After I had got Meg to bed yesterday evening, I wrote a fairly long and candid email to one of my Hampshire friends – we are in constant contact with each to give each other emotional and practical support as both of of our wifes are absorbing a lot of our attention these days. My friend gave me a call late in the evening which I am always pleased to accept following the email I had written to him earlier in the evening but then Meg woke up and I needed to get her settled back in bed again (which I did, successfully) Having made a cup of tea this morning, I thought I briefly heard the sound of our front door bell coming vaguely through the ether. I was not mistaken and it was actually the Worcester-Bosch engineer who had made us his first port of call. I needed to open the back gate to let him in and,evidently, I was delighted to see him. He was with us about an hour, replacing the upper air vent, the pump, some seals and the drooping front lower door as well as giving the whole boiler a service. I texted the good news to our son, on his way to see his wife’s mother and also my friends down the road who knew that we had been without heating and had offered whatever help was needed. Our son opined that I probably had the equivalent of a new or at least reconditioned boiler with which judgement I agree. Meg and I treated ourselves to a steaming bowl of porridge this morning and then put both the hot water and the central heating onto a ‘continuous’ setting for the next few hours to heat the house up and to encourage the system to replenish itself. Then we ensured that we were down at Waitrose promptly at 10.30 in the morning where we met up with two of our friends (both of whom are coping with ill husbands) so we had a bit of a ‘moanfest’ to each other and shared with each other the various traumas of the week. We had to inform them that next Tuesday we were going to have to miss our regular get-together because we have a meeting arranged with the social worker which we did not want to rearrange and is going to be quite an important meeting anyway. We got back home at 11.30 just in time to coincide with the Eucharistic minister who visits us from our local church and, as is usual, have a few minutes of spiritual uplifting as well as a general chat which is always a source of enjoyment. After she had left, it was time for us to start to think about and to prepare the lunch which was the haddock pie not consumed yesterday but which we accompanied by a melange of onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and some petit pois.

After lunch, we caught up on a bit of Sky News and there was a particular ‘Saturday’ style slot which we really enjoyed. The presenter of the ‘Politics Hub’ on Sky News at 7.00 each evening, Sophie Ridge, was putting on a programme featuring political cartoons of the year. The programme featured three guests and they ranged over ‘political cartoon of the year’ as well as ‘political cartoonist of the year’. Each year, Peter Brookes, the political cartoonist of ‘The Times‘ publishes a series of his favourite cartoons, taking one for each month of the year. Peter Brookes’ cartoons are savagely and brilliantly funny and he has a technique of tying two current political events or stories together into a single cartoon. In ‘The Times‘ supplement published towards the end of December each year, Brookes adds a brief paragraph of explanation, detailing the context of the paticular cartoon and this is incredibly informative in case one had either inadvertently not seen that particular cartoon or, even more to the point, failed to grasp the complete sigificance of the two intertwined stories. I must confess I often have the image in my mind of what might be an interesting political cartoon but a complete inability to draw means that this is another career ambition which has had to be abandoned.

This afternoon, Meg and I resumed our viewing of the film ‘Passage to India‘ which we can view by courtesy of Amazon Prime video. Although I may well have seen this serialised some decades ago, I could not remember the plot lines. But we were gripped by the second half of the film and our enjoyment was enhanced both by a stellar cast and also the quality of the cinematography. In fact, I think the defintion and the colour rendition makes this cut-price Toshiba the best of the TVs that we have in the house that I am almost tempted to junk or present TV in the bedroom (probably about 7-8 years old and showing its age by now) and substitute another Toshiba. However, I am sure that we have other priorities at the moment. Next week, we are going to have a particularly busy week culminating with seeing our friends in Oxfordshire towards the end of the week and with engagements every day of the week so a quiet day getting ready for this might be called for. At the moment, Meg and I are just basking in the glow and warmth of our recently restored central heating system after enduring some privations in the last couple of days.

When I caught up with the texts that had been left for me on my iPhone, I discovered that Worcester-Bosch, the manufacturers of our central heating boiler, believe that they have found a slot for our boiler to be repaired some time tomorrow, Saturday. This was confirmed by two live calls this morning, the first to confirm the contents of last night’s text and the second to take some payment before the engineer calls around. Friday morning is when our domestic help calls around and I was delighted to show her our newly acquired classic leather armchair which got delivered to us during the week. I had given the leather, already in good condition, a treatment with our ‘Leather Silk’ spray and was delighted with the result. Our domestic help agreed with us that the chair fits nicely into our our overall scheme and seemed to think it was our best bargain acquisition yet, with which judgement I am inclined to agree. Meg showed off her injured eye and received a hug for her efforts. After that we had breakfast and then contemplated where we were to go this morning. As we often do on a Friday, we set off to Droitwich calling ‘en route’ into a garage en route where we were fortunate enough to pick up the last remaining copy of ‘The Times‘ Then we were fortunate to find a parking space relatively close to our cafe of choice which was quite a lot more quiet than of late. The staff, who we know well, made a bit of a fuss of Meg when they could see she had experienced a fall and had required some patching up – the bruise around her eye which developed in intensity a day after the event is now starting to fade but is still evidence of her past misfortune. The Catholic lady who we know well was off on her way to do some childminding of grandchildren in Spain for a week but gave us some very useful advice how to cope with Meg’s developing care needs and said that she would speak to us further on this subject when she returns in about a week’s time. Meg and I indulged in our normal treat of a teapot full of tea and one bacon butty shared between the two of us. I informed the staff that we had forgotten to pay the last time we called in so we needed to make sure that we paid all of our debts before we left this morning. We were running a little late this morning so we did not tarry or be tempted to visit charity or other shops which is our wont but made straight for home, not least because we needed to have a few words of ‘debrief’ with our domestic help before she had to dash away to do her major job today. Meg and I did not feel like our normal full scale meal this lunchtime so we treated ourselves to a couple of boiled eggs and ‘soldiers’ of toast which was certainly meal enough for us on top of the bacon butty. Our consumption of boiled eggs reminds me of a funny incident that occurred in the B&B dining room in which we used to stay when we visited Harrogate. The owner has become a personal friend and wrote a book about his personal experiences as a B&B owner in Harrogate. He offered Meg some boiled eggs for breakfast, accompanied by toast ‘soldiers’ and after Meg had consumed this, enquired whether or not they were to Meg’s liking. Meg replied, in what happened to be a lull in the normal burble of conversation in a dining room that ‘It is a very long time since I have enjoyed so many soldiers at breakfast time’ This created a moment of extreme merriment in the assembled guests and the anecdote has found its way into the proprietor’s book to be memorialised for all time.

This afternoon, in the absence of any central heating until tomorrow at the earliest, we needed to keep warm so kept ourselves in front of a gas fire in our lounge. Sky News was showing the funeral service for the Irish lead singer of ‘The Pogues’, Shane MacGowan, which had all kinds of interesting elements to it. The most extraordinary thing was when a collection of objects associated with the life of the singer was held up for the congregation to observe and to reflect upon. I do not know if this is a common practice in funerals in Ireland or just an innovation in this case but the whole ceremony seemed almost like a quasi-state funeral, attended as it was by the President of Eire itself. Afterwards, we caught up on the Thursday night transmission of ‘Question Time‘ which I had largely seen last night but which Meg had slept through.

A shocking image has emerged from the Israel/Gaza conflict of scores of Palestinian men, stripped to the waist, shackled and blindfolded. This image showing the extreme humilation of those captured is sending shockwaves around the Arab world. But military commentators in this country have observed that that is what the military do and the British would have done the same under similar circumstances. If left in this condition without clothing for an extended period of time, this would constitute a war crime but so far the Israeli Defence Force has not denied the veracity of the images but not made any comment on it either, so far.

Today has been quite a day so far. We got up somewhat earlier after Meg in particular had had a good night’s sleep for which we were both duly grateful. I then departed to do the shopping, first calling at an ATM to collect some weekly money and then filling up our car with petrol (which happened to be its first time it has been refuelled) One little feature that I particularly like about the display in our new car is the very clear petrol guage which is a straight line of 10 little indicators – as the fuel tank is 40 litres then each divison is 4 litres which is about 0.8 gallon. After completing the food shopping, I make a sweep by our regular newsagent which has been closed for over a week now so I am rather fearful about what is happening to our newsagent and no real way of finding out. I got home at 9.00am amd then proceeded to give Meg her breakfast before getting her washed and dressed and ready to face the world. One hour later, a care assistant turned up, according to the schedule, who is the first person that we had of a succession of carers and this gave me a little bit of space to get the shopping unpacked and put away and then I got ready to hit the road again again to visit another supermarket which will supply me with the items that are not stocked by my supermarket of choice or things that I had forgotten this morning. One thing that struck me in particular is that one item that I buy regularly for Meg each week was £4.00 in Aldi but exactly double that in Morrisons so this is a bit of a shock to the system when normal supplies are not on the shelves.

The rest of the day has turned out to be a little more traumatic that we would have wished. We noticed that our central heating boiler was both empty of the water which needs to be at a particular level and was also dripping some water. We sent a couple of urgent messages to two different phone numbers with our regular central heating engineer who lives (and whose business) is only about 1km away from us.To our dismay, we got a message back to say that they were incredibly busy but they would try and call around next Tuesday. But perhaps in response to our second message and in view of our proximity to the firm, the doorbell rang and it was one of the sons who are employed by the business. This firm had installed our Worcester-Bosch boiler about six years ago now and we have always regarded this product as super reliable, But we were to receive some bad news that there was a serious fault with the boiler and water had sprayed all over its internal parts – the only solution was to make a phone call to Worcester-Bosch themselves to have the boiler repaired under warranty. But this is when the bad news started. A call to Worcester-Bosch indicated that the waiting times on the phone would be in excess of an hour and I think the call eventually got answered in just under an hour. Then the really bad news is that no engineer could be sent around until next Tuesday which from today means five days without central heating or hot water. I indicated in the strongest possible terms that my wife was a vulnerable person in her late 70’s and with a range of health conditions and a wait of this magnitude was unacceptable. The contact at the other end tried to be emollient and after words with his supervisor is trying to see if they could give us any degree of priority but, as he explained, it is a ‘first come, first served’ basis and this time of year with cold weather and just before Christmas is one of unprecedented demand. So we are left as a fall back that we have an appointment scheduled for next Tuesday but that some efforts would be made to see if we could possibly be accommodated before that date. So we may well have to wait until Tuesday so it is a case of ‘hoping for the best but preparing for the worst’ Looking on the slightly brighter side, we have a house well stocked with food, a lounge that can be heated with a gas fire, a bed which has the benefit of an electric blanket and we will have to do whatever washing up needs to be done with the benefit of water boiled in a kettle.

Today, Meg and I have been watching the Boris Johnson 2nd day of evidence and he has faced a variety of questionning – some of which managed to find their mark. On some issues, Johnson issues a half apology along the lines of ‘With hindsight we would have done x or y differently’ but on what we now know as Partygate, Johnson comes out swinging. His evidence to the enquiry was that ‘the version of events that has entered the popular consciousness about what is supposed to have happened in Downing Street is a million miles from the reality of what actually happened’ which is a jaw-dropping inability to acknowledge what so many photographs and personal testimonies to the Sue Gray enquiry have revealed. This absence of contrition may well come back to bite him. But the major talking point of the day has been the turmoil in the Tory party given the resignation of the Immigration Minister, Robery Jenwick. He and Suella Braverman only need 29 MPs to rebel and the PM’s Rwanda plan falls. Meanwhile, the sight of the factional infighting within the Tory party on the subject of immigration has been described by one commentator as a ‘death spiral’ which may well prove prophetic.

The significant event of today was to be a procedure upon one of Meg’s eyes to be conducted in the local community hospital so all of our planning and activities today were focused on that appointment which is quite early in the afternoon. We breakfasted and so on at a slightly later hour, both having slept in a little which was pretty useful for both of us given that we have lost some sleep over the past few days. We got ourselves off to the Methodist coffee club where we enjoyed tea and teacakes at a very reasonable price but did not avail ourselves of sitting on the ‘Chatter and Natter’ table as there was no one around that we immediately recognised and we had to keep an eye on the time in any case. Just as we were leaving, we got a phone call from the social worker who was evidently responding to a long email that I had sent her yesterday evening in response to a prompting by the doctor. I have to say that the meeting with the social worker that has been fixed for next Tuesday may prove emotionally traumatic for both of us but we will cross that particular bridge when we come to it. Having got back from our coffee break, Meg and I were glued for a little to watching the Boris Johnson evidence to the COVID-10 enquiry – I would dearly like to have seen more of this but the lunch had to be prepared so that we could make the journey in plenty of time to the local hospital. There Meg’s eye was treated with a special laser treatment which she seem to carry off with aplomb and no visible distress. I,though, was obliged to wear a special pair of dark glasses in case of any laser rays strayed whilst in front of the machine. So we got Meg back home before dark, which was a bonus for us. I got the bins out ready for collection in the morning and we carried on watching the Johnson evidence. Meg was hurling epithets at the sight of Johnson and I am sure that these sentiments chimed with many of the bereaved families well in evidence both within and also without the enquiry centre. Later on this evening, we will no doubt get a full and edited summary of the Johnson appearance and performance, briefed as he was by some of the expensive lawyers that money can buy paid for by the Cabinet Office!. The one early point that Johnson made that had me spitting teeth was that Johnson was arguing that the BSE (‘Mad Cow’ disease) episode had greatly exaggerated the potential number of deaths, which he could very clearly remember but, very conveniently ‘could not remember’ arguing that COVID was also likely to be a gross exaggeration (which it was not).

In the late afternoon, we received a very welcome invitation to visit our friends in Oxfordshire for a pre-Christmas meal and invitations such as these are always wonderful to receive. We started off trying for Monday (routine checkup for Mike), could not make Tuesday (social worker visit), Wednesday was also fully committed (pre-planned visit from Meg’s specialist nurse) and finally settled on Thursday when we have a pre-arranged call from the doctor but can probably get this accommodated just before we set off to Oxfordshire. At this time of year, of course, we have always to have an eye on the weather not to mention the traffic conditions but the present cold snap seems to have moderated somewhat and we have a brief respite of a few days before the next adverse weather hits us. Apart from the intense media interest on the COVID-19 enquiry, the government has today published its ‘Emergency’ legislation designed to rescue its Rwanda policy of exporting asylum speakers to the African continent. The legislation is designed to overcome legal challenges e.g. by declaring in the legislation that ‘Rwanda is a safe country’ but for the life of me I cannot see how declaring something in an Act of Parliament causes it to become somehow true. The bill will pander to the Tory right wing who want to see us leave the European Court of Human Rights (nothing to do with the EU but set up after WW2 with the active involvement of Winston Churchill no less). The government is trying to steer a middle course by not withdrawing from the Court but by declaring it will not abide by some of its rulings. How this will work, I do not know but I do not see the proposed legislation getting through even our own House of Lords without significant watering down which will infuriate the right of the Tory Party even more. The extreme Brexit/erstwhile UKIP party who have now transmogrified themselves into the right wing of the Tory Party are the people that an ex-Tory PM (John Major) once described as ‘bastards’ and forced them to back down with a ‘back me or sack me’ ploy which tactic Risho Sunak would not dare to deploy because he probably realises he would be quickly toppled. Now that I have our Music Room exactly the way I want it with a complement of comfortable or restored furniture, I feel a little bereft. I no longer have the excuse of looking out for a charity shop saying that I am just looking for one thing or another. However, I will say that having got such extraordinarily good results from the ‘Leather Sik’ leather polish which I have utilised recently to such good effect that I have been tempted to supply myself with the parallel product, made by the same manufacturer, but designed for vintage wood furniture. The reviews seem to be almost universally good so I have a supply coming in a few days time which I have no doubt can be well utilised in our recently restored ‘Captains’ chair which Meg uses every day in our hall to help her don her outdoor clothing.

We always look forward to Tuesdays as it is the day when we meet up with our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria. But first, I had a little delight in store for myself. When Meg and I were out on the road in Bromsgrove High Street nearly a week ago, I popped by chance into the AgeUK furniture shop where they had on display a rather magnificent ivory leather traditional armchair. This was even been offered at a price which had been reduced but, with Meg’s concurrence, we decided to go ahead and buy this because Meg has a very wonderful, and comfortable, leather armchair which is very snug and inherited from my son but my own seating arrangements have hitherto been considerably less comfortable. So the new armchair was delivered yesterday and I gave it a quick dose of renovating polish, of which I still have a supply. I did up-end the chair and discovered it is an Italian make of chair by a firm with the name of Rosini (one ‘s’ which seems a little unusual) Consulting the web, I discovered that new models sold by this manufacturer have a guide price of $720 and the chair I have just purchased looks in practically brand new condition. But having renovated it last night, I did not actually start to use it until this morning and I must say that I am more than delighted with our purchase. It fits well into our colour scheme, is superbly comfortable and fulfills all of the needs that I could ever wish for it. It is not a reclining model but this is of no consequence but from my reading on the web, it is evident that the materials used in its construction really are of the highest quality with some small but extremely stlish wood trim and leather that looks as though it has hardly had much wear at all. So this completes the furnishing of our Music Room because I can think of nothing else that I either want or need to make everything complete.

This morning after a disturbed night, I needed to write a Web-based application form to request a telephone conversation with the doctor to discuss Meg’s condition – after several abortive attempts at establishing contact, I eventually got a phone call from a GP at about 6.00pm tbhis evening. The advice was not particularly helpful given the scale of the problems that Meg (and I) are facing but in the short term I have been used to double the low initial dose of some medication and to write a long email to the social worker who is looking after us to explain in detail what our current circumstancs happen to be. On a happier note, when we eventually got to Waitrose this morning after an attenuated night’s sleep, one of our number had a bowls match and another an appointment with an occupational therapist this morning but we were delighted to spend some happy time with the third member of our little group. She had very kindly acquired for me the contact details of an ouuteach organiser at the Methodist Centre who is trying to establish a supportive club each Thursday mornimg. I need to write to her giving her our full support and indicating that if she were to be successful, we would be enthusiastic and regular patrons of any new service. We shall see our friend again on Saturday, all being well. Later on this morning, one of the care workers detailed to call around to release me to undertake some Pilates showed up. She happened to be the fifth different face we have seem on five occasions but today I felt too tired and worn out to actually undertake any Pilates so I stayed with her and Meg during her two hour stay. It turned out that she orginally from Peru and as our son had spent a year at a Mexican university, we developed a range of some interesting conversations. My Spanish, which I have not had the opportunity to speak for quite some time, came back so we had some intereting little conversations some in English and some in Spanish and Meg managed to contribute to this when her memory recalled the words. So whether we shall see this person again is an interesting question but it did make the two hours actually fly by, particularly as I needed to stay close to my mobile to get a telephone consultation phone call which seemed to quickly go to voicemail after only two or three rings which was frustrating in the extreme.

Later on in the afternoon, Meg and I delved into Amazon Prime and we started to watch the David Lean production of ‘Passage to India‘ This had a stellar cast but we decided not to watch the whole of it in one go but rather split it into two halves. So at what we hope to be an appropriate juncture, we exited our viewing and hopefully will pick up the rest of it in a day or so. The cinematography and views of India are stupendous and we found that this film actually absorbed us for much of the later afternoon. We then caught up a little on the Sky News current affairs transmission before we start to have our evening spot of a light tea and then a viewing of the Sky News Sophie Ridge program of the Politics Hub which we enjoy each day and watch for as long as we can before it is time to think of our bedtime preparations for Meg which often take about an hour.

Various things delayed us this morning but we had nothing to really rush about for so getting up a little later than planned did not distress us. However, it was a really gloomy day and raining quite hard – however, if the weather had been a tad colder then the precipitation may have fallen as snow so under the circumstances we were not dspleased. After our normal breakfasting, we made tracks to go to Droitwich despite the weather. En route, I made three attempts to call in at a variety of retail outlets to pick up a copy of ‘The Times‘ but failed every time so I came to the conclusion that perhaps the print run and/or distribution had been a victim of the weather. When we got to Droitwich and got Meg into the wheelchair, we nearly came a cropper. The roads en route to Droitwich had been pretty flooded but absolutely passable and when in Droitwich, I though I espied a low kerb and promptly drove the wheelchair off it. But I had been deceived because the drain water was level with the kerb itself and what T thought was flat was a bit of a drop. Fortunately, I grabbed hold of Meg before she went flying forwards and whereas normally I hold on to her hood to prevent such an occurrence, today Meg had her hood up. But the ‘kindness of strangers’ intervened again and we went to our favourite cafe where we were greeted warmly by the Catholic lady who always looks after us very well. We ordered a pot of tea and one bacon butty between us and I must say that this was some of the nicest bacon I had ever tasted. So we had a wonderful little repast and were going to make a little trip into areas of the town but instead were quite pleased to get home. By this stage, it was not too far short of 1.00pm so I pressed on making the lunch whilst Meg watched TV in the Music Room. We had a very tasty of chicken for our lunch, dining in the kitchem as we always do and I popped out into the Music Room for something. Hearing a loud ‘thump’ I knew that Meg had had a fall on the kitchen fall – although we tell her constantly never to to try to walk unaided or ‘the staggers’ will intervene and a fall is very likely to ensue. This is what had happened and there a fair amount of blood on the floor and on Meg’s jumper. It looked as though her glasses frame (fortunately not the glass within them) had impacted her eyebrow causing quite a deep gash which had bled quite profusely. Fortunately, our son was in the house upstairs working away but heard the commotion so he helped to get Meg onto her feet and cleaned up the floor and the clothing but without attempting to do anything about the cut itself (about two thirds of an inch long and quite deep) At this stage, it was pretty clear that we needed to attend the Minor Injuries unit in the local community hospital.

Fortunately, although it was raining hard, we managed to get Meg into the hospital in the wheelchair and as I had Meg’s NHS number in my wallet, managed to get her booked in and then into the hospital system. We did not have to wait too long to get seen by a Triage nurse who took some particulars. Then we got seen by a medic and a nurse (whether the medic was an A&E specialist I am not sure) After some quick neurological tests for head injuries (which all proved negative), he applied some of that special ‘glue’ to the cut and then some varystrips to help the edges of the wound to stick together. I had one or two almost Kafka-esque conversations with the medic along the lines of ‘Have you mentioned these falls to your GP and what did he say?’ ‘Yes and he made a diagnosis of lack of core strength’. The medic made eyes at me and asked if we had been referred to the falls clinic, to which I responded that I did not know that such a clinic existed as it had never been mentioned in any of our previous transactions with the NHS. By sheer coincidence, earlier on that morning, I had made an appointment for about ten days time to have an annual review of Meg’s condition and so all of this ncident can be discussed then. The one silver lining to the cloud is that a report of the patching up done at the hospital will automatically wing its way onto Meg’s case notes so perhaps the GPs might apply their mind to this particular problem that we have, given that Meg falls about once a day and sometimes more frequently than that. For good measure, she fell again whilst getting out of the car on the way home so that is quite enough for one day.

There are going to be two days of ‘immigration issues’ in the House of Commons – today being legal immigation and tomorrow illegal immigration. The Home Sectetary is under enormous pressure from his right wing to do everything possible to curb immigration but in the meantime, the care and hospitality sectors are desperate for the workers which just do not seem to be forthcoming from the indigenous population (probably because the wages are too low for the levels of responsibility that have to be deployed and retail outlets like supermarkets offer an easier way to earn one’s wages.)

We thought that the weather might not be very good today so we had two plans projected for the morning. If the morning had been bright, crisp and clear we would have wrapped up warmly and then gone for a venture in our local park, armed perhaps with some soup in a flask and some comestibles. But the weather was dull, overcast and raining, so we had no hesitation in adopting ‘Plan B’ This involved going to Waitrose in Droitwich some seven miles distant. The advantage of this was that we could park with no charge, pick up a copy of our Sunday nespaper and then get a ‘free’ coffee which is a service Waitrose offers to its cardholders. There was a certain degree of debate whether my exchange of the voucher for the Sunday newspaper constituted a purchase or not. I argued that it did as the value of the voucher gets passed through the tills as though it were a cash purchase but on checking, it seemed that the Waitrose policy is that this is not the case. Nonetheless, the staff stretched a point for us so we proceeded to the very basic coffee drinking area. Although pre-Covid, this store had its own little cafeteria, this did not survive the lockdown so we had to make do with perching on one of the three or four bar stools in front of a shelf which passes for the coffee facility. We got into a friendly Christmas style conversation with another couple having their repast and, rather surreptitously, ate a banana and some biscuits to go with our coffee. Then we had to make a fairly smart progress towards home as our chiropodist was due to call today at 11.45. But she turned up an hour late as she had forgotten the time of our appointment, her own phone being almost out of action because of a broken screen. So this made things even after we had a mistaken appointment time last Monday, I think it was. The minute we got back from Droitwich, we put the ‘breast of chicken in a tin’ into the oven suspecting that it would take well over an hour to cook. When everything was ready, we dined on chicken, roast potato and broccoli leaving enough of the chicken left over for two further meals.

Meg and I had come to a decision to give ourselves the experience of watching ‘The Way’ on Amazon Prime. We first saw this film over a month ago but thought it was well worth an extra watch. The plot consists of a son with a distant relationship with his American father who died in the French Pyrenees whilst undertaking the ‘Camino de Santiago’. The son is cremated and his father decides to complete the Camino on his son’s behalf leaving a few of his son’s ashes at each important staging post. En route, he encounters variuous travelling companions so the journey as a whole has its little escapades. Watching the film for a second occasion was full of little surprises and delights when there are little details that escaped you the first time around. The film is also incredibly poignant and Meg and I felt watching the film again was quite an emotional experience. We know Santiago de Compostela pretty well but never in our younger days considered doing the Camino do Santiago officially but as well as this particular film, there has been at least one TV series based upon pilgrims’ experiences as they undertake the journey via one of the several routes all of which are several hundreds of kilometers in length.

We have not had much time today with our TV viewing to read the Sunday newspapers in any real depth but we know that next week, Boris Johnson is due to evidence for at least 1-2 days to the COVID-19 enquiry. Witnesses who are called to give evidence to the enquiry have already supplied a fairly lengthy written statement and these are always self-justificatory. But one wonders how penetrating the questions from the barristers in the enquiry are likely to be. It is by now fairly well documented and admitted by Matt Hancock, at least, that if the lockdown had been initiated some three weeks earlier then thousands of lives would not have been lost. This bald statement seems dramatic in the extreme and it is probably the case that the COVID-19 may well have shortened the lives of many elderly and infirm people who might have not had a great deal of time left to them in any case. But when Meg and I walked down to the local park during the pandemic, we witnessed old and sick people being ushered into the back of an ambulance whilst tearful relatives waved a goodbye to them as the ambulance departed, probably knowing that they would not see their aged relatives ever again. This was true also of Clive, the aged gentleman we know very well from our daily walks who even played ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring‘ on his trumpet on the occasion of our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations.

Politically, Keir Starmer has come out in praise of some of the reforms of Margaret Thatcher, to the astonishment of many of his MPs. Whether this gain him any extra votes from previously ‘soft’ voting Tory voters is uncertain but I have a feeling that this praise of Thatcher was both unnecessary in purely vote winning terms and also, more seriously, likely to badly misfire.

Today being a Saturday, we are looking forward as always to seeing our normal little band of friends in Waitrose but first things first. I had a much better night’s sleep than the night before and so consequently, we got up to a little late to the coldest day of the winter. But I have done two things to mitigate this. The first is that I am getting into the habit of protecting the car windscreen each morning with a thinnish plastic windscreen film held in place by a couple of car mats. This system is both simple to put into place and really effective, so I am pleased about that – if things get too complicated, there is a temptation to ignore them. Secondly, before I came to bed last night, I had a portion of porridge oats and the relevant milk/water mix prepared in the saucepan such that we can very quickly have a hot and sustaining breakfast in the morning. As soon as I got up this morning to make our early morning cup of tea, I gave our newly restored dining chair its second last coat of specialist spray as it only takes just over a minute to do this. After we had breakfasted, Meg and I made our way down to Waitrose and, in no time at all, got down for our elevenses. Today, as the weather was so cold, Meg and I treated ourself to something special which was two cups of hot chocolate and a bacon butty which we shared between us. We felt that our bodies appreciated this little treat as we are currently in the coldest day of the winter and then our friends arrived. Amongst the topics of conversation this morning, was the way in which different nationalities have their own favourite remedies which, in the case of the French is a liberal utilisation of suppositories. I have noticed that in Flemish culture, there seems to be a great reliance upon throat sprays to treat all kind of winter cold-and-flu symptoms – we in England, tend to rely upon pills. At about 11.30, we got a telephone call from our Eucharistic Minister who had turned up to the house at 11.30 (but I had thought our appointment was 12.30 and had evidently mis-remembered it) So we shot off quickly and got back to the houuse as soon as we could. We always enjoy these little sessions because apart from the strictly spiritual part of our meeting we always spent some time discussing family matters and also musical issues where a lot of our tastes coincide. When the minister left us, we quickly had to jump up and make ourselves our Saturday lunch which in this case was some low fat beef mince cooked with some onions in an onion gravy and then complemented with a baked potato and some fine beans.

We started off the afternoon looking at a YouTube concert and then realised with a sickening thud that I left our consignment of the Saturday edition of ‘The Times‘ (lots of supplements at the weekend) in the cafe at Waitrose, no doubt as a result of quickly getting up in response to the phone call. So Meg and I got in the car and popped into the cafe to ask whether my left-behind newspapers had been handed in. They had not, so with a heavy heart, I bought another set but then when I got back to the car to throw them on the back seat, I found out that I had already put the newspapers there this morning. So I popped back into Waitrose where they know me well and negotiated a refund for the second set of papers I evidently did not need. When we got home, Meg and I treated ourselves to an old Yorkshire tradition which is Christmas cake with a hefty slab of white cheese (Wensleydale or Stilton) which is a delicious combination if it has not already been tried and often given away by the wives of publicans to their regulars in the pubs of Yorkshire (well they did decades ago but sometimes traditions do not survive) I then made a quick phone call to our Italian friend down the road to see if she was at a loose end in these wintry condition. As it happened, she had a dose of gastric flu from which she often suffers (she told us) at this time of year. But she appreciated my phone call and then we promised that in the next few days ahead we would get together for a tea and a chat in either her place or ours. I also had a long and informative email informing me of the latest medical news about the wife of one of my University of Winchester friends. This all sounded very serious but my friend and I are in frequent touch with each and give each other whatever mutual support and advice that we can. On Sundays, we generally meet up with our University of Birmingham friend but we have a fair idea that he may be up in Yorkshire with his latest squeeze but we are going to fill our day with a visit from our chiropodist (even on a Sunday) in the late morning. If the weather is fine and clear, we may go along well wrapped up to the park and take some hot soup along with us when we may bump into some of our park friends and acquaintances.

Friday is the day when our domestic help calls around and the night had been pretty frosty last night so I felt that a good saucepan of porridge was called for. When the temperature drops sharply, Meg and I get into porridge-making mode and it does help to set us all up for the day. Then I took some delight in showing our domestic help both the Imari style pottery of which I managed to acquire some extra pieces at the weekend and also our newly restored dining chair. This has had several treatments already and I will probably only give it one or two more before I call it a day. I have a specialised polish which one sprays on and then immediately wipes off wih a soft cloth. This way, it only takes about a minute and a half to complete the job and I think I am quickly approaching the point where I have achived the end result that I want and further treatments are no longer warranted. After we had breakfasted and chatted for a while, we popped into our local Waitrose for a swift coffee (meeting no one that we knew, it being a Friday) and then made our way into Droitwich. Once safely parked we banked a couple of cheques and then made our customary visit to the shop of Worcestershire Association of Carers in which, unusally, we found nothing to take our interest. We are now quite well supplied with the cushions and cushion covers that we need so the point is coming when we need to search no more. Having said that, I needed some material to make a ‘flatter’ style of filling for cushion covers in order to make some seat pads. I actually did find a seat pad filling from an unusual source i.e. our own garage. In the past, I have carried around an old towelling dressing gown which I have carried round in the boot of the car in case I ever needed to lie on the ground to make a running repair to the car. With our latest car, I decided that this dressing gown had outlived its usefulness so I proceeded to give it a wash and dry. After that, I filled it carefully into the square shape of one of my spare cushion covers and it does the job almot perfectly without the enormous expense of a foam insert filling. Finally, we made our way to our favourite coffee shop where we were booked in for a Christmas lunch at 12.30pm. When this arrived it was absolutely enormous. Meg and I enjoyed a meal of five slices of turkey breast, stuffing, pigs in blankers, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and sprouts. This was so enormous that Meg and I could only manage about three quarters of this huge plateful but we did complement the whole of the meal with a good class of Argentinian Malbec.

As we had practically finished our neal, we were approached by a lady who asked if she coukd share our table as she really rather liked the tub shaped seats that we around our table. We were more than happy to oblige and quickly got into conversation about the towns in which we grew up, world affairs, politics and goodness knows what else. I think we found each other good company so we were both quite happy to let the conversation flow where it might. We told her how much we had enjoyed our Christmas dinner whereupon she felt emboldened to approach the proprietor to see if he could rustle up another one at short notice and without having been pre-booked. This he did and the person sharing the table was soon tucking in to what was an enormous lunch. In our case, we were so full that we took the option of a simple trifle, not having the inclination or the space for more conventional Christmas pudding. On the subject of things culinary, Meg and I made quite a discovery yesterday evening. I was exploring a cupboard which we use as an ‘overflow’ cupboard at this time of year, primarily for Christmas fare and discovered a complete Christmas cake, complete with icing and with its package, including a sealed cellophane, completely intact. It had on it a ‘use by’ date of mid-January of this year and one’s first impulse was to actually throw it away. Instead, I opened it and we removed the marzipan and soft icing leaving behind a moist fruit cake. We assumed that, at best this might be very dry and at worst it might have gone rancid. We intended to try some of this cake out with a carton of custard but tested it first to make sure it had not ‘gone off’ To our complete surprise, it was one of the most delicious fruitcakes we have ever tasted. I mentioned this to our hairdresser who mentioned a tradition to us that one layer of a wedding cake be retained and consumed at the birth of one’s first child, presumably about a year later. Intrigued, I decide to consult wider opinion on the web and this is what I discovered. The web source stated ‘Fruit cakes can generally be stored for up to a year in the freezer. But they could probably last for even longer. This is because the alcohol prevents mould and kills bacteria and the sugar helps to preserve the cake for longer. The dried fruit in the Christmas cake has low water activity’ so perhaps our experience is not so out of the ordinary, after all.

So the regular Thursday routines have popped round again. Today I made sure that Meg and I had all of our ablutions done after which Meg stayed in bed (as is usual on a Thursday) whilst I go off to do the weekly shopping. Under the regime that started last week, a care assistant comes around on a Thursday morning primarily so that I can complete my shopping activities. The assistant who called around this morning is the fourth different person we have had but she seems a jolly little soul and quickly struck up a rapport with Meg and myself. I had a feeling that this particular relationship was going to turn out quite well and, indeed, after I had returned from my venture up and down Bromsgrove High Street,it seemed that the last couple of hours had proceeded satisfactorily from everyone’s point of view. I took the opportunity to visit our local Poundland store where I purchased a couple of rubber, but not particularly heavy, carmats. I have an intended use for these not inside the car but to provide a little bit of weight to hold the anti-frost screen securely on the windscreen on the car if the weather forecast indicates that it is going to be a cold night. Last night, I think it was near freezing or just below but tonight is going to be even colder and so before it got really dark, I popped out to get the protection in place. I am trying to get this done in just a minute or so because if the routine is rapid you feel more inclined not to neglect it.

This morning, after we had listened to the news, we turned the radio onto ClassicFM where they have started playing some Christmas music. Personally, I feel that they should have held off until Sunday which is the start of Advent and, I suppose, can be said to be the starting gun for the commencement of Christmas. We are still November until tomorrow and I do not like these celebrations to start too early. On the radio, they played the Christmas carol ‘Away in a manger’ and this reminded me of a comedy sketch some time in the 1970’s.The sketch reminded people that at about this time really wide-screen cinema was starting to make its presence felt (was it called Todd-AO or something similar?) but many cinemas had to cope with chopping off a bit of the left hand side and the right hand side of the transmission. So, chopping off the first and the last letters of some well known Christmas carols we have things like ‘Way in a mange’ and also ‘hen shepherds watched their flocks by nigh’ and so on and so forth. This has become a little of a family joke over the years as we sing ‘Way in a mange’ when called for.

After we had lunched, we enter our normal TV routine. It looks as though as ‘Outnumbered‘ has now run its course so Meg and I watched an old episode of ‘BlackAdder‘ which I must say neither of us found particularly funny. But after this, we tuned in to some of the COVID-19 investigations being broadcast live and this afternoon were treated to Matt Hancock, who as Health Secretary was a crucial player at the start of the pandemic. Various accusations of ‘lying’ have been thrown backwards and forwards with nothing definitive being as yet proved. The leading counsel for the enquiry keeps issuing what in boxing terms might be a probing ‘jab’ but so so far has failed to deliver anything like a knock out blow. The enquiry as a whole, though, is meant to learn the lessons for the future and a discovery that politicians may be lying to each other as well as to the public is hardly a revelation. In fact, I have often wondered about politician’s relationships with ‘the truth’ – as they have dissembled for years and years and will never give anything other than an evasive answer to any question, then perhaps none of these revelations in the enquiry will come as a great surprise.

Tomorrow will thankfully be 1st December and I shall be glad to have got the month of November out of the way (I feel the same about February) I am always happy to get 21st December out of the way because at the very least it should then start to get lighter by 1-2 minutes a day. I find that once we get into the run up to Christmas, all of the glitter and trash associated with Christmas not particularly heartwarming. There was a campaign in the 1950’s as I remember to ‘put Christ back into Christmas’ which rather ignores the fact that early Christianity actually appropriated Christmas for their own purposes. But of course, apart from Christian traditions there are similar mid-winter festivals (Hannukah, Eid, Divali and so on) and most of them have the theme of light fighting against the darkness. Yuletide and similar mid-winter festivals all pre-date Christianity and I always marvel at the ways in which our earliest ancestors managed to get the timing of their mid-winter festivities as accurate as they are. There may have been ‘naturally occurring’ clocks such as the sun appearing in the centre of two erected stones but I am sure archeologists and pre-historians have a much more sophisticated explanation.