Our friendly and hard working Polish-born carer turned up this morning absolutely on cue so we are always pleased to see her and it helps to get the day off to a good start. She is having a couple of days off now so we shall have to see what her replacement is going to be like tomorrow morning. This morning, we were absolutely delighted to see our domestic help back again after an absence of about 10 days, during which time she has to cope with the euthanasia of her pet Jack Russell dog which, at 17 years old, was part of the family. I am pleased to say that she was coming to terms with the loss of her pet which I think had struck her quite hard (and coming on the heels of the death of a close family member as well) In the middle of the morning, we were happy to see the Eucharistic minister who tries to call on us at weekly intervals if this is possible. She and I are both complete aficionados of Mozart but I told her all about the fantastic programme I had seen on Beethoven recently courtesy of YouTube so I hope she manages to get a sight of this. Although we had our mid-morning coffee at home, Meg and I still felt the need to get out this morning. I managed to find a car parking space fairly near to an accessible ATM and I was pleased to get our living money out as I am going shopping for our weekly shop tomorrow morning. We did whizz around Waitrose and I bought some things like milk that I really did need for today. After that, we got home and I got on with our lunch which was our last full meal of the chicken we had for last weekend, complemented with some mange-tout peas and baked potato. After a tasty lunch, I encouraged Meg to have a good long doze but it was not to be. By the mid afternoon, the weather looked quite sunny and Meg expressed the desire to go for a walk in the park. This we did but as soon as we got to the park, quite a bitterly cold wing sprung up which meant that we had to confine our stay in the park to the bare minimum. Needless to say, the minute we got back to the car, the sun seemed to shine brightly once again so we were just a little unfortunate in our timings.

As I write, the parliamentary game of ping-pong between the Lords and the Commons is still proceeding. The Lords has whittled down amendments to the last two which are deemed critical – one of them is trying to guarantee the rights of Afghanis with a substantial connection to the British Army should not be deported to Rwanda whilst the second is seeking to strengthen an oversight committee, designed to ensure that Rwanda really is a ‘safe’ destination. It is possible that many of the almost sleeping members of the Lords might be encouraged to come up to London and to vote in favour against any amendments but the results of this last ditch stand is a bit difficult to call at this stage. If the Lords does pass further amendments, then the Royal Assent night be delayed until Monday whereas if the two Lords amendments are not passed, then the Bill could actually receive the Royal Assent tomorrow. The news is developing as I write and it now looks as though the Lords have passed the amendment concerning Afghans who have assisted the British army which means that the final vote will be delayed until Monday. The Opposition estimates that the cost per refugee is £2 million pounds, that less than 1% of asylum seekers will de deported to Rwanda under the scheme and the costs are in excess of £500 million (0.5 of £1 billion)

Whatever one’s politics, the veteran Labour politician, Denis Healey, used to say ‘In war, the first casualty is truth’ and this seems to be true in the case of Russia and Ukraine. A recent report has put the number of Russians killed at 50,000 and when this figure is put to the Russian military they would neither confirm or deny it. The official figure is about 25,000 but the true figure has been compiled by counting up the number of new graves dedicated to soldiers across the country which is proof indeed. The American military when in a conflict in Vietnam were desperate to maximise the numbers killed in the conflict to try to sustain public support for the war. A strategy that was used was to look at the population of a village surveyed by the French in 1954, increase the number by the putative birthrate so that 500 became 750, for example, and then bomb the village. If 4 people were seen running away, the death toll was then put at 750-4= 746. Two assiduous journalists looked at the figures published in very small print in the ‘New York Times’ and concluded that the population of VietNam must have been killed about 10 times over. So this immediately blew the pieces the claims that were being made of the ‘kill rate’ and, of course, public support for the war drained away and eventually the Americans were forced into a humiliating withdrawal. I knew that Donald Trump had dodged the draft on one occasion but I did not know until I checked that this was done five times. On four occasions it was because of attendance at college and on one famous occasion it was because of his bad feet. Whether this fact is well known to his avid supporters is interesting to know but the American elite made sure that their sons did not serve by using one draft dodging ruse after another, leaving the unskilled and poorly educated to beat the ultimate costs for the war.

The day started with two of our favourite carers, one hailing from Poland and the other from Peru and, as it happens they are great mates with each other. The carer from Peru told us that in July she was going to visit Peru with her two sons and they were going to visit Machu Picchu which is one of Peru’s best known tourist attractions. The other would have liked to have gone back to Poland for some summer holidays but none were in prospect for her. And speaking for Meg and I, we have not started to think about the viability of summer holidays, just wanting to be on a stable keel for a week or so yet. Tuesdays are our regular Waitrose meeting days and we were delighted to meet up with a couple of old friends. Our conversations are always far ranging and we never quite know where we are going to end up but today’s topic of discourse was ‘Barns I have slept in’ Our veteran hiking friend was evidently used to making a billet in a Youth Hostel but if by any chance it was full or unreachable there were always the local farms. The farmer and his wife would let well behaved hikers spend a night if necessary in one of their barns and the hikers would typically purchase some eggs and milk from the farmer’s wife (who, in the remote areas would have these in abundance) and I dare say that if you were lucky, there might be a small loaf of freshly baked bread available. Whilst we were exchanging these stories, our chorister friend told us of a night she spent in a barn only to discover that a half door into the barn had been left open and their sleep was disturbed by a sheep also wishing to find shelter for the night. Needless to say, there were a lot of impromptu jokes about woolly jumpers and the like. We again had a very jolly hour as we spark each other off and then we all had to go our separate ways. Later on in the morning, I knew that it was my Pilates day and a new carer had been allocated to us who was new to us. She arrived a quarter of an hour late what with SatNav problems and we established quickly that she been in the care business since she left school although she now ran her own beauty salon. I put on a ‘Pilgrimage’ program on the BBC iPlayer thinking that this would help the first hour of the hour and a half session before my return to pass more quickly. When I returned, we got into conversation about walking activities and our carer had just returned from a walk up Snowden which we ourselves have walked on quite a few occasions. My Pilates class was the first that I had attended for about a month now and I felt that my body really needed the stretches which are a part of the Pilates routines. I had seen one of my Pilates class members in the park a couple of days ago so my return to the Pilates fold was anticipated.

The Government bill to establish Rwanda as a ‘safe place’ to which to deport refugees who are claiming asylum is returning from the House of Lords where the battle of ping-pong will continue. In six votes on government moves to throw out Lords amendments to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, the majorities were 65, 71, 70, 70, 74 and 59. The Bill is now walked down the corridor to the House of Lords who will eventually capitulate as the government seems to be in no mood not to accept a single Lords amendment (which is often the case) Then the bill will receive the Royal Assent, become an Act of Parliament and then even more machinations come into play. The government will have to find a carrier to transport the asylum seekers, many of whom will be dragged screaming and kicking and will have to manhandled into the planes. Whether any of the press will witness any of this is an interesting question – the government will try to ensure that is not done before prying eyes. I even anticipate that a suicide might take place – not that the government will care. Then we shall start with all kinds of legal proceedings both domestically and in front of the International Court of Justice (which has just toughened its stance recently in any case) This will run and run and one shudders to think of the cost per migrant which is horrendously large. The government argues that once refugees are on a flight to Rwanda this will act as a massive deterrent to those wishing to cross the Channel in small boats but this seems like wishful thinking rather than based upon any hard evidence.

I am following the court appearances of Donald Trump with a kind of fascinated horror. Yesterday, Trump passed another milestone which is the first ex-President to be charged in a criminal court, the actual offence here being not to actually pay the porn star with whom he had a dalliance but to attempt to conceal all of this as a legitimate business expense. I keep reminding myself that Al Capone was eventually brought to justice on the subject of tax evasion. What I had not fully appreciated but did with a certain amount of ‘schadenfreude’ (what a wonderful expression in German – ‘malicious delight in another person’s misfortune’) is that Trump is going to appear in court every day for maybe weeks whilst the case is heard. It is also being said that if Trump is convicted, he will not actually be sent to jail but may be forced to do so many hours of ‘community service’ e.g. cleaning the streets, removing graffiti from city walls and the like. Of course, there will be appeals and appeals and there are several other cases along the line. Nonetheless, the face that Trump presented to the world last night was a kind of tired belligerence – one wonders, whether after some weeks of this, the fight might go out of him somewhat.

Today was the day when our previous set of carers were due to take over again and one of them, a Polish lady who we respect very highly, duly turned up just before 8.00am as planned. Between us, we got Meg up and ready and just then the ReAblement duo turned up, no one having told them that their contract had finished the evening beforehand. Today was always going to be a bit of a funny day because the lights were flashing on our BioDisk system, meaning that there had been an interruption of power supply to the unit. We had phoned up the maintenance company last Friday and the lights had been flashing for at least a day before I notified the company – in the event, they turned up today at about 2.00pm and found nothing wrong of any significance, I was glad to be told. It might have been that we had a power outage and the unit had failed to reset itself but all seems fine now. However, Meg and I did not feel that we could go out anywhere until the engineer had called around and done his stuff and hence we were reconciled to having to stay in for most of the morning. However, the morning did have a compensation which came from a most unexpected quarter. Meg and I tuned into ‘YouTube’ and watched a performance of Beethoven’s 9th (the so-called ‘Choral’ Symphony) As a follow-on, a programme was advertised called ‘A World with Beethoven’ which I think is one of a series of three films made about four years ago to celebrate an anniversary associated with Beethoven. This film turned out to be one of the best pieces of television that I have watched in years and both Meg and I were enthralled. It was presented by a French horn player, Sarah Willis, and she posed the question of what the world of music would have been like if Beethoven had never lived. The film took a series of themes, the first of which might called the development of the ‘riff’ or the motif beloved of guitarists and rock bands. The argument ran that the iconic first three notes of Beethoven’s 5th is recognised the world over and the notes can be represented in Morse code as dot. dot.dot. dash or a ‘V’ and were used as a shorthand of ‘V’ for Victory deployed extensively during WWII. The argument then developed arguing that Beethoven’s music led to the development of the concert hall as we know it today, that it was first used to propel a political agenda, that it created a bridge between the traditional and the innovative, that it broke new ground by getting music to evoke specific images (as in Beethoven’s 6th symphony, the ‘Pastoral’), that it pushed forward the concept of exact timings by utilising extensively the timings of the recently metronome and finally that the use of complex rhythms (think of the left hand followed two beats to the bar and the right hand three beats to the bar) were a precursor of syncopation and some of the melodic forms that were to be fully developed in the jazz era.

I was reflecting upon the crisis that the world as a whole faces in the Middle East with Iran and Israel. The terrible paradox here is that Israelis think they are ‘strong’ by retaliating hard against Iran and ‘weak’ by doing nothing i.e. not retaliating. But the rest of the world, led by the USA, thinks that Israel would show strength in a policy of non retaliation and weakness by lashing out at all and sundry. I remember one or two key things from my undergraduate days and one that sticks in my mind is a book by Lewis Coser called ‘The Functions of Social Conflict’. Coser made the point over half a century ago that right wing governments always pursue aggressive and belligerent foreign policies in order to try to ‘unify’ the nation that would otherwise be rent with internal conflict as a result of their policies. So right wing leaders (and in the case of Israel) extreme right wing leaders such as Netanyahu will automatically hunt for enemies. As one military analyst said on the radio this morning, it is hard-wired into the DNA of the Israeli military that after any blow the only response is to fight back hard. For this reason, I am not hopeful that Israel will refrain from further military action against Iran or its proxies which will almost certainly ensure a ‘tit-for-tat’ and so the conflict will escalate, possibly completely out of control.

This afternoon after Meg had a bit of a doze and as we had not had the opportunity of a walk this morning, we decided to go for a spin in the car. We popped down the road to see if any of our friends were around and then went on to our favourite charity shop located in a street some distance from the High Street. Quite unusually, there was nothing there that took my fancy so I contented myself with buying a glasses case and then we returned home and watched some of the Parliament channel to guage the reaction of MPs on the strike on Israel.

The last time Meg and I went to the Age UK club, we were seated next to a lady who hails from Leeds and who was attending as a carer for her father. We exchanged email addresses and have exchanged some practical tips and hints with each other as to how to cope with our caring functions. These kinds of mutual support friendships are incredibly valuable and I am a firm believer in the principal that ‘1+1=3’ i.e. that we can always learn something from each other. I am hoping in the fullness of time and if the weather remains anything like fair, we can tea together in our garden and I can share our list of notes (and useful contacts) with each other. We are also looking forward to another meeting group like the one organised by the AgeUK charity but to be held in the Methodist centre down the road, of which we are patrons generally on Wednesdays of each week.

This morning being Sunday, we saw the last of the carers who attend Meg in the morning. In some ways, this was a sad occasion because the male carer who I dubbed ‘Mr. Teazy-Weazy’, as he had been a hairdresser in a past life, we would not encounter again. Similarly, when we see the carer this evening, this will probably be for the last time as well. But tomorrow morning, we will re-establish contact with the previous team so we are looking forward to this as well. We breakfasted watching the Lorna Kuennsberg ‘Sunday’ program where evidently the news and the program was dominated by the launch by Iraq of some 300 drones and a goodly number of Cruise missiles against the state of Israel. It is evident to all of the players that the Israeli ‘Iron Dome’ missile defence system, supplied and maintained by the USA, would stop the vast majority of these attacks ever reaching their target. The Israelis themselves claim a 99% success rate in shooting down the drones and the missiles and the Iranians probably realised that this was going to be the case, almost giving the Israelis advance notice of an attack and allowing the Israelis to get their defences in place. The really big question now is whether the Israelis are going to offer a retaliation or whether both sides now tacitly agree that a ‘tit-for-tat’ has taken place. What I think was a genuine surprise was that British jets were in action overnight, apparently shooting down some of the drones as they progressed over Jordanian airspace. But one commentator who was a supporter of the Labour Party expressed some misgivings given the intensity of the conflict on both sides of the Gaza conflict should be seen as so evidently taking sides. A fuller picture may emerge tomorrow morning when surely there should be a statement before Parliament which should be reassembling after the Easter recess. But I suspect that Britain’s military planners should exercise the most extreme caution before any involvement in the cauldron of Middle East conflicts.

After breakfast, as it was a beautiful day, we decided to go to the park which we have not visited for about a month now. Some of the flowering cherries in the park were at their absolute best and the weather was sunny and quite mild. We had taken along a flask of coffee and some biscuits and reflected upon the fact that this was a daily occurrence during the height of the COVID pandemic. As we taking our repast, we were approached by one of my Pilates fellow class members (plus dog) and we had a pleasant chat for a few minutes. I explained that, all being well, I should be able to attend the class this Tuesday as we ought to have someone available to sit with Meg so that I can attend the class. When we got home, we finished off our viewing of one of the ‘Pilgrim’ series, courtesy of the BBC and this particular one is following a group of pilgrims in their journey to Fatima, Portugal. We realised that we had forgotten to get our copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ but this was soon remedied by the swiftest of visits down to Waitrose where I knew that they would have plenty in stock. For lunch, we had one of those chicken crowns which are already in their tin and ready to be popped into the oven. This we ate with the baked potato (what else), primo cabbage and a tomato. I try to ensure that Meg has a doze immediately after lunch and today as soon as she was settled and in at least a deep doze, I set about cutting the lawn at the back of the house which had gone twelve days without a cut. Fortunately, I got more than half of this done before Meg started to await from her after dinner sleep and so it was quite easy to finish off the lawn, clean up the mower and be assured that a much needed job had been done. We decided to view an opera as a mid-afternoon treat and so we selected a version of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni‘ but Meg did not enjoy this production very much and so we abandoned this. What eventually we settled upon which engaged Meg’s attention was some Rick Stein’s programmes on the cookery of Spain. These are part travelogue as well as pure cookery and they were visiting San Sebastian and the coast of Cantabria, both of which we have actually visited.

Last night, after Meg was soundly asleep in bed, I started idly watching a ‘Royal Palaces’ programme which actually features several ‘things you do not know’ about our royal family. One fact that emerged was so extraordinary that I could scarcely believe it and had to check out its veracity but true it was. George V was dying perhaps of lung cancer but his physicians decided to give nature more than a helping hand. One physician let it be known that the ‘King’s life was drawing peacefully to a close’ whilst another administered a huge and lethal dose of cocaine and morphine straight into the dying king’s jugular. This meant that the King was dead within the hour but the motivation behind all of this was not the alleviation of suffering – rather, it was that the death could be in the evening so that it could be announced in the columns of ‘The Times‘ the following day. Any later, and the death would have to have announced in the evening newspapers which were judged not to be a suitable vehicle in which to announce the death of a monarch. So here we had a process of undoubted euthanasia, not to say murder, performed in such a way that the time most judged to be suitable could be chosen. Even the editor of the ‘The Times‘ was pre-alerted and requested to hold the front page so that the ‘news’ of the king’s death could be properly announced. All of this was kept a secret for fifty years but eventually the facts leaked out in a biography of one of the physicians concerned when all of the other interested parties had been long since dead. Even in 1986 the Palace when approached would only comment that it was a long time ago. Whether this euthanasia of a monarch is well known in the general population, one can only speculate but it quite a story.

Today being a Saturday we pop into our weekend routines. We had two carers this morning, one an old faithful but the other one new to us but we shall only have two more days left on this ReAblement contract until the previous firm takes over on Monday. We generally can rely upon bumping into two of our regular Tuesday crowd on Saturday mornings and indeed we did meet one or two of our regulars as we were making our way into Waitrose. But then our routines were to be sadly disrupted because the local Waitrose management had decided not to open the coffee bar section because of staffing difficulties. After a rapid consultation, Meg and I got our newspapers and one or two other things that we intended to purchase and then we decided on a local coffee bar in the High Street. This turned out to be pleasant enough and the coffee was reassuringly hot and so we had a pleasant chat with one of our friends (the other one deciding to give this coffee shop a miss) At the end of our stay, we had an amusing little episode. My friend and I were seated on a very low couch whilst Meg was in her wheelchair. When it came to it, it took me all my time to get my friend out of the low slung settee – we had noticed it seemed a long way down when we first sat down in it but the moment of reckoning came when we came to clamber out of it. After Meg and I returned home, we adjourned to the kitchen listening to ClassicFM whilst I assembled the various ingredients for a salad I was preparing. I dare say that I was a little ambitious because the salad finished up with some slices of German ham, potatoes which had been previously cooked, a carrot-walnut-sultana mixture, tomato, boiled egg, beetroot, grated cheese and a pickled onion all dressed with a garlic mayonnaise. As this dish was so full of different flavours, I was pleasantly surprised when Meg ate up every bit of it so this must count as some kind of success. The weather is due to drift colder in the next few days so I am not liable to repeat my salad venture for a little while.

After lunch, Meg seemed fairly sleepy so I got her settled and decided, as the sun had come out, to try my luck and see how much of the front communal lawned area, I could manage to get cut. My preparations were interrupted a little by what I think was a cold call to sell me house insulation – as the caller asked to speak with the householder this aroused my suspicions. Only later, did I remember the classic response to this type of cold call which is quite rare these days. This is to give a response along the lines of ‘You have called the the regional office of MI6 – can I ask how you obtained this number?’ When I have tried this tactic in the past, the phone gets put down within about half a second but I am afraid that I thought of it a little too late on this occasion. I managed to get the first half of the first cut done and popped in to see Meg was still asleep. As it happened, she was waking up but I still persuaded her to keep dozing until I had finished the first cut completely. Then I came in for a bit of a break and Meg was still a little sleepy. As she now knew that I was just outside giving the grass its second, quicker transverse cut, this would only take a quarter of an hour and, in practice, a few minutes short of this as I do not hang around. Then I came in, made Meg a cup of tea and I gave myself a 5 minute break before a clean up of the mower until it gets put away for another week. Our principal viewing this afternoon was always going to be the excitement of the Grand National. We watched a little bit of the England women thrashing Scotland at Rugby until it was time to switchover for the big race. The racing authorities are sensitive to the carnage that can sometimes occur in what is always termed as the greatest steeplechase in the world – two horses had to be destroyed yesterday. So several measures had been put in place to reduce the levels of danger somewhat and towards the end of the race, it looked as though any one of about five horses could have won it so this must make this year’s Grand National one of the most open in years. When a horse has won the race, I always wonder whether they know it has won and it always faintly amusing to see buckets of cold water thrown over the flanks of the winning horse to help it to cool down. On a slightly offbeat note, it is known that after a certain distance a horse’s muscles will lock up with lactic acid and the horse will be reduced to a walk and then eventually to a dead halt. Some bright soul had the idea to pit a man against a horse and if the distance is carefully calculated (but I do not know what it is) then a man can just about beat a horse.

A rather amusing political story was to be found in the columns of ‘The Times‘ today. Apparently, Liz Truss who was Prime Minister for just over 40 days complained that she had a very uncomfortable time in the Downing Street flat which she was argued was flea-infested, the fleas having been provided by the Johnson’s dog. I suppose that this story has some foundation in truth and she says in her recent book that the Downing Street had to be especially fumigated to stop her perpetual itching. On the other hand, she did seem to have been quite fond of Larry, the Downing Street cat who looks for all of the world as though they could be the parent of Miggles, the cat who has adopted us and came around to see us when Meg and I decided to sample a little of the late afternoon sunshine.

It sounds strange to say that your day starts in the middle of the night, but so it was last night. I got up in the middle of the night (not an unusual occurrence) and consulted my emails. My close friend from Hampshire, am ex-university of Winchester colleague, is caught in the middle of a most horrendous bureaucratic nightmare as he is in the basis of arranging long term care for his wife. His email to me was really a tale of woe which was quite upsetting to receive – as though carers do not have enough troubles of their own without bureaucracy on top. So although it was the middle of the night, I immediately sent a fairly full reply and we have arranged that I phone him this evening for a good old heart-to-heart. Whilst on the subject of carers caring for each other, I had given my email address to the lady sitting next to me at the club meeting last Wednesday and I showed her some of the tips and hints I had put up in a one page website. She had replied with a series of tips and hints of her own which I was delighted to receive and, hopefully, we can continue to be of assistance to each other as our careers as carers progress. Although I was up for about an hour during the night, both Meg and I had a pretty restful night which helps you to face the forthcoming day with a bit more fortitude. We had anticipated that our domestic help would arrive this morning in a session postponed from Wednesday which was the day when her beloved pet was sent to his maker. Our carer had got some of the way to us but was a bit to over-wrought with grief still to contemplate a morning’s work in our house so she was gong to take the morning off to give herself a period of restoration. I can quite understand the grieving process after 17 years with, in effect, an additional family member suddenly not being there. I did suggest that she might meet us for a coffee in Waitrose to help to take her mind off things but she intended to stay at home for the morning. Meg and I made our way down to Waitrose not really expecting to see anybody but glad if we did so. We were delighted to see our nonagenarian (90 year old?) chorister in the store this morning and we had a very pleasant chat, made all the more so because we shall not see her tomorrow as she is being taken out for lunch by family members. After our visit to the store had come to its natural conclusion, I remembered one or two things that I had forgotten to buy in my whizz around the Aldi store yesterday afternoon so Meg and I went to the big Aldi store in town. The car park was teeming but it is free after all but whilst Meg stayed in the car I managed to dive in and get some of the forgotten items from yesterday. As soon as I got home, Meg has her cup of tea and I progressed to cook our Friday lunchtime meal with was a haddock pie, complemented by some left-over vegetables from yesterday but complemented with some carrots, parboiled and then glazed with honey and finished off in the oven. I started thinking about the meal which we might have tomorrow, Saturday, because I have generally tried something a little out of the ordinary on Saturdays. We have sometimes treated ourselves to some really good sausages (which I know are not particularly healthy) or some liver which is quite hard to find these days. But as the weather has turned a it more spring like, I think I have all of the ingredients to put together quite a nice salad which we have not actually eaten during the winter months. So I am reminding myself to buy a bit of greenery whilst we are in Waitrose for our Saturday morning coffee.

I was pleased to receive a schedule of planned visits from the private sector care agency that provided carers for Meg before the hospitalisation episode and which is due to resume on Monday morning. I have a good relationship with the owner/manager of this care agency and there is a bit of give and take on both sides. Some of the timings for the evening visit may need to be adjusted if all of the logistics will allow but in return I am ‘making do’ with one rather than two carers in the mornings in the next week. But the allocated worker is a Polish lady with whom I get on really well and she really gets stuck into every task with no hesitation so it will be a joy to work with her again in the mornings ahead. I am hoping that apart from the days off that she must have that a pattern establishes itself such that she becomes a regular ‘morning visit’ person. So we are in the business of finishing off the ReAblement package of care which will finish on Sunday evening whilst the new package will start again on Monday morning. This afternoon, Meg and I are quietly relaxing to the sounds of ClassicFM and I am convinced that they put on a more interesting series of tracks on a Friday afternoon when they know that people are starting to unwind ready for the weekend. For example, we have just enjoyed the piece of Brahms ‘A German Requiem‘ which is a constant favourite of ours.

The Post Office Horizon enquiry is proceeding apace with past CEOs coming under the microscope. My son was telling me with some glee how the counsel for the sub postmasters at the end of each session actually ripped apart the facade displayed by these CEOs who tried to maintain that they were ignorant of what was going in the Post Office despite an audit trail that showed that they were in receipt of all of the reports and minutes. The quality of the top management teams at organisations like the Post Office appears dire and perhaps it is no wonder that the UK economy is in the state that it is when senior management in some of our private sector institutions is so poor. Of course, they have hardly been held to account for anything like these enquiries in their professional lives and hence constantly stumble and flail around under questioning by the Enquiry’s QCs.

Today has been a very interesting, and quite a full day for a variety of reasons. We had a couple of new carers this morning, one male, but everything worked out according to plan so we got Meg up, washed, dressed and breakfasted as part of our normal routine. Yesterday, we had received a text from the outreach organiser inviting us to the inaugural meeting of the activity which the Methodist church in Bromsgrove is going to put on starting a week on Friday so we accepted this invitation with alacrity. This morning, we thought that we would visit the Methodist Centre in Bromsgrove where we have not been for a week or so with Easter intervening but got ourselves installed on the ‘chatty table’ which is a feature of the centre. There we soon got into conversation with a couple of other patrons both of whom we knew slightly by sight. Talking about the roadworks and traffic jams in Bromsgrove is always a good conversation opener, not least because one of the main thoroughfares through the town has just started to display a notice to indicate that work is due to start next Monday and we should expect disruption for at lest the next 26 weeks. In our seventeen years of living in the town, we have never known so many and so disruptive a pattern of roadworks making life one great hassle all day long. We then got onto the conversation of selling houses, having drives ripped up to accommodate new gas mains and eventually the topic of antiques that may have passed through our hands. We had a pleasant chat but eventually, it was time to go because we needed to prepare a fairly early lunch to prepare for the afternoon in front of us. I prepared a vegetarian lunch of a quiche supplemented by a mixture of onions, peppers, petit pois and mushrooms with a good dollop of fruity sauce. All of this was very tasty and I put into my effect my new policy of not giving Meg oversized portions because I calculate that Meg is 70% of my weight and her energy needs are a lot lower so I should not be dishing up equal sized portions any more.

This afternoon, my daughter-in-law had reorganised her work schedule so that she could come and sit with Meg whilst I went off to do the family shop which os a normal activity for a Thursday. When I got to my local Aldi, I thought that the carpark seemed quite unusually empty but at the door of Aldi I was greeted by one of their employees who informed us that the store was closed, Apparently the whole of the street had been affected by a massive power outage which did explain why the traffic lights were not operating. I wonder if Aldi and other businesses have a claim against the utility company in circumstances like this? So I had to turn around and make my way to my normal, and smaller Aldi store where I got everything that I needed. I also indulged Meg in buying her a new pair of pyjamas that will supplement the additional nightdresses that I have also bought in the last few days so that we do not run of nightwear again with things stuck in the wash or the dryer. As soon as we had done done the shopping and got it all unpacked, it was time to go across the road, as it were, to have tea with our newish neighbours. They were kindness personified to Meg and myself and we had a wonderful natter about things Asian and not so Asian as well.They have been away on a cruise quite a lot of the time since they moved in and we do not know them particularly well, until this afternoon. They plied me with a most magnificent red wine from Aldi which I am determined to go and buy and drink in copious quantities.

Tomorrow, we expect to be quite an emotional day. Our treasured domestic help has had to have her Jack Russell of 17 years finally sent to his doggie heaven so I am expecting that we shall have lots of tears and hugs in the morning. After all, pets do become part of the family and 17 years is quite a long time. I do not know if anyone has made this calculation but the amount spent on pets as part of the national economy must be massive.I thought that the British were crazy about their animals but seeing Ukrainians flee their houses at the height of the war with miscellaneous animals around them makes me wonder if the Ukrainians take op first place. I seem to have read somewhere that private equity firms have bought up vets’ practices and are regarding them as massive money makers. From casual conversations that we have had in the park with a variety of dog owners, it seems that hundreds of pounds can easily be spent on a pet and I am sure that some of the private equity firms have cottoned onto the fact that is a magnificent money earner for them. But I must admit that the only two dogs that my family very owned cost about 10s 6d from a pet shop window, the ‘parvo virus’ was not well known and we never had occasion to take our pets to the vets ever in their lives until the end (which in Spanish is called ‘sacrificio’ which has quite a brutal ring about it) A quick internet search reveals that in the UK about £10 billion is spent on dogs each year and £8 billion on cats. To put this figure into context, the government pays around £22 billion to fund the education of each cohort of English-domiciled full-time undergraduate students studying in the UK. So the two aggregate figures (£18 billion on pets, £22 billion on students) are not too far short of each other. They may be comparable if to the ‘cats and dogs’ figures, you add in all of the other pet creatures owned in the UK.

There is quite a lot to comment upon today what with one thing or another but I will start with the results of some of the internet searches I made last night. Trying to ascertain some of the provenance of the tapestry I purchased yesterday at a knock-down price and am having currently re-framed, I have discovered the following. The story is considerably condensed but the starting point is that the outstanding weavers in the middle and late middle ages were undoubtedly the Flemish. The best of these were charged with the opening of the Gobelin factory, actually started by Louis XIV but coming into its heyday during the reign of Louis XV (‘Louis Quinze’) Under this monarch, there was a massive flowering of the decorative arts and the legacy to this day is Louis Quinze furniture. The Gobelin factor produced tapestries on mediaeval and classical themes and its output was used extensively at Versailles and at manorial homes throughout France. The established court painter was Boucher and a tapestry was made, in the style of Boucher, of ‘Jardin de Louis XV’ which depicted 18th Century aristocrats, some dancing, others painting, to the sound of music being played in the garden. (As you might have guessed by now, the tapestry I purchased yesterday was one of this genre.) Tapestry making was extremely expensive and took a lot of skill and gradually the use of tapestries fell away with the rise of paint and wallpaper – but the tapestry-making skills were still deployed in restoration work. The Flemish weaving tradition was still strong and one of the famous of these enterprises acquired the rights to all of the Gobelin as well as Jacquard designs. Then in the 1960’s, the skills of the weavers was deployed to make modern facsimiles of some of these classic designs. This was not like a photocopy or even a print but was a skilful adaptation of century old skills. The resulting output, although made on a machine and not hand made as in the original, were then put on the market at prices ranging from £160-£200 upwards. So the binding on the back of the tapestry I purchased although it says ‘Made in Belgium’ should really have read ‘Made by Flemish weavers using traditional skills’ So this the condensed back story of the tapestry I have purchased which is still best described as ‘Jardin de Louis XV’ but, if it were an absolute original, would sell in the hundreds of thousands and be in a museum (or stately home) somewhere.

This morning, after breakfast Meg and I went out to the AgeUK Club which we attend on the second Wednesday of each month and the morning turned out to be far more entertaining than we would have imagined. A troupe of female ‘Morris Men’ had been engaged and they engaged in some traditional dances made resonant by the clogs that they were wearing. They were accompanied by a little band comprised of a guitarist, an accordionist and a concertina or squeezebox. Some of the tunes originated from the locality and some from the North where the wearing of clogs in the mills was quite widespread. This really does not sound like everyone’s cup of tea but was actually immensely enjoyable and the morning just flew by. To make life a little more interesting, one person attended the club for the first time with her father and this lady was a teacher in Leeds, so we actually had quite a lot to talk about. This particular lady was being faced with the prospect of moving her father from a community in which he had lived for decades to a brand new environment so that she could continue to provide care and support for him. This must be a very difficult to make and I do not envy her lot – but I gave her details of a webpage I had put up some time ago that might offer a few practical tips and hints. I had hoped that more people might contribute to these pages so that we could information share but I guess that we are all too busy actually caring than to have time reading websites.

In the middle of the afternoon, I received a phone call from the daughter of Meg’s cousin. Yesterday, although very frail this cousin had celebrated her 88th birthday yesterday and had a really wonderful day with members of the care staff baking a birthday cake and with all round celebrations with the two daughters. This turned out to be a sort of swansong because early this morning, Meg’s cousin had slipped peacefully away having had the most enjoyable day yesterday. The family have been under immense pressure coping with the illness of her mother and so today their inevitable sadness is tinged with relief and almost a certain amount of happiness that their mother had experienced what in my youth used to be described by my religious studies teachers as a ‘good end’ The significance of this phrase was lost on me at the age of 14 but I appreciate the sentiment more fully today. Whilst one inevitably mourns the passage of a loved one, the age of 88 is not a bad age at which to pass on – in the meanwhile, we are still thinking about the practical arrangements when we can meet again, funerals notwithstanding, so that life can go on.

Just before we got the phone call from Meg’s cousin, we had received another one from the member of the NHS ReAblement team who had made an assessment of Meg some two or three weeks ago and was now checking that all would be in place for a hand over (or rather a hand back) to the care agency which we were using before Meg’s recent stay in hospital. This will be a case of picking up the pieces again and there is a certain amount of sadness involved as we move from one band of carers to another. Almost inevitably, one enters into a sort of emotional relationship with the personnel involved in providing care for a loved one and we may be in a situation where we will be sorry not to be seeing some of them again. This afternoon, though, has been one of those really wet and gloomy days and one wonders when we are going to get a glimpse of more springlike weather.

Today started off wet and blustery and these conditions persisted for most of the morning. Although we generally look forward to our Tuesday morning ‘get togethers’ in Waitrose, we suspected that today was going to be a little different because we knew that one of our number had a meeting scheduled with a social worker and was going to miss this morning. We thought that the weather might act as a deterrent to another of our regulars and so it proved, so Meg and I had our coffee alone. On leaving the store, I realised I had left my hat behind so I went back to retrieve it. Upon reaching the car, I realised that Meg was no longer holding the loaf we had purchased inside the store so we traipsed back again and one of the really friendly shop assistants retrieved the loaf for us which had been dropped outside the store. Then, as it was not too late, we decided to go back to Droitwich in order to visit the Worcestershire Association of Carers shop which we were in yesterday. When leaving yesterday, I had noticed a rather fine tapestry of a lute player in a rural scene and at a very quick glance I suspect it is an 18th century theme even though it may have been made a century later. I thought that I would make an offer below the asking price if it was still available today and then it was pointed out that the frame was damaged (which I had not noticed yesterday) and it was offered to me at a discount. The volunteer within the store thought that the tapestry might have been an original which, if so, would make it pretty valuable but she thought that the frame was reparable. I left it for the moment but then called in at our local picture framing store here in Bromsgrove to ask their advice. The store actually had in stock some ornate frames more or less in the spirit of the original but not as ornate as the original frame and I asked for a quick quote as to what a re-framing might be. I explained my dilemma to the very knowledgable assistant who encouraged me to ‘Go for it!’ (Well, she would under the circumstances) So I am still rather conflicted. not to say torn, but the factor which is weighing quite heavily is the fact that the theme (a lute player) would actually be quite an enhancement to our Music Lounge as presently constituted. The dilemma is whether to spend money that I had not anticipated but to acquire something which is not only beautiful but probably with a value way in excess of the offer price, even after I have it re-framed. So I am still in the contemplation mode about this one. I have consulted the web and picked up some clues as to how to discern a genuine and handmade tapestry rather than a machine produced version. Eventually, by the late afternoon, I had made up my mind and so Meg and I raced back into Droitwich where we picked up the tapestry at the negotiated reduced price. I then dropped it off at our local picture framers in Bromsgrove who confirmed they could not repair the damaged, ornate gilt frame but they could do a tasteful and suitable replacement. But this will take them a couple of weeks as they indicated how busy they were at the moment. In a fortnight’s time, or a little over, I can contemplate my purchase as a sort of birthday present and I trust that it will maintain its function as adding a touch of class to our Music Lounge. At the picture framers, we did discern that it was produced in Belgian and some internet searches reveals that the theme (lute players, aristocratic ladies dancing and the mandatory Greek temple in the background) was a popular depiction of the Georgian period and used in many Belgian designs. The tapestry, though, looked as though it was machine produced and not an original tapestry (which was unlikely but would have made the potential value of it shoot upwards considerably)

Last night, we received an email from one of Meg’s second cousins (well, the daughter of a cousin) suggesting some dates when the sisters who are second cousins and ourselves might meet for a family meal. This Friday was one possibility but the next alternative was a date in May which happened to be the day before my birthday next month. So I suggested that the date in May might be a good occasion for us to meet up. not least because it would enable me to have a bit of a birthday bash at the same time. We also received the very sad news that after a lot of heartache, our domestic help had decided that it really was time that her beloved Jack Russell, who seemed to be falling apart in ways a bit too graphic to mention, really needed to start a journey to his doggie heaven and our domestic help wanted to share one or two days with her pet before the fateful day. So we now expect to see her on Friday rather than on Wednesday for the most understandable of reasons. Last night, in a slightly restless period before Meg settled down for good, I got onto the internet to buy some items of night attire that I thought were needed as well as some additional aids to help Meg and I to have a better nights sleep.

The enquiry into the Post office is continuing today and the evidence of Mr. Bates, although we know a lot of it already, is going to be revelatory. I could actually watch this all day but one bit of the evidence that I say just before I prepared lunch was the long and revealing letter sent to Ed Davy who was then part of the Conservative–Liberal coalition government and whose short, not to day curt, reply to Mr. Bates was to the effect that he thought that ‘No useful purpose would be served by such a meeting’ In the light of the ensuing scandal, this must surely rank as one of the greatest dereliction of duty by a serving minister although it may be that he was advised in this course of action by his civil servants who want to keep the ‘lid’ on things.

So the start of another week and two cheerful carers turned up, absolutely ‘on cue’ as it were. One of these carers, is a male I call Mr. Teazy-Weazy as he was a hairdresser for at least a decade in a previous life and I allow him to do his best on Meg’s hair once she is all washed and dressed. I think he achieved a kind of ‘urchin style’ look this morning but the results are always very pleasing. Under the arrangement that we have with the ReAblement team, we might have one more week of their regime and then we revert to our previous (private sector) care providers organised by Worcestershire Council with contributions from ourselves. After we had breakfasted, we thought we would go to Droitwich as, with Meg’s recent hospital stay, we have not been there for the best part of a month. Have visited the ATM and W H Smith’s (next door to each other!) to pick up our newspaper, we made for the ‘old’ Wilkinson’s store which has been taken over by Poundland. Here I bought some socks as I seem to developing holes in the heels of my current stock, some underwear for Meg and some of those little bits and pieces that you see in hardware stores that you know are going to be incredibly useful, even if you started off with no intention on buying them. We popped into the coffee shop that we used to frequent but every single table was taken (quite a frequent occurrence in this particular shop) and thence to an Oxfam charity shop where nothing took our interest. We made our way to our regular coffee house where we indulge in a pot of tea and a bacon butty and finally called in at the Worcestershire Association of Carer’s shop which is always stocked with interesting goodies. Here I did buy quite a few things, amongst the items purchased were some children’s books that were on sale for 50p each. Rather disappointingly, two that I would have readily purchased are already in our possession but I picked up six more, carefully chosen so that the illustrations are superb and that I can read aloud to Meg and she can follow the text as well as admiring the illustrations. Then I espied on a top shelf in the store the rather fine litre sized goblet that I suspect is actually Murano glass for the famous factory in Venice. I had seen this piece once before and rejected it because the designers have seen fit to encrust a band containing what I think are coloured pieces of red glass. To my eyes (and the store assistant agreed with me) this cheapens the look and appearance of the whole thing and almost makes it look like the kind of thing you would win at a fairground. But today, I had another long hard look at it and decided to purchase it (even though the price had risen since I first saw it) because the idea occurred to me that I might be able to ameliorate the effects of the red glass by the judicious application of some modeller’s gold paint. After lunch, I gave it a good wash in some warm soapy water and then decided to display it in a shaded corner of our Music Lounge. To my utter delight, in that particular position, the red glass ornamentation seems to practically disappear leaving only the traditional intricate gold design etched or applied to the amethyst of the original. So I may leave the way it is without running the risk of spoiling it but in any case, I shall certainly take the advice of my style consultant aka our domestic help who will call around on Wednesday and whose judgement on these matters I trust implicitly. Tonight, when Meg is safely asleep, I will photograph it and pop the photo into the Google app which identifies images to see if I can ascertain anything of the provenance of this piece.

Just to show what a dangerous world we are now living in, there is a report today that one of the nuclear reactors in the Ukraine have been subject to a drone attack. Russia has control of these reactors but the Ukraine has denied any involvement in the attack. It may take some days to investigate from which territory the drone was launched but when nuclear power stations were designed and then operated, I do not suppose that the civil designers ever had a thought that they should be made bombproof. The motivation behind the attack seems bizarre – would the Russians attack a nuclear power plant under their control and then try to blame it on the Ukrainians? And surely the Ukrainians themselves would not attack a plant they regard as ‘theirs’ and are trying to liberate? The full truth behind all of this may never be known but seeing the trail of destruction wrought by Chernobyl, one would have thought that all sides to a conflict would keep nuclear plants out of their sights. There is quite a lot of excitement growing in the US at the moment concerning the total solar eclipse which will be seen across some of the eastern states of the US as well as parts of Mexico and Canada. The very earliest partial solar eclipse that I witnessed was in about 1961 then a partial eclipse was visible in the UK. One of the masters at the school I attended had rigged up a telescope which was then focused on a piece of card so that we could an observation of the eclipse without the risk of damaging our eyesights. The authorities are rightly full of warnings about the damage that can be done by observing an eclipse with the naked eye or without suitable optical equipment but I wonder how many of these warnings are actually heeded?

One hope it is not a false dawn but there is a glimmer of light in a resolution of the Israel/Gaza conflict. It looks as though the killing of the seven aid workers was an ‘inflection point’ in the war but it is perhaps a sad refection that 33,000 Palestinians have died. many of them women and children but the West only tries to exert some influence upon the conflict when seven of their number have lost their lives. But by my calculation, the kill ratio of 33,000 Palestinians compared with 1200 Israelis is of the order of 27.5 to 1.