Today being a Tuesday, we swing into our Tuesday routines which will turn out to be coffee with the Waitrose friends at about 10.30am followed by my Pilates session in the middle of the day. I got myself showered and then Meg’s carers did their bit to get Meg washed and dressed. One of the carers in particular is pressing that I ask for extra equipment to help Meg (and them) in their tasks. She is arguing along the lines that her grandmother had greater levels of mobility than Meg is exhibiting at the moment so we should press for a stairlift and other quite expensive mobility aids. But more of this later. After we had breakfasted, I got Meg ready to meet with our coffee bar friends and whilst the youngest one was busy playing bowls, we met with our other two regulars. Our friend who was a keen fell-walker has lost her husband (who was quite a lot older than her) to dementia and the funeral was held about a fortnight ago. Since then, she has busy with the things that are consequence of the death of a partner, such as the adjustment to joint bank account details. She was telling me of a government website called ‘TellMeOnce’ which, in theory, is a portal in which you communicate a person’s death to the portal which is then meant meant to inform all other relevant government departments. But I think she had run foul of one agency, probably I think the Benefits Agency, who when asked to cease the payments of one particular benefit, then required the completion of an eight page form including such details as the bank account details of any executors (presumably to pay any monies due into their bank accounts) Our friend had quite a row with them, refused to fill in the form and slammed down the phone. I am sure there there must be a simpler and easier way of dealing with this particular benefit but this is bureaucracy running mad for you. Before I left for my Pilates, I had a couple of welcome telephone calls from a nurse who works in the ‘Falls’ team and is part of the Occupational Therapy service. I had telephoned her yesterday to thank her for the piece of kit which she left with us on Friday which is helping to transport Meg around the house. She returned my message today, as she was out of the office yesterday, and said that she would see what she do about my request for a second and parallel piece of kit which would be used exclusively upstairs. A second phone call informed me that would manage to get the second piece of kit round to me some time in the afternoon. In addition, she was going to set up a visit in which she would call round with another OT/physiotherapist colleague to see how Meg was able to cope with stairs and how she managed the journeys she made (one at the start of the day when she comes downstairs and one at the end of the day when I get her off to bed) I must say I am delighted with the rapid and timely response of the team but I think that as Meg falls about once a day she is just an accident waiting to happen and we want to avoid these unpleasant possibilities. This is not just an idle speculation. One of my life-long friends who was both my art master, music teacher, dormitory supervisor at boarding school and boy scout troop leader (I knew him in several roles) would send us a Christmas card and verses of his composition every year without fail. When one did not arrive a year or so back, I sent another urgent letter which eventually passed into the hands of his daughter. She informed me that her father had fallen down the stairs of the cottage in which he lived in Northern France as a result of which he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage from which he died within the day. So potential falls down the stairs of a house are to be taken very seriously and evidently everyone concerned with Meg’s care is going to try to ensure that this does not happen to her.

It is budget day tomorrow and the media are their normal feeding frenzy in the day or so preceding it trying to ascertain what tax cuts are to be implemented in this most strange of years when the country cannot afford anything but it is going to be an election year, probably in October/November. There used to be a time when the Chancellor ‘went into purdah’ communicating with not a soul until he could announce good news in his budget statement that would be treated with wild applause on his own side of the house. Budget leaks used to be treated with the utmost seriousness, requiring ministerial resignations in the past. But we have had a ‘pre announcement’ (or is it a government leak of its own Budget) that there will be a cut of 2p in the rate of National Insurance contributions. This announcement, though, has a degree of political thought behind it. Firstly, a 2p cut in National Insurance will not benefit the extremely wealthy, nor the pensioners who do not pay NI contributions. But pensioners do not need any more largesse to be handed out to them as they benefit from the ‘triple lock’ policy in the first place whilst the extremely wealthy do not need a tax cut and will vote Tory anyway. So a cut in NI insurance contributions benfits those still at work who may be persuaded that the Tories may be worthy of some support after all. So there is quite a lot crude political calculation at work here.

After yesterday, I thought that today might be a much better day and so it has proved so far. The carers turned up around ten minutes late but there were horrendous traffic jams right through the centre of Bromsgrove so I was sympathetic to their plight. I know from an early doctor’s appointment that I had some years ago that at 8.00am it is possible to walk down the Kidderminster Road faster than the line of slow moving traffic. After breakfast, we contemplated our shopping and itinerary for the day. We started off at the Aldi supermarket to buy a toilet requisite that they stock and nobody else does so we were fortunate that they had some of this particular item in stock. Aldi sells it for about the price of other supermarkets and so that people in the know tend to snap it up whenever it appears on the shelves so you are never sure whether the shelves are to be bulging or completely bare. After this little venture, we picked up a newspaper and motored to Droitwich where we parked fairly easily. Then we had our usual fare of a pot of tea and a bacon butty in our favourite cafe which was fairly quiet this morning. Droitwich used to be the home of my favourite hardware store, Wilko, which went ‘belly up’ a month or so back. The store space has now been overtaken by Poundland who I suspect have inherited a lot of Wilko’s stock and supply lines. In short, it does not feel like a Poundland store as things are displayed at their normal discounted prices but with I suspect about two thirds of the lines that Wilko used to have. So Meg and I had a very useful trip around the store picking up those bits and bobs that you know you are going to find useful. I was also delighted to find that they stocked a range of mens’ underpants which I was on the point of buying online, anyway. I think the price I paid probably beat the online price anyway and I was delighted to see one of those little folding step-stools that are so useful for reaching into high cupboards so that went into my shopping basket as well. So after our successful little shopping trip, we called in at a Cancer Relief charity shop that we now well and usually carries a good range of items. I bought myself a Marks and Spencer shirt in the size, colour and style that I would buy if I were in a M&S store and some Easter cards of which we only send a very few these days. But I espied a wall clock in a classic pine hexagonal style design which was being sold for a song. I suspect that the price may have been discounted even further than normal because the label on the back informed one that you required a battery. But it was a standard AA battery of which I have a copious supply at home. I have wasted no time in getting the clock mounted in such a position that it can easily be seen when sitting in our little two seater settee – and it just so happens to match the surrounding furniture perfectly so that meant a piece of good fortune for us. Whilst we were paying for our purchases in the charity shop, I enquired of one of the assistants whether they had dominoes sets available – I have hunted for some dominoes for what appears to be months amidst the myriad of jigsaws but to date have been unsuccessful. But the assistant went into the back of the shop and appeared with a traditional box of dominoes which I was more than happy to acquire for a small sum. I am hopeful that Meg and I might be able to play this simple game at some suitable point in the afternoons if there is nothing to grab our attention on the TV and/or YouTube. Meg is getting into the habit of having a little doze after lunch and I am convinced that this helps her to cope with the rest of the day more easily.

This afternoon, just after Meg had rested, I made a FaceTime contact with my sister who lives in Yorkshire and who I have not seen for quite a long time now. Whilst being conscious of the fact that we are trying to organise something to see Meg’s cousin in Derby, I have also turned my thoughts to seeing my own family in Yorkshire. A year or so back we would have stayed in a hotel in Harrogate without a moment’s hesitation, but these days I have to think a little more carefully about the logistics involved. I am playing with the idea of staying overnight with one of the family overnight if this at all feasible but otherwise it might be logistically better just to one long extended day when we make the journey by car. The journeys would be principally by motorway but there are rush hours, traffic congestion and roadworks to take into account so what might seem to be a simple journey might prove to be a little more arduous than one would have thought.

Some of the breaking news late this afternoon is that the Government have been dealt a ‘spanking defeat’ in the House of Lords over the Rwanda bill. An amendment has been passed by a majority of 102 to the effect that if the bill comes into operation, it must comply fully with our obligations under both national and international law. As it is the intention of the Rwanda bill to try to avoid UK litigation this is a tremendous spanner in the works of the passage of the bill. Eventually, of course, the bill will emerge heavily amended by the Lords and then a game of ‘ping pong’ might emerge in which the Commons will have to try to reverse the amendments made in the Lords.

Today started off bright and early with what promises to be a glorious spring day. We set our alarm and were up and had our early morning cup of tea before the duo of carers arrived at 7.00am this morning – one hour earlier than during the week. We got Meg turned around and then we managed to watch the Lorna Kuennsberg program in its entirety. As it is the Budget next Wednesday and this year is going to be an election year, there is much speculation as to what the Chancellor will give away in the form of tax cuts. Apparently, there is enough money ‘in the kitty’ as it were for a 1p cut in income tax even if this were to be a prudent thing to do, but the Conservatives in their present mood are clamouring loudly for much more significant tax cuts although they seem to be very coy about what public services are to be cut in order to pay for a further tax reductions. The current political thinking is that a 2p reduction in income tax is necessary to make any real political impact and so, at the moment, there is a desperate scrabble around as to where the extra money might be found. Two avenues are in mind, of which the first is exploring the option of scrapping the tax status enjoyed by people who live in the UK, but whose home for tax purposes is overseas (the so-called non doms). As Rishi Sunak’s wife falls into this category and it would be a direct steal of one of the Labour Party’s prime policies, it must be a measure of the desperation of finding the money from somewhere afflicting the Chancellor and the PM at the moment. A second avenue is to withdraw some of the very generous allowances enjoyed by some landlords but so many Tory MPs are also landlords so one can see the political difficulties in this direction as well. After we had breakfasted, we received a very welcome telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend who we did not see last weekend as he was away in Yorkshire so we readily accepted his invitation to join him for coffee in Waitrose. We have discovered in the course of our many conversations, that we have a mutual interest in etymology or, at least, in knowing the derivation of the more rarified words we came across. The one we were trying to work out is ‘minestrone’ (as in Italian soup) but this is a bit more complicated that might be thought. On the one hand, the word probably derives from a Latin root to indicate ‘that (potage) which is served’ but in contemporary Italian the words is used more figuratively to indicate a haphazard collection of objects (hence any bits of vegetables that one had left in one’s kitchen) I am going to scour my collection of books to see if I have any of a vaguely etymological nature that might prove to be of interest to our friend – the nearest that I do know that I have is one called ‘The Pedant’s Revolt’ which is full of interesting bits and pieces including some etymology.

Last night, when Meg was in bed, I vaguely remembered seeing the flash of the latest film from Sasha Baron Cohen (‘Ali G’ to most people) I did a quick check and found out that it was included in one of the Prime collection of films to which my subscription entitles me. So I watched it, alone, and found several sections of it excruciatingly funny as well as disturbing. Without reviewing the main plot of the film, Sasha Baron Cohen takes a massive swipe at many manifestations of the extreme right in America and gets some people in the commercial sector to do the most outrageous things without turning a hair. For example, he gets one patissier to ice a cake with the most outrageous anti-Semitic trope which the shop owner does immediately – I should point out that of course Cohen is himself Jewish and I have seen videoclips of him doing similar outrageous things such as getting a folk club to sing the most outrageously vicious anti-Semitic songs without pause for thought. Having enjoyed this film last night so much, I thought I would play it all over this afternoon for the joint enjoyment of Meg and myself. But the black humour and outrageous nature of some of the pranks played in the course of the movie were a bit too much for Meg to follow so we had to abandon this after watching about half an hour of it. The rest of the afternoon rather put me in mind of the reply that I asked one of original Spanish students on an Erasmus exchange what was the worst time he spent in England. Without hesitation, he replied ‘4.00pm on a Sunday afternoon’ which was a deliberate misunderstanding of course but reasonably accurate from his point of view. I think the contrast with Leicester and Madrid was overwhelming at 4.00 on a Sunday afternoon because in Madrid there was a lively cafe frequented almost exclusively by university students who used to engage in earnest debate with each other. I mentioned this to one of my Waitrose crowd whose husband worked a Sunday shift and she reckoned the only ‘escape’ at this time on a Sunday afternoon with a one year old child was to wander around the local park.

Today has been turned out to be quite an interesting day. We needed to set our alarm for 6.30am so that we were up and awake before our two carers were meant to turn up at 7.00am. In the event, it was one only but between us, we got Meg up, washed and dressed and then I got Meg downstairs for breakfast. On Saturday mornings, we tend to meet up with our Tuesday+Saturday crowd and again we had a jolly time. I recounted the story to them of the rules that the Womens’ Moral Tutor made up to keep the girls (i.e. female students) safe from predatory males and this just seems so quaint by the standards of today. I then popped around the Waitrose store to buy one or two things of which I knew we might run short. I also espied a particular low alcohol beer which Waitrose stocks but where the preserved flavour is superb and it is difficult to know that you are drinking a low-alcohol product. Whilst paying for our purchases, I noticed from the person’s shopping in front of me that the store was selling off some its ‘Cavalo Nero’ kale which I have not seen on supermarket shelves recently. The traditional kale was called ‘Hungry Gap’ because it was often available for harvest in February when last year’s greens were spent and this year’s had not yet been planted. This traditional kale was often of a bitter taste and I suspect the greens of last resort. But the newly bred ‘Cavalo Nero’ is bred with narrow leaves with a spine that is easy to remove and the flavour is generally superb. So I bought some of this discounted veg and we ate one half if this lunchtime to accompany the fish pie which we generally eat on Friday but we carried over until today. So our lunch was tasty this afternoon and I successfully persuaded Meg to go and doze on the settee in our Music Lounge which she did for about half an hour. Whilst she was in a deep doze, I took the opportunity to email the daughter of Meg’s cousin to ascertain how Meg’s cousin was these days and whether we might organise a joint family meal both to see each other but more especially to exchange relevant information about the family members for whom we were caring. Although I knew Meg’s cousin was in a pretty poor state of health, I had not appreciated the triple whammy that she had experienced. As well as advancing dementia, she is also suffering from a terminal cancer and has recently sustained a broken pelvis as a result of a fall. All of this means that it has become impossible for her daughter to give her the sustained level of care that is evidently needed, so is now in a residential home in the village where her daughter resides. So I am busy exchanging emails and we are trying to work out the logistics of seeing Meg’s cousin in the residential home. It may be that Meg and I motor over to the suburbs of Derby and see Meg’s cousin, after which we will have a communal meal somewhere. I have got quite a lot of photos of this particular cousin spread around various folders of photos and I shall and extract as many of these as I can once a certain amount of searching has been undertaken and this collection, once assembled, we will be able to take over to Derby if that is where we actually meet in a week or so.

Earlier this morning, we had been told of an organ concert that was due to be held in our local Methodist centre, principally to celebrate St. David’s Day which was yesterday, March 1st. We thought that we might go along to this if Meg felt well enough and our friend told us she thought it started at 3.30 in the afternoon. But one way or another, the same friend managed to get hold of our telephone number to tell us that the concert started at 3.00 and not 3.30 So we had a bit of a race around to get there in time but we did it, only being about 5 minutes late in the event. The event was not quite as we imagined it might be but was enjoyable nonetheless. Most of the pieces were actually Welsh hymns or at least hymns well known and loved by Methodist Welsh audiences with some perennial favourites (along the lines of ‘Cwm Rhondda’) interspersed with some solo organ pieces (naturally, by Welsh composers) The whole event took a bit longer than we anticipated, being about an hour and a quarter in length overall. But we finished off having tea and biscuits in the ‘overflow’ area such as we do each Wednesday. I must say that we found those attending were incredibly friendly and we were recognised as being Wednesday regulars. We had our cup of tea with our Tuesday/Saturday Waitrose friends and felt that we had a very entertaining afternoon, although Meg was getting tired towards the end of it.

The George Galloway circus rumbles on and there is a view that all of this might prove to be very bad news for the Labour party. In a rousing victory speech, Galloway denounced Labour and the Conservatives as ‘two cheeks of the same backside’ and claimed he had put Sir Keir Starmer on notice. He declared with characteristic Galloway passion: ‘Starmer, this is for Gaza. You have paid, and you will pay, a high price for the role you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe currently going on in occupied Palestine in the Gaza Strip.’ What is worrying for Starmer in that many tight constituencies, Galloway might just away enough of the traditional Labour (and especially Muslim) vote to allow the Tories to retain the seat (which may cut Starmer’s anticipated margin of victory considerably)

This morning started off as we have by now come to expect with a couple of carers turning up to help Meg up, showered, dressed and then eventually helped downstairs. We breakfasted to the news dominating the airwaves of George Galloway and his Workers’ Party of Britain having gained quite a sensational victory overnight in the by-election yesterday. Normally, this seat would have won by Labour but the Labour candidate was disavowed by the party after he had made anti-Semitic comments and so George Galloway romped away with the seat in Rochdale with an Independent candidate occupying the second place. What was so remarkable about this election was that the two established mail political parties, the Tories and the Labour Party were beaten into third and fourth place. After we had breakfasted, we waited for our minister to arrive from our local church who we had not seen for a week or so but were delighted to see her when she arrived. We spent a slightly shorter amount of time together as she had another service that she needed to attend but, as always, we find these visits quite uplifting. Then Meg and I had the choice of where to go for coffee so we chose to go to Droitwich which we sometimes do on a Friday. As we were parking in Droitwich, I espied a most extraordinary sight which was a group of about eight nursery age children packed into a sort of modern trailer which was then being pulled along by their minders. I suppose this arrangement must be somewhat safer than having a line of children some of whom might be stragglers or be otherwise wayward. The only time that I have seen something similar was in La Coruna in Northern Spain where I did once notice a long length of blue rope with young children (aged about 4) who had evidently been instructed at all costs just to hang onto the piece of rope. At one end of the piece of rope was their teacher/minder and this was a device that they utilised to get across busy roads and otherwise circumnavigate the city. This morning as I was concentrating on my driving, I did not have a great deal of time to observe exactly how the transportation of nursery school children was being done but I suspect it was fundamentally a staff-saving type of arrangement. So Meg and I picked up our copy of our daily newspaper and then headed for our normal cafe which was much quieter than usual. But when we came to leave, we were astonished to see that the ground was white over and evidently there had been a sudden flurry of hail if not snow (I think the meteorologists cover themselves by calling these ‘wintry showers’) But whatever shower there had been, the skies had cleared quite quickly and became quite a bright blue with a hint of warmth from the sun. Today is called meteorologically the first day of Spring, an event I would prefer to be associated with the equinox on 21st of this month. We made our way to the Worcestershire Association of Carers shop to see if, by any chance, the Murano glass goblet was still in evidence but it was not, so had evidently been sold perhaps to a discerning collector. Then we made our way home, the weather having changed remarkably for the better. Once we got home, we wee running somewhat late for our normal Friday lunch of a fish pie which would have taken a fair amount of time to cook. Instead, we made ourselves a lightning lunch of a slice of toast topped by a slice of cheese, then a slice of ham and topped up with some garlic mushrooms. This lunch was not only tasty but prepared in a record space of time as well.

During the afternoon, I was encouraging Meg to have a post-prandial map when I received a mobile phone call from a nurse who was actually standing outside our front door with a piece of kit designed to enhance Meg’s mobility around the house. I was half expecting this piece of kit to be delivered but I was not expecting the person who delivered it to be a nurse employed by the Falls Prevention/Occupational Therapy team to be delivering it in person. This turned out to be a most useful visit as she came and assessed Meg’s mobility and made sure the new piece of kit was suitable for her. She also took Meg’s blood pressure both sitting down and standing up and then was going to submit the readings to our doctor. She was a very useful source of advice and I would have liked to spend even more time with her if it were possible but just then our hairdresser turned up (by appointment) and so between us, we managed to get Meg’s hair given its monthly treatment. In the late afternoon, we saw the Prime Ministerial statement and then an amazing interview of George Galloway, the winner of the Rochdale by election with Sam Cooke, the Sky News political commentator. Whatever one might feel of George Galloway’s political stances, his rhetorical flourishes are second to none and he seemed to reduce Sam Cooke to a quivering wreck in the course of a most extraordinary interview. I saw George Galloway do a similar thing in the United States Senate here again he managed to completely out-argue his Senate inquisitor who was absolutely no match for the verbal skills that Galloway can display when he is ‘on song’ as it were.

This morning started off with two carers plus a ‘shadow’ who turned up fairly promptly and I had just about got Meg up by this time. I always like to try to establish a relationship with all of the carers and this morning, I asked the youngest of them if she had any particular hobbies or interests. It turned out that she had been playing the (baritone) euphonium since the age of eight and was currently a member of a brass band who had performed in several quite prestigious venues. This reminded me that before I went to university, I had a good friend who played the ‘flugel horn’ (a sort of cross between a cornet and a trumpet) in a brass band in Leeds. My friend invited me along to a performance and I was initially reluctant because I did not think it was practically my scene – however, eventually I was persuaded to go. This turned out to be quite an eye-opener for me. Many members of the band seemed to ex miners (hints of the film ‘Brassed Off‘) and they were an incredibly friendly and hospitable crowd as I remember. They seemed to drink like fishes even before a performance and I remember being bought a pint of Tetley’s with the advice ‘Get this down th’ neck, lad!) After having imbibed what seemed quite a quantity of beer quite quickly they went on to perform flawlessly in what seemed to be like a choir of angels and, of course after the performance, there was quite a lot more drinking as well. When I was at my first secondary school at Bolton in Lancashire, the school had a reasonable musical tradition and I was part of the school choir and the school orchestra. But the school was best known for its brass band which regularly took part in the ‘Whit Walks’ processions which were quite a feature of Lancashire life in the mid 1950’s but I think that only remnants of it survive until this day. As it happens, I have a print of an L S Lowry upon my study wall that reminds me of my days spent in Manchester and in the background, there is an illustration of the Whit Walks taking place. A story that I was told about L S Lowry is that he was rather a curmudgeonly old soul and he used to hire a taxi into the Pennine hills overlooking Manchester with only green fields around him. Then he used to paint from memory the industrial scenes with which are typical of Lowry. Today the carer came to look after Meg whilst I went off to my shopping and in the course of getting there almost had a collision in the car. There is a traffic light controlled junction with the A38 dual carriage way and this junction is always difficult to negotiate. You have to get to the centre of the road and then try to peer past any large vehicles that are stuck in the junction and might obscure one’s view but trust there is no oncoming traffic bearing down at a great speed. Of course, the evident thing to do would be to have a filter system but as I know from encounters in the past, the traffic officers attached to the local planning authority will not authorise this because, as they say, ‘we must not do anything to impede the flow of traffic along the A38’ At present in Bromsgrove there appear to be major roadworks on practically every major road system throughout the town and even the main Kidderminster Road is blocked off for about a month whilst the water authority is upgrading something or other. So at the moment, the residents of Bromsgrove seem to be suffering from all of the delay, congestion and inconveniences of the various ‘improvements’ that are taking place, including widening of the A38 at a cost of millions which will have the net effect of moving a traffic jam about one half of a mile along the road. I do not know if the conjunction of the period of austerity following the financial crisis followed by COVID has led to a massive backlog of maintenance that needs to be done. But is all does add up to the impression which is widely shared in the community that the whole of our social and political life is falling apart.

This afternoon, I received a welcome phone call from the Occupational Therapy team after is had contacted them after Meg’s recent falls (on Saturday and yet another today) It is possible that they are able to supply some equipment that may enable me to move Meg from one place to another more quickly than we are managing at the moment and, if they have the piece of equipment in stock, it may arrive as early as tomorrow. On the face of it, this sounds good but is essentially a piece of sticking plaster which cannot address the long term needs that Meg does have. But in general terms, apart from today which is a slight exception to the rule, we get Meg and myself out most days for a coffee and comestibles and to enjoy some social contact as well. The wheelchair that I bought for Meg and which lives in the back of the car has actually proved its weight in gold and after I replaced a nut that fell off, has seen some sterling service.

There is some rather disturbing news from the other side of the Atlantic. It appears that the US Supreme Court have ruled that it will eventually adjudicate upon the claim that Donald Trump was the instigator of insurrection because of the attacks upon the Capital building some three years ago now. The upshot of this is that Trump’s trial will be so delayed that it might not take place until after the next presidential election which means that the American people will be asked to make a president of a man accused of violent insurrection before the presidential election takes place. One can only assume that if Trump wins the presidency again, he will be able to avoid a trial and probable conviction. All of this is incredibly bad news for the normal operation of democratic and legal processes within the US.

This turned out to be quite an interesting day but not one with the most promising of starts. Our domestic help had swapped her day to a Wednesday and, as usual, we were always pleased to see her and have a chat. I got Meg ready for the care workers at 8.00am and then two of them turned up but waited outside until a third shadow worker turned up. For some organisational reason, they stayed outside in the car for half an hour leaving Meg in a half state of preparedness waiting for them, which seemed peculiar to me. But when they did turn up, they took care of Meg well and helped to get her downstairs and seated in her customary chair. As it is a Wednesday, Meg and I were resolved to go off to the Methodist centre which is quite routine for us on Wednesday mornings. There we were welcomed at the ‘chatty table’ from someone who recognised us and we had a most fascinating conversation for most of the morning. Somehow we got onto the subject of how we had first our prospective spouses and in both of our cases, it was at university. We had a bit of a giggle about the fact that when Meg and I started to attend the University of Manchester in 1965, the University employed what was coyly termed the Womens’ Moral Tutor. This lady spent her life devising rules how young women were supposed to behave if they invited a male student into their bedroom.The rule which was in place was that young men were not allowed to lie on the bed and could do what they wanted so long as they kept one foot permanently on the floor! Another person at the table joined in the conversation and told us the story of what used to happen in a residential college in Bromsgrove in a similar time period. Here the rule was that all men had to leave by 10.00pm at night and the girl whose room it was and who was entertaining a boyfriend was required to keep the door a few inches ajar whilst a warden vigilantly patrolled the corridors to ensure compliance. Our friend explained to us how she had got ‘A’-levels in Maths and Physics and started to study Maths at university but it was not for her. Eventually she trained in Psychology and then acquired a position in a doctor’s surgery eventually becoming the practice manager of a large group practice. I told her, in turn, how my mother had trained to be a teacher late in life (when she was in her 40’s) and how she had told me a most remarkable story when she was considerably advanced in years. The story that she told me was that she had been employed briefly in her occupational life in a brothel. The whole story is that my mother had received a good training in Pitman shorthand and typing and on the strength of this acquired a position as a dentist’s receptionist. Her duties consisted of greeting the (male) clients, ticking off their names in a ledger and then escorting them to a waiting room. This she did for about 3-4 days before her mother (i.e. my grandmother) stormed into the dentists and dragged my mother out of it. Apparently the whole facade of a ‘dentist’ was just a ruse to design the true activities of the establishment which was actually a brothel and so my mother was technically quite accurate when she confided in me that she had been employed in such an establishment.

We lunched on a lightish lunch of ham, green beans and baked potato and then set forth for our appointment with the optician for Meg at 3.00 this afternoon. We got there only about a minute late and explained the circumstances of Meg’s fall to the optician who has treated us for years. The news after his examination was good in that the back of each eye appeared sound and both eyes passed the ‘pressure’ test. He confirmed that as a result of the fall, no damage had been done to Meg’s eyesight so this was good news to receive. We need to have a slight adjustment to be made to the nose piece on the glasses which had suffered a little from the fall but this was quickly adjusted for us and we were soon on our way. We popped into one or two of the charity shops as we were already on the High Street and they were so nearby and had a stroke of good fortune. Yesterday, I just missed acquiring one of these desktop spotlights that are used for close work and the like as another customer was clutching it in his hand and was about to pay for it. This afternoon, I found exactly the same model that I had seen the day before and it had only just come in the store and had been tested. Nonetheless, I satisfied myself that it was working as it should and I am pleased to say that it fits unobtrusively just where I wanted it to be and it will give me the little bit of extra newspaper reading light that I need. We also acquired a set of coasters, a little dish upon which I can serve up pieces of chocolate for Meg and a shoe horn, as well as accessing an ATM to get out the shopping money for tomorrow. So we both felt that we had a very productive afternoon and particularly enjoyed our afternoon cup of tea once we arrived home. As is customary on a Wednesday afternoon, I remembered to drag the bins out ready for the emptying tomorrow morning and as this is a job which I actively dislike doing in the dark, I was delighted to get it done today before the light faded.

I always look forward to Tuesdays if only because it is the day when the five of us (three of our friends plus Meg and I) meet up in the Waitrose cafeteria for our morning coffee. I think our friends were a little surprised at seeing the bruising around Meg’s eyes caused primarily by her glasses frame when she experienced a fall last Saturday and she does rather look as though she has gone several rounds in a boxing ring but when she wears her glasses the appearance is less dramatic. The bruising discolouration emerged dramatically a day after the fall but in accordance with good practice, this was immediately photographed and put on Meg’s case notes so that when carers who have not visited before are reading their notes (all on their iPhones) they know what to expect. This morning, we had a visit from three carers) a normal two plus one who is shadowing) and they all turned up very promptly at almost exactly 8.00am this morning. They arrived at just the right point where I had got Meg out of bed and into the bathroom and then they were in a good position to take over. After they had departed and we had breakfasted, we made our way to Waitrose and had a jolly chat. The running joke between us all is that I decline the offer of some chocolate to be sprinkled on top of my cappuchino and I explain that I have given up chocolate for Lent, together with gambling, fast cars and loose women. My friends tell me that I had exactly the same list that I gave up for Lent last year and although on Easter Sunday, my consumption of chocolate will resume, the other pleasures of life (vices?) seem to have passed me by throughout the last year. After we all took our leave of each other, I thought that I could squeeze in a quick visit to the AgeUK charity shop which is off the High Street and also chock full of useful things that can be bought as well as being perpetually busy. I wanted to buy just a little desk type spotlamp to assist me in reading the newspaper when Meg is having a rest on our sofa and when I was in the shop, I saw exactly the sort of thing that I was looking forward and would have bought immediately. The only trouble is that it was being clutched in the hands of another customer which was frustration in the extreme as if I had arrived a few minutes earlier, I might have got it to it first. I sighed to myself and tried to be philosophical, consoling myself that in the fullness of time, other offerings will be available for me but I had rather had the same emotions with which car drivers are familiar when you spot an available car parking space as another driver but he/she are a yard ahead of you and therefore have a more legitimate claim to the space. The usual carer, plus her shadow, came along at the appointed time so that I could go off and do my Pilates class. We had a few new exercises this week and I must say that I am feeling a little out of condition. I think I probably need to spend a few minutes every morning doing some Pilates exercises whilst Meg is tucked up in bed and I have got up to make the early morning of cup of tea but I think it is a classic case of ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’. Incidentally, in the early days of computerised automatic translation, this phrase translated into Russian and then back again yielded results such as ‘the vodka is good but the meat is rotten.’

Today was the day when the ex boss of the Post Office, Henry Saunders, was due to give evidence in front of a committee in the House of Commons. Although Sky News is predicting that it will be an explosive session, I have my doubts. This is because in committee with a Tory majority upon it, there will be a natural inclination to side with the Tory minister’s (Kemi Badenoch) version of events rather than the recently sacked chairman and I expect that we shall probably see a series of diversionary tactics designed to denigrate the reputation of the sacked chairman and not to sully the reputation of the aggressive Trade Secretary who is reportedly a front runner to replace Rishi Sunak who is bound to be quickly replaced when the Tories lose the forthcoming general election. The trouble with the political scene these days is that practically every political intervention has got to be seen through the prism of the forthcoming election and the leadership battles that will take place immediately after it. There is a tremendous turmoil in the Tory party at the moment. One strand of thought is that the party needs to drift further and further to the right to avoid an electoral disaster. This rather mirrors what the followers of Jeremy Corbin used to believe that the failure of the Labour Party was that is was insufficiently left wing and the further left the Labour Party party became, the more it would appeal. Of course, it is an acknowledged part of the political consensus that general elections are only won by appealing to the centre ground i.e. the uncommitted, non-ideologically driven sections of the electorate and driving a political party to either of its extreme fringes is probable electoral suicide.

Today has proved to be an interesting day so far. We actually had three helpers turn up this morning but one of them was a ‘shadowing’ worker whilst she learnt what was involved in the job. Having said that, she had worked in a care setting beforehand and made a useful suggestion to us to help acquire some bathroom cleaning aids that might be useful for Meg. So after we had breakfasted, Meg and I set out on the road calling it first at a large store in Bromsgrove that sells the type of household products that we had just had recommended to us. But we parked extraordinarily easily and found the products for which we were looking, fortunate in that a store assistant was stocking the shelves and knew exactly the product for which we were looking. Then we swung by our newspaper shop but a swift look inside showed that they still had not got a regular supply of newspapers organised so we made straight for Droitwich. Here we had our normal repast of a pot of tea and a bacon butty before we popped into the Droitwich Association of Carers shop, which is one of our frequent haunts. Here I picked up a couple of what I can only describe as wooden framework owls for a song – whether they are designed as bookends or merely as decorative objects, I cannot say. But in any case they complement well our collection of other ‘owls’ that we have in place in our Music lounge and after a moment’s hesitation, I am glad I actually purchased them. Then I espied a fairly large goblet with a design upon it that I recognised as almost certainly a product of the Murano glass factory in Venice. When we visited Venice several decades ago, we made a tourist visit to the world famous Murano glass factory and bought a set of traditionally decorated liqueur glasses and a decanter. I remember well that as a sales ploy no doubt, the guide to the factory took one of these glasses and hurled it to the floor to show that their glass was so tough that it would not break. We have these glasses and decanter in a display cabinet and we would bring them out for special occasions such as Christmas time when entertaining close friends. So I recognised the design on the goblet in the shop but the trouble is that particular goblet was decorated with a ring of what looked like red glass stones, completely out of keeping with the wonderful amethyst style colour of the traditional Murano glass. This made the whole goblet look like a cheap piece of fairground ‘tat’ but was it actually tremendously more valuable than the charity shop selling it recognised? I took the piece over to the manager and he was going to do some checks on its provenance to work out what a correct selling price could be. Whilst this little conversation was taking place, I got into conversation with another lady who had disposed of some of her own pottery of which she was not particularly enamoured only to see it sold an enormous price some time later. In the course of our discussion. she made the telling observation that ‘after all, one person’s fairground tat is another person’s collectable’ but this has set up a dilemma in my mind. Should we return this Droitwich and pick up this piece which to some extent matches the rest of our collection (even though I do not like this particular exemplar) and/or is it too good an opportunity to pass by and displayed in a suitable way, its qualities might be revealed?

When we got home, I consulted my emails. After Meg had a fall last Saturday, I had communicated the event to the specialist nurse who looks after Meg’s condition in the hope that she could put my observations into Meg’s medical file lodged with the GP practice. As always, the nurse was extraordinarily helpful and had passed my email onto the GP, spoken with them to request a domiciary visit so that Meg could have any further assessment (for example a head injury assessment). She has also made an onward reference to the Occupational Therapy team because both the carers and myself are of the mind that Meg may be in need of some extra mobility aids to help her to get to the bathroom, around the house and so on. So it will be interesting to see how long it will take the OT team to respond and whether there are some additional mobility aids to assist in Meg’s painfully slow progress around the house. We lunched on ham, broccoli and baked potato and immediately afterwards, I was delighted to see that Meg availed herself of a little post-prandial sleep on our two-person settee which I am sure will do her some good, particularly after we had an interrupted night’s sleep.

The political row over the effect of the utterances of Lee Anderson (red-wall ex-miner MP who, until his resignation, was a Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party) rumbles on. The media circus are now going after Rishi Sunak who as Prime Minister must take some responsibility for the effect of the words of an outspoken ex-minister. So far, Rishi Sunak as admitted that the words used were ‘wrong’ but cannot bring himself to admit publically that the sentiments were anti-Islamic. In this respect, there seems to be a divide between Labour and the Conservatives because the former have admitted to anti-Semitism and have taken steps to do something about it but the Conservatives are not admitting to any Islamophobia within their own party. But Baroness Warsi (the female, ex-Conservative minister who is a Muslim of Pakistani heritage, hailing from Bradford) is scathing in her public comments about the extent of Islamophobia in the modern Tory party and reckons that the Tory party just ‘look over their shoulders’ when she has raised the issue with them.

Between us, we had rather a disturbed night last night which may have been a delayed consequence to the fall that Meg had in the mid-afternoon of yesterday. Meg had a restless period but eventually I got back back to sleep having lost a valuable hour or so of sleep time which both of us will find it hard to replace. Two carers turned up this morning on cue and although Meg was rather on the wobbly side, we got her up and dressed and ready to face the world. As is usual on a Sunday morning, we had the Lorna Kuenssberg program remarkable if only because of the presence on the show of Oliver Dowden, the deputy Prime Minister. He said the outspoken MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, used the ‘wrong words’ to hit out at the mayor of London, and that ‘words matter’. However, Mr Dowden refused to condemn recent remarks by former home secretary Suella Braverman, who said the ‘Islamist mob’ had now ‘taken over’ communities in Britain. In trying to defend the indefensible, we have our deputy Prime Minister refusing to disown former colleagues and resorting to a formula such as ‘they used the wrong words’ This sort of denial is implying that the words used may have been Islamophobic and the sentiments almost certainly were but refusing to endorse the exact form of words used. One is driven to conclude that if the Labour Party had issues with anti-Semitism – which it undoubtedly had – then the present Conservative party has similar issues with regard to Islamophobia which they refuse to acknowledge. After the show had finished, Meg and I made our down to Waitrose for a Sunday morning coffee and pastry but without meeting anybody in particular. When we got home, we indulged in a bit more coffee and once I had got Meg settled, engaged in the preparations for Sunday lunch (ham, baked potato and some sprouts) Today I am preparing lunch a little earlier than usual and we are even forgoing the Six Nations rugby match between France and Italy for a particular reason. This is because there is going to be a showing of ‘Doctor Zhivago‘ which is one of the favourite films of which we never tire which is to be shown between 2.00pm and 5.00pm this afternoon. For the same reason, I am writing the bulk of this blog somewhat earlier than would normally be the case so that we have an uninterrupted afternoon of pleasure (so to speak). Meg and I watched the whole film (of over three hours) and reminded ourselves that we the first time we saw it was in Leicester Square in London in about 1966 or 1967. The film has always been one of our favourites and in common with other David Lean films, the cinematography is superb. Of course, many people will know the theme tune ‘Lara’s theme’ which has part of popular culture for the last half century. The film has an incredibly poignant ending. Torn between the two loves of his life, Tonia and Lara, Zhivago was separated from both by the cataclysmic events of the Russian revolution. Eventually, Zhivago finds himself on a Moscow tram and thinks that he sees one of the loves of his life, Lara who has borne him a child, walking along the pavement. He desperately scrambles off the tram and desperately tries to run after her again after a forced separation of several years. But he does not quite reach her as a few metres short of catching up with her again he suffers a fatal heart attack before he can catch up with her again. Sorry if I have spoiled the ending for any reader who has not seen the film. I think that film ranks alongside ‘Amadeus’ (the life of Mozart) as one of my two most favourite films of all time.

There are reports this evening that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas might be forthcoming in the next few days. Israel’s war cabinet has been briefed on a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas following negotiations in Paris. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gathered ministers late on Saturday night after Israeli envoys returned from meeting US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.The Americans are cautiously optimistic that some kind of deal might be attainable. Of course the critical thing for the Israelis is to work out how many Israeli hostages will lose their lives if a further Israeli push is made deep into the territory of Gaza. The Israelis must know that many of the hostages would be abandoned to their fate if the Israeli push went too far and, of course, by attacking the tunnels that the inhabitants of Gaza have dug for themselves and in which many of the hostages are being held, then the Israeli defence forces might be responsible for the death of their own citizens held hostage. In addition, the public opinion in Israel is strongly in favour of ending the conflict now and saving the lives of as many of the hostages as they can. I find it noteworthy that the phrase ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ which one associates with some of the bloodier passages in the Bible is meant to refer to a proportionate response. Latest figures show a Palestinian death toll of 30,000 in retaliation for the 1400 Israelis killed in the initial attack (a ratio of 25:1). In addition, practically 90 journalists have lost their lives as well.