Tuesdays are always one of the days in the week to which Meg and I particularly look forward as it is one of the days of the week when we meet up with our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria. Once we return, we also have a ‘sit’ service from the care agency which was originally designed for me to attend my Pilates class. In practice, I have not managed to attend these sessions for some weeks now which does not trouble me as greatly as might be imagined as pushing Meg in her wheelchair up and down the hill practically every day of the week is giving me some exercise as well as the fresh air. In practice, I use the sit session to make a visit into town to buy some of the things such as toiletries that are not necessarily readily available when I do my grocery shipping each Thursday.

Whilst watching the Paralympic athletes, I am quite interested in how they manage to cope with failure. Whilst the gold medals are celebrated, sometimes an athlete makes a bad mistake such as the cyclist who crashed out in her individual sprint in the Velodrome where she was tipped for a silver or even a gold medal. Kadeena Cox had missed out on the first gold of the Games when she crashed on the first corner of the C4-5 500m time trial on Thursday, having made a bad start, then slipping while trying to correct herself. The 33-year-old struggled with a calf injury, an eating disorder and a relapse in her multiple sclerosis in the build-up to this event, but overcame all that – plus her Thursday mishap – to claim a fifth Paralympic gold. Cox admitted she had struggled badly with her mental health after the incident and was nearly crying before going to the start line, but was helped through it by her sprint team-mates.

On a personal level, I have had occasion to wonder how to cope with failure – or at least the lack of success on the first attempt. I have always had a fairly successful academic career and have never really had to cope with outright failure or even a relative failure. But after I submitted my PhD way back in 1997 there was a waiting period of some three months which was the time given to the external examiners to read and assess the PhD. At the time, we lived just over a mile away from the Scraptoft Campus of Leicester Polytechnic and I used to walk to work each day in order to give myself some daily exercise, although I did use the car if I had masses of student work to carry. Whilst I was walking each day, I had plenty of time to contemplate how I would cope with failure because I had not had much experience of failure in my life to date. There was a much younger but brilliant postgraduate student with whom I was a conference buddy as we went on conference trips where we could to build up our contacts and publishing record. He was very much an old head on young shoulders and he gave me the advice, which was timely, to prepare myself psychologically to be asked to revise or rewrite a chapter. This is actually what did occur as the Chief External Examiner asked why I had not include ‘4th generation evaluative methodologies’ in my thesis which was a concept of which I was completely ignorant (as, incidentally, were the other two examiners of the thesis) So I undertook another increment of fieldwork, added the results into a chapter including, of course the aforementioned 4th generation evaluative methodologies, submitted the revised version of the thesis and was eventually rewarded with success. A month or so later, I was in contact with a fellow academic who worked at the University of Birmingham and who, like myself, had written and submitted her own PhD when we were both about the same age (in our 50’s) She told me that did I not realise that my Chief External Examiner who we both knew well from the conference circuits always, always asked his students to go the ‘extra mile’ and to undertake some further work to refine the thesis they had submitted. Knowing this, I did not at the time feel that my initial setback was a ‘failure’ as such but was a lack of immediate success which is not quite the same thing. However, I have known at least a couple of close colleagues who had similarly not met with immediate success but who had become thoroughly disheartened and had not proceeded further with their PhD thus ending up with nothing. But athletes themselves know that they cannot win every race every time and there may be good reasons for a lack of success on the day. For example, they may know that they are carrying a niggling injury or they might have got their tactics for the race all wrong and end up being ‘boxed in’ which is a constant danger in middle distance races. No doubt, they learn from these experiences and know that if they are beaten by a bitter rival in one particular encounter, the positions might be reversed at some point in the future. Moving to the sphere of politics, the controversial right wing Tory MP, Enoch Powell, once remarked that ‘all political careers end in failure’ Actually this is a précis of what he actually said which was somewhat more verbose than this as follows: ‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.’ But when the failures do come, they are often in quite dramatic circumstances as we saw when Margaret Thatcher failed to secure enough votes from the Tory parliamentary party to carry on as Prime Minister and eventually had to be told by her fellow cabinet members that she had come to the end of the road. Actually, it is said that her husband Denis Thatcher, who was quite a sage politician in his own right but who rather like to be portrayed as some kind of buffoon, told her in their Downing Street flat ‘C’mon on, Maggie – you know that the game’s up’ and we all can remember Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street with a tear in her eye. To conclude this point, I still think it is an interesting point how as individuals we cope with failure (or with evident lack of success). It is undoubtedly true that this can act as a spur to redouble one’s effort to succeed in the future and equally the case that some find they are completely disheartened. I suppose most of us oscillate between these two extremes.

Today we enter our Monday morning routines which consists of a longer walk than normal down to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ cafe, swinging past Waitrose to collect our daily newspaper. Typically, the schoolchildren are being given a last little treat by their grandparents in the form of coffee and cakes before the school regime starts tomorrow. I am reminded of the little child who after their first day at school and explaining that they had done some painting and singing before being read a story asked of their parent ‘Do I have to go again tomorrow?’ not fully appreciating that the education bureaucracy will have them captured for the next 14-15 years or so.

Yesterday was the 1st of the month and I have to resist the temptation to say to my nearest and dearest ‘White rabbits! White rabbits! White rabbits’ and then keep my fingers crossed behind my back until I saw a policeman on a white horse. These were the ridiculous rituals in which we used to engage at about the age seven and evidently it must have a Yorkshire thing. Here in the Midlands some of my friends tell me that elder brothers gave their siblings a pinch followed by a punch whilst exclaiming ‘Pinch! Punch! First of the Month!’ But the 1st September always seems to symbolise for me the end of summer as every time I have started a new job or venture (all of my periods of employment, attending university) I always seemed to start the new venture in September or October. Consequently, I tend to think of this time of year as the starting point for ventures new. Schools start back in early September once the August Bank Holiday is well and truly over and we start the long haul towards Christmas. Of course Halloween and the activities associated with it constitute a way of breaking up the long period between now and Christmas. When I worked in higher education, the start of our year was effectively the middle of August because this was the point in the year when ‘A’-level results were announced and we were always pressed into service to start the recruitment process for the forthcoming academic year. From that point on, there was a gradual intensification of activities when one was marshalling the resources for the forthcoming academic year and there was generally a frantic period in which we needed to recruit not only students but the staff to teach them. In an ideal world, we would have wanted to recruit full time staff in about May but the resources never seemed to be forthcoming when we needed them so there was always a lot of last minute of ad-hoc planning. Then having recruited the students there was a variety of induction activities and a series of rolling starts for the various years of the course. I noticed that by about early November, the spirits of both staff and students started to drop considerably. August seemed a very long time ago and Christmas seemed a very distant shore so the Autumn term, coupled with nights getting longer and the first blasts of bad weather made this a difficult period of the negotiate. Things were much better in the Springtime after Christmas because with a modularised system there were typically examinations in mid January, a couple of inter-semester weeks for the holding of examination boards and then only about six weeks of the second semester before the Easter vacation kicked in. When possible, Meg and I tried to go away for about a week in mid January before the second semester of teaching started and this, too, helped to draw the sting of winter.

Just when you think that Donald Trump is one of the most unsuitable men ever to run for President of the United States, another extraordinary story has emerged. Donald Trump has threatened to imprison Mark Zuckerberg for life if the Facebook founder does ‘anything illegal’ to influence the upcoming presidential election. Next to a photograph of him meeting Mr Zuckerberg in the White House, Mr Trump wrote: ‘He would bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.’ This was a reference to the more than $400m (£303m) Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg, donated to election offices in 2020. The gifts mostly went to Democratic-leaning counties in some states – partly because Republican politicians rejected the donations as Mr Trump warned against funding election offices so they could instead encourage postal votes during the coronavirus pandemic. Donald Trump and his supporters have repeatedly blamed the donations for contributing to his loss in 2020. The extraordinary thing about this outburst is the limited grasp that Trump seems to display of how legal processes work in the context of the United States and in particular whether a (newly elected) Trump would have the authority to imprison anybody ‘for life’. It also displays the sort of threatening and bullying behaviour for which Trump is now becoming notorious and one has to wonder whether in his commercial activities Trump found he could use bullying tactics against anybody who happened to cross him with complete impunity. Even more stories are starting to emerge of Trump’s incoherence and ability to think through straightforward questions, the latest example being his incredibly confused stance on abortion. The latest national opinion polls put Harris some 3.4 percentage points ahead of Trump with only just over 60 days to go before the election in November.

I read a remarkable technical story recently that almost reads like an April 1st spoof. Scientists have found a simple trick that could dramatically change how our batteries perform. A lithium-ion battery, of the kind used in everything from our phones to our cars, is usually charged up soon after it is first made. That first charge is key: it decides how long the battery will work for, and when it will eventually deteriorate. Now researchers have found that if that first charge is done with unusually high currents, it dramatically changes how those batteries perform. When that happened, the batteries’ lifespan was improved by 50 per cent and the initial charge took just 20 minutes, compared with 10 hours usually. If this story ‘has legs’ as it were, then this might have a dramatic impact upon many aspects of our lives, not least mobile phones. One is forced to wonder, as well, whether the battery power in the present generation of electric cars could be similarly improved.

We have our usual ‘Sunday morning’ routines into which we slip but the broadcasting of the Paralympic Games in Paris provides an alternative to the diet of Politics programmes at the weekend. Our Eucharistic minister will still be on a well deserved holiday for a few days yet so we shall not see her for the best part of another week now. But the trip to the park is still on our weekly ‘to do’ list, particularly as the weather is set fair for a few days.

A day or so ago, we received a phone call from one of the nurses who specialises in Meg’s condition and who keeps in regular touch with us to offer us practical as well as emotional support. I knew that she was a little worried about the elastic supports that I have adapted to keep Meg’s feet from slipping off the wheelchair footrests when I wheel her up and down into town and wanted to contact the OTs (Occupational Therapists) to check out the safety aspects of the supports. I think the OT’s respond more to calls from fellow professionals than they do to patients and their carers because they had responded very promptly and positively on this occasion. After a telephone call, two OTs turned up at least one of whom knew Meg pretty well from previous contact with her. The two of them checked out the ankle supports and gave them the OK so I shall send a message to the specialist nurse which I am sure will reassure her. The two OTs had taken the trouble to call in at their stores and brought with them two quite specialist little flat cushions.These are designed in two layers such that one layer can slip over the other but it will not work in a reverse direction. This they thought might be incredibly useful to prevent Meg from slipping out of her wheelchair and they took the trouble to hoist Meg in her sling to seat her on a chair and check out that this little aid seems to work as intended. I showed the system that I have particularly in the late afternoons after the carers have left but before the final evening call to keep Meg secure in her chair. This involves a variety of little ‘tricks’ one of which is to tilt the chair cushion somewhat backwards and another of which is to utilise a cushion to give her back straight rather than slipping down the chair. Finally, I have a system to support Meg’s legs and feet on a low stool with a blanket on it. When the OT’s saw how I had to make these improvisations to keep Meg safe and secure they said they were going to recommend a special chair for us which might help to keep Meg’s posture in the correct position given that she has to sit for up to four hours between the penultimate and the final visit of the carers for the day. So this was an incredibly positive intervention and I fervently hope that if a more specialist chair can be provided that it will assist in keeping Meg in the correct orientation. I proudly showed the OTs the new sofa brought into commission and as the two carers called at the same time as the two OTs we had quite a houseful and the four of them started to wonder about hoisting her onto the new sofa. We soon realised that this was not going to be feasible as the leather panels of the sofa extend to ground level and hence the ‘legs’ of the hoist cannot be fitted underneath. The two OT’s were completely unfazed by this apparent setback and reckoned that we could remedy the situation with some risers to fit under each sofa foot (which they referred to as ‘elephant’s feet’ which they must resemble) The two OT’s were a jolly couple and one of them announced to me that she was getting married next Saturday. So I gleefully told them about the earliest feminist slogan which was apparently scrawled on the back of a toilet door in the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1967. This slogan was that ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ The soon-to-be married OT was so taken with this that she was going to try to introduce it into any of the wedding speeches which she might be called upon to deliver. In conclusion, I must say that I have the highest regard for OT’s who almost uniformly have an incredibly ‘can do’ orientation to the dilemmas faced by patients and their carers.

There is really disturbing evidence emanating from the troubled war zone of Gaza this weekend. There is evidence Israel could be establishing infrastructure in Gaza signalling plans for a long-term military presence in the Strip. Satellite imagery, gathered over months, has mapped the creation of a new corridor in northern Gaza that is almost a kilometre in width in some places. It reaches from Gaza’s border with Israel to the edge of the town of Beit Hanoun. The IDF has bulldozed farmland, orchards and buildings to create the corridor, which allows the IDF some freedom of movement while denying Gazans access to their homes, many of which no longer exist. One analyst has argued that corridors are well-honed colonial techniques of fragmentation and separation. In the history of Israel’s occupation, corridors have been used to fragment Palestinian territories, particularly in the West Bank. What these corridors are doing, is that they will be preventing access, preventing return of residents. The implications of all of this is that it makes any peace treaty incredibly more difficult if not impossible. We have reports this weekend also that there may be a cessation of hostilities not for any evident military reason but because polio is rearing its ugly head as a consequence of the destruction of much of the social infrastructure in Gaza.

Meg have been fascinated by the series that we watch on BBC iPlayer by David Olusoga called ‘Black and British – a Forgotten History’ from which Meg and I have learned so much. For example, I learnt that known in its day for being the second best selling of a book after the Bible, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ has had a global presence ever since. While it may not have the wide readership it did in the 19th century, it continues to be one of those books that many people still know about without ever having read it. Stowe’s book is known for its position against slavery, often depicting the harsh, cruel conditions that slaves had undergone in the Plantation south. Olusoga even revealed that Queen Victoria had a secret meeting with Harriet Beecher Stowe at King’s Cross in 1856.

Saturday morning dawns and we know that after breakfast, we will pop down the hill and see the ‘granny gang’ in Waitrose. We all make an effort to attempt to coincide at about 10.30 come hell or high water and today is no exception.

These days, I rather rely upon the hope that Meg gets off to sleep fairly easily and does not have a distressed evening so that I can concentrate upon any tasks that I want to undertake some time from about 8.30 onwards until I get myself off to bed at about 10.00om. Fortunately, last night Meg seemed to settle fairly easily which let me concentrate on what I wanted to do in the evening which was to put the finishing touches to the look of the leather sofa which I had purchased from AgeUK but had taken them about two weeks before they had a spare delivery slot. I had a fair idea what I wanted to try to do but in practice the sofa was in remarkably good condition when it arrived. I wonder if before delivery, they had someone in the store to give it a brief once over with some restorative furniture polish before they actually delivered it. Sometimes, when one makes a purchase there is a syndrome called ‘buyer’s remorse’ where one really regrets the purchase that one has made and wonders whether or not to return it. But in this case, I had the opposite of buyer’s remorse which I suppose is buyer’s delight because although I had evidently taken the decision to purchase it and tried it out for comfort, the sofa when it arrived seemed to look so much better than when I had tried it out in the store. As an interesting twist, our domestic help had wandered into the store and seen this sofa and rather fancied it but noted it had a ‘Sold’ sign on it. I had confided in her that when she called round last Wednesday about my purchase because I showed her the couple of throws that I had already purchased in anticipation of its eventual delivery. Although it did not really need it, my ‘baby wipe’ solution was put into place to remove any shop grime but in the event, it was in a very clean condition when delivered. Then I put into effect the ‘Leather Silk’ treatment to give it a final touch of restoration before the next stage of the process. I had a quick look underneath it to see if there was any maker’s trademark but none was to be found. But what was attached to the underside was a little swatch of the leather from which it was covered which I suppose you could utilise in case there was something like a cigarette burn on it and you needed to make a patch repair. I wanted to try to discover whether the type of leather utilised was ‘genuine’ leather or a man-made plasticised substitute named PUV or faux leather, But a quick trawl of the internet revealed that this is a not an easy question to answer as there are a whole slew of different types of leather varying in expense naturally from the most expensive to the least expensive and to make life even more complicated it is quite possible that different qualities of leather are utilised for different parts of the sofa, the most expensive being utilised for the parts of the sofa that will receive the most wear such as the seats) and the least expensive for other parts that receive no wear to speak of. One website I consulted listed at least six types of leather depending upon the layer of the hide that had been used. So my source referred to full-grain leather, top grain leather, split grain leather, Nubuck, bi-cast leather and bonded leather before you actually start to consider what is popularly known as faux leather which is not really a leather at all. This is all very confusing but at the end of the day, I think that what I have purchased is a combination of split grain leather and bonded leather. The latter is composed of scraps of leather once the real ‘quality’ parts of the hide have been removed and these are then bonded together into a sort of chemical soup which is still ‘real’ leather but not as we might imagine it. So all of this is really confusing and only a matter of academic interest. I think the mainly American websites are at pains to educate their more discerning customers so that one knows the type of questions to ask of the furniture salesperson in the furniture store. Anyway, I intend to take my swatch down to the local cobblers who have a very good reputation in the town (and who regularly repair my hat for me) to see what their opinion is of the matter if they have the knowledge base. Now for the throws I have utilised. One is a throw I had bought originally and is a creamy, linen type look and goes down the back of the sofa so that one is not presented with a slab of brown upon walking into the room. Most people would have their sofa backs against a wall and the fronts would have some scatter cushions and hence this question would not arise. The indian cotton throw in a delicate palish green design which I purchase just the other day goes beautifully across the seated area to almost give a two tone appearance. The two ‘Eau de Nile’ cushions I acquired recently have now found a good home as well. As a final finishing touch, I impulse bought a ‘Chindi’ rig when I was shopping in my local Aldi store. I can do no better than to quote a website telling me about this type of rug: ‘Chindi rugs are a type of rug that is originally from India. The word Chindi means leftover in Hindi, and these rugs are made by weaving together leftover scraps of fabric. These scraps can come from old clothes, bed sheets, or any other type of fabric. Chindi rugs are authentically and ethically made in India with recycled materials, and they add a traditional and colorful vibe to any space in your home or office.’ So this is placed in front of the new sofa and adds a colorful, not to say ethnic, look to the seating area. The final thing that I did was to take a photo of both the ‘bare’ and also the ‘decorated’ sofa and this will be added to the website that I maintain documenting the various types of furniture I have bought, where and how it was purchased and what its final use has turned out to be.

As today is a Friday, we make a visit to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ which is now our preferred cafe of choice on a Friday. It also has the bonus for us of a visit to the High Street so that I can make a quick detour into one of the stores if I want to buy some toiletries for example. Sometimes it has the bonus that we bump into people that we know, now that we have lived in Bromsgrove for practically seventeen years now and in fact is the longest that we have ever lived in one place (or house for that matter) in our lives.

So after what seems quite a long wait, we are now enjoying the spectacle of the Paralympic games in Paris. The French had all of the athletes parade down the Champs d’Elysee (as in the main games) rather than just around the stadium and this innovation probably allows a much larger public welcome the athletes rather than those who have just paid for an opening ceremony seat. The joy on the face of the athletes is something to behold and whether they eventually win a medal or not, it must be an incredibly life affirming experience to represent one’s country as a less abled athlete. The UK generally performs very well in these games and hopes are high for this year as well.

This afternoon, we have taken delivery of a piece of furniture that we purchased a week or so ago from the AgeUK furniture store in Bromsgrove in the form of a bijou leather two seater sofa that we intend to use as a quasi room divider. Our Music Lounge is quite a long room and is divided what might be termed a ‘Technology’ end in one half with comfortable armchairs, the TV and audio.The other half of the room has quite a different and distinctive character and has a generally rustic quality. We have a large (reproduction) Van Gogh in this section of the room and underneath there is our selection of (principally) pottery owls with a variety of cushions, generally with a bird motif, forming a kind of backdrop. The Victorians sometimes put collections of animals in a naturalistic session into a large glass case called a diorama and I think the essential concept we have tried to imitate to some extent but without the benefit of a case. So each half of the room has its own character and we intend to use the sofa we have just purchased to form a sort of open square in the ‘Technology’ half of the room and thus to add a degree of separation between the two halves of the room. We will have to experiment a little but I am hopeful that we may be able to transport Meg quite easily onto the new sofa which has the advantage that she and I can sit side by side which will very convenient if I am reading or showing Meg something. So the newly acquired sofa is completely functional as well as fulfilling a role of dividing up our living space. It was superbly comfortable that one sits ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ which can be a fault with some modern sofas. The colour is a mid to deep brown but I did not want a huge slab of this colour to dominate the room. So I have two throws which I can experiment with and use one against the other. The first I have bought is a faux fur throw which is a wonderfully subtle shade of a pinky purple colour best described as either a lilac or a lavender colour. The tonalities of this complement the sofa perfectly and helps to break up the ‘slab’ of the brown back of the sofa that might greet you otherwise in this end of the Music Lounge. The other throw I only purchased very recently and this too has been washed and prepared for eventual use. It is an Indian cotton in what is probably best described as an ‘Eau de Nile’ shade and as this turn out, it looks better o the newly delivered sofa once I have had a chance to try the two of them out. . In time I may come to much prefer one of these throws to the other but in the meantime, I am very happy with what I have managed to obtain (needless to say from the local charity shops). I have a good selection of cushions already in stock ready to be pressed into use so again a period of experimentation will be deployed until I settle on a firm preference. As I have now acquired a couple of pieces of fine leather furniture, I have some little rituals to be performed on them before they are put into their final position. Firstly, I give them a good all over wipe with baby wipes which I suppose are principally purified water and some added glycerine and therefore contain no harsh chemicals. Then I use a special spray polish which goes by the name of ‘Leather Silk’ and which, the manufacturers claim, is a blend of the purest beeswax, emollients and nutrient oils and contains no silicone. I have been very impressed by the results that I have achieved so far. The Amazon reviews of this product are very favourable and I try to ensure that I have more than one tin in stock so that I do not run out.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from one of the nurses who specialise in Meg’s condition and she is always a great source of help and advice. She is going to liaise with the Occupational Therapy service to see if there are any additional aids to help keep Meg comfortable whilst she is sitting in her wheelchair, as well as other armchairs throughout the day. As Meg cannot stand or walk nowadays, then getting Meg’s posture correct in a chair so that she des not slip forward assumes a significance. As it is, we use a variety of cushions and other aids to attempt to ensure Meg’s comfort throughout the day when she is not being attended to in one of the four visits by the care agency staff throughout the day.

Thursday is my shopping day so I generally race around a smaller Aldi store (where I know where everything is) and hope to have the whole trip completed in just over an hour whilst a care worker sits with Meg. Yesterday, we were blessed with some good weather in the morning but then the weather got progressively gloomier during the afternoon. Nonetheless, I managed to get some bedding washed and dried on the outside line I have just rigged up without it all being rained on.

I know the modern term is ‘rail enthusiast’ but I was introduced to trainspotting as it then was by the older brother of a lad of my own age who lived just around the corner from us in Harrogate. It was ‘de rigeur’ to have one’s precious Ian Allan little book of train numbers. Trainspotting began in 1942 when Mr Allan was a 19-year-old trainee in the public-relations office of the Southern Railway at Waterloo. Tired of replying to letters from railway enthusiasts demanding details of locomotives, he suggested that the office produce a simple booklet listing their vital statistics. His boss was not interested, so Mr Allan decided to do it himself. The heydey of train spotting was in the 1950’s when crowds of schoolboys could be seen crowded at the end of railway platforms. Later they were to be joined by older, retired men who had taken up the hobby. The crowds of trainspotters were tolerated by the railway and station authorities and apart from the occasional little trespass, mainly the fraternity kept out of trouble. Being brought up in Yorkshire, the principal railways serving the region was LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) and our local venue of choice was York railway station. Occasionally, we might be content with the Leeds LNER station (there was an adjacent LMS station in the 1950’s but then they got redeveloped into one larger station) but the real ‘Mecca’ was to pay a visit to Doncaster. Here there were works for the maintenance of the steam locomotives and the opportunity to glimpse some of the rare Scottish engines that came down for repair and/or overhaul. During what was termed ‘the dead hour’ (between about 1.00pm and 2.00pm when hardly any trains seemed to arrive) you could actually walk to some of the maintenance sheds where one’s eyes were well and truly opened to see locos in various stages of repair. Provided you kept to the extreme perimeter of the workshop and made sure that you did not impede any of the work being carried on in the workshops, our presence was tolerated and although we might get the occasional friendly warning, it was amazing to be able to get access to such buildings. Of course in our current Health and Safety culture none of this would be remotely allowed nowadays but in my trainspotting days (from about 1959-1961) I am quite surprised with what we got away with. In our Ian Allan record books, we would underline the number of the locos that we had actually seen and very occasionally, we were allowed to ‘cab’ a loco i.e. be allowed to climb into the cabin to witness the internal controls. Any engine thus ‘cabbed’ would be noted in our books as well as also noting those locos by which we had actually been pulled. To be allowed onto a platform one only had to purchase a ‘platform ticket’ which cost a derisory 2d (less than a penny of current coinage) and of course this lasted all day. In the 1950’s, many of the principally schoolboys who were the trainspotters could be distinguished by their school caps but this gradually gave way to an anorak and a woolly hat as standing at the end of a platform for hours on a end could be a cold business. There was invariably a ripple of excitement and excited chants of ‘Streak!’ when one heard the distinctive very low whistle of the streamlined Class A4 locomotives which never failed to attract admiration and attention. In those days, we were not particularly into photography but in general one had a good day out in which one had ‘bagged’ a goodly number of locos that were new to one. I suppose that later on, I must have thrown away my trainspotting books but it would have been nice to have rationed just one of my own as a form of memorabilia. As a hobby, apart from one’s train fare of getting to the destination, it was generally a cheap day’s leisure pursuit and I suspect that you always retain some of the enthusiasm for locos even as the years roll by. I think that in the late 50’s, trainspotting was a phase through every lad went but as one got older, things like GCSE examinations rather took over and then one developed new interests in later adolescence.

Two recent aspects of the UK political scene are causing me some disappointment. The first of these is that the Labour Party seems to be exhibiting some of the cronyism to which we have grown accustomed in the last few years of Tory government. Some of this night just be the right wing press seeking every opportunity to criticise the incoming Labour government. Nonetheless, one reads with some dismay that wealthy donors had been given a pass to the heart of government in Downing Street and there are quite a lot of reports of ‘advisers’ being brought in and fulfilling roles that should be undertaken by impartial and properly funded civil servants. Another source of concern are our relationships with the EU in general and Germany in particular. Keir Starmer has held meetings with his German opposite number and there seems to be a rebuilding of relationships after the Brexit experience. But relatively innocuous policies such as allowing German students to visit the UK for study and perhaps some vacation work seems to have been ruled out of court. Sir Keir is in Germany to discuss a new bilateral treaty covering a range of issues including market access, clean energy, trade, and tackling illegal migration. But the UK government is stating that ‘But it does mean a closer relationship on a number of fronts, including the economy, including defence, including exchanges, but we do not have plans for a youth mobility scheme.’ One would have thought that this is an ideal opportunity for the UK to exhibit ‘soft power’ but a little Englander approach where we deny German students jut a short exposure to live and work for limited periods in the UK seems to be so short-sighted

Today we look forward, as always, to the visit of our domestic help who is always a source of good housekeeping advice as well as a good friend. With her, I can discuss the cleaning and drying of the faux fur throw which I successfully completed over the last few days and am shortly to bring into use. This morning, I managed to get the front lawns cut whilst we had a burst of sunshine. Our domestic help (with some some assistance from her husband as well) had baked us a cottage pie. We ate it with some fresh runner beans, kindly donated by our neighbour yesterday and topped off with a little garlic and herb sauce to make the beans even more delicious. Yesterday on our walk back from town, it was delightful to bump into our Italian friend with whom we always exchange pleasant words. I also received a telephone call from our friends in South Oxfordshire that we used to visit regularly but which is now beyond us. He explained to us what a wonderful few days he had just experienced in Southern Spain zigzagging across from Malaga to Ronda to Cadiz. I would not be very surprised if eventually our friends might sell up and relocate to Spain as they evidently enjoy the culture so much. In fact, I well remember that when our friends joined us for some 50th wedding anniversary celebrations in Spain and I has asked the waitresses to supply us with Cava whenever we ran out, my friend exclaimed that he thought the whole trip was organised in such a way so that I could embrace as many young Spanish women (waitresses) as I could. But there again Spain has a much more tactile culture than in the UK even though things are changing here somewhat.

A story has come to light recently about which I have some fairly strong views but the exact reasons why will become apparent at the end of my piece. The story relates to the 15 year old son (not far short of his 16th birthday, actually) who interrailed across Europe with a sixteen year old friend. An anonymous caller had phoned social services who had opened a file on the case suspecting a case of neglect. Then Alsopp demanded that the file be deleted, the social services department replied that it had to be kept open in case a further case of ‘neglect’ was reported. To make matters worse, the law requires that the file be kept until the young person is 25 years of age. Allsopp is furious beyond belief because no law had been broken and she argued that in other cultures e.g. in Japan, youngsters are encouraged to make journeys of their own. Now we come to my own story. At the age of 11, I started to attend a boarding school in Bolton in Lancashire whilst my mother went off to train to be a teacher. I hasten to add that this was not a boarding school in the traditional sense but a boarding unit of some 40 pupils attached to a 600 intake grammar school. At the time we lived in a suburb of Harrogate in Yorkshire. The journey to school consisted of me walking to the local suburban station and catching a diesel train into Harrogate. Here I caught a train to a station in Leeds called ‘Holbeck High Level’ station from which I caught an LMS train that took me to Rochdale. On Rochdale station I caught another train (leaving from more or less the same platform) that took me onto Bolton. When I Bolton, I then caught a bus for a journey of some 2-3 miles after which I alighted and then walked the best part of a mile to the school. I was shown this journey by an existing pupil on one occasion but from then on from the ages of 11-14, I undertake the journey there (and evidently back at half term and end of term breaks) completely on my own. Judged by the standards applied in the Allsopp case, this would nowadays be a cause of evident neglect or child abuse but certainly not in 1956. Of course, the environment was so much safer in those days as the trains always turned up on time and I do not remember a single delay in the journeys I made across a three year period. But having said all of that, I do not think that if I had an 11-year child today, I would allow them to undertake a journey like that and nor would it be necessary. How the other boys arrived at their school destination completely escapes me but I do not remember cars turning up to collect their offspring. Even at school, I think that once I had entered the second year I was allowed to go down into town to do some shopping completely on my own and unsupervised. Now I do appreciate that it is impossible to be completely definitive about these issues and the environment of today is full of dangers and risks that were not present in 1956. But at the age of 10, I raided the local municipal tip for some empty oil drums which we then strapped onto a kind of platform before carrying it across the moors surrounding Beckwithshaw in Yorkshire where we then lived and then sitting on this raft whilst we paddled up the river. This I describe as a ‘Swallows and Amazons’ style of experience and I am not sure that my mother, who was at work at the time, ever knew of the experiences in which we engaged. I now return to the Alsopp case. I will follow the media to see what the reaction of other parents is to this story. From what I have been able to gauge so far, opinion seems to be fairly evenly divided between those who wish to encourage independence and initiative and those who feel that the Alsopp case represents a step too far. The point is made, with which I concur, that one has to distinguish between a 15 year old boy and a 15 year old girl. A further point is that youngsters may now be reliant upon their mobile phones as the answer to everything if they ran into difficulties but there are certain life skills (e.g. managing to interpret a bus timetable) which may prove troublesome for adolescents and probably many older people as well.

A high rise building in Dagenham, East London, went up in flames overnight but it appears that no one had dies or been seriously injured. More than seven years after the fatal Grenfell Tower fire in west London, it cannot be clearly explained why a building less than 20 miles away was still covered in unsafe materials. In the Grenfell case, various parties to the construction are still arguing like rats in a sack about who should bear the ultimate responsibility. If and when the official enquiry into this disaster reports, I wonder if we shall ever know how many critical documents held in the filing systems of the construction firms or even the planning departments of local authorities mysteriously have gone missing i.e. probably been shredded so that an evidence trail of blame cannot be established.

Now the Bank Holiday is over, Meg and I are looking forward to meeting up with our Waitrose friends in the cafeteria. What is interesting is this venue is not particularly easy for us to visit (one of us in a motorised scooter, another a 90 year old who has to judge what distance she can safely walk and, of course, Meg has to be pushed down (and up) the hill in her wheelchair.) But perhaps it is because the visit takes some commitment that we all make a great effort to see each other. If we have a fine autumn, then our various journeys can continue but if the weather suddenly turns very bad then this is, as the Spanish say ‘otra causa’ i.e. another thing altogether and we may have to rethink our plans. The staff who we have known for years always make us welcome and it is not uncommon for bunches of (soon to be out-of-date) flowers to be tossed in our direction.

After the hobby of model making with the Keil Kraft range of balsa wood aircraft, I developed a new interest when I was aged about 15 but I honestly cannot remember how I got this into the first place which was the breeding of hamsters. Together with a school friend, we developed our interest in common and were fortunate in that there was a friendly and eminent breeder of hamsters that we used to visit regularly in Harrogate. Hamsters are interesting little creatures but have some strange breeding habits. The females come into oestrus every fourth night on which occasions the female will mate but on the other three nights she and whatever male is in the vicinity will fight to the death. The gestation period is also incredibly short at about 16 days. After a litter has been produced, each hamster will require its own cage and at one stage, I was producing cage after cage – I think the grand total that I achieved was about 14. In the railway sidings of the suburb of Harrogate in which I lived, there seemed to be quite a supply of abandoned (or easily liberated) soda water syphon cases which were inevitably just about the right size. The only difficulty is that hamsters being rodents would easily chew their way through a normal wooden cage so each cafe needed protecting with a kind of tin strip. This was produced by taking the top and the bottom of a tin can, cutting it open with a pair of garden shears and then after some unrolling and re shaping cutting the result ‘tin’ into strips which were then tacked onto the relevant area of the cage. Although the keeping of hamsters does not sound an incredibly exciting activity in itself, my friend and I used to visit many of the small towns in the vicinity where we could take our hamsters along to be entered into a show. The show facilities were nearly always draughty Methodist halls with long rows of trestle tables inside. As a condition of entry into the show, the hamsters had to be housed within a standard show cage that were so designed that a judge could put two or three of such cages together in order to make comparisons of the animals within. The show cages themselves were housed in a special travelling box which would hold exactly two cages facing each other and this gave rise to an incident on a local train which sticks in our memory. The train conductor who inspected our tickets asked what was inside the boxes was told that they contained hamsters said they would have a special train ticket bought for them. My friend and I thought this was a tremendous joke and laughed and laughed until the ticket inspector wandered away. On his next journey down the train, the ticket inspector again requested payment and, once again, assuming that this was the most ridiculous joke we laughed and laughed until the inspector gave up. It was only afterwards that we came to appreciate that this was not intended to be a joke at all and he was absolutely in his rights to demand payment for their carriage but evidently felt he was no position to enforce the payment request. I was not very successful at hamster breeding and the most I ever achieved might have been a ‘third class’ or perhaps a ‘Highly Commended’ but that was the total amount of my success. My friend, though, visited the breeder on his own and secured an animal for about £2 which then went to secure a ‘Best in Show’ I felt at the time that this was not quite in the spirit of the show events but at least my friend and I got to explore some of the little towns in the vicinity of Harrogate and Leeds. The hamster breeding phase of my life only lasted a year or so and then I think GCSE ‘O’ levels intervened. We did have a sort of brick built shed at the rear of our house which housed the hamster cages in their heydey and I did branch out and acquire either one or two pigeons which I keep on the roof of the aforementioned shed. The father of a neighbouring boy had some racing pigeons but I do not think the pair I acquired showed that kind of class and I soon tired of them. I also acquired a rabbit that had the most beautiful purply-browny fur but the most vicious temper it is possible to imagine. When my sister’s then boyfriend exclaimed that I had got a rare ‘Australian Blue’ or something similar, I generously made a gift of the rabbit to him and I was heartily glad to be shot of it as cuddly it most certainly was not. My mother and sister tolerated my animal husbandry with a sort of bemused indifference but I do remember that my mother was not best pleased that I insisted that my hamsters be fed an extremely expensive wheat germ mixture called ‘BeMax’ which I insisted was necessary to increase the fertility of my hamster collection. Wheat germ and an associated chemical called Spermidine do have manifest health benefits. Spermidine stimulates autophagy, enabling the body to clean out and recycle any unnecessary or damaged cells. This process has been linked to multiple potential health benefits, including fighting against cancer, Type 2 Diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease and is suggested to display anti-aging effects.

Yesterday, Meg entered our Sunday morning rituals which starts off with the carers making an earlier than normal than visit on Sundays, after which we breakfast and watch the Politics programs on Sunday mornings. The Labour Party is bound to come under scrutiny for the policy of withdrawing the winter fuel allowance just when prices are destined to rise. Our friend who calls around from the parish is away on holiday this week so we go down into town to pick up our copy of the Sunday newspaper and then come back via a visit to the park where we normally bump into acquaintances. We were especially pleased to see our University of Birmingham friend and, later on we bumped into our Italian friend whilst I was pushing Meg back up the hill. Whilst I am prepared the Sunday lunch, Meg followed the ‘Pilgrims’ series which we to reserve for just time slot on a Sunday morning. As today is a Bank Holiday, we have changed our plans and are visiting Waitrose which we have checked is probably going to have ‘Sunday hours’ trading on the Bank Holiday. The care workers came an hour earlier today so we had a bit of a rush around to get ready for them.

Recently, I wrote about the experiences of pre-teenage lads building ourselves go-carts. I checked out with our University of Winchester friend and he did the same at a similar age but he and his friend appeared to be even more ambitious by utilising tricycle wheels, but not always successfully. Out family did not start to rent a TV until I was about 15 but before our TV days I did have a hobby in common with many lads of a similar age. There was a firm called ‘Keil Kraft’ and they produce model kits from which you could construct an aircraft. The kits were incredibly simple and consisted of designs printed onto thin sheets of balsa wood. With a craft knife, you cut out the essential 2-D shapes and then set about modelling into a 3-D shape, for example an aircraft. My first craft was a Hurricane which did not figure so much in the public collective memory and affection as the Spitfire. The Hurricane was slightly slower than the Spitfire, but it was robust, stable, and had impressive firepower. It played a critical role in defending Britain against German bombers. The Spitfire was more advanced, faster, and more manoeuvrable. However, it was also more complex and less easy to repair than the Hurricane. The construction process started off with two or three bulkheads with little notches cut along the top and the sides. Into these notches, one then glued the ‘stays’ of the fuselage which were in effect only thin strips of balsa wood. I remember that there was an awful lot of gluing involved as well as a fair degree of patience because each stay had to be held in position for about 15 minutes until the glue had set. After the fuselage came the wings and the tail assembly and then the whole was glued together. At this stage, you were left with essentially what looked like a wire model (although it was actually in balsa wood) and thus then had to be covered in a type of tissue paper and something called ‘dope’ which shrunk the tissue paper and made it cling to the frame like a skin. Finally, one followed the instructions by painting it up in the relevant colours and if you were bold you could even flit a propeller, powered by a wound up large piece of elastic band. These models took weeks to construct but it was the pre-TV era so whiled away the hours. I think the model construction process taught one a degree of patience and, of course, you had something tangible afterwards to show off to one family and friends. After the Hurricane, I bought myself a glider which was on a much bigger scale. Just out of interest, I did manage to locate on the web some cine film that had been shot within the Keil Kraft factory dating back to the 1950’s. The video showed an operative with several layers of balsa wood being shaped by a revolving band saw and in which the operative’s fingers only seemed to be a matter of millimetres away from the bandsaw. There was an amusing strap line that had been added to the cine film either originally of when it was made into a file to be displayed on the internet but the strap line read ‘No fingers were lost in the making of this film’ When my son was of the appropriate age, I seem to remember that the original Keil Kraft concept had evolved somewhat and now the current model making kits consisted of parts made of plastic that one had to detach from their containing frame and then clip together to make a battleship or what have you. But I think Keil Kraft (‘the greatest name in model kits’) is no longer still in existence but a company known as ‘The Vintage Model Company’ still produce replicas of the original balsa wood models. I wonder, though, whether the materials deployed today are considerably more advanced than the simple balsa wood of the late 1950’s.

The government has withdrawn the winter fuel payments for pensioners but retained a much more restrictive version for those who are in receipt of Pension Credits which is a very much smaller number. This has come when the Gas regulator is going to allow prices to increase by 10% this winter and so the interest on the Labour back benches is palpable. I can see that some sort of back down or way of refining the policy might be on the cards but it looks as though a massive backbench revolt may be imminent. The government could decide to tough it all to show who is boss but the danger is that once backbenchers have the taste of rebellion in their faces then they might be tempted to keep on rebelling over a whole host of related issues.

The Guardian is reporting that even some of Donald Trump’s supporters are now asking the question that was the undoing of Joe Biden: is the former president fit for office? But while Biden’s run for re-election was largely sunk by a single disastrous televised debate before a national audience, Trump is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country. While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths by suddenly finding himself running against Kamala Harris a month ago.

Yesterday, Meg and I went down the hill after breakfast and enjoyed the company of our Saturday friends. Upon our return, we cooked the second half of a chicken, leek and ham pie that we had left in the freezer. Then we started watched the classic film of ‘Casablanca’ which we watched until the carers came for Meg’s late afternoon comfort call. When it looked as though the weather was set fair, I washed our new purchased throw on the coolest of washes and rigged up a clothes line – fortunately, I had some spare clothes lines in places waiting until I had need of them. Then I put the throw out on the line to have a blow for about 3-4 hours after which it was nearly dry so I spread it out in our airing room so that is can get truly dried off before I bring it into use.

The Summer Bank Holiday beckons next Monday and I do not look forward to these with any degree of enthusiasm. As it is the last Bank Holiday of the year, many families take it as an opportunity to get their last little taste of a summer vacation as the school children will return to schools in early September and the long hard grind over the Autumn period commences. These days, half term breaks become quite important but these are generally towards the end of October which seems a fair way off. The next few days have to be ‘tunnelled through’ in many ways. Many friends are taking the last opportunity to have a break with their own wider families and there is a general sense of turmoil even amongst the cadre of care workers who we have grown to know over the last few months. Turnover in the care industry is high but at this time of year there seem to be an unprecedentedly large number who are leaving the agency. This is either because they are starting more permanent and secure positions within schools in a variety of roles or because the agency does not give them sufficient hours on their zero hours contracts and they seek a greater continuity of hours of work. Many of the college pupils/university student sections of the agency staff will be returning to their colleges shortly so it is a time of great change. The Paralympic games are due to start next week but as the opening ceremony is not until Wednesday, the actual events will not commence until the following day. We have always found these games to be entertaining and the UK has traditionally done very well in these sports. The proximity of Paris no doubt bodes quite well as many families and friends will find it easier to make the trips to support their athletes. It looks as though Paris is going to make a distinctive set of games by having events in the locations that show off Paris to its very best and therefore, like the main Olympic Games themselves, the opening ceremony is not going to be in a stadium. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, which will take place between 28 August and 8 September, will see more than 4,000 athletes from around the world competing in 549 medal events and will showcase 22 sports, including both individual and team events.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech of the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination Thursday beat MAGA to the political punch and captured a key voting bloc in the process, according to a former Republican spokesperson. Tara Setmayer, Seneca Project co-founder and former GOP communications director, argued during a CNN Friday morning that Harris positioned herself as a potential commander-in-chief before former President Donald Trump could define her as a threat. ‘If you don’t think it was effective, all you have to do is look at how Donald Trump and his surrogates were responding to her speech: there was a meltdown.’ Republican commentators have already conceded that the Harris stance on abortion rights is going to be a critical factor in the Democrat’s favour in the forthcoming election. Paul Begala, co-panelist and onetime campaign adviser to former President Bill Clinton, concurred that Harris had the upper hand when it came to unifying a political party ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. Begala pointed to Harris’ promise to be a president for all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, as a crucial moment in her speech when it came to unifying her base. I have also just come an extraordinary story concerning Trump’s finances. Trump himself has been the biggest spender, both this year and over the last decade. Between his three presidential campaigns, Trump and associated political groups have funnelled more than $28 million in campaign donations to his businesses – helping convert the enthusiasm of his political supporters into personal profit. Other Republicans have followed suit, spending millions at Trump’s properties in an apparent attempt to curry favour with the former president and signal their allegiance to him to GOP voters. An even more extraordinary Trump ‘happening’ was reported by the liberal MSNBC network. Former President Donald J. Trump was watching television on Thursday night and he did not like what he saw. His newly minted Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, had just accused him of grovelling to dictators, imperilling democracy, betraying American values and, to top it off, deemed him ‘an unserious man.’ So Trump picked up the telephone and called Fox News. It can be appreciated why the network worked quickly to get the Republican candidate on the air, albeit by telephone. Trump is, after all, the Republican nominee, and it stood to reason that he’d have something notable to say in response to his Democratic rival’s remarks. What Fox might not have realised, however, is that Harris’ convention speech had apparently caused a meltdown. Trump appeared on the air for about 10 minutes, during which time he not only raged incoherently, he also accidentally pushed random buttons on his phone. The interview might have gone on longer, but the Fox anchors effectively cut off the former president mid-rant so that the network could move on to other programming. For Fox News, one of most right wing and Trump-friendly channels to cut him off in this way is extraordinary. So the term that the Republicans are using to describe Trump’s behaviour i.e. ‘meltdown’ might not be hyperbole after all.