement but before that date will take no doubt massive amounts of investigation with no guarantee of eventual success. So our friend left us on his way to a Quaker Meeting House and associated cemetory in Leek, Staffs where he had enlisted the help of a local historian who might be able to fill in some of the gaps in his own researches so far.

After our friend was on his way, Meg and I went down by car to collect our newspapers but we parked the car in such a place that I could a lightning visit to Poundland – here I managed to purchase some of the extra plastic storage baskets with a handle which will almost exactly accommodate some CDs that I intend to store in our recently acquired little music cabinet. I now have five of these incredibly useful little baskets but as each holds 20, then I have enough for 100 CDs which gives me some excellent room for expansion. After our errands, we decided to do a quick tour of the park although we did not have any prepared elevenses with us. Nonetheless, we were delighted to just about meet up with our University of Birmingham friend and we spent a very pleasant 20 minutes discussing a recent TV programme which had given our friend considerable food for thought (particularly as some of it was relevant to his own life-story) As it happened our views on the subject were almost completely aligned – perhaps that’s why we are friends in the first place and like to discuss this and similar issues with each other. Then we popped home to have a lunch of sea-bass which we cooked with ‘normal’ vegetables rather than salad as we felt the need for some hot food on a day which proved bright and clear but quite cold.

I spent a little time this afternoon putting some little circular felt ‘feet’ on my boxes as otherwise being quite a hard plastic they could scratch whatever surface they were located upon without some modification. I was expecting to take delivery some time of the recently ordered antenna for my new music system, only to be informed by Amazon that the item was ‘undeliverable’ whatever that means and I would get a refund for the cost. So then I tried to hunt round to find this exact Panasonic spare part and did manage to locate a source at a reasonable price which I have ordered but it will tke about two weeks to arrive which is rather frustating. I then spent some time trying to get the exact manual for the system I have recently acquired as the documentation I have downloaded is for the version without DAB which is the one I actually need. I have tried to view some of the relevant sections of the documentation on line (or even downloaded) but the sections on DAB are not susceptible to being copied from a protected pdf file. So I needed to take the downloaded pdf and use an online facility I found to unprotect the pdf so that I could copy just the section that I needed. This is both somewhat complicated and frustrating but eventually I have found a solution that gives me – more or less – what I require.

In the World Cup today, Wales put on a lack-lustre performance here they were well beaten by Iran. The Iram team had a goal disallowed, hit the bar on two occasions and were judged to be worthy winners even if one of their goals was in the dying seconds of the game. Incidentally, I was amazed that all of the schoolchildren in Wales were given the morning off schoool so that they could stay at home and watch the match. But the real contest this evening is between England and the USA and I think it is correct to say that England has never won a match against USA in the World Cup. I must say that my money is on the USA but both teams are quite ‘young’ sides so the difference between the sides may turn out to be a single misplaced tackle which produces a freekick that in the event will prove decisive.