This Tuesday, we are going to depart somewhat from our usual pattern of events for a Tuesday. But first, having got Meg up and breakfasted, we needed to make our way down to Waitrose where we hoped that we would bump into some of our normal Tuesday crowd. In the event, we were to be disappointed because our recently widowed friend was not there, a second may have been at home with a chest infection and the thirds was off playing bowls. Nonetheless, Meg and I had a coffee quite alone for once but we noticed, en passant, that the store was full of red roses ready no doubt for people to purchase them in anticipation of Valentine’s Day which is tomorrow. I am afraid that we make the most ungallant of gestures, refusing to participate in Valentines Day after 56 years of marriage but it is not unheard for the Waitrose staff to dispose of some of their excess stock, immediately after Valentine’s day by throwing some in our direction. But we knew that a visit to us scheduled for later in the day so we did not tarry too long in the store. At 1.00pm, by arrangement, the two nurses who specialise in Meg’s condition, were coming along to make their scheduled monthly visit. These meetings follow a pattern as one nurse spends some time with Meg and the other with me and then we swap over. One of the nurses had spent some time encouraging Meg to read aloud from the ‘Mog’ book which I acquired yesterday and was pleasantly surprised at Meg’s fluency in this little venture. This being the case, I must keep looking in the charity shops for books of a similar genre and I am wondering whether we might build a new pattern of activities into our daily routine such that Meg reads to me some passages from whichever book is engaging her attention and I, for my part, get the computer to ‘speak aloud’ the words of my most recent blog. As the nurses’s own son is just starting school, I think I have planted a seed in some of the books that she might quite like to acquire and to read aloud to him (or for him to read to himself as he gets older). However, I amused the two nurses, or afflicted them both, with getting the new laptop to speak out loud the words of the little ‘Hints’ page that I put on the web last week and then the latest edition of this blog. We are always pleased to seeing these two nurses who work for different parts of the Health Service but in adjacent rooms so they evidently liaise well with each other. Amongst other things, we review Meg’s medication where we are going to reinstate one of the items that the doctor (not a specialist) had decided to discontinue. To be in the middle of competing sets of advice is somewhat frustrating but I must admit I tend to go with my own feelings as to what is appropriate in most cases. As I had been anxious not to postpone this visit from the two nurses, I had foregone my Pilates session this Tuesday, but I felt the visit was more important under the circumstances. After the nurses had departed, we had our normal ‘Tuesday’ lunch of fishcakes and micro-waveable vegetables and then settled down to some afternoon TV. Meg and I had scheduled for ourselves to watch, on Prime TV, the biopic of Edith Piaf called ‘La Vie en Rose‘ This was rather full of the gritty realism of the backstreets on Paris in the early years of the century in which Edith Piaf was raised, or should I say ‘dragged up’ We only watched one half of the film today, saving the final half for another day when Meg is not so tired and/or stressed.

The enquiry into the Post Office scandal seems to gone into abeyance for a little while but I gather is to resume again in April. Yet another sub postmistress has been cleared by the Court of Appeal today and I read on ‘Sky News’ that Paula Vennels, the ex-Post Office chief is to give evidence. This I hope will be a ‘must see’ event because it is quite rare to see the powerful brought to account and in this particular case, Paula Vennels, seems to be in denial that she bears any responsibility for the ill-judged prosecutions in which the Post Office engaged. I find it simultaneously amusing and frustrating that when such individuals are held to account that suddenly they have a great lapse of memory or to say that ‘that to best of their knowledge and belief’ which they hope is a get-out-of-jail card for them. In a similar vein, when one of the Maxwells was questioned in the phone-hacking investigation and was presented with an email showing they had been informed of some malfeasance or another, the flimsiest of excuses that I have ever heard is to not to deny that they had received such and such an email but that he ‘had not read it to the end’

The political event unfolding in the by-election to be held on Thursday may well prove to be interesting. The Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election has had support from the Labour Party officially withdrawn from him but the Labour Party ‘label’ will still appear on the official voting forms. This is a consequence of past comments indicating that he thought that Israel had ‘allowed’ the Hamas attack to happen to give an excuse the invasion of Gaza. Will this candidate still be elected or not? Even if elected, the new MP will be shunned and will have to sit by himself as an ‘Independent’. In any General Election which is now only months ago, this MP will deselected and will be replaced, no doubt, by more suitable candidate who is not prone to making anti-Israeli jibes of this kind.

So Monday, the start of a new week has dawned and so we got Meg up and ready for the carers to take over at 8.00am. For one of the care assistants, it was her first day in a new job so she rather tended to stand around consulting the package on her mobile whilst the other girl got on with the job in hand. To be fair, I had got Meg half ready so there was not a great deal for them to actually do. But today is the start of the new régime where we are going to have a couple of carers in every morning so I am hopeful that we can get rapidly into a new routine. After the carers had left, I gave Meg her breakfast and then we proceeded to go to Droitwich, which is our normal run out on a Monday morning. I called in at the newsagents that we used to frequent on a daily basis and saw that they had a supply of newspapers. So I made a request to the young male assistant behind the counter that they keep a copy of ‘The Times‘ safe for me in the back office which was the arrangement I used to have with my previous newsagent. Whether this new arrangement will work out as I would like, we will have to wait and see but the youngish lad who is behind the counter these days does not seem to have much clue about things. We then proceeded to Droitwich where we parked fairly easily and just outside the Worcestershire Association of Carers shop which was to prove fortuitous. Then we repaired to our favourite coffee shop enjoying a pot of tea and a bacon butty and the cafe seemed to fill up quite readily. The proprietor did not have any assistance this morning so he was doing a lot of running around but after we had had our fill, we returned to the car. As we were quite near the charity shop, we popped inside and emerged with several goodies, all at bargain prices. One of these was a boxed set of children’s classic stories (of the likes of ‘Little Women‘ and ‘Black Beauty‘) I bought these for Meg hoping that her concentration span was such that she may well like to read them again, probably having read each one when she was of the age of 10-12 years old. Whether this little theory of mine will work or not is unclear but the whole boxed set of a dozen books cost less than the current price of a coffee so it is scarcely a waste of money. I also took the opportunity to buy a children’s version of ‘Scrabble’, another Judith Kerr on the adventures of Mog the cat and finally a slimline melamine tea tray with a poppy design upon it. When we got home, it was not quite the normal Politics program in the middle of the day that we have come to expect- perhaps they are on a half-term break as well but I needed to press on and make lunch rapidly as time was marching on. I scaled down the amount that we were going to eat and so we dined on ham, mange-touts and baked potato.

This afternoon, we had intended to watch ‘La Vie en Rose‘ which was the life story of Edith Piaf. Incidentally, I wonder whether the title of this song is best idiomatically translated as ‘Life seen with a rose-tinted view’ along the lines of the English expression ‘seeing life through rose-tinted spectacles’ The literal word for word does not justice to the subtlety of the phrase so when I next see our French friend from down the road who was also a language teacher, whether my conjecture is correct. I always think of the translation process as much more than actually knowing the meaning of the words themselves – after all, think of the meaning behind describing a man as an ‘old dog’ but the female equivalent would be a ‘bitch’. Meg was not feeling at all wonderful this afternoon, so instead of watching the film as we intended, we tuned into one of our favourite baroque concerts on ‘YouTube‘, which is a staple of ours these days.

Ex-President Trump has a known predilection for ‘strong’ (quasi-fascist?) leaders and has more recently expressed the view that the Europeans should be making a greater contribution to Nato that they actually do. With these thoughts in mind, it seems amazing that one should hear these words from ex-president Trump: ‘No, I would not protect you. In fact I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay’ he has reported to have said to unnamed leader. Quite a backlash to these comments is now making itself heard and a former presidential candidate (Chris Christie) has retorted ‘This is why I have been saying for a long time that he is unfit to be president of the US’. It is certainly the case that many NATO members are increasingly concerned about the consequences that might flow from a Trump re-election and the Ukrainians, in particular, must feel that they are on the verge of being abandoned for good. It may well be the case that other Western governments have to bite the bullet and increase funding and support for Ukraine in the face of American intransigence but perhaps their economies cannot bear the strain.

We pop into our Sunday routine this morning which means getting ourselves ready for the Lorna Kuenssberg program on BBC1 which we manage in time. Once we were up and breakfasted, we wondered if our University of Birmingham friend might make contact with us. This, indeed, he did but only to inform us that he had another commitment this morning so could not meet with us today. Nonetheless, we still went down to Waitrose on the off chance that we might bump into some people that we knew. There were some Sunday morning regulars that we know by sight only so after we had our coffee and a Danish pastry for Meg, we came home to settle down for the treat that we had promised ourselves. Two Sundays ago, we dropped into the second half of a three part series in which a group of very dissimilar minor celebrities were joining forces to walk an ancient route from the Swiss Alps over the St. Bernard’s pass and thence to Rome. Last week, we saw the third and the final part of this series but today we had promised ourselves that we start to view the series on iPlayer from the very beginning and in this way find out who the eight minor celebrities actually were. This proved to be an hour of the most absorbing TV that it was possible to watch – as well as the stunning mountain scenery and ancient Italian towns, there were the various group dynamics to consider. There were a variety of faiths – and no faith – individuals on offer but they were all, in a way, trying to prove something to themselves by undertaking the pilgrimage. One fascinating fellow pilgrim that they met en route was a British doctor who quite liked to walk along alone although he acknowledged that many pilgrims found walking in a group was extremely enjoyable. He explained that when one was alone, you concentrated on food, drink, appropriate clothing and where you going to spend the night in a hostel along the route. All of the other problems that you might have faded away when you were concentrating upon these bare essentials of life he argued and one could understand that he had a good point. So Meg and were delighted to have tuned in successfully to this first episode and are going to get to view the other episodes at about the same time each Sunday morning as some viewing to which we can look forward each week. This morning, we had some unsmoked ham cooking in the slow cooker and made ourselves a fairly conventional Sunday lunch of baked potato, broccoli and the slices of meat bathed in a thick onion gravy. There is always a certain amount of preparation preparing a Sunday meal like this but, once done, it makes life easier for the rest of the week as the meat is cooked, the onion gravy is prepared and so meals are quite straightforward for the remainder of the week. We knew that we were going to watch the Ireland vs. Italy Six nations rugby match this afternoon and this turned out to be quite enjoyable. Although this was one of he strongest teams of the competition playing the weakest, the Italians put up as good a show as they could and the match was reasonably entertaining, even though the Italians finished the match without a single score on the board. Whilst we were waiting for the match, we tuned into BBC 24 hours news programme and saw a fascinating half hour of the Art of Islam which was pretty enjoyable in its own right as well.

The next week is going to seem quite strange to us in a variety of ways. Our son and daughter-in-law are going to be away in Spain enjoying a half term break and some nice warmth away from the winter weather in the UK (although to be fair, we have not had he snow which was forecast last week and the next few days are going to be quite mild) But we are moving onto a new pattern of carers for Meg in which the carers are going to come every day rather than three days a week. My Pilates session this week is being junked so that we can enjoy the visit of the Admiral nurse under whose care Meg is receiving at the moment and whose advice and support we find quite valuable. Then on Thursday, our allocated social worker is due to visit for another visit in which the care and support for Meg are to be reviewed.

There is a story told about Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister of the landslide win for the Labour Party in the 1945 election. After a reshuffle, one of his ministers was very disappointed that he had not been offered another portfolio and sought an interview with the Prime Minister. When asked why had had not offered another appointment, Clement Attlee apparently took a suck on his pipe and looking up from his desk just said ‘Not good enough’ – which ended the interview. I am reminded of this story because a Tory Treasury Minister was caught out in a Radio 4 interview last week not knowing some of the most basic facts about the British economy and hence the ‘not good enough’ epithet which ought to be applied to her. Mind you, the same could be said of many members of the current Cabinet whose days are surely numbered.

Being a Saturday morning, we were looking forward to making contact with some of our coffee bar friends. As it turned out, we had coffee with the one of our friends who had attended her own husband’s funeral last Wednesday. Her husband was practically 90 and had sort of decided, for himself, that he no longer wished to eat or drink so it was fairly evident that he could not last a great deal longer. I think the overwhelming emotion of our friend was one of relief that everything was all over and now she had to continue with all of the post-death sequelae such as ensuring that her dead husband’s name was taken off joint bank accounts and the like. We are a little worried about a mutual friend (the chorister) who we normally see each Tuesday and each Saturday. But whilst we were in the Methodist Centre last Thursday we thought that we heard that our friend might have taken to her bed with a chest infection so we hope this is just a transient thing and that she quickly gets over this little setback. We also bumped into two other friends to whom we used to make a videocall once a week during the height of the pandemic but they have moved from their previous address and we have lost the kind of contact that we used to have them. They both have their share of health problems with which they are coping on a day-to-day basis but without the benefit of any carers at all. When we got home, we made a lunch of quiche with a ‘melange’ of vegetables to go with it. The vegetable mixture consisted of two small onions, some sweet peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and some petit pois with a dash of a garlic and tomato sauce to add a little bit of piquancy. This turned out to be delicious and whilst being a completely vegetarian meal, was nonetheless incredibly tasty and enjoyable.

We knew that we were going to enjoy some Six Nations rugby this afternoon and the first of these was Scotland vs. France at Murrayfield. Scotland were in the lead at half time and ten minutes before the end of the match were leading by six points. But then followed a ping pong period in which the backs from each side booted the ball up and down the field with each side waiting for a mistake and neither team making a decisive move. But then the French made a bold move and scored an opportunistic try which one always thought that they would, and then after a conversion led by one point. They then added three penalty points and Scotland needed a try to win the match. Then followed one of the most tense ends to a match it was possible to witness. Scotland did get the ball over the try line but the online decision of the referee was that the ball was held up i.e. no try. The video referee has to find ‘clear and compulsive evidence’ to overturn the on-field decision and then what we all saw on the video replay was the ball held up on a French leg and then rolled off it. So the ball was probably grounded but was there ‘clear and conclusive’ video evidence that this was the case and the answer is that there was not. So the try was not awarded even though on one video frame one saw the top of the ball roll over the leg but was the ball grounded? This is rather like the burden of evidence in a legal case when in a civil case the issue is decided on the ‘balance of probabilities’ whereas in a criminal case it has to be proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ So to summarise here, I think on the balance of probabilities, the ball was grounded but was there ‘clear and conclusive evidence’ to overturn the on-field decision’ and one has to say there was not. So the rules of rugby were properly followed but the decision of ‘no try’ was decided on the tightest of margins and so the French were awarded the victory. Such fine decisions are not rare in rugby these days but in a case like today’s, the decision was agonisingly close and some members of the public reviewing the video evidence might conclude that the ball had actually been grounded and the try (and the match) should have been given to Scotland. This was one of the tightest and hardest decisions that a refereeing team have ever had to make but this is what makes the game so excruciatingly difficult to watch upon occasions. The match to which we had been looking forward was the England vs. Wales match and this, too, had echos of the previous game. The Welsh were leading at half time but like the French before them, one always had the suspicion that the England team would manage to overhaul the Welsh in the final stages of the game, The Welsh played with enterprise and flair and the English with a kind of gritty determination which proved to be decisive in the end. The margin here was only a couple of points and made for a tense and exciting finish (but it could not rival the knife-edge of the Scotland vs. France game). Tomorrow, we shall see Ireland vs. Italy which is probably the strongest team in the competition taking on the weakest, but we shall see.

So Friday has dawned and two carers turned up this morning, one of them being one of our regulars and the other new to us. So between us, we got Meg up, washed, dressed and breakfasted and we started to look forward to the day ahead. Apart from our domestic help turning up which is our usual Friday commitment, the Eucharistic minister turned up as arranged from our local church and we had our usual little bit of spiritual solace. Then we had a very welcome telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend and we responded with due alacrity to his suggestion that we all meet for coffee in the Waitrose coffee bar, which we did in the late morning. Afterwards we had spent a very pleasant hour in each other’s company, we parted and it was time for me to come home and prepare our Friday lunchtime meal, whch was a fish pie. One way or another, we had had quite a busy morning which seemed to fly by. Our domestic help mentioned a TV programme which featured cookery and a visit to Santiago de Compostela so after we have had our post-prandial rest, we may see if we can get this on catch-up TV. I have consulted yesterday’s ‘T2’ section in ‘The Times‘ to see if any good films or series are available for us to watch later on this afternoon. Last Friday was the start of the ‘Six Nations’ rugby competition and I was not sure whether a match was going to be shown this evening or not. There are at least a couple of matches that are to be shown tomorrow afternoon of which the Wales vs. England match in the late afernoon is certainly the highlight.

I have just installed the type of memory card on my new PC which is normally reserved for photographers – technically, an SDHC card. This card was pretty cheap (£8) and stores 32GB of data and at the present rate at which this blog accumulates (2 x. 7kb a day) I calculate that I have enough space left to last me for over 1,000 years. Having said that, the manufacturers (Sandisk) give a warranty of 10 years but most computer experts advise against using this kind of flash memory for long term storage for a variety of technical reasons. Whilst you can read the card as many times as you lke, writing data to the disk actually degrades the memory cell by a few electrons and in the course of time, say after 10,000 writes, this type of memory may fail. However, I am happy sticking with it for a few years, say five, and then immediately replacing it with a newer version. Whilst memory has got cheaper and cheaper, the newer types of memory is not manufactured for long term storage. The old-fashioned hard disk drive may actually be somewhat better for long term storage and this type of drive has technology associated with it which can ‘tell’ when the disk is starting to fail and can map out ‘bad sectors’ In other words, the old fashioned drives degrade more gradually whereas the newer technology can fail more dramatically.

The police are now saying that the Afghan who conducted a chemical attack against a woman with whom he was previously in a relationship is now probably dead. The attack itself was quite horrific as a caustic soda solution was used in the attack on the woman and he had actually injured himself in the course of the attack. Every single bit of CCTV footage that could be scoured indicates that the Afghan was making his way to the River Thames and that some footage indicates that he was near to the water. Some medical experts were of the view that untreated, the chemical burns which the attacker had unintentionally inflicted upon himself would probably result in his own death and the pain must have been insufferable. The latest thinking of the police is that the suspect is almost certainly dead having thrown himself into the river but that his body may never be found. This is admittedly conjecture at the moment but is the best guess that the police have of the whereabouts of the attacker. On the other side of the Atlantic, President Biden is the subject of a report which indicates that he may be suffering from quite severe memory problems. This is a political nightmare for the Democrats who know in their heart of hearts that Biden is not the most suitable of canidates but it is now probably too late in the political process for him to be replaced. So the American electorate are faced with the choice between Trump who has a track record of inflammatory rhetoric if not downright insurrection on the one hand versus an aged and evidently ailing President on the other. From this side of the Atlantic, one would have thought that there might have been some time within both the Republican and the Democrat camps for new candidates to be chosen and to come to the fore in both cases. But given the popularity of Trump with a hardcore section of the American electorate for whom he can do no wrong, then Jo Biden seems to be the only Democrat who is capable of beating Trump amongst the non-committed. All of this is building up to a scenario in which Trump, against all of the odds, may well be re-elected and the consequences for Europeans and the rest of the ‘free’ world are almost unimaginable.

We have decided to have a slightly different pattern to our Thursday, starting today. Normally, I have asked Meg to stay in bed whilst I shoot out and attempt to do the shopping very quickly but I think the time has come to abandon this particular pattern. We have a carer allocated to us for this Thursday (the same one as yesterday who locked herself out!) so I thought I would wait until she came and then go and do the shopping. This worked out pretty well given that road works on the A38 impedes one’s progress to the supermarket but I managed to get there, get some money out of an ATM, do the shopping and get back in just a little over an hour. Today has been one of those wet, drizzly days where it stays gloomy all day long and there always seems to be rain hanging in the air, so to speak. The weather forecasters are talking about a band of snow sweeping across the North and the Midlands during the course of this afternoon and this evening. Insofar as I can discern from the weather maps, it looks as though Bromsgrove is absolutely on the edge of this snow line and so I am hopeful that we only get sleet or, if the snow does fall, it is sufficiently light to dissipate quite quickly. So having got the shopping done and then unpacked, we said goodbye to Meg’s carer who we might not see again if we replace her mid-day ‘sitting’ visit for an earlier one provided by the couple who get Meg up, washed and dressed. I promised to give her a reference if she applies for other jobs because, as a Psychology graduate, she may not to remain as a carer for the rest of her life. We had to have our lunch fairly expeditiously this lunchtime as I have a hospital appointment later on this afternoon and this having been done, I left for the hospital just after 2.00pm. When I got to the hospital, the car parking was a nightmare as we have come to expect oven the years. I joined the queue of cars searching desperately for a space and zigzagging through the car park on several circuits. The upshot of all of this is that I arrived some 5-10 minutes after my appointment time and apologised profusely although I suspect this must be happening all of the time. Nonetheless I was seen for my scan on time and chatted with the Polish radiology assistant about Brexit-related matters whilst she was getting me prepared (CT scans require a radio-opaque die to be delivered via a canula) This CT scan was routine insofar as it may be one of the end points of the monitoring of an operation that I had nearly six years ago now)

Now that I am exploring gradually some of the features of the Windows 11 operating system on the new laptop I have just acquired and on which I type as Meg is following news or listening to music in our Music Lounge. One such feature may seem a little like a gimmick but I found it quite intriguing. Once I got the webpage displayed that I composed for the benefit of fellow carers yesterday evening, I received a prompt that I could have the text on the website ‘read out’ to me if I pressed a combination of keys. This I did and heard an English style (i.e. not American-accented) female voice reading out the website to me. Excited by all of this, I thought I would try it out on the text version of these blog pages and again, this worked perfectly. I may get into a pattern where I play the ‘audio-enabled’ version of the blog to play the last day’s entry to Meg whilst she is sitting in her favourite armchair. I am intrigued to see what the reaction of various people might be (our domestic help, some of Meg’s carers) if I inflict any of my blog entries upon them.

Today, we feel as though we almost in an election mode as both of the principal party leaders attack each other. The Labour Party has decided to abandon its pledge to spend some £28 billions of both public and private sector money on green projects before the end of the next Parliament (always assuming they were the government of course) This pledge has become an albatross hung around the neck of the Labour Party even though it was first formulated in an era of low interest rates before Liz Truss trashed the economy and was always meant to be a mixture of public and private sector involvement. The Labour Party was finding that spokesman after spokesman were attacking the £28 billion figure as typical Labour profligacy and it was becoming evident that in the forthcoming election this attack line was going to be hammered to death across the social media and every time a Labour Party minister took to the airways. I think that ditching this figure was quite sensible even though environmentalists and the green lobby are up in arms. Rishi Sunak also massively opened his mouth and put a foot in it at PM’s question time yesterday by trying to taunt Keir Starmer over the definition of ‘a woman’ Whatever the rights and wrongs of this argument, the fact is that the murdered ‘trans’ adolescent’s mother was in the public benches of the House of Commons so this was not time or the place to issue what seemed a supremely insensitive comment into the debate at this particular point of time. In fact, the murdered girl’s father has already asked that Rishi Sunak’s insensitive comments should be withdrawn but of course, that is not going to happen either. One does get the feeling in these pre-election skirmishes that the personal attacks and ‘dirty tricks’ are only going to grow exponentially. A very ‘old fashioned’ political expression, taken from football, is that one ‘should play the ball not the man’ but one suspects this is going to be the reverse of what happens as the election campaigns unfold.

Today turned out to be quite an eventful day. We knew that in the morning, we were going to have the elecricity turned off whilst the power company took the opportunity to cut down the branches of trees that might be impeding their power lines. We were prepared for this to happen shortly after 9.00am so between the carers and myself, we ensured that Meg was up and breakfasted. Then we entertained ourselves with ClassicFM on a battery operated radio until it was time for us to have coffee in the Methodist Centre. Here we were greeted by another obstacle as the immediately adjacent local authority carpark that we generally use was out of commission for the week as they were doing some maintenance work upon it. So we had to hunt out a more distant carpark which entailed a more distant walk into the Centre itself. Once there, we sat ourselves down at the chatty table where we consumed some of our usual teacakes and coffee. We got into conversation with a couple who happened to be a retired health visitor married to a retired policeman. Meg had taught the Health Visitors some sociology and social policy whilst we were both lecturers at De Montfort University and I think that taught them them some elementary statistics, research methods and perhaps IT as well. We then left, wanting to get home just before 12.00pm when we assumed that the power would be restored. Our immediate next door neighbour had called around a few days ago and we agreed that we would use the contractors employed by the power company to radically prune back a conifer in our garden but which was causing a nuisance by intruding into our neighbour’s garden. My neighbour had agreed a ‘back pocket’ price with the men involved who, of course, had all of their necessary gear (shredding machines and the like) on site. So suddenly our back garden was filled with the three contractors who busied themselves with the job in hand, taking some 20-30 minutes altogether. I always prepare coffee for workers in this situation but the three of them waited until the job was done before having their drink.

This afternoon, I was going to attend a special neeting organised for carers and this was to be the second of two sessions, the first being last week where we concentrated on those being cared for whilst this week we were concentrating upon ourselves.The session was run by a couple of occupational therapists and in the course of the afternoon, we shared various concerns and problems with each other. I thought that it might be quite a good idea for us to form a self-help group so that we could swap ideas, strategies and even provide some practical support for each other. To facilitate this, I circulated a sheet of paper with contact details on it and we then put the filled-in sheet of paper on our mobile phones so that we all had a record of each other’s contact details. I then said that I would supply a list of some practical tips and hints to share with others that I would put on a simple one page website, which can grow and be expanded as the need arises. Whether anything will come of this, I cannot say at the moment but as I have a template prepared, it is only the work of a minute or so to get a simple web page prepared which I did when I got home. Whether or not, we can be of mutual support to each other as carers is a bit problematic as we all seem to have a plethora of individual problems and not many of the scenarios that we face are at all similar to each other. I had to leave the meeting a tad early as I did last week to ensure that I got home before Meg’s carer had overrun her allocated time slot. She is a good natured lass but had experienced a couple of problems to make her afternoon all the more eventful. The first thing that had happened is that car was in the way of the contracters who had been busy pruning the conifers in my garden and after she went outside to her car, she had not appreciated that the front door would lock automatically behind her – which it did. The contractors, evidently practical people, suggested that she contact our immediate next door neigbour to see if they had a key to our front door. We nearly always leave a key with next door neighbours for contingencies such as this so that one was one problem for our care worker resolved. The second was that Meg had experienced a fall which sounds dramatic but was actually more of a slither to the floor, but again presented the care worker with a dilemma. Se sensibly did not ring the ambulance which would have been a drastic solution but instead remembered some of the advice that I had given her when we first met with each other. This is to get the fallen person onto their hands and knees, then onto a low stool, then into a sitting position and finally into something like a standing state. So the girl managed to follow this advice and although I am sure she had some anxious moments, managed to get Meg back into her chair again. So at the end of the day, I was glad that I had given the care assistant the appropriate instructions when first we met to alleviate difficulties such a this (although I meet with this problem on a daily basis)

Tuesdays are always the days to which we generally look forward and today is no exception. That is because after meeting with our Waitrose friends, Mike goes off and does his weekly Pilates session whilst Meg communes with her (Peruvian-born) carer whilst Mike is out of the house. Today was no exception and we got down into town where we made contact with one of our usual crowd. Tomorrow is going to be quite an event-filled day as her husband who was several years her senior and in his 90’s had died recently and tomorrow was going to be the day of his funeral. So tonight and tomorrow night there was going to be a gathering of surviving relatives and evidently these had to be entertained and fed. But in some ways I felt that our friend would be keen to get the whole funeral business over and done with so that she could get on with more living of her own as she has own pattern of disabilities with which to cope. I was telling our friend what a deep impact the Channel4 series on the Miners’ dispute of 1984 had had upon Meg and myself and recounted some of the salient points from the TV program recorded in last night’s blog. The conversation then moved onto the Birmingham Six which was another miscarriage of British justice. After the Birmingham pub bombings, six local Irish men were rounded up and charged with the murder of the innocent civilians drinking within the pub. The Irish men were convicted on what was turned out to be the flimsiest of evidence. A Home Office pathologist who did not have a good reputation for competence used the traces of a cellulose type substance, found in the most minute quantities on the hands of those accused, had argued that this was evidence of bombmaking activity. The accused Irishmen argued that the cellulose type substance had been transferred onto their hands because they had all been playing cards on a train journey but they were not believed at the time and the Irish were convicted. Several years later, it transpired that the Irishmen’s explanation was quite valid and the Home Office pathologist’s evidence was fundamentally flawed. At the time, there was a huge outcry and there was a massive public demand that those guilty should be caught and convicted. And so the ‘Birmingham Six’ were put behind bars and I believe that at least one of them died in prison protesting his innocence. Now I have gathered that the substantial Irish community in Birmingham was put under severe pressure and felt the real weight of public anger directed against them. We can see parallels in the way in which the Jewish community is feeling such pressure today as anger is directed against them as a result of the Israel/Gaza conflict. All of this is, of course, history but our friend managed to convey a bit of oral history to us. This was that in the Longbridge car factory, often known locally as ‘The Rover’ there were groups of Irish workers on the assembly line but the management felt constrained to shut the whole of the plant (for how long I do not know) until public anger had subsided and the Irish workers were no longer deemed to be at risk of battery and assault by the rest of the workforce. I am reminded of the phrase which I encountered when I was a sociology undergraduate that the individual can be regarded as the point at which ‘biography and history intersect’

The email client that I have used also gives its users an allocation of filespace and the opportunity to create some webpages and I have taken this opportunity in the past but not consulted the websites recently which I had originally created. So I browsed one of these websites and was quite amazed at what I had re-discovered. On the website there were some snaps taken of my sister and brother-in-law who had helped us to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary celebrations in Spain some 16 years ago. But there were some gems of other family ‘heirlooms’ which must have been scanned in some time ago but I am not sure where the originals are now. I discovered three photographs of my mother, one resting up half way up ‘Catbells’ overlooking Derwent water in the Lake District, on on her Open University graduation day in Sheffield and one holding the hand of our son when he was about six years old. In the same collection I also discovered two photographs taken of our son when he was about two, one on his own and the other sitting in a push chair being pushed by a mini-skirted Meg. These last two photographs are now over half a century old but the oldest was a photo of myself at the age of about 14 taken in the school playground at my school in Bolton, Lancashire and the original of this would have been about 1959 or 1960 which makes it over 60 years old. So quite a find after all.

The news media is dominated by the news today of the cancer from which King Charles is suffering, discovered during another routine operation. Our close Spanish friend send me a quick email message expressing some surprise (or even shock) at the news. In my reply, I said that we had scarcely noticed the news announcement despite the fact that it had been mentioned in the news media outlooks as least 87 times before breakfast this morning. The ‘Sky News‘ commentator announced, somewhat gleefully I thought, that this may well be a topic of news for months to come and my heart did sink at the prospect. As my son and wife have have drily remarked ‘So an old man has cancer – where’s the news?’ with which sentiment I feel I must concur.

Today being a Monday, we look forward to our carers coming at 8.00am but we waited in vain. Eventually three turned up at 8.40am but then three turned up together (two regulars and a ‘newbie’ in training) but by this time everything had been done. We got Meg downstairs and breakfasted and then prepared for our trip to Droitwich, which is quite a regular event for us on a Monday morning. Then our University of Birmingham friend phoned up to see if we were free which was a welcome call for us. We decided to go to Droitwich as a threesome which we did, attending our our usual cafe and picking up a copy of ‘The Times‘ en route. Then we had a very pleasant chat and returned home in the late morning. We watched a little of the ‘Politics Live’ program on BBC2 just after midday and then prepared our lunch which consisted of some of the beef joint cooked yesterday, some broccoli and a baked potato.

This afternoon, after one or two false starts, I managed to access the ‘catch up’ of the astounding documentary series which is being broadcast on the events of the Miners’ strike of 1984, evidently 40 years ago now. This film I think it is fair to say was jaw-dropping in what it revealed but I managed to watch it for the second time (but Meg for the first time). A few of the most memorable points are recounted now. At the time, the police made every effort to stop miners joining the picket lines, even turning cars around at the ‘other’ end of a motorway if it was thought that miners were about to join the picket line. But in the ‘Battle for Orgreave’ coking works in the West Midlands, things were very, very different. No miners were turned back but the police were there in massive numbers with mounted horses on two sides of a valley and dogs on a third side. After an initial ‘push’ the police sent in the cavalry and some terrible truncheon damage was inflicted upon the miners fleeing the police. The mass of miners were pushed towards a neighbouring village for good reason – if it could be shown that members of the public were frightened or disturbed by unfolding events, then the miners could be charged with the much more serious offence of ‘riot’ rather than ‘unlawful assembly’ and this more serious offence could result in a gaol sentence of 25 years. The trial itself was a farce. When the police came to give their statements, many were practically identical as the police had been instructed what to write in their notebooks. They all claimed to have seen a barrage of missiles heading towards the police even after the police horses had charged. But the defence team managed to get hold of the police’s own video which did not show any missiles being thrown nor any of the offensive weapons which the police claimed the miners had in their possession. After a while, it became evident that the police were guilty of a mass perjury i.e. each one had lied under oath (but no-one has ever been charged) and faced with the overwhelming evidence of police perjury and concocted statements, the prosecution collapsed, every charge was withdrawn and every one of the nearly 100 miners were acquitted. There are even more shocking revelations insofar as the media were ‘tipped off’ and given prime vantage points on the top of buildings so that the results of the orchestrated confrontation could be filmed. Even the BBC admitted some years after the events that they reversed some of their footage to make it appear that the miners had charged the police who had then responded rather than the reverse which was actually the case. We now have the evidence of some footage shot on the miners’ side of the dispute which shows the police initiating the action against the miners which of course the government was determined to win. So why should all of this matter today so long after the event? The fact remains that even five years ago, the government have repeatedly denied that there is any need for an enquiry despite the emergence of a mass of new video and documentary evidence. One recent commentary put it thus: ‘An Orgreave inquiry is in the public interest in order to put the facts in the public domain and to put an end to years of lies and cover-ups by the Conservative government about the political role they played in orchestrating and managing the pit closure programme in the 1980’s, directing militaristic police operations in an industrial dispute and manipulating the courts and media to manufacture a false narrative to demonise and criminalise workers fighting for their jobs and communities.’

Just when we were hoping that there might be an imminent breakthrough in the Israel/Gaza conflict (or do we call it a war?), news has emerged that a big split within the Hamas movemmnt is preventing the emergence of a peace deal. One would have thought that the Americans could have forced a deal on the Israelis but the latter hold two ‘Trump’ cards (no pun intended) which is not only is it an election year in the US but also that the Americans know that the Israelis (and probably the Iranians as well) are in possession of nuclear weapons which they would not hesitate to use if the very existence of the state of Israel were to be threatened.

Meg and I had a better night’s sleep for which I think we are truly grateful after the disturbed sleep that we had the night before. We got ourselves up, washed and dressed and sitting down for the Lorna Kuenssberg politics program which runs from 9.00am and was characterised by a moving interview with the mother of the teenager murdered recently by other teenagers. We knew that our University of Birmingham friend was away this weekend but nonetheless we decided to pop down into Waitrose to see if there was anybody there that we recognised. But as it was a Sunday in February when no doubt everybody is spent up, Meg and I drank our coffee practically alone apart from one other family evidently treating their young children to a treat. But we made a point of getting back by 11.30 because there was going to be a programme on the TV which we thought we would find very interesting. Last week when we returned home from our coffee excursion, we dropped into the second half of Episode 2 of a programme called ‘Pilgrimage’ and found this so interesting that we thought we would make a point of watching the third and final episode this morning. A group of eight celebrities had been formed into a group and in their number were a couple of Catholics, one Jewish female, one Muslim female, a gay black of largely agnostic views and I do not know about the rest. They had started their pilgrimage in Orsieres in the Swiss Alps but were walking the Via Francigna, which in mediaeval times had started off in Canterbury with Rome being the ultimate destination of the pilgrimage. Whether there were any tensions within this group was not shown in the broadcast episodes but the programmes did concentrate upon the mutual help and support which members of the pilgrimage offered to each other. Of course, for everybody concerned, this was not just an (arduous) physical journey but a quasi-spiritual and emotional journey as well. In this respect the series was reminiscent of the film ‘The Way’ which detailed the pilgrimage journey from the French Alps to Santiago de Compestela in northern Spain. These films show some stunning scenery as well as the ancient towns and villages along the route and to some extent can be seen as a travelogue. The final episode was extremely compelling, including some of the final scenes. Having arrived in Rome, the group as a whole was granted a private audience with the Pope – no doubt, a street-wise and savvy media group within the Vatican realised the good propaganda value of this audience. The pilgrim who was the gay black person of no religious convictions was determined to make the most of his opportunity to have direct words with the Pope and explained that as a gay man, he did not feel at all welcome within the Catholic Church. The Pope’s words to him were both diplomatically skilful as well as indicating Pope Francis’ direction of travel on trying to modernise the modern Church. The Pope picked up on the phrase ‘as a gay man’ and indicated to the pilgrim that one should concentrate not on the adjective ‘gay’ but on the noun ‘man’ and these words were incredibly well received and a source of emotional support to the group as a whole. Meg and I checked that the series as a whole is still available on the BBC i-Player so we think that next Sunday we will probably start to watch the series from the very beginning and watch all three episodes on succeeding Sundays.

Meg and I lunched on beef at midday in which we cook the whole of a joint in the slow cooker and then cut it in half so that one half gets frozen in our freezer whilst the remaining half sees us through the week. We made a mash of parsnip and carrot which we feel always goes particularly well with beef, particularly as I always make an onion gravy to go with it. We try to keep our consumption of meat within strict limts these days and tend to eat meat three days a week, fish two days a week and a meat-free, vegetarian type meal for the two days a week. Ths afternoon, Meg and I thought that we would indulge ourselves in a rather different kind of quasi-documentary and this was a account over several hours on Channel 5 on the progress of the Great Fire of London of 1666. Of course after any catastrophe, there is always a search for a scapegoat but in this case it was not the baker on Pudding Lane where the fire is known to have started. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, there was a search for people to blame and the Dutch (with whom we were in maritime conflict at the time) and then the French (as they were Catholic) were the first suspects. The authorities at the time found a Frenchman fleeing the blaze by the name of Hubert whose mental health was poor and who ‘confessed’ to starting the fire by throwing a fireball into the premises of the bakers. The baker himself and the members of his family all attested to the fact that poor Hubert was to blame who was subsequently hanged at Tyburn, the traditional site of public executions at the time. Of course, there are echoes of this even today when there are hints of this in the ‘hue and cry’ over asylum seekers arriving by boats which can be seen as a cynical way of deflecting criticism from other aspects of immigration policy, not least when legal migration has reached an all time high.