Today has not been a good day at the time of this starting this blog but there is always room for improvement. For a start, it was raining quite heavily when we awoke this morning and all of the indications are that the rain will persist for much of the day. Meg took longer to get up, washed and dressed than usual but we were all in place for about 9.00 where we tend to catch up on the overnight news stories by watching Sky News. We knew that today we were going to fit quite a lot in but we made our way to Waitrose for coffee and to see our friends. Neither of these materialised – the coffee dispenser in the cafeteria had broken down so all we could be dispensed with us was tea. To make matters worse for us, none of our friends turned up and whether they were just deterred by the bad weather or whether other misfortune had befallen all of them, who can say? Last night, after I had got Meg to bed, I started to bottle some of my home-made damson gin as I knew that I needed some for the following day. Bottling is a bit of a messy business as the gin has to be strained through ideally a muslin cloth. I tend to compromise a little and do it with actually pristine dish cloths but after one or do bouts of decanting, the fibres of the cloth get all clogged up and it is best to jetison the cloth and to use a fresh one. But I got six bottles all done, then labelled up (with actually a date of 2022, the damsons being picked in 2021 so we are talking about two year old liquor). Then some Christmas paper has to be liberated and the bottles wrapped up but I do this rapidly and with no degree of finesse. Last night, after a bit of a search and some good fortune, I found my Santa Claus outfit and so I was all prepared for later on this Tuesday. In theory, the care assistant who sits with Meg whilst I am off doing Pilates should have turned up at 12.30 but by the time it was 12.55 and still a no-show, we decided to adopt Plan B. I put on my flannelette Santa Claus trousers and the Santa Claus top taking the outer clothing and the red woollen hat with me. Then I went down to the Asda carpark, got Meg into the wheelchair and then made my way to the Pilates studio bundled up with a Santa Claus sack (into which to put clothing), my Pilates gear and by bottle bag of gin. Once in the studio, I left Meg in the communal area whilst I crept into an empty corridor and took off my track suit bottoms and shirt to reveal my Santa Claus gear underneath and then put on my outer jacket and hat and went into the studio. Here was my teacher and only one of my Pilates class mates, the other two not having turned up. So I gave Christmas cards to my teacher and one classmate, leaving behind further supplies for my teacher to distribute to my class mates when she next she sees them. Then Meg and I made for home and in the absence of fishcakes – our normal fare on a Tuesday – I made a sort of concoction of onions, tomatoes and a tin of tuna enhanced by 1000 Island dressing which we then served on a bed of microwaved rice for Meg and cream crackers for myself. This was a little tastier than might have been expected and Meg and I finished all of our meal. We were not too displeased with the way that things worked out because it was quite possible that Meg might have become agitated with the care worker with whom she would have to have spent two hours if things had worked out as they should have done.

This afternoon, I have been engaged in a certain amount of furniture rearrangement. The reason is that although our new Music Lounge was technically full, I did feel the need for a little two seater settee for Meg and myself for some therapeutic reasons upon which I will not elaborate. After trying one or two locations for the settee, I eventually fixed upon a location with which I am more than happy because our standard lamp is adjacent should one wish to read, my IBM portable workstation is on the other side and, evidently, the sound from the YouTube concerts fills the whole of the room in any case. As there was no evident ‘gap’, I had to rearrange and relocate some of our existing furniture but I am happy with the overall result and I think that Meg enjoys it as well. She can sit on the settee and chat with me whilst I can blog and we can both listen to the music playing in the background (at this very much I am pretty sure it is some passages from Haydn’s ‘Creation’). I am convinced that this sounds better in the original German rather than the original rather poor, English translation because there seems to a natural symmetry of the words and the cadences of the music. In case this sound very pretentious, I see to remember the chorister friend who is one of our Tuesday crowd is of the same opinion. At this time of year, I still like to listen to renditions of ‘The Messiah‘ when they are broadcast and/or available and, of course, in some cities of the country, there are mass events where one can turn up and sing it with a choir of thousands. Tonight, Meg and I are gearing ourselves up for the Christmas carol concert in our local church. Although this might make a later night for us then we would have liked, we have no pressing commitments tomorrow and can always indulge in a little lie-in if need be.

Last night, after my wife was safely tucked up in bed, I had set myself the task of getting our Christmas cards completed because I very much wanted to get the whole lot into the system by a fairly early post this morning. I worked solidly from 8.15 until nearly 10.00pm and got all 38 of them completed. Each, as well as an indivualised message, needed a little label so that recipients would know how Meg was progressing alongside some of my blog details and a normal address label. Needless to say, I was delighted to get this job done with just two held over whilst I try to acquire some up-to-date address details so I know where they are to be sent. Then I started to watch the news but promptly fell asleep but did crawl into bed before midnight. The task for this morning was quite simple and that was to stick one of our address labels on the back with the attribution of ‘From:’ in the case of mis-delivery. This morning Meg and I got ourselves up and going in plenty of time and then set off for Droitwich, some 8 miles distant. En route, I managed to stop off at a store that sells newspapers and acquired their last copy of ‘The Times‘ and then arrived in Droitwich where we were fortunate enough to secure a parking place just across the road from the bank which was fine as I managed to speed across the road and relieve the ATM of some of its cash, which I knew I was going to need for a multitude of stamps, presents and the like. Then Meg and I made our way (Meg in her wheelchair) towards the fairly adjacent post office and were fairly dismayed to see a series of insurmountable steps – however, there was a disabled access to the side and so I breathed a sigh of relief and wheeled Meg inside. In my imagination, I thought the post office would be absolutely teeming this morning – I am sure that the one in Bromsgrove would have been and on similar occasions when we had a ‘proper’ post office in Bromsgrove (i.e. not a counter in a W H Smiths), I have known people queue all the way inside the shop and finish off on the pavement outside. I was sure this was going to happen today but I was mistaken. The queue mercifully was short and we were seen within a minute or so, the post office having two counter staff on duty. Having posted off the four items for Spain, I then got a block of stamps and all I needed to do was to affix them. The post office had fortunately provided a little desk and a chair so this task was made very easy for me. I discovered in the course of my stamp- fixing duties that I was about to send two copies of a card to the same person so I quickly jettisoned one of them and then handed the complete bundle to the counter staff as they asked me to. In the past, though, I have known the red post boxes to be so full that it would have been possible to stick your hand inside and grap a collection of the already posted mail. So I felt very pleased with my morning’s work and Meg and I made it across the road to our favourite cafe where we treated ourselves to a pot of tea and a bacon butty on thick granary bread. For some reason, the bacon tasted particularly delicious this morning. Then Meg and I returned home and Meg watched a bit of the Politics programme starting at 12.15 which I would dearly would have liked to have done but I did have to crack on and get our lunch prepared.

This afternoon, Meg and I have been experiencing some wonderful pieces of music, courtesy of YouTube (to which we have taken out a subscription and it is really proving its worth to us) We tend to start off in the same way with a bit of Fauré which we both find relaxing. Thereafter, some of the pieces that YouTube ‘select’ for us according to its algorithms are pieces that we already know and like whilst others are a selection of new material. I think this afternonn’s are some choral gems from the Deutsche Gramaphonen collection which is, of course, of the most superb quality. Earlier, we have received both a telephone call and a text message indicating more or less the same thing i.e. that there is going to be the annual carol service in our local church and did we intend to go tomorrow (Tuesday)? Although this will make a somewhat later night than we had intended, we think that the atmosphere and the ability to see again some of the regular members of the congregation whom we have come to know over the years probably makes us feel inclined to make the effort and to go along. We may not take a final decision until later on tomorrow but these special occasions are nearly always worth the effort.

Quite a lot of the political comment today has centred upon the Baroness Mone who was enobled by the Tories and having enriched herself as a manufacturer of bras was elevated to a seat in the Lords. She and her husband have now come clean about the obscene amount of money that they have made by being ‘fast tracked’ to win a contract for the supply of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) at the height of the pandemic. She has now admitted lying repeatedly to the press and to the House of Lords and is arguing that ‘it is not a crime’ to lie to the press to protect one’s family. I suspect that the stench of corruption is so great that she will be ejected from the House of Lords with great haste (and I am sure many people will cheer that decison and event when it happens)

So I got up this morning well pleased with myself (but perhaps celebrating a little too soon) This is because last night, after Meg had been safely put to bed, I managed to completely update my master Christmas card list file and then got all of the labels printed off. I also printed out a little label which gave the current position on Meg’s health and intimating that despite everything, we managed to go out six if not seven, days a week and then have coffee in our three regular venues and often with friends and acquaintances thrown into boot. Also, I typically include one of my pre-printed sticky labels with our contact details on. However, these days, this is not really sufficient if you want to convey some additional information such as the web addresses of my blog, my web home page and including details of my mobile as well. So these two additional sets of labels needed printing out as well. So all in all, when I eventually got to bed, I was thinking that my task on the following day would prove easy as I had now ready to utilise a set of ‘normal’ labels, a set describing Meg’s condition, another with my blog addresses and finally a ‘master’ list on plain paper so that I could tick things off label by label to make sure that I had not missed anybody out. This morning, I realised that one of our oldest friends in Spain was missing from the list but a quick search in an old diary rectified this. I am also having to be careful that I do not address a card to ‘Mr. and Mrs …’ when one half of the couple has died in the past year.

After we had breakfasted, we had a plan to take the car into our local hand car wash run by a group of Kurds which is completely adjacent to the Waitrose store so I figured that the car could be washed whilst we having coffee and this was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. The car was pretty dirty from traversing narrow, muddy Oxfordshire lanes and byways from our trip during the week and so badly needed a wash. But the best laid plans of mice and men! We met with our University of Birmingham friend for an hour and then went to collect the car but they had not get round to doing it just yet. Undeterred, Meg and I made our way to our friendly newsagent shop expecting it to be shut which, indeed it was. But the little curio shop next door was open so I popped in to see if they had any news about the newsagent next door. The proprietor and I know each other by sight so we welcomed the opportunity to see if either of us had any more news than the other. She had no more news than we ourselves had but we promised to let each other know as and when we had any information to impart. But as the newsagent must be approaching the age of 80, may well be terminally ill and the business has been closed for about three weeks now, the prognostications do not bode well. We both suspect that the whole business may well have to be sold or taken over by other family members. Once we had made this little venture along the street, Meg was feeling the cold somewhat so we decided to pop back into the Waitrose store where we out of the cold and I bought one or two things that we would probably need in the next few days, if not immediately. Then we returned to pick up the car but it was still not ready. So I bundled Meg inside the car until the car cleaner had finished his job. As the car was still being finished off, we had the bizarre situation of Meg inside the car whilst I was outside the car in not very clement weather discussing the plight of the Kurds divided as they are between so many nations – Irak, Turkey, Syria to name but three and there may be more. They are one of the most institial of non-states that I know – their position not very dissimilar to the Basques split between France and Spain. The next result of all of this is that both Meg and I have developed sniffles being in the cold (and wet) longer than we would have anticipated.

When we got in, I decided to make the most instant of lunches which was a tin of chicken and noodles soup, a tin of chicken and vegetables soup served on a slice of toast. The idea was to get some hot food inside us both instantly and this was fine so we abandoned what would have been our normal full scale meal for the day. Then I started on the Christmas card list and ran into some troubles. Some of the labels has been printed on the ‘wrong side’ (it actually being quite difficult with this brand to determine one side from the other) Also, the text on the label updating people about Meg was tending to ‘miss’ the label and would chop a line out. So I decided to cut out a couple of lines to give a bit more space and then, eventually, after more misadventures printing the wrong side, got some more labels printed off. Perhaps the whole of this operation is a little complicated by now and difficult to complete unless I give it my complete and undivided attention, I have decided to leave the major part of the task until after Meg is in bed and hope to complete the task before bedtime (whenever that might be) because I really need to get this lot into the post tomorrow. We will be visiting Droitwich tomorrow but I suspect that the queue in the post office could well extend out onto the street as so many people will have left even their reduced number of Christmas cards until tomorrow.

Today we slept in a little late as we both had a bit of a disturbed night last night. Notwithstanding this, we got ourselves up and breakfasted and then set off for Waitrose so that we could be there by about 10.30 although we were a few minutes later than this. Once there, one of our regular friends was there and we spent quite some time discussing the various interactions we have had with a variety of health service professionals over the years. Normally, if our other friends had been present, we would not have bothered to be quite so self-indulgent but today we felt no such self restraint. We did learn, though, that jelly babies were stocked by the store and that my friend had a similar weakness of locating the black ones and then eating them by biting the head of first. At the end of our stay, no less a personage than Santa Claus turned up and I accused him of being an imposter and stealing my job but he was having none of it. He did take the opportunity of being photographed with the youngest and the prettiest of the Saturday staff which I suppose is his privilege. On the occasions when I have played Santa (and I may well again this Tuesday if plans work out) we searched for an outfit for Meg as ‘Miss Christmas’ but on the web these turned out to be the skimpiest and most revealing of outfits and therefure did not fit our purpose at the time. At the end of our coffee break, I did a tour of the store to pick up some things that were needed in the absence of a main shop this week. Last night, when Meg was safely tucked up in bed, I did a search for my Christmas card list materials and, after a bit of searching managed to locate my master list of a few years back which badly needs some updating, a little diary with what I hope are relevant amendments, and some of the appopriate size of labels. I did locate a supply of these but managed to order some more from Amazon Prime and was absolutely delighted to receive my new supplies late on tbis afternoon. Tonight, my task will be to update the master list with unfortunately a certain number of deletions as people have died during the last year, which number at least three significant people in our lives and there are always the changes of address as well.

After a fairly conventional lunch, we settled down to see what offerings might be available in this afternoon’s TV. We discovererd that ‘Swallows and Amazons‘ was being filmed and, of course, it has some great shots of the Lake District. I have an idea that some of it might well have filmed on Derwentwater becuase it has a large island situated on it but I am not sure Windermere has a similar island. We knew it was Derwentwater, south of Keswick, because of the familiar and unmistakeable view of Cap Bells which is a lowish height but wonderful little mountain with stunning views over Derwentwater as you ascend it. We actually have a print of a painting of this in our living room to remind us of times past. I had not realised that the film was so exciting and full of little twists and turns – a little bit like the genre of ‘The 39 steps‘ and we really enjoyed it. This version of the film was made in the fairly recent past and I believe that they had to rename one of the children ‘Tatty’ rather than ‘Titty’ to accord with modern day sensibilities. After this was concluded, we had a little pleasant task to complete between the two of us. About a month or so, I had bought a complete ‘Crib set’ (the Spanish call them ‘Belen’ (Bethlehem) which is a lot more self explanatory) This was being sold in the Worcestershire Association of Carer’s shop for £3 and after a cursory examination to ensure that none of the critical figues were missing, I had put it away until the time had come (like today) when it was to be unpacked and displayed. Altogether there were somje 11 pieces- Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus,a shepherd, an angel, three kings and the complement of three animals, namely an ox, an ass and a sheep. Evidently, these could be displayed in any way that we wanted but space was a little limited so we went for a degree of historical accuracy by putting the three kings on the peripathy (as they were late comers after all), whilst the shepherd and angel were nearer to the centre of the action. We finished off the whole with a little fragrance candle in front of the scene.

There have been two items of news that I have found particularly shocking. The first of these is that some ‘Hamas fighters’ (actually Israeli hostages), waving a white flag were shot dead by the Israeli Defence Force. One can only speculate whether if the victims had actually been Palestinians would the story have received the prominence that it did. The IDF have confessed, though, to a terrible mistake having been made. The second is a local story of an operative working on a jammed industrial shredder which enorged him and cut him into so many minute peices there were was no body left for the widow to view or to mourn. The funeral had to be held with an empty coffin. The firm itself, since prosecuted and fined, quickly got rid of its shreddings into a landfill site in what appears to be suspiciously short period of time, after the accident. Evidently, gruesome industrial accidents do occur and many limbs and some lives are lost each year but to leave no trace of the actual operative/victim whatsoever I found to be poignant in the extreme.

Meg and I woke up relatively early this morning and we imagined that we would feel pretty shattered after the long journey of yesterday. However, we both felt OK under the cirumstances and so by the time that our domestic help called round, which she always does on a Friday, we were all breakfasted and ready to go. I did not go shopping yesterday but this week is going to turn out to be quite a light week so I was contemplating the minimum that we could get away with, although we know that we are out of milk for a start. Then we received a telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend and we set up a coffee date in Waitrose for later on that morning. As we now had a spare three quarters of an hour, this was a good opportunity to make a venture into the loft to bring down all the Christmas gear. We do make a habit of always storing all of the Christmas goods in one neat, discrete pile so we know that everything in the pile is to be brought down. Fortunately, our son was in the house so whilst I put our steps into place, I relied upon him to locate and hand down the various items which were a large silver Christmas treee, a little bijou one with interesting glowing fibre optics which we locate in the corner of our sitting room and must be at least twenty years old by now. The silver tree comes in three sections and has to have its various branches unfolded before we start to think about decorating it. I remember well the trauma that we had with Christmas trees last year – I ordered a particularly nice from Wilko that people raved about but it seemed to get ‘lost’ in the distribution warehouse and so Wilko, apologetically, refunded my money but by that stage I had wasted a critical week or so and now all of the really good trees were out of stock. So I was thrown onto the wilds of the internet and thought to myself that it would be better to have a sophisticated looking silver tree rather than a cheaper, not to say ‘naff’, green plastic version whose resemblance to a real tree was only passing. Anyway, our domestic help helped us to drape the coloured LED set over the tree and then to dress it with a supply of baubles that we happened to get as a job lot at the end of last year’s Christmas season. I have to say that the end result is absolutely stunning and lights up a dark corner of the hall and so looks particularly good when day gives way to evening and then to night. After we had done this, we went down into town and met up with our friend and we spent a happy time in each other’s company whilst I updated him with the events of the week. We dashed around the store to get some milk and other supplies before returning home.

After we returned home, we made ourselves a risotto with mackerel and really enjoyed it – it is some time since we have made ourselves one and therefore was much appreciated. Then I realised that in my rush around this morning, I had forgotten to pick up my copy of ‘The Times‘ So we made our way to the garage where we normally pick up a copy of the newspaper but they were sold out. So we popped into the local AgeUK shop to see what they had to offer as one never knows what bijou items might appear. Finally, we called in at Waitrose to locate a copy of our preferred newspaper for which we have a token and joked with the staff about whether they have the same feeling about Christmas as do the turkeys that they sell. To be honest, they gave me their impression that they know the week ahead is going to be frantic and getting more so as Christmas approaches – I must admit that only being 10 days away has made me appreciate how much is to be done, not least by locating the Christmas card lists and getting on with this particular job. Although I have a computerised list, it is a little out-of-date and I know that I need to locate a little sheet of amendments that I compiled last year but never made its way onto the computer as it should have done.

The media has been dominated today by the judgement in Prince Harry’s favour in his court claim against the Mirror Group newspapers. The judge ruled that in at about half of the cases presented by Prince Harry to the court that there was evidence of illegal phone tapping and has awarded the Prince some £140,000 in damages. The judge also indicated that the then editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan, must have known about the phone hacking. A furious row has broken out this afternoon as Piers Morgan denies ever having hacked a phone and launched a tirade of invective against the Prince. It does now appear that witnesses to the important Levison enquiry into the press may well have lied under oath and many of the recommendations to the Levison enquiry were never implemented in any case. What is being said today is that Prince Harry has won in the High Court – but has he won in the court of public opinion? I think the full ramifications of this judgement are still to unfold.

First, I must apologise to regular readers of this blog if normal service has been disrupted for the last couple of days. With the aid of the very competent lady who rents me the webspace and gives me an excellent service at reasonable prices, we identified the source of the problem as a domain name that had expired. Normally, these are set to ‘auto renew’ at the end of the period for which they are bought, generally 1-2 years, but in this case the domain name had actually expired. It looks as though domain providers and web space providers do not immediately cut you off when this sort of thing happens, which must be quite frequent, for there is a grace period during which things are resurrectable. Once I had paid my dues for another year, it took less than an hour for normal service to be resumed for which I was truly grateful. I am now taking steps to ensure that this does not happen again and am reassured that the text version of this blog which I maintain in case disaster strikes (as I had thought it had last night) was available so that not all is lost. So all’s well that ends well. My sister in Yorkshire who keeps track of my comings and goings telephoned me a lttle distraught that she could not access things as normal but now we have got things back to normal again.

Today is the day when I normally do my shopping first thing and then we were scheduled to go down to South Oxfordshire for a luncheon date with very old and sincere friends. I took along with us a little pressy of a ‘butterfly box’ which is designed to give a good home to butterflies as they develop. The same firm also produces parallel products, one for bees and one for ladybirds but our friends keep their own bees so I thought that taking along the ‘bee’ version might set up some create problems down the road so was best avoided. The journey was uneventful until I turned off at a junction too early from the main road down a road I thought recognised and got into quite a tangle along narrow and twisting Oxfordshire lanes. Eventually, getting somewhat lost, I just had to retrace my steps back to the main road until I found the correct turn off point that I recognised. When we got to our friends, I explained how we live our lives day by day and then detailed the various transactions that we have had with social workers and other health care professionals. Then we sat down for a wonderful lunch of soufflé and salad, followed by some exotic home made icecream and mince pies. We left our friends at about 3.15 and I thought that we would probably get to the main A34 distributor road that goes around Oxford in the daylight. Then the traffic problems started. For a start, there were some major roadworks in the Botley interchange on the outskirts of Oxford and this must have been compounded by an accident of some sort as we witnessed a procession of blue-lighted vehicles. We crawled our way to the M40 probably spending the best part of an hour and a half going 20 odd miles. As soon as we reached the M40, as we had been delayed for so long and still had about 60 miles yet to go, Meg and I decided it was prudent to call off at the first service station we knew about which was five miles along the M40. This service station was one of those I regard as a nightmare as you leave the motorway and then the services seem to be off a roundabout, off a second roundabout and sometimes even a complex junction thrown into the mix. I really dislike accessing these service stations at the best of times but it is a bit more stressful in the dark with lorries whizzing all around you. Eventually we got to the service station and I put Meg in the wheelchair and attempted to access the disabled toilet for her. Naturally, this was locked so the instructions on the door indicated that one needed to backtrack and ask the staff at W H Smiths for the key. The young man behind the counter explained he was new so had to make a telephone call to find out where the key was located. But eventually we got Meg and myself in to the toilet OK and used the facility before doing all of the actions in reverse returning the key, accessing the car and getting the wheelchair folded away and then navigating our way back to the M40. So all of this took quite a chunk out of the journey. All in all, the 93 mile journey had taken up some three and halh hours start to finish and although we were relieved to get home, I suspect tha we shall feel shattered in the morning. After a cup of tea and some fruit and yogurt, I got Meg into bed as fast as I could as I suspected that by now she badly needed her bedrest. Having said all of that, Meg stood up to all of the tribulations of the day with a resilient spirit and I think it is true that the kindness and hospitality of our friends easily outweighs whatever travel difficulties we might have had. Mind you, if it had been snowing or excessively wet, then I think that would have added to our stress levels considerably.

Today we got up rather late and it was one of those days where we had to pack quite a few things into the morning. Having got ourselves up and breakfasted, we immediately made our way to Finstall village hall where there is a meeting organised for us by AgeUK, meeting as we do on the second Wednesday of every month. The activities organised for us were quite jolly really because it was a kind of musical ‘bingo’ where Chistmassy type songs and tunes were played and we had to guess things like the year of the recording, identifying the title of the film from the music clip and so on. This was to the accompaniment of cups of tea/coffee and some mince pies. All in all, we had a very successful day because we seemed to win three of the mini-competitions and won some token prizes of chocolate but we promptly gave away two of these as a run of success like this is not very natural for us. We finished promptly at 12.30pm and then made a couple of detours in order to pick up our copy of ‘The Times‘. At 1.00pm we were due to be visited by the couple of nurses who specialise in Meg’s condition and they were due to make a scheduled visit today as, indeed, I hope that they will continue to do on a monthly basis. I had run off some little biographical notes for them both which I believe will help them to understand Meg’s condition. These two healthcare professionals work in adjacent offices and evidently liaise with each other about Meg so that is really joined-up care. When they call at the house, as they have a couple of times in the past, we have a routine where one of the nurses sits with Meg and gives her some care and attention whilst the other consults with me (out of Meg’s earshot, in another room). Today, we had what I consider to be a particularly helpful little session. One of the nurses was able to give me some practical advice how to cope with Meg’s condition whilst the other was offering some practical assistance to Meg. Between the two of them, I am gradually learning a few new little things and acting upon some of their suggestions so that between the four of us, we are getting to a situation in which caring for Meg becomes a tad easier.

This afternoon, Meg and I started watching a film but quite recently, switched to some music which was a little more to Meg’s mood this afternoon. One piece that was played, of which we never tire, is the ‘Barcarolle‘ from Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffman’ The rendition that we are offered on YouTube is, I believe, a performance by a full French orchestra and the ‘Barcarolle’ is sung by a couple of sopranos, one a mezzo, whose voices blend together absolutely perfectly. Also captured is the wonderful slow rythmn of the waves lapping against the gondoler (as that is the origin of the Barcarolle in the first place) It never ceases to amaze me how Hoffman who one would normally rate as amongst the first rank of composers, could have composed such a stunningly beautiful piece. In fact, the beauty of it absolutely moved Meg to tears on this particular playing of it and I must say that I know how she feels.

After all of the hype and anticipation of the vote for the revised Rwanda legialation last night, in which Rishi Sunak was practically putting his premiership on the line, the government finished off with quite a sizeable majority of 44. It looks as though not a single Tory MP voted against the bill (as several had threatened) but a goodly number of some three dozen looked as though they probably abstained. The major battle for this legislation is now to be at the Report Stage. This is normally delegated to a smaller committee but in view of the importance of this legislation, there is going to be a ‘Committee of the whole House’ At that stage, several quite critical amendments will be tabled which many of the diverse groupings on the right of the Tory party will vote for but which the ‘One Nation’ group of centrist MPs have indicated would be totally unacceptable. In short, the ‘can has been kicked down the road’ and the real battles are going to re-commence in the middle of January. One can only speculate whether between now and then, opinions will harden or whether they will soften. As MPs often take the occasion over Christmas to consult with their constituency parties (who often themselves hold a Chtistmas ‘party’ for their own faithful) and Tory constituency parties are always to the right of the parliamentary party, then I suspect that the battle lines are being prepared for the resumption of hostilities. It rather does put you in mind of mediaeval battles, or even the war in Ukraine, when all the fighting stops amidst the fog, mud, slush and snow of the winter time whilst the armies prepare for the resumption of the real hostilities in the spring when the weather improves and the days lengthen.

Today, one of the songs played that we had to identify was ‘Que sera, sera‘ or, in translation, ‘What will be, will be’ This song has a particular resonance for me because it was popular in the summer of 1956. At that time, our family was contemplating a temporary dissolution whilst I went off to boarding school in Bolton (Lancashire) whilst my mother was going to Newcastle to train to be a teacher, my sister was to attend the Bar Convent in York as a boarder and my grandmother was to stay behind in Harrogate. So at that time during the summer, we all wondered, in our own ways, what the immediate future was going to bring.

Today, we break with our usual pattern of seeing our friends in Waitrose because we were scheduled to have an important meeting with our social worker, accompanied by some other health professionals at 10.00am this morning. Naturally, we were all sitting in place at the appointed time with our best bib and tucker until our two visitors arrived. The meeting was somewhat inconclusive but our social worker had suggested a few extra episodes of care for Meg which we are going to trial for a couple of weeks to see if they achieve the desired objective. After our visitors had left, Meg and I decided that we would treat ourselves to a little trip to Waitrose where we knew that we were too late to meet with our regulars but we always interact well with the staff in any case. When we arrived, there was a very old lady whose daughter brings her quite regularly to the cafe but who had experienced quite a severe nosebleed. One of the staff was acting as a quasi-nurse to the old lady holding her nostrils together to staunch the flow of blood with a degree of success. In the meantime, the daughter and other staff members were trying to summon other medical assistance from I know not where. When things had calmed down a little, I asked the staff member (who I know well) if she could give the same assiduous attention she had shown to the elderly lady to a small cut on my finger but was given very short shrift. As Meg and I were having our coffee, our Irish friend who we had seen yesterday popped by – she must have been doing some shopping in the store and espied us. So we had a quick ‘debrief’ upon the outcome of theis morning’s proceedings this was a welcome little chat. As we were leaving, we were offered a crusty loaf which would have gone out of date and would have been thrown away – this sometimes happens in Waitrose as I suspect that the staff, like ourselves, do not like to see completely good produce thrown away. When we got back home, we had our (normal for us) fishcakes and microwaved vegetables and settled down for a quiet afternoon.

Our plans for the afternoon were a little disrupted for a variety of reasons. Meg needed some medication after experiencing some anxiety which is, unforunately, is not an uncommon pattern these days. But then we received a phone call from the specialist nurse who looks after Meg and who was scheduled to call around tomorrow afternoon. It looked at one point as though this scheduled visit was to be replaced by a telephone conversation but I was delighted to know that the specialist nurse and the other health professional who works in an adjacent office could both call again at midday. We are always delighted to see these two and I think they are really doing their best to provide a little joined up care. The trouble is that little care is actually joined up these days and the professionals have their work cut out to ensure that things do not escape their attention where one service interacts with another. I spent a certain amount of time writing to our social worker to provide her with some background information which might explain to explain the ‘rugged individualism’ that we exhibited before the social worker. Although it sounds hard to believe, Meg used to make independent journeys to France as a young teenager. As for myself, I attended a boarding unit of a grammar school in Bolton, Lancs. This involved the catching of four trains in a sequence followed by a bus journey and then a walk of about a mile. After being shown the journey once, I undertook this same trip every half term from the ages of 11-14. I wonder, today, how many parents would feel complacent about letting their 11 year old undertake a journey of four inter-connecting trains followed by a bus journey and then a longish walk? Following this theme of ‘rugged individualism’ I also pointed out that I had experienced an episode of cancer in my teens with no emotional or social support of any kind (my mother not even visitng me when I was resident in a hospital undertaking radiotherapy treatment). I then studied for my ‘A’ levels completely independently, receiving no tuition of any kind. The same pattern was to repeat itself for my PhD gained at the age of 52 but researched and written in a record part-time mode of 1-2 years. So I was reflecting to the social worker that in both of our lives, we had done everything for ourselves and generally received good results which might explain explain a few things nowadays.

Politically, all eyes are turned to the outcome of the vote on the Rwanda legislation to be taken at 7.00pm tonight following a day’s debate in the House of Commons.There are no less than four groupings of MPs on the far right of the Conservative party and the indications are that they are in no mood for compromise, wanting the legislation to be tougher. In the meanwhile, the more ‘centrist’ Tory MPs belong to a group called the ‘One Nation’ group and they will only support the bill if no compromises are made to the Tory rebels. So the outome of tonight’s vote and of the premiership of Rishi Sunak absolutely hang in the balance tonight. I have a feeling that several of the rebellious right wingers may decide to abstain or to vote through the bill through gritted teeth thinking that they may be in a better position to force amendments at the Committee stage of the proceedings. The right wingers are rather full of their own self-importance and were scheduled to hold their own news conference after a breakfast meeting with the PM, leading one Sky News commentator to observe, perhaps in an unguarded moment. ‘Who on earth do they think they are?’ So interesting viewing tonight.

Today was quite a full day for us. Once we had both got ourselves up, washed and breakfasted we started to think about the bits of shopping that we needed to do this morning. We intended to visit Droitwich which is one of our usual ventures for a Monday morning – at least, the weather is enjoying quite a mild stage at the moment. We made a visit to the major Aldi store in town to buy some things that were out of stock in the smaller supermarket in which we generally shop. Fortunately, they had plenty of supplies of what we wanted and then we hit the road to Droitwich. En route, we needed to pick up our copy of ‘The Times‘ which we did at a large Shell garage on the road. Then we called in at Waitrose just to use their ATM machine within the store and then finally got to our friendly cafe in Droitwich where we had our normal ration of a large bacon sandwich between the two of us and a teapot of tea. Once we were sufficiently refreshed, we struck off in a slightly different direction to visit the Cancer UK Charity shop that we used to frequent when we took our coffee in another establishment. Here we had a quick look around and did not see anything immediately to our liking but we did pause before a large display of charity Christmas cards. Our thoughts have not really turned to this annual task just yet but we are starting to receive a small stream of cards day by day from those who are better organised. When selecting Christmas cards, I like to buy cards with a strongly religious theme for relatives and friends who would appreciate them, cards stressing peace and international collaboration for internationalist minded friends and acquaintances and a variety of cards for everybody in between. I have a particular dislike of what you might term ‘jolly robin’ type cards or those with ho-ho-ho Santas on them and try to choose cards that are tasteful and look well designed. Whilst looking around, I mentiond to Meg that I was looking for cards with a religious type theme and a very helpful lady overheard my remark and found a pack of cards with a vaguely religious theme (images of a stable) We got into conversation and she told me that she played the piano and took some piano lessons but was still a bit weak on her left hand. I explained how I had recently purchased both a Casio keyboard and an organ and was practising some simple classical pieces which I both enjoyed in themselves and were quite easy to memorise. It is amazing who you meet in the most prosaic of circumstances. After this, we proceeded along to the Worcestershire Association of Carers to see what they had in offer. I had in mind even a Christmas jumper for myself but found nothing that was remotely tasteful but I did find quite a warm and high quality gilet type of garment in a very subtle shade of blue which I purchased for Meg.

Whilst we were having some coffee earlier in the day, we had received a telephone call from the secretary of the consultant whose clinic I was due to attend this afternoon for a regular annual monitoring check. My appointment in a local hospital this afternoon was to be postoned because the consultant himself could not take the clinic for ‘compassionate’ reasons. So I texted our friends down the road and we agreed to have a little tete-a-tete earlier on this afternoon. This is because tomorrow morning, we are going to be visited by our social worker and the manager of a care agency at 10.00 in the morning and we felt that we needed to take the advice and support of our friends who are very knowledgeable in this area and know just what questions to ask and what observations to make. We were provided with some delicious little sandwiches and had the most useful of chats, in the course of which I received a telephone call from the manager of another care agency with whom we have been put in touch and who may well prove to be exceptionally useful to us.

Last night, after Meg was in bed, I updated the little website that I maintain of the quality furniture we have acquired and renovated over the past few months. I also added some paragraphs of commentary about the provenance and particular feaures of each of the six pieces and then sent the whole URL of the website to my University of Winchester friend to ask his opinion of the same. He was very complimentary about the whole of this little project but it is now at at an end given that our Music Lounge is now completely furnished and needs no further additions. I did a very quick totting up of my total expenditure on these six pieces and it comes to about £160. It is just possible that I have been remarkably lucky or else in the right place at the right time but each individual piece is worth anything between five and thirty times what I paid for it. This run of luck must surely come to an end and, of course, I shall not be putting temptation in my own way by any further searches.

Today dawned as one of the wettest and most miserable days imaginable and having made our early morning cup of tea, we promptly fell asleep again. However, we both felt that we had a good night’s sleep which is particularly important for Meg. By the time we had got ourselves up, washed and breakfasted, we had even missed the Lorna Kuenssberg show so we listened for a while to Trevor Philips on Sky News. Then we received a telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend to indicate that he could not see us this morning so we set up a coffee date for 2.00pm in Waitrose, one of the few places that we can guarantee to be open on a Sunday afternoon. This left us with the prospect of how to fill the morning but we were not too unhappy about a stay in the house as it seemed to be raining cats and dogs outside. Almost by accident, we stumbled across an ITV programme hosted by Alan Titchmarch called ‘Love your Weekend’ which runs for the best part of a couple of hours. This was a very gentle form of TV but we found it pretty engaging nonetheless. When we first tuned in, Keir Starmer was being interviewed not as a ‘political’ interview per se but more as a reflection upon his own life and times. After that there was an interview with Penelope Keith including some of the funniest clips from ‘The Good Life’, including the one where Margot refused to wear a Christmas party hat made from a copy of the ‘Daily Mirror‘ but would consent to one if it happened to be the ‘Daily Telegraph‘. After that, there was a feature on non-alcoholic cocktails to try at this time of year which was interesting enough. I must say that the presentational manner and even timbre of the voice of Alan Titchmarch is well suited to this type of magazine format (and I even like the same style when I hear him as a presenter on ‘ClassicFM‘). We had put some beef into our slow cooker to cook throughout the morning but we felt as though we needed to change our plans. So I relocated the beef from the slow cooker to the conventional oven and, this way, we could have a Sunday lunch and just about get things cleared away before our afternoon coffee date. We got down to Waitrose to see our University of Birmingham friend at 2.00pm and arrived just about five minutes late. As we had not met for a fortnight and we had a fairly eventful time during the past few days, we had quite a lot of catching up to do. We both scoped out for ourselves the various activities in which we were both engaged and then made tentative plans to meet each other next weekend.

After a very pleasant chat we got ourselves home, we got ourselves home and fortunately the rain had stopped. We started watching a YouTube showing of Brahm’s ‘A German Requiem‘ and were really enjoying this when the dreaded ‘buffering’ problem emerged when the program seems to freeze and the only thing you can do is to tune away and then tune back in some minutes later. I wonder whether YouTube might be more prone to this on Sunday afternoons when there is a lot of demand for downloaded video. On consulting the TV schedules for this evening, there is going to be a showing of one of the classic versions of ‘Pride and Prejudice‘ from 6.00pm until about 9.00pm. We think that we may do under these circumstances is to get Meg all prepared for dropping into bed but watch it together in the comfort of our normal lounge where a gas fire supplements the central heating during a spell of cold weather. This means that Meg may go to bed an hour later than normal but if she can stay awake and is enjoying it – otherwise, I can always bundle her up into a warm bed and carry on watching it myself downstairs.

The next week is going to be quite a busy one for myself with one thing or another so we may not be able to follow all of the political news with our usual intensity. We think that Tuesday is going to be a critical day because Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, will probably start to give evidence to the COVID-19 enquiry. Tuesday as well is probably the date then a critical vote on the revised ‘Rwanda’ legislation is going to be taken in the House of Commons. A few days beforehand, there is intense speculation whether the rebels on the Tory Right will stage an out-and-out rebellion or vote for the bill through gritted teeth and reserve their fight for the Committee stages of the legislation. I think that many people have forgotten how Boris Johnson was faced with a similar problem when trying to get Brexit legislation through the Commons. His solution was brutal but simple, namely to withdraw the whip (i.e. throw out of the party) any who did not agree with the legislation and in this way many outstanding and extremely competent members of the Commons (David Gauke, Anna Soubrey for example) were effectively despatched. Of course such MPs still remain MPs and might feel inclined to force a vote in the House of Commons effectively bringing an end to the present government and precipitating an early general election. But the very hackneyed expression comes to mind at this point which is, simply this : ‘Do turkeys vote for Christmas?’

The situation in Gaza seems to become more dire with every day that passes. We now have the prospect of mass starvation ans an almost complete breakdown in the social order. Now that the north of Gaza has been so heavily bombarded and the citizens encouraged by the Israelis to flee to the south of Gaza, these areas are also subject to the most severe bombardment. I think I saw an estimate recently that about one quarter of the entire infrastructure of Gaza has already been destroyed and the Israelis unless constrained by the Americans may try to fight on for months yet. Another, terrible alternative is that there is hand-to-hand fighting actually within the tunnels that the inhabitants of Gaza have dug all over the place. The loss of live is almost too terrible to contemplate and, of course, some of the casualties are bound to be the Israeli hostages that Gaza is keeping hidden in the tunnels.