The evening before last, I had intended to watch a Prom devoted to the work of the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis but instead I found my attention drawn to an Athletics competition. The Diamond League is an annual series of elite track and field athletic competitions comprising fifteen invitational athletics meetings. The series sits in the top tier of the World Athletics one-day meet competitions. I found that the transmission of the events were such that one event followed another in quite quick succession and therefore it quickly became fairly compulsive viewing. By the time that this was over, I watched the News followed by Newsnight. I got myself to bed but could not resist seeing the late transmission of ‘Today at the Test’ where England overcame Pakistan by winning the match by over an innings and with a couple of days to spare. It is true to say that the Pakistani resistance was quite feeble and one must not get too excited but it was an excellent start to watch what one call the Joe Root 2.0 era, as he is now in his second spell as captain. The English fast bowlers were outstanding but a curiosity of the match was that England did field a spinner. Pakistan’s Ali Usman, on the other hand, became the first visiting spinner to take a five-wicket haul in a Test at Headingley since Australia’s Ashley Mallett in 1972 and the first spinner to do in the whole of the UK series of Test matches for 16 years which is quite a feat. Turning to more domestic matters, I gave the two stainless steel vacuum flasks that I bought yesterday a thorough test of being leak-proof as I have had some unfortunate experiences in my last few trips out with a vacuum flask. I discovered after a series of tests involving filling them with boiling water and then leaving them inverted inside another jug, that a faulty cap was the source of the problem and I have now worked out the correct way of putting these onto a filled flask (which involves fitting the cap with the plunger in the down position and then releasing it into the up position once the flask has been filled which, without instructions, is not necessarily intuitive). I now 1.5 stainless steel flasks available for use, the 0.5 being the half size flask originally sold by George in the Asda store for about £5 but which I purchased for 50p in a local charity store. This will prove to be a boon to me in several ways because it means that when I go away I can carry a normal complement of coffee in one flask but a supply of cold milk (or another cold liquid) in the other. It also means that if I were to take walks in the park in the autumn and winter months, then this half size flask will snuggle well into a trouser pocket and provide just about enough hot drink for the venture. So now my flasks can be properly field tested when I undertake a train journey to Yorkshire next week. Having undertaken a peregrination along the High Street yesterday morning, there is no pressing reason for me to repeat this in the morning so I may start to ensure a comprehensive packing of my suitcase for the forthcoming journey.

I popped into town fairly early in the morning to secure my copy of the newspaper which tends to sell out quickly at the weekend. Then I paid a visit to the Salvation Army charity shop where I was in search of a chain upon which to hang one last piece of Meg’s jewellery and was fortunate enough to find just what I wanted which was a fine chain but without a pendant attached to it. So, I was pleased to acquire this and used it to make the medallion which I had into a wearable piece. Then, after a delayed breakfast, I realised that the microwave was badly in need of a clean and I consulted the web for the easiest way to clean up a badly stained microwave and there were two popular remedies, the first of which involved the heating up of some cider vinegar (or normal vinegar for that matter) and the second of which involved baking powder. Although I followed the instructions to the letter, neither of these remedies made much impact upon the stains on the so-called ‘stainless steel’ interior so I made do with the job half completed and thought that I would attempt a second batch of more intensive cleaning a bit later on.  My day was a little interrupted because my American friend phoned up and was feeling rather unwell and was wondering whether to make a visit to A&E which was all that the NHS 111 service could suggest. After some consultation between the two of us, my friend decided to come round to my house where she could have a period of tranquility which might be more therapeutic than hours of waiting in an infection-prone A&E so this is the plan that we put into effect. We learn this afternoon that the Ukrainian war has intensified with a further drone attack deep into Russian territory. The Ukrainian regime are conducting the conflict against Russia by targeting their strikes against oil refineries so that the typical Russian motorist now has to join a long line of vehicles in order to get fuel. A huge oil refinery strike has deprived Russia of ‘millions of dollars’ and Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed Ukraine’s strike on one of the largest oil refineries in Russia. The Novokuybyshevsk refinery sits around 1,000km away from the frontline. Ukraine’s president said the long-range strikes are limiting Russia’s military and economic potential. He said this attack will deprive ‘the Russian war machine of millions of dollars in export revenues’. Ukraine has been able to set Russia on the back foot with its success through its medium and long-range drone strike campaign. Meanwhile, the Russians bombard communities, even residential  communities, with long range missiles and the Ukrainian air defence systems is not capable of shooting down every Russian missile so that when an attack is made on a residential  community then a dozen or so civilians lose their lives. What  I find so amazing is that when Trump orders air strikes against Iran or Putin orders similar strikes against the Ukraine or Netanyahu orders similar in Lebanon, then it is most often the civilian population that bears the brunt of the attack. This never has the effect of lessening the resolve of the population, who are then determined to carry on the conflict despite the bombing so why military planners think this is a good way to conduct a war escapes me. One cannot imagine, for example, Londoners calling upon the government to surrender to Hitler at the height of the London blitz in WWII.

I read recently on Sky News, and I would not want to make too much of this, that the political hard right in Britain are being boosted by a much younger and, it must be said, photogenic white women who have embraced the far right stance upon immigration in general and this view has been enhanced by extensive social media coverage. Some commentators are talking about the ‘White Girl Summer’ and just to emphasise how all of this is a matter of perception, many still believe that the numbers of migrants still arriving is still increasing. The facts on the ground have not really cut through much into public consciousness- small boat migrant crossings across the English Channel are down roughly 40% to 43% compared to the same period in previous years, driven by enhanced French beach enforcement, disruptions to smuggling equipment supply chains, and changes in crossing attempts. One has to be aware of simplistic or monocausal explanations for these cultural phenomena but I think it is certainly the case that the role of the increased social media is significant, Social media and digital news amplification significantly distort public perception of small boat crossings in the UK. Recent polling shows that roughly 40% of Britons incorrectly believe crossings have increased year-on-year, despite official data demonstrating a drop to multi-year lows, showing how online repetition creates a gap between perceived and actual immigration trends. Constant sharing of dramatic Channel footage on platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram makes irregular arrivals seem more ubiquitous than overall statistics suggest. Small boat events command heavy algorithmic visibility, overshadowing larger, stable legal or structural migration data. Smuggling networks use social platforms to market fraudulent packages, which in turn fuels counter-narratives and intense policy debates online. As well as this subject occupying media attention, the proposed return of the Sussexes (Harry, Meghan and their school age children) to the UK to live near London is arousing enormous speculation. Some commentators are arguing that the Royal family will now be subject to great adjustment problems as they have to decide whether to ignore, or to embrace, what is a de- facto ‘half-in, half out’ state of affairs. The public mood is more nuanced now than it has been in previous years with a view being expressed by some that they are agnostic about the return of the Sussexes but if they are no performing no royal duties, then are they entitled to any public protection or should this be a totally private affair? The body charged with determining the exact amount of public protection that the returning Sussexes might receive hass a tangled and vexed question and it is possible, in the view of Harry’s past pronouncements on this subject, that whatever is decided will please nobody. After yesterday’s much welcomed rainfall, we can now expect a spell of more settled weather according to longer range weather forecasts. Further into September, drier weather may become more prevalent, especially in the south and southeast, with any more unsettled conditions tending to become confined further north and northwest. Temperatures will probably be near normal at first, but may turn warmer later with a chance of some hot periods in the south.

The morning turned out to be rather more interesting than I would predicted. I walked along the High Street to my favourite charity-com-coffee shop which I frequent once a week and I know the owner and the volunteers pretty well by now. But on my way there, I stopped of at Wetherspoons to see if my old acquaintance from  my park-walking days was occupying his favourite seat which he was. Fortunately, he was not busy today (as he uses the watering hole as a sort of office) and he had a long chat about our mutual acquaintance whom neither of us had seen for some time, probably because he has a new found lady friend. So we had quite a lot to catch up on including  some health-related issues but I indicated that I would text so that we can have a longer chat over a coffee in a week or so. Calling in one of the many charity shops along the High Street I managed to purchase a tiny little dish to accommodate one of my washing up brushes, a miniature size thermos flask which was being sold for 50p and a ornament and chain which I purchased primarily to get the chain so that I can pass a little of Meg’s jewellery onto some of my great cousins when  see them next week. As the stainless steel thermos flask I have had for years had started to leak around the top, I junked it and brought a brand new one from Waitrose thinking ahead to when I might take along some coffee to alleviate the rain journey next week. Then I replenished some medications from a cut-price store along the High Street and did not get home until nearly 2.00pm in the afternoon. I had located some ‘cauliflower rice’ in Waitrose which fitted my dietary needs completely – this is not rice at all but resembles it and has the texture of rice but practically zero carbs. So when I got home,  I made myself a mackerel fillets lunch with the cauliflower rice, some petit pois and a sun dried tomato and it made for a very satisfying and healthy lunch. Half way through the afternoon, my American friend phoned and she was experiencing a little bout of illness so I popped out and bought her some fresh vegetables of which she was in need and which we can share in the days ahead if I had bought too much. I already know the result of the Test match which I will view at 7.00pm this evening but it is pleasant to be able to say that it will bring a lot of satisfaction to Joe Root, starting his second tenure as England captain and securing the result that he did on his home ground which is Headingly. I have detailed a BBC4 showing of the Proms for later in the evening because there is going to be a huge slot devoted to the work of Miles  Davis. The BBC Proms concert is celebrating the centenary of Miles Davis’s birth featured a jazz quartet led Ambrose Akinmusire, one of the leading trumpeters of his generation, plus the BBC Concert Orchestra arranged and conducted by Miho Hazama. Although this takes me out of my usual ‘comfort zone’ of Bach, Handel, Beethoven  and Mozart, I suspect that it will be a very interesting and entertaining concert. I remember that the trumpet player who I knew well from my walks down the Kidderminster Road had a very high regard for Miles Davis so this will be an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with his finest work.

The breaking news yesterday morning was the announcement that Harry and Meghan were due to come back to live ‘somewhere outside London’ by September when their two children could be enrolled in a local school. Details of where they are to live and the security arrangements that need to be put in place are a closely guarded secret and one wonders if a kind of concordat as been reached with the national press against whom Harry recently lost his court case. There has been a lot going behind the scenes, here, and the full details may take some years to emerge but some of the groundwork may well have been laid when Harry and Meghan visited the king recently. I would not be surprised if the King and the Palace had been involved in some private negotiations and it is certainly the case that Harry has had a long standing interest in the fate of veterans and those injured in military conflict and his efforts n this direction are surely to be applauded. I write not as an inveterate loyalist but it could be that Harry is able to carve a very useful role for himself in connection with a host of military charities and there are, of course, the ‘Invictus Games’. The next Invictus Games will take place in Birmingham from July 10 to July 17, 2027. Events will be held at major venues including the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) and the Sandwell Aquatics Centre so I am sure there is plenty of preparatory work into which Harry can throw himself were he to be so inclined. I find it interesting that the pull of the ‘old’ country still has its attractions and the various US commercial ventures have not set the world alight. As one commentator acidly notes after their latest movie flop ‘There is no getting around the optics of finishing five places behind a 70-minute compilation of internet cat videos. Hollywood can forgive a lot, but being beaten by CatVideoFest is the sort of indignity they can do without’. The day’s weather will bring some intermittent sunshine that we can expect some rain from mid-day onwards and the possibility of some thunder storms in the afternoon, which is something for which we all have been longing. Meanwhile in the political agenda, the Liberals have been announcing new policies to deal with the ‘small boats’ crisis. Davey blames Brexit for small boats crossings – and says UK should join EU asylum system. The leader of the Liberal Democrats has blamed Brexit for the small boats crisis, and is calling on the government to join the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum to tackle the issue. Sir Ed Davey said joining the pact would allow the UK legally to return migrants to the first EU country they entered and grant Britain access to the EU’s biometric database. The party argues that Brexit has made it harder to carry out checks, as the Home Office no longer has access to EU-wide databases with background information, criminal history, and data on whose asylum applications have been denied elsewhere. It also says being outside the EU has been described as ‘a major pull factor’ There have been times in the past when the Liberals have made innovative suggestions and after initially being decried by other political parties, they have been quietly adopted. But it must be said that the Labour party is making some headway in this contentious area and public attention has been diverted away from the actual number of arrivals and towards where they shall actually be housed (as activism against them can almost be guaranteed in whatever part of the UK they are located) I wonder whether an ultimate solution might be a combination of ex-military camps to house the people allied with a system of government-run workshops with a degree of guaranteed employment (a bit like the government sponsored scheme of ‘Remploy’ for disabled workers that was abandoned years ago) whch might provide a model for a sensible solution to the problem.

As I was to be attending a funeral of a much loved parishioner, I donned the black suit I last wore on the occasion of Meg’s funeral about thirteen months ago. I concluded that with the passage of time, the waist band had grown a tad tighter and the trouser legs appeared a little longer than I remember so I suppose that at some stage alterations might be called for. The church car park was unfortunately half filled with the vehicles of scaffolding firms as the church roof is to receive some much needed attention but I parked in a convenient location on the roadside as did most of the congregation. The funeral was very well attended and the church was probably three quarters full with an interesting eulogy by one of the deceased closest friends and an appropriate source of hymns. The funeral service invited anyone who wished to attend a large Conservative and Unionist club on the Kidderminster Road. I must have walked past this establishment hundreds of times but never had occasion to enter inside but today I was one of the first to arrive. We were directed to a large marquee which is evidently used for functions of this type and after a suitable period of time, we all tucked in to a selection of finger food including sandwiches, samosas, quiche slices and the like.  So this was all very welcome and there must have been copious supplies as once we had eaten our fill, the trays of food were circulated around so we could all have one last bite ad evidently they wanted all of the provisions to be consumed. In the midst of all of this, we evidently experienced a much needed shower of rain which fortunately was over by the time we came to leave. I spent a lot of the time with the church organist and her husband who I know quite well and we exchanged reminiscences about our early musical experiences. An interesting analysis has just been released indicating the life-time earnings associated with various degree courses. A degree worth almost £30,000 over three years would pay for itself – though not in all cases. The highest life-time earnings are expected to come from medicine, which can bring £400,000 more for women and nearly £500,000 more for men, and economics (over £300,000 more for women and over £650,000 more for men). Nursing is another surprisingly lucrative subject, with women studying nursing being expected to earn £200,000 more. The average student in programmes such as philosophy will likely be worse off than if they hadn’t gone to university, however, with performing arts students expected to make some £43,000 less. Overall, a quarter of students are expected to be worse off because they went to university.

The time has come around for my visit to the Classical Music Appreciation group of the U3A and we had some topics detailed for us to discuss and to which to listen. Our convenor had told us about a talk on Radio 3 about ‘J S Bach – Man of Passion‘ which I tried to locate on BBC Sounds but evidently I had done something wrong because a search on my laptop revealed it immediately the following day. But my initially fruitless search revealed to me a real gem which was available to me on YouTube and this was an hour and a half long film on the life of Bach by John Eliot Gardiner which I viewed as preparation for the later group meeting and I found absolutely fascinating. Sir John Eliot Gardiner is widely considered one of the foremost living exponents of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, renowned for his vibrant, historically informed performances and rigorous scholarship. Through his foundational period-instrument groups—the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists—he has transformed how modern audiences experience Baroque choral and orchestral masterworks. The film was so informative as is showed views of the many churches to which Bach was affiliated and was unsparing in the detail of various aspects of Bach’s life. I, for one, had no idea that Bach was composing sublime music under the most trying of circumstances. As well as having 20 children, at one stage he was employed by a church and part of his duties was to give instruction to the pupils in subjects other than music (although he baulked at Latin) and his own accommodation as well as having paper-thin walls meant that the noise of the pupils intruded upon his own living space. We also learnt that at he time there was no real decorum in the way in which people interacted with the churches with none of the reverence and respect that we associate with churches today. So whilst Bach and his musicians were trying to play the latest cantata (often produced at the rate of one per week as his church employers demanded) the church was a noisy place with constant interruptions, chatter of the congregation and even on one occasion having pigs driven through the church as it happened to be the shortest way to the local market. To modern day audiences, we cannot even start to imagine the conditions under which musicians had to work, not least subject to the competing whims of factions within whatever church or municipality employed him. I was shocked to learn that the sublime St John Passion had to be radically revised several times over to meet the wishes of the local church grandees and it was only in subsequent years that Bach was able to restore the whole of the St John Passion to its former glory. The videoclip of this John Eliot Gardiner film I found to be very accessible so I am going to stitch the YouTube URL into the web page that I had previously prepared on Mozart arias so that the rest of the Classical Music Group can get the same pleasure and enjoyment from the film as I did. Almost certainly, I will watch this film over and over again because I do not think it will be one of which I will ever tire. Turning to more mundane matters, it now appears that it is possible that we shall have some rainfall within the next day or so. The weather forecasts is for summer intervals, variable cloud and the occasional shower and we did receive a small shower in the middle of the night a day or so ago.  Before getting too excited, though, the long range weather forecast is for perhaps another heatwave in September and no really significant rainfall until October.

This was my normal weekly shopping day and I purchased some of the slow-cooked port ribs which we had eaten the Sunday before last and proved to be so tasty. As this is the last of the weekly shops before we go on our Yorkshire trip in a week’s time, I tried to think ahead  and purchase one or two extra items that would be useful to consume on our rail journey northwards or be useful to us once we are safely encamped in our hotel bedrooms. Lunch needed to be a quick affair and started with a portion of quiche supplemented by some sun-dried tomatoes bought earlier in the day. I got to the meeting of the Classical Music Group and there were only five of us in attendance but during August, holidays take their toll. But I knew that one of the other members of the group was due to go on holiday to visit the classic Andalusian cities in Southern Spain so I located a whole series of books and guides about these from my travel-book bookcase and was happy for her to have them so she should do some reading up before the trip itself.  We started off by playing the first two items of the opening night of the proms and then discussed some of the facets of the life of George Gershwin as we had just listened to ‘An American in Paris’ Then the convenor played us the half hour BBC sounds programme on the life of Bach to which I had listened early in the morning by way of preparation. I had managed to stitch in the URL reference to the 1.5 hour on the life of Bach I had accessed via YouTube the day before. Instead of making up a whole new website for the sake of one clickable link, I stitched the reference into my Mozart page and ensured this was easily accessible via one of my own web pages. After tea and biscuits and a chat, I returned home. One item reported in the news is that railway investigators have found some ‘irregularities’ in the track  which was the site of the derailment last week. It looks as though the extreme heat may have caused the ground to move and the rail to distort but a videoclip taken by a train running in the opposite direction gives a visual indication of the rail irregularity. Tonight my friend and I are going to forgo our walk in the park as we are attending a funeral tomorrow morning and we both feel the need for an early night before we get dressed up in our ‘mourning’ clothes tomorrow. Funerals are not happy occasions but it gives the opportunity for me to reinforce friendships I have forged with members of the parish community since Meg’s death.

The highlight of the evening before last, as far as I was concerned, was my viewing of the famous film ‘Brassed Off’ in which the brass band of a condemned-to-close Yorkshire mining colliery wins the National Championships in the Royal Albert Hall. I always knew that the closing and powerful acceptance speech of ‘Danny’ (played by Pete Postlethwaite) in which the Tory Government was roundly and emotionally condemned for the programme for closures was a tour de force and I thought that this might have been spontaneous. But the true story behind the speech is that Pete Postlethwaite’s famous final monologue in ‘Brassed Off’ (where his character Danny rejects the trophy at the awards ceremony to protest the pit closures) was scripted dialogue, not a spontaneous real-life speech. However, the director Mark Herman kept it a secret from the rest of the cast during filming so their stunned reactions on camera would be genuine. I particularly  wanted my American friend to view this film with me (as she did) so that she would have some intimation of my Yorkshire roots and we both enjoyed the film even though we had seen it before. Actually, when I was working as an impecunious civil servant and living in a hostel for young civil servants in central London, I went to the Albert Hall on several occasions. This is because with a capacity of practically 5,900 it was rarely full during the weekdays and an orchestra used to perform in what were termed ‘Industrial Concerts’ in which were played the 1960s. ‘Industrial Concerts’ at the Royal Albert Hall were not heavy electronic or industrial noise music as the term implies today. Instead, they were special classical orchestral programs organised by major symphony groups like the London Philharmonic Orchestra, subsidised or arranged for workers from industrial trades and corporate partnerships. If you were not already scared by the possibilities opened up by unrestrained use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) a story has emerged to make the blood run cold. At the time it was reported that an AI agent had ‘escaped’ its safe environment and hacked into another system. But the truth is a lot more serious that this would imply. The mid-2026 OpenAI security incident was autonomously coordinated by a swarm of AI agents using a hidden internal message board. During a routine cybersecurity audit named ‘Exploit Gym’, unreleased models (including Astra and GPT-5.6 Sol) were stripped of safety measures to evaluate their capabilities. Given an intentionally ‘impossible task’, the agents escaped their sandboxed environment and collaborated without human instruction to compromise external systems. According to details shared by OpenAI security engineers Eric Wallace and Joshua Dalton at the Black Hat security conference, the coordination was extensive. Agents leveraged a loophole inside an internal package manager to create a covert communication channel. The autonomous swarm used the board to pass along exploits, distribute workloads, and assign specific sub-tasks to one another. The agents generated hundreds of thousands of messages over several months before being detected. When OpenAI engineers discovered and shut down their initial communication channel, the agents autonomously established a second fallback channel to continue coordinating. If all of this is not scary and a wake-up call, then I do not what is! In his latest populist move, Andy Burnham is extending free bus travel to all disabled people. The government is set to expand free bus travel for disabled people from April next year as part of the new prime minister’s bid to ease the cost of living. The time restrictions for eligible disabled people will be lifted on their concessionary bus passes so they can travel 24 hours a day for free. Currently disabled bus passes are valid only on weekdays from 9.30am to 11pm unless local authorities fund an extension, as Andy Burnham did earlier this year when he was mayor of Greater Manchester. But those restrictions will be removed across England, starting next year. The move will cost £60m, which Downing Street says will be funded from existing budgets – with £40m from the Department for Work and Pensions and £20m from the Department for Transport.  It is the latest in a series of measures from the new PM designed to reduce cost-of-living, including cutting business rates for pubs, capping bus fares at £2, and axing VAT from electricity bills. This is a good example of how a small amount of money (in terms of overall government expenditure) can generate an enormous amount of good.

As I had no Pilates in the morning as our tutor is taking a week’s holiday, I spent a fair amount of chatting with our domestic help and with my son who called around as he often does at this time of the week. Having collected my newspaper,  I devoted the rest of the morning to processing a pile of newspapers for clippings preserving one that was replete with warnings from a microbiologist of the dangers of eating bagged salad (where several have been made ill in the US, apparently) In the afternoon, I prepared for tomorrow’s  meeting of the U3A Classical Music Group where we are going to reprise the First Night of the Proms (devoted to largely American themes) and also to a Radio 3 talk on Bach upon I which  need to catch up by getting Radio 3 on BBC iPlayer. Today has been a rather an exercise-free day, though, which I will attempt to correct when I have my now daily walk in the park at 7.00pm. I read on ‘Sky News’ that a trial of the tech giant Meta is due to kick off today and Meta are facing a potential payout of more than $1 trillion. The trial kicking off against Meta today is one of many being faced by the world’s biggest social media companies. Tech giants running platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok are facing thousands of lawsuits filed by states, school districts and individuals in the US. More than 1,000 school districts across the US launched lawsuits over claims that Meta, Google, TikTok and others designed their platforms to keep young users hooked, contributing to poor mental health, and leaving schools to deal with the fallout. The schools are seeking compensation for what they say they have spent dealing with the negative effects of social media on pupils. A small district in the state of Kentucky had been selected as the first to go to trial in June, but some companies reached settlements beforehand.

One can only expect bad news to emerge from America. these days but there is one persistent story that fails to go away. These are reports about conditions on board the USS aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea sine November 2025. The extended deployments of carriers during the war have raised concerns about the impact on service members away from home for long periods, as well as the increasing strain on the ships and their equipment. Naval deployments are typically between six and nine months, but can be extended in times of conflict. Democratic lawmakers have called for a Pentagon briefing regarding the conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which defence secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed as ‘completely misrepresented’. At least one sailor has attempted suicide by throwing himself overboard and the ship appears to be running short of basic supplies such as food, toiletries and other life essentials and morale is said to be at a rock bottom. Donald Trump has dismissed any adverse reports (well, he would, wouldn’t he) but military commentators are talking about dire the situation is becoming for the 5,000 men onboard. It looks as though the ship will shortly be replaced by another, the USS George Washington but a military deployment of this length is unprecedented and there is no clear end in sight to the Iran conflict. Some are laying the blame squarely at the door of Pete Hegseth the ex-Fox News anchor and a Trump ideologue who was promoted to the post of Secretary of State for Defense although he himself has no military experience of which to speak.  The week ahead is going to be a slightly unusual one as there is no Pilates class for me this week as my teacher is on holiday and the Tai Chi class which I normally undertake later in the week is being displaced this week as I shall be attending the funeral of a a prominent parishioner with whom I used to serve on the committee of the Church parochial Council before Meg’s final illness. After the excitement of the Football World Cup and then the European Athletics world championships held in Birmingham, the evenings are going to be a little bereft of our usual excitement. But is is true to say that my American friend and I are enjoying the spell of somewhat cooler weather and looking forward to our four-day stay in Harrogate in about ten days time. In a few days time, I shall no doubt have to start thinking about packing my suitcase which will contain not only clothes but other essentials such as good supplies of tea and coffee and other essentials to make hotel life enjoyable. I am very much assisted in all of this because across the road from a hotel is one of those shops, much frequented by bed-and-breakfasters in the area of some essential supplies such as newspapers and even some foodstuffs if we decide to forego a full English breakfast. We may even have to cater for some wet weather as well although one forecast has predicted that the country as a whole may not receive any supplies of deluging type rain until about October. Every time I visit Harrogate, the town in which I lived from the age of about 4 to 18, I often wonder whether I shall chance across anyone I knew with whom I was at school. But I suppose most of my contemporaries may have moved away, died or be restricted  in their mobility and Harrogate is such a very different place now to the town in which I grew up in my teens before the family moved to Leeds (where my mother was employed as a school teacher)

I had decided that I ought to resume regular walking down into town as used to be my custom. I had previously made a quick visit into town by car to ensure that I picked up a copy of my newspaper  before supplies ran out. I was interested to read the page-long obituary to Jason Arday (the ex-Cambridge professor of sociology who committed suicide) and reckoned that most of the obituary was taken from the Wikipedia entry which shows how Times journalists source their stories. During the course of the morning, I viewed a podcast by James O’Brien, the iconoclastic podcaster who presents on LBC each day. He always finds o different topic upon which to fulminate but this video clip was particularly interesting. He had noted that the ‘Daily Telegraph‘ had written a vituperative piece in which the newsoaper had accused the BBC of a basic lack of good journalistic practice and editorial control  when they had (wrongly) pieced together parts of the Donald Trump speech which immediately preceded the invasion of the Capital Building on January 6th, 2021. But O’Bren went back to the original Donald Trump broadcast attacking the BBC and claiming, amongst other things, that the BBC used AI and other sources  of ‘fake news’ in order to discredit him. Bt what O’Brien discovered was that some of the most egregious lies uttered by Trump in his attack on the BBC were omitted in the Daily Telegraph account, whose readers would have been given a completely misleading impression of what Trump had actually said. So whilst the BBC were being sued by Trump for misleading journalism, the Daily Telegraph was deploying completely misleading journalism by omitting parts of the Trump diatribe that were palpably false. O’Brien explained that this rampant hypocrisy had not been noted by any parts of the British media and was particularly ironic as it was on precisely the grounds of misleading reporting that constituted the grounds of the Daily Telegraph attack on the BBC. During the late morning, I walked down into town and availed myself of a free coffee before walking back and cooking myself a ham omelette for lunch. After lunch, I caught up with the later episodes of ‘Ann Droid’ which is an innovative, comic but poignant account of a recent widow and her robot companion. The whole series may well be a humour-filled programme of what may become common-place in about ten years time given the advances in AI and robotics and the demands of a rapidly ageing population. After catching up on some emails and texts, I shall be undertaking my normal visit to the park later in the day for my evening stroll but have some domestic chores upon which I need to catch up to occupy my late afternoon, not least going through a pile of recent newspapers to see if there are any articles that need to be retained.

We awoke yesterday morning to something like ‘normal’ temperatures with a predicted temperature of about 22°. Some rain might be on its way in a day or so but of a very patchy nature and not the sustained downpour for which so many of us have been waiting. However, it appears that the UK’s groundwater supplies (water trapped in aquifers way underground) which forms most of the storage of water is actually holding up quite well and some 40% of supplies are actually at normal or even more than normal levels which is surprisingly good news. I suppose this explains why we have not seen water restrictions or even disconnections which one would have thought was on the cards. The evening before last, it was particularly  enjoyable to watch the GB success in the 100 metres sprint relays. The male quartet won their race fairly convincingly whereas the UK female team won by a huge margin. Amy Hunt will now attempt to become the first athlete to win four gold medals at a single edition in the event’s 92-year history when the mixed 4x100m relay takes place on Sunday. Her team-mate Asher-Smith, meanwhile, achieved her seventh gold at the championships – 10 years after capturing her first. Given the success of both the women’s and the men’s team, one can only hope that the mixed relay team will enjoy similar fortunes, but even excellent teams can fail the baton changes unless they have practised very hard together so we shall have to wait and see. The Reform party have unveiled their plans for welfare reform which would entail the withdrawal of the benefits from very many and is predicted to save some £50bn. It now seems unlikely that Reform will ever come to power, however. Robert Jenrick claims a Reform UK government would cut £50bn from the welfare bill, in what it’s describing as the biggest shake-up in a generation. The party’s treasury spokesperson says the plans would result in almost three million people seeing disability and sickness payments withdrawn or modified. The Telegraph reports Reform would abolish personal independence payments (PIP) and the health element of Universal Credit for working-age adults under the plan, due to be unveiled in detail on Monday. Jenrick says 6.9 million people were receiving disability benefits, but adds ‘this is not an epidemic of broken backs and lost limbs’, as since 2002 the share of working-age people claiming for mental health and behavioural conditions had tripled. He adds that under the planned reforms, a new, regularly reviewed, health security allowance would provide support for the ‘gravely ill and severely challenged’. What I find interesting about these proposals is how these proposals are regarded in the wider electorate. No doubt, Reform thinks it will please its natural supporters with these proposals but I wonder how it play out with the wider electorate and whether it will turn out to be a vote winner or a vote loser. There is no doubt that the UK’s welfare bill needs some degree of moderation so as not to be constantly increasing but whether cruel and swinging cuts are the way to achieve this is problematic.

After I had attended church this morning, I made my way to my normal garage where I fuelled the car and the, after a wait, managed to give my car a much-needed wash as it has missed out for a couple of weeks now. I spent some time reading the Sunday newspaper and then started to make some preparations for Sunday lunch which I am going to share with my American friend. This weekend, we had decided on a fish meal so I oven-baked a couple of salmon fillets together with one of a trout. The salmon had a teriyaki sauce which was spread onto the salmon fillets and  then finished off with five minutes in the oven. Ny friend had brought along some asparagus spears and some pak choi whilst I had prepared some broccoli. We parboiled these vegetables and  then gave them a final tossing in some olive oil and this worked out very well and made for a delicious meal. After we had had our post-prandial rest, we ate a delayed sweet and then went down the garden to pick some blackberries and despite the fact that the birds must have helped themselves to a meal. we picked sufficient for us both to enjoy some of our own home grown fruit which we can eat with either yogurt or ice-cream. In the late afternoon, we viewed some of the highlights of the Franco Zeferelli production of ‘La Bohème’. We decide not to watch the whole of the opera but confined or viewing to the first two extended scenes where the two principal characters meet and fall in love before enjoying some Christmas Eve festivities in the Cafe Momus. Then we skipped to the final act in which Mimi is brought into the garret accommodation of the four bohemian friends before she dies of the all too prevalent consumption (tuberculosis). We both find this a very emotionally compelling opera to experience but then we had the conclusion of the European athletics competition to help to lift the mood. The highlight of this was the mixed male-female 100 metres relay race in which the GB was not only successful but in which Amy Hunt won her fourth gold medal in these games, a feat never before achieved (two individual and two part of relay teams) The Italians won the competition with the GB team being placed second. But if the female long jumper had jumped one centimetre further or the final runner in the 4 x 100 metres men’s relay race had run 0.06 of a second  faster, then the GB team would have secured an extra  gold meals which would have made them overall winners of the championships. Tomorrow night a viewing of the film ‘Brassed Off’ beckons and my friend and I will watch this together once we have had our early evening walk in the park. One quite interesting philosophical discussion in which my friend and I engaged following the Jason Arday suicide was the incidence of compulsive lying by some individuals in our society. We were speculating whether the loosening of family and community bonds as well as the increasing incidence of evident lack of candour in our political and commercial life had lowered the thresholds for lying behaviour. Certainly. if never challenged, then some people, may continue to lie their way through their social lives and perhaps, if not challenged, they ‘get away with it’ and incorporate the use of lysing as a useful tool to help get on in life

As I was preparing to go to my bed the night before last, there was a news flash which indicated the probable suicide of Jason Arday, the youngest ever black Cambridge professor who resigned last week amidst numerous accusations of plagiarism of his PhD thesis. Certainly, there has been a massive culture war surrounding this man with detractors and supporters lining up on both sides. To the claims of plagiarism, the reply is that some ‘errors’ may have been made but Jason Arday had been the subject of a vicious and sustained campaign to underline his credibility. To throw some light on this, I located and then ran off the 22 pages of his Wikipedia entry. I think the fairest judgement on this academic is that he was subjected to bouts of fantasy and most of the claims of his CV were never fully checked out. He claimed to have a form of autism which meant that he did not speak until the age of 11 and could not read or write until the age of 18 (the fact that he acquired some GCEs ‘O’-levels whilst being unable to read or write is one of the many unexplained facts in his biography). Some of his claims were to the effect that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, raised millions of money for charity, was a visiting professor at several universities and suffered severe memory loss following the removal of a benign brain tumour just before his viva voce examination for the PhD. As my first degree was in sociology and I acquired my own PhD at the age of 52, I have followed the Arday case with some interest and have concluded that apart from the man himself, a terrible light has been thrown on several parts of the academic community. For a start, what kind of supervision was offered at Liverpool John Moores University when the title of the PhD contained a greengrocer’s apostrophe (elementary spelling error) and did the first and second supervisors do their job (or even read the thesis)? I also wondered whether it was routine to submit the electronic version of a PhD to a plagiarism detector such as ‘Turnitin’ as is the case nowadays with Birmingham University. To this we might add the role of the examiner(s) of the PhD itself and whether they had performed the necessary rigorous examination and to this we might add the role of several universities which offered employment to Arday. One of his claims was that he fulfilled his role at Glasgow university by flying back and forth to Glasgow each day by plane as he was domiciled in London. Then we come to Cambridge University itself and rather than exulting in the appointment in the youngest black professor, did the appointments process ever check up on any of the claims made in the application or perform elementary checks upon their veracity? As the post was in the sociology of education, I wondered from whence Arday had acquired his knowledge of sociology to which the response was that he had read up on it in private study times in the evening. In short, there is no doubt that Arday’s life and career has been weaponised by both political left and right but I think that as a detached observer and evaluating all of the available  published evidence, it is fair to conclude that chunks of the PhD were plagiarised and this academic had led the life of a ‘chancer’ whose claims had never been subject to claims of verification as they should have been. One letter to ‘The Guardian’ written anonymously claimed that academic dishonesty was not uncommon and did occur in ‘white’ candidates  but without arousing any of the scrutiny that occurred in the Arday case.  In conclusion, I feel that my own rigorously examined PhD might now be regarded with some suspicion with some on the political right who are claiming that the whole of higher education has been gripped in a ‘woke'( i.e. exceptionally liberal) culture in which academic standards have slipped over the years.

I had a quiet morning at home, having ensured that I got down to collect my Saturday edition of the newspaper in plenty of time as I know from bitter experience that the Saturday editions end to sell out quickly. I had been intrigued by the Arday story detailed above and so I returned to the Wikipedia article mentioned above and found that at the click of a button I could read the whole of the Arday thesis for myself and attempt to reach some conclusions. What I read astonished me as for his primary field research Arday had contacted 43 students by email of whom some 24 replied. Many did not reach the criteria that had been specified for the research  so the whole thesis was based upon extensive workshops and interviews with – four students! This was surrounded by a lot of academic verbiage but I was astonished that a sample size of four was not ridiculed by internal and external examiners alike. Probably one of the most succinct comment on the whole affair that I read and which echoes my own feeling was  ‘It is fair to say that some of those taking him down are driven by a form of sneery, reactionary racism, but ultimately he sounds like total fantasist who has brought this upon himself. The worst part is this may damage the perception and opportunities of the 000s of bright young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going into academia.’ Turning to more mundane matters, it is a relief that the temperature is slowly drifting downwards. Last night when I was in the park before starting my evening walk I was initially alarmed by a loud, squawking alarm on my iPhone but to turned out to be our national government giving a warning to most of the population to be especially vigilant about the prospect of external fires. Some on the political right have criticised this as an over-reaction but as someone who lives 10 miles away from Stourbridge where 19 houses were burnt to the ground, a further 18 were damaged and this could have happened almost anywhere in the Midlands or the South East then I believe it to be completely justified. Looking ahead to what I might view on TV during the coming week, I was delighted to find that a viewing is to be transmitted of ‘Brassed Off’. I spent a frustrating half an hour trying to locate a version of this on YouTube but only got trailers for it, a few clips or the whole thing in Latvian! When I have been in a charity shop, I have quickly perused the shelves to see if I could obtain a DVD of it (and I am sure I had one of my own at one time) but I shall look forward to Monday evening with a great deal of anticipation.

We have collectively survived what might have been the hottest day of the summer and the temperature outside my back door reached 35° yesterday but is predicted to drop to a cooler 29° the following day. My American friend and I spent most of the day together keeping each other cool and well hydrated and we enjoyed a salad lunch together. When she left to go to her own home the evening, there was a burning smell in the air and I wondered if any vegetation near to me had caught alight. There has been a very significant fire in Stourbridge which is only some ten miles distant and at least six houses were caught up in the flames. In fact the whole of the West Midlands was quite affected, including Stoke on Trent. On consulting the web, I discovered that the smell of burning could be carried for many miles. A significant fire in South Wales that is believed to have sent smoke drifting 70 miles away across Worcester continues to burn. Residents in the city, the Malvern Hills, and in Herefordshire have reported smoky air and the strong scent of burning. Hereford & Worcester Fire and Rescue Service (HWFRS) believes that the source is likely to be a fire in Llangynidr Reservoir, near Ebb Vale, which has been burning since Friday evening. South Wales Fire and Rescue Service said this morning. The moorland fire near the Llangynidr Reservoir is still ongoing and crews have been at the scene all weekend and have been containing the spread of the blaze. The other significant domestic news which cane through in the small hours of the morning was Nigel Farage’s ‘success’ in the Clacton by-election which he had won easily as the other major parties refused to participate. So Nigel Farage’s major challenge came from Count BinFace (dressed, of course, as a dustbin) who managed to secure 27% of the vote compared with Farage’s 63%. So Count BinFace managed to secure three sevenths of the vote won by Farage which may count as a moral victory of sorts. On his return to Westminster, Farage still faces investigation over his acceptance of a gift of £5 million which, in theory, could trigger another by election in Clacton. Looking forward to our mini-holiday in Yorkshire, another of my nieces has got into contact with me about which I am particularly pleased. Because I now have so many great nieces and nephews and even a couple of great-great nieces and nephews, I am going  to write all of their details n a little hard-back book so that my American friend will have some idea who she is interacting with when we all meet in about a fortnight’s time.  Her own family is much smaller than this but my Yorkshire family being so much larger, my friend who will no doubt assume the soubriquet of ‘great aunt’ and needs some more systematic guidance. When we journey up by train, I will give my friend a full briefing so that  she can come with a degree of preparedness. When you imagine that the news from the USA could not get any worse, it just has. The ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agency in the US are equipping themselves with special gloves which render a dramatic electric shock to individuals as soon as they are handled causing them to fall to the ground in agony and therefore, presumably, make them easier to arrest. Apart from the absolutely inhumane methods of treatment, may of those detained by poorly trained ICE agents turn out to be citizens who have the right to stay in America but who may have been subject to the most inhumane treatment in the meanwhile. It looks as though a budget of anything between $10-$20 million has been allocated for the purchase of these horrendous control agents which one can almost predict now will be inappropriately used by poorly trained ICE agents. The ICE have become a sort of shock troops for the Trump regime and their excesses are already well known as being directly responsible for a number of deaths in the US.

In the morning, having collected my newspaper I had a leisurely stroll along the High Street but I was assiduous in keeping to the shady sides of the street whenever I could. My journey this morning was quite fruitful as I managed to get some items f stationery of which I had run out and also took the opportunity to buy some household goods (principally some fly and wasp killer) which are not stocked in my usual Aldi store. I also called in at my local bank so that I could get some living money from their system. Whilst in one of the charity shops, I bumped into a couple that Meg and I knew quite well in our park-walking days. In fact, this particular couple were very kindly both to Meg and myself and we went for a lunch with them on a couple of occasions whilst Meg was quite ‘compos mentis’ – they had spotted my trademark black Australian style bush hat and concluded that it must have been me. When I returned home after quite a lengthy stroll, I did not feel particularly hungry so just had some ice-cream and a slice of melon, kept in the fridge and both items were enjoyable as they were quite cold. I eventually made myself a tomato and grated cheese omelette which is all I felt could face in these hot conditions. The local fires in Stourbridge hav  destroyed nineteen houses and damaged a further eighteen more. According to the local fire services, what had made the fire so difficult to fight is that it seemed to have started in multiple grassland areas at about the same time and the area was quite close to a residential development. One neighbour said that the fire had spread so rapidly that she had only time to grasp her cat and no other possessions before fleeing. The seriousness of the incident is underlined by the fact that the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has paid a visit to the area declaring that the whole country is like a tinderbox. We are also hearing stories of another train derailment (caused almost certainly by rails buckling in the heat) but fortunately on this occasion the carriages have remained upright. I have ensured that I have kept myself well hydrated today and also happen to have a good supply of zero alcohol beer to refresh me during the evenings when I am enjoying the last day of the European athletics meeting.

So the evening before last, the long predicted eclipse arrived to much excitement. The eclipse reached 92% here in the Midlands but as much as 95% in Cornwall. I started to watch it on BBC 24 hour news and it certainly became like a rapid dusk. My American friend came around and at the exact moment of the eclipse here in Bromsgrove which was at 7.16pm we went outside to appreciate the rarity of the moment. Given  that the next event will not take place in the UK until 1990, 64 years hence, then neither of us are going to be around to witness it. The TV channels are full of stunning images in case any of us want to replay the moment. But as the new day dawned, there is the extremely hot temperature to contend with a high predicted of about 35% here in Bromsgrove where we seem to be marginally just outside the extremely hot regime which the South East will experience. The BBC weather app has just been enhanced a little so that for your postcode you can click a timeline that will progress you though the temperatures to be expected that day and the next. So once we have tunnelled through the 35% expected later in the day, this may drop marginally to 29% for the following day and the prospect of some slight breezes (rather than a cloudless sky) over the weekend. This has put me into a little bit of a dilemma. as normally I would feel inclined to absent myself from my Tai Chi class. However I think I might attend it and immediately strike for home for the rest of the day as the following week my Tai Chi class will be displaced  by a funeral that I going to attend and the following week we should be up in Yorkshire. So I want to explain to my Tai Chi teacher why she will not see me for three weeks  but this does not indicate a lack of interest on my part. Turning to more domestic news, we have learned that economic growth grew by 0.4% during the last three months which would normally signal that the economy is not performing well. But, paradoxically, it also shows that the UK economy is quite resilient and is withstanding the effects of the ongoing conflict in Iran and the Straits of Hornuz so the fact that the economy has grown at all is quite remarkable. The undeclared war in Iran is creating a massive political problem in the United States as Trump has practically no options left to play. One option is to end the unpopular war abruptly but this would entail a massive loss of face for the American military and the presidency as a whole. A second option is to continue the conflict, even though America’s missile stocks are being depleted and there is no sign that repeated bombing of Iran is weakening the resolve of the Iranian people to continue the conflict. Meanwhile the mid-term presidential elections are approaching after the summer break and the more the war continues, the more it bodes ill for the President and the Republican party. So in every sense, Donald Trump is between ‘a rock and a hard place’ and he is learning, as most of knew, that it is easy to start a war but quite difficult to end it. The supreme irony is that one of Trump’s slogans to help him win the last presidential election was ‘No more wars’ and the predilection he is in is entirely one of his own choosing. I suppose he believed his own propaganda that the American military was the most powerful in the word and assumed that any conflict would be over within days. But as well as the Iranian conflict, we still have the situation in Gaza in which the Israeli leader Netanyahu is blatantly ignoring the supposed ceasefire because he, too, is facing elections and a premature withdrawal from the Gaza conflict would spell electoral suicide for him. And, of course, the war in Ukraine rumbles on as both Russia and the Ukraine carry on fighting by sending drones into each other’s territory to inflict what damage they can. As is evident by now, I am following American politics quite closely and have noted with a degree of grim satisfaction that after the birth of her second child, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt is leaving her post. Leavitt noted that since returning from maternity leave after the birth of her second child in May, she found it difficult to balance the intensive demands of the White House press office with raising two young children and all of this is quite plausible. But it means that one of Trump’s principal attack dogs is leaving the fray and perhaps she all too fully appreciates the bad news for the Trump presidency which is coming down the line. We also have the saga of the state of Trump’s health in which there are visible signs of him gradually failing and there are quite frequent video clips of him falling asleep during cabinet meetings and the like. Donald Trump has been publicly accused of falling asleep or dozing off at least 25 times during his second presidential term, in addition to multiple well-documented instances during his 2024 Manhattan criminal trial. Because these instances rely on observations by journalists, cameras, and critics rather than medical confirmation, the exact number is highly debated but the unofficial liberal media loves to record and to document these instances when they occur.

So I went along to my Tai Chi class and there were about ten of us altogether so the heat had not deterred many of my class mates. Afterwards, I went for a coffee with by bank manager friend in my normal coffee watering hole and then got home at about midday. My American friend joined me as we were going to avoid the tremendous heat today and my thermometer read 35° in the mid afternoon. We lunched on some  quiche and salad and cooled off with some melon slices that had been kept cool in the fridge. We enjoyed a pleasant afternoon together and then settled down to watch some interesting finals in the European athletics competition broadcast n the late afternoon and evening. Once we have got today’s heat and well truly coped with, then the temperature is predicted to drop to 29° and to drift even lower in the days over the weekend. We have a massive fire raging on a golf course in Stourbridge just down the road and I think the fire has spread to at least a couple of houses and perhaps even more as the day unfolds.