Last night, I got Meg to bed and then I started on my Christmas Eve vegetable preparation, postponed from earlier in the day. I prepared the sprouts and saved them in a little plastic bag well laced with lemon juice and then broke off to see a repeat of ‘Yes, Minister‘ on BBC4. Towards the end of this, I got a phone call from my University of Winchester friend whose wife has been discharged from hospital but is still quite seriously ill. Despite an army of carers, she still suffered an incident which meant she had to be readmitted only a few days after discharge (I suspect this is not an uncommon occurrence these days) So my friend and I had a long telephone conversation where we offer each other a listening ear, some emotional support and perhaps some practical tips and suggestions as our two spouses seem to parallel each other in some respects. After this, it was case of preparing the parsnips and then to bed for a fairly early night. Meg and I got up at more or less the usual time and got ourselves breakfasted before we received a videocall from my son and his wife in their Christmas hotel but who had themselves overslept. After this, we had four bags of presents to unwrap and, of course, this is always a source of delight and much pleasure. By an extraordinary coincidence, we had just watched the repeat of the cartoon film ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse‘ when one of the first presents that we opened from was from our Eucharistic minister parishioner who had bought us the actual book from which the cartoon is derived. And so we proceed to our Christmas lunch for which many preparations had been made in advance. Apart from the starter, it is not false modesty to indicate that this the worst Christmas lunch that I had ever prepared – and I have cooked lots in my time. I think that I probably prepared too much but by the time we came to eat it, it was certainly overcooked. So the sprouts, par-boiled and then out in the oven were scarcely recognisable, the gravy condensed down to practically nothing and even the rioja proved to be a little less than inspiring. I think probably the worst Christmas meal of all time was one my mother was preparing it whist using a tiny little oven that she deployed on her kitchen table. She handed me a dish which she had just taken out of the oven which burnt all of my fingers on both hands and I cannot remember that we had any Acriflavine on hand at the time. When fingers have been burnt like this, even afer the application of some cold water, the heat (and hurt) seems to build and intensify and this is what happened for the meal in question. The only saving grace to today’s meal is what looked like a huge volume of washing up was actually dispensed with quite swiftly and the judicious use of tinfoil meant that no dishes were left with food that resisted the washing up brush.

This afternoon was a fairly typical Christmas afternoon where we doze in front of the TV, this being ‘Death on the Nile‘ which we must have seen umpteen times before but as a ‘whodunnit’ has all kinds of twists and turns in one of the most incredible of plots. Of course, the author was Agatha Christie who was married to an archaeologist and who used to remark that the most interesting thing about being married to an archaeologist,the older one got, the more interested one’s husband became in one. In the course of her career, Agatha Christie disappeared for several days (or even longer) into a hotel in Harrogate which was actually ‘The Old Swan’ in which I worked regularly from about 1961 to 1965. There was quite a strict stratification structure in the hotel and as well as washing dishes, I also washed silverware (which for odd reason, paid slightly more), then in the still room which serves teas and coffees, then washing glasses for the bar and finally working on the bar itself (whilst actually being underage) I also did a certain amount of portering, particularly when coach loads of American tourists arrived (sometimes as many 4 x. 40 seaters in one night) and the guests required their luggage as soon as possible. One of my duties as a night porter was to vacuum the huge ballroom which had to be done at night as the room was in use during the day but occasionally the management, when our jobs were done, allowed us to curl up on some of the comfortable settees and go to sleep for the rest of the night. Incidentally, in a hotel of this size being of the order of nearly 400 bedrooms, it was inevitable that every so often a guest would die in their hotel bed. We had a well established routine for getting a body out of the hotel so as not to attract attention from guests or passers-by. This was to roll the body up in a carpet and then take the carpet down in the service lift. After all, nobody raises a second glance at two porters handling a carpet between them and this happened about once a year, in my recollection. I quite often worked on Christmas day but the generous management did not pay us ny extra wages but did concede that we might be treated to a glass of sherry. Incidentally, this must have cost the management hardly any expense at all as they imported amontillado sherry by the cask from southern Spain and then bottled it themselves in their own ‘Old Swan’ labelled bottles. Christmas time was always special for us because about two dozen young female trainee waitresses were imported from a catering college in South Yorkshire and to us local lads, this seemed like manna from heavan.

Last night, after Meg had finally ‘hit the hay’ and gone to bed, I started to complete some little jobs that needed doing before the next day. First I located the little crib which we bring in once a year and is made of very simple and stylised figures of a very light wood which I suspect is balsawood. Once this had been put in place, I put another piece of ornamention in place which is a stylised crib in a rather tasteful wood surround. We saw this in the crypt of Chester Cathedral when we were visiting Meg’s Uncle Ken whilst he was still alive and were immediately taken by it. We put a bit of lighting on one side and the shadow cast on the wall behind is somewhat reminiscient of a palm tree. Several years ago, I bought a copy of the Koran from a remainder shop on Bromsgrove High Street and read up on the Koranic version of the Nativity. In this, Mary goes and out and gives birth under a palm tree so perhaps our stylised crib is quite multicultural. Finally, I addressed the Christmas cards for the immediate neighbours – these I always leave to the end as there are no postal deadlines that require to be met. We knew that when breakfast was over, the Eucharistic minister was going to call around from our local church and we had our normal little service inside the house. We exchanged Christmas cards and I was fortunate to find just one, religiously themed, card to give to our fellow parishioner because I particularly wanted to give her an appropriate card as I had tried (and failed) to find some more religiously themed Christmas cards this year. She had brought a little gift along with her which went into the bag waiting until tomorrow. Fortunately, she confessed to a liking for damson gin so I was delighted to give her in return the last remaining bottle of the batch of 2-year old damson gin which I had bottled last Monday.

After that, we posted the Christmas cards for our immediate neighbours through their front door and then we sped in our car to the home of our domestic help to help put her Christmas card through her front door as we were all in a bit of a rush when she left us last Friday and her own card had been overlooked. Then we needed to make one more call which was to the Waitrose supermarket to buy some gravy granules which is a vital ingredient for me when preparing the Christmas dinner tomorrow. Almost inevitably, as happens under these circumstances, I saw one or two extra things that I thought would help to enhance the meal tomorrow when one of the staff in the store, who I know pretty well, informed me that Meg was sitting in the cafe. Although I had left her in the car she was now translocated into the Waitrose store and given a cup of coffee on the house. So after a little but unexpected sojourn here, we made for home and then I cooked a lunch largely of vegetables (onions, peppers, petit pois, some ham ends, tomatoes, mushrooms and a handful of sultanas and a touch of demerara sugar with a modicum of home-made gravy thrown in.) This was served on some pasta and actually we both enjoyed it very much.

We had just about completed our washing up after our lunch when the front doorbell rang and it was our newish Asian neighbours of whom we have not seen a great deal because this year because a voyage they had undertaken in the Caribbean had been followed up by a lengthy trip back to India. They had brought round some Christmas gifts for ‘looking after their house’ whilst they had been away but, in truth, we had done very little. Naturally, we invited our neighbour in so that we could catch up on news of comings-and-goings and spent a wonderfully intimate twenty minutes telling each other some stories about our past lives and the houses we have lived in. Our neighbours are going to invite us round for samosas and perhaps other delicacies so we shall really look forward to this in a few days time. But we noticed that our Irish friends from down the road had also left a carrier bag of Christmas goodies for us on our doorstep so now we have quite a lot of Christmas gifts to unwrap.

Christmas Eve entertainment is generally of a pretty high order but tonight we are anticipating viewing ‘Mog’s Christmas’ which is going to be shown later on this evening. Generally, I devote Christmas Eve afternoon to the preparation of vegetables for tomorrow but I suspect that this is going have to wait, as with many other routine jobs, until Meg is safely tucked up in bed. I always think that Christmas starts at about 3.00pm in the afternoon when the light is fading and I am starting to prepare the sprouts and parsnips for tomorrow’s lunch. We have a bottle of Rioja freshly bought from Waitrose yesterday and we trust that this will complement the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner to which Meg and I treat ourselves each Christmas day.

Today being a Saturday, we were quite looking forward to meeting up again with our friends. After one or two days of early starts, Meg and I were more than pleased to have a little lie-in this morning but, nonetheless we got ourselves up, breakfasted and then located in the Waitrose cafeteria by just after 10.30. We were about the first to arrive but pushed some tables together and were soon joined by our three regular friends plus our University of Birmingham friend who had phoned us yesterday. There was much exchanging of Christmas cards and a little last minute Christmas shopping as we, individually, discovered things that absolutely had to be bought just before Christmas. We are a jolly little bunch and I helped the jollities along by showing our friends an illustration of the children’s character, Mog. This is because within the family I have the soubriquet of Mog (the initials of which stand, incidentally, for Miserable Old Git) Everytime our daughter-in-law went into her primary chool and mentioned ‘Meg and Mike’ her collegues would exclaim ‘Don’t you mean Meg and Mog?’ and so the name has stuck with me for years, even being used on one famous occasion in a hospital ward where there was confusion over the multiple ‘Mike’s’ as patients and so I volunteered to be known in the hospital thereafter as Mog. Now the Sunday Times made a feature of Mog on the front page of their Culture magazine last weekend and so I was flattered to have made it to the front pages of the High Street Media at last. This illustration was cut out and pasted onto some card and passed around the table so that my friends could appreciate how Mog was making an appearance. I had also been sent an extremely amusing Christmas card so this was taken along to help with the general jollities. So after all of this, we made for home and started to think about a simple lunch. But the doorbell rang and it was our next door neighbour who had popped around with one or little Christmas delicacies for us to enjoy. As his wife was at work for the rest of the day, he was inclined to tarry and we invited him along to our Music Lounge where we explained some of the musical offerings that we now access via YouTube. Our neighbour has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music from about about the 1940’s to the 1980’s at a guess and, as a hobby, has installed several of the old style juke boxes in his converted garage. By the way, these have the most wonderful and vibrant rich sound on the occasions I have been played one or two records in our neighbour’s system. So although our musical tastes differ wildly grom each other, we have enough in common to remember together some of the tracks that we remember fom our youth. For example, I have quite vivid memories of my sister and I buying an EP (= ‘Extended Play’) 45rpm record on which recording there was Harry Belafonte singing ‘Mary’s Boy Child‘ I am pretty sure that Harry Belafonte is in his mid 90’s and still alive but I have not heard it played over the airwaves for many a long time now. After all of this, our normal lunchtime was so delayed that we thought we woukd improvise a quick as lightning lunch. We had a bowl of soup, followed by some tea loaf augmented by a slab of cheese and this was easily enough for our lunch.

After lunch was over, we received a telephone call from the daughter of a niece who had texted us yesterday, suggesting that we have a Christmas style chat. As it happens, Meg and I were able to view, over a YouTube link, the Sunday morning service in a church in Gateshead in which there two children were christened.So this turned out to be quite a joyous occasion and I doubt that Meg and I would have managed a journey to Gateshead in the first place. Our phone call lasted about 50 minutes and we had a lot of family news to catch up on both sides. I intimated that I hope that Meg and I might travel to York by train and have a family meal at a bistro that we know which is immediately adjacent to the station and thus easy both to find and to access. We will probably make some arrangements to see if we can organise a family get together like this, probably in the Easter vacation. Later on tonight, Meg and I feel that will indulge ourselves in yet another viewing of ‘Paddington‘ which we have seen so many times that we have probably have forgotten some of the words. I remain of the view that this is much an ‘adult’ as a ‘children’s film’ because there are quite deep matters of identity, attachment to UK culture and the way that, as a society, we treat strangers to our shores, which actually chimes today with current matters of political debate over migration. There are also some fabulous little ‘in jokes’ as when Paddington seized a dog to carry down the escalator in response to the notice that ‘Dogs must be carried’

Late yesterday afternoon, we received the most wonderful surprise. One of my Yorkshire nieces and her husband had sent Meg and myself a wonderful bouquet of flowers, through the post. According to the instructions, these will be at their best within 48 hours after they after they have been revived with some water and specialist plant food. So I emailed my especial thanks to my niece immediately with the promise that when the flowers were fully open and at their best, then I would send on a photo so that they could see how they turned out. This morning is the start of the shortest day of the year – the exact turning point being 3.27 in the morning. So from now on, the days should be gettung a smidgeon longer but generally we have to wait until after the Christmas festivities are well and truly over before any difference in the daylight is at all discernible. This morning is the day when our domestic help calls around and she was intrigued and then agreeably surprised with our new settee. Actually, yesterday, I did pop into the AgeUK store when I was on Bromsgrove High Street and was glad that I did not buy the other settee on offer which looked somewhat tired and pedestrian. The one I did purchase was actually a very marked improvement over the one in the store and last night, I put the finishing touches to a freshening up of the fabric as a whole – not that it really needed it but I felt it ought to be done. I thought I had noticed the slightest hint of a grubby patch on the front panel and gave this some remedial treatment so now all looks restored. I now have the settee in its final location so that the standard lamp which we purchased some time ago actually sheds light on some of the organ controls on the one hand whilst also affording some extremely good reading light for the settee on the other.

This morning after we had exchanged all kinds of chat and Christmas cards/gifts with our domestic help, we set off for Droitwich expecting to find the town pretty busy, which it was. We needed to get some cash out of the ATM and also acquire a copy of ‘The Times‘ but Santander and W H Smiths are next door to each other so this made life quite easy. Then we progressed on towards the cafe and were slightly dismayed when, upon reaching it, a crucial nut fell off Meg’s wheelchair meaning that one of the arms had detached itself. We had our normal ‘bacon butty’ and then progressed slowly back to the car, keeping my eyes peeled in case the errant nut would manifest itself (it did not) As I was getting Meg into the car with a little difficulty, a passerby helped me to get Meg into her seat. I explained the nature of Meg’s illness and was amazed to receive a hug from a complete stranger. On our way home, I popped into our local hardware store and managed to buy several nuts of th appropriate size (only 8p each) so that I can quickly do some running repairs to the wheelchair before I use it next. When we got home, I decided to use some of the haddock pieces that I had purchased yesterday to make a risotto. Although I only made sufficient for Meg and myself, our domestic help cannot resist a portion of my risotto and so I found a container for some so that she can have some for her tea when she gets home. I inadvertently then dished some up into a bowl which still had its boiling water in it to heat it up and when I realised my mistake, this evidently had to be jettisoned. The point of this story was that it seemed to be one of the nicest risottos I have ever made even though the quantities had been diminished somewhat but I may repeat this dish next Sunday which, being Christmas Eve, is obviously the day before the big culinary onslaught which is Christmas Day. Meg and I generally have on Christmas Day that which we really like which is a nice piece of beef and Yorkshire pudding. I discovered in Aldi when I went shopping some Winter Roasted vegetables which are carrots, parsnips and onions with a thyme and rosemary glaze so this will be a wonderful accompaniment to our beef when we cook it. Incidentally, I remember several decades ago that I used to grow parsnips in the long garden attached to our house in Wigston, near Leicester. I always reckoned that these were much tastier when we had a hard frost beforehand (and in purely chemical terms, some starches are converted into natural sugars) and I can remember the delight in digging up some nice huge parsnips ready for preparation the following day. In practice, I still do this preparation on Christmas Eve and make sure that the pasrnips have a good squirt of lemon juice to stop them discolouring overnight. Parsnips with my roast Christmas Day beef is one of the delights of life and I am afraid that I do still prepare and cook many more vegetables for the Christmas Day lunch than is strictly necessary.

Today being the Thursday just before Christmas, we suspected that the supermarkets would be absolutely bursting from the minute that they opened. So I left in plenty of time, filling the car up with petrol and surrounded by white vans in the supermarket filling station at that hour in the morning. When I got to our local Aldi they were already open – if I had a shop last week, I might have known they would be opening an hour early in the days before Christmas. But it was not too bad when I got inside, the only frustrations being that the extra Christmas stock displaces some of your usual items and so the shelves require some extra navigation as well as shoppers treating themselves to Christmas delicacies. Nonetheless, I got all of the things that I felt that I needed leaving the wine to be bought at Waitrose which I really feel is superior to the Aldi offering. Then it was a case of getting home, getting unpacked and then being just about organised before the carer allocated to Meg make her appearance for a two hour stint. She turned out to be a pleasant lass with a sunny disposition and a Pyschology graduate to boot so we had some points of contact in our introductions one to the other. Then I left to go on the road and get some non-food shopping done before Christmas. The principal item that I had in mind was two or three of those slim calendars which we have in strategic places, the one in the kitchen just fitting nicely inside the kitchen door, being used (in theory) to record people’s birthdays throughout the year. There did not seem to be a great selection this year and I avoided those with cute puppies and kittens before settling on some that we will need to live with throughout the forthcoming year. There was a certain amount of drama when I left the house to go shopping as quite a large and mature tree had completely fallen across the road from which our drive leads off. A man in a small van had been sent out to deal with the situation as best he could – the only thing that I could do was to reverse back into my own drive and access town from the opposite direction. I did not particularly enjoy trecking up and down the High Street but I did acquire some of those stout vegetable/fruit boxes in which supermarkets receive some of their stock and for which I have a particular use in mind. After I returned home, the carer departed and I started to think about our lunch for the day.

After lunch, I had a particular job to do which was to give a spring clean to the two piece settee which I had installed last Monday. I must say it just not look particularly grubbby but in the case of second hand fabric furniture, I felt I ought to give it a clean before using it in earnest. I had done a certain anount of reading beforehand and following the advice to give it a good brushing to loosen any dirt caught in the fibres of the fabric. I had purchased a brand new little dustpan and brush so this task was easy but then I should have given the whole a vacuuming but could not work out how to utilise the crevice attachment so gave this stage a miss. The next thing I did was to use a recipe I had acquired from the web which was to mix up in a spray container a cup of distilled water (straight from the dryer in our case) mixed with 1/2 cup of white vinegar and 1/2 cup of ‘rubbing alcohol’ (and I just happened to have enough in stock) So the task consisted of removing the four substantial cushions and then lightly spraying the arms, front and back of the settee itself. I then used plain kitchen paper to absorb any excess moisture. The american recipe called for the addition of a few drops of orange essence but I did not feel inclined to go hunting around for this. So the settee is in a disaggregated state at the moment but later on this evening, or in the very early morning, I shall reassemble it before our domestic help arrives and gives it her seal of approval (or even a thumbs down, but I think this is unlikely)

The other day I was casting an opinion whether IBM keyboards helped you to avoid typos and were a delight to type upon. I found that I was not mistaken and other users have enthused about how brilliant they find these classic IBM keyboards in shart contrast to the things that are current today. Incidentally, this generation of IBM thinkpads were built like tanks and evidently the IBM engineers had abandoned all ideas of saving weight in order not to compromise a really sturdy build quality. I think I am correct in stating that Neil Armstrong was equipped with one in his mission for the moon decades and decades ago. Whilst on the subject of workstations, I have utilised one of the fruit boxes, already a functional black, with some extra materials which means that I have organised my little workstation so that the piano stool and the table height are correctly aligned. I did a few measurements around the height and the optimal distance between seat and desktop should be of the order of 9″-10″ which I have now achieved.

Last night, Meg and I attended the annual carol service which is held in our local church. When we used to attend regularly each Saturday evening, we tended to arrive half an hour before the commencement of the service in order to gain a parking slot and so today we arrived some 40 minutes before the service was due to start as we thought the church would be crowded to the rafters. In the event, we were one of the first to arrive and, indeed, had to wait for the church to be opened up. Before the service started, we got chatting to a parishioner who played the viola in local ensembles and the time flew by until 7.00pm. When the service of carols and readings was concluded, we intended to go straight home but as we the first to arrive, we discovered that we were completely blocked in the car park and it took quite a long time to clear. So we decided to avail ourselves of tea and mince pies in the adjoining parish hall and to commune with some of the regular parishioners who we had not seen for some time. People were very solicitous and concerned about Meg’s health and we certainly feel that it is was worth the effort of attending, even though that it meant that we an hour late in getting Meg to bed. This morning, I was just about to start my normal routine of getting Meg washed and dressed in the bathroom when the doorbell rang and it was a care worker (the same one who turned up 30 minutes late yesterday) who had come to offer some assistance with Meg’s personal care. In practice, the care assistant just stood there watching whilst I did everything that needed to be done (after all, I have these things off to a fine art by now) and then asked if she there was anything she could do to help. I suggested that she help to brush Meg’s hair which is something I do each morning and takes no time at all. Tomorrow, we are going to have yet another carer who is a ‘new girl’ and probably number 5 in the sequence but I am losing count by now and am certainly forgetting their names, which is not a good thing. Today’s carer had no idea who was scheduled to come on Friday but at this rate, I think I am probably past caring.

This morning, as we were up relatively bright and early, I paid a flying visit to the large Aldi’s in town to get some requisites for Meg (but they had sold out) We got to the Methodist Centre which was deserted when we got there but gradually the numbers built up and we learnt that later on that morning, there was to be a sort of carol concert. Actually, it turned out to be an extremely entertaining musical offering. The group that came in to perform went by the name of the Bromsgrove Community Choir and they were a collection of individuals who sang together for pleasure and occasionally gave little performances. Today they were augmented by a recorder group where the instruments played were several sizes larger than the little twee things that they used to dish out to school children and, in some cases, were extremely large, being over a metre in length. The program was very varied and interesting. One offering was to put several things following some of Mozart’s best known tunes and themes. Another, which was memorable, was the work of a local Gloucestershire musician whyo was both a serious recorder player as well as a jazz player. So we presented with offerings such as two carols seamlessly stiched together with some jazz overtones – all that I can say is that it worked. We also had some community participation with Good King Wenceslas sang in such a way that after a communal first verse, all the males present took the works of the King whilst all the females sang the part of the Page. All of this was quite a good idea because it made the event a much more communal event. At the end of the performance, we were approached by the viola player (whose acquaintance we had just made the night before) but who was one of the recorder group on this occasion and expressed delight that we managed to make this performance as well as last night’s. So when Meg and I left for home, we felt that we had an original and entertaining musical experience that was enriching in a sort of way.

Meg and I had sone quiche for lunch and then made a quick visit down to Waitrose by car to pick up our copy of ‘The Times‘ which we had forgotten about this morning. Half way througth the afternoon, we got a telephone call from a specialist nurse for whom there is an 18 week waiting list but who, nonetheless, is going to pay uis a visit in early January. Actually, both carers and ‘cared for’ are just going to survive the next 10 days or so because it appears that many services will be suspended over the Christmas period and will resume once New Year’s Day is over.

Just as an interesting aside, I am typing up this blog on my IBM Thinkpad which really has the most superb keyboard with clunky keys and a decent ‘travel’ on each key, just like old fashioned keyboards used to be until the more recent and (cheaper) alternatives became the norm. Quite impressionistically, I seem to make far fewer ‘typos’ on this old fashioned keyboard and I am wondering whether this experience of mine is a more general one or just an idiosyncrasy. Tomorrow is the day of the ‘big’ Christmas shop up and I am starting to steal myself for what might be a manic and somewhat fraught supermarket experience as a lot of the population will no doubt choose tomorrow as their main Christmas shop-up day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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