Today was a brilliant day and would have been a good day if we did not have other commitments. Although it ws a beautiful day, we looked forward, as always, to our trip to Waitrose where we met up with one of our regular pre-pandemic friends. We had not seen her since she had performed in Brahm’s ‘A German Requiem‘ in a local school to quite a large audience. The accompaniment was a couple of pianos which, as this was a choral work, seemed to work quite well and our friend who has sung this piece on and off for decades reckoned that whilst not perfect, it was nonetheless a good performance. We wished her well for future choral highlights and wonder whether we could perform as well when approaching our ninetieth year. We both needed to be off before too long as we had other commitments. In our case, our son was calling round to offer assistance in the sequelae following Meg’s little tumble last Sunday. In my haste to clear blood and coffee stains off the carpet, I had failed to notice similar stains and splashes down the walls, on a mirror, down the radiator and so on. Fortunately, my son attacked these with some gusto before any permanent damage was done. Then, after a family consultation, it was decided that I would go down to Pilates and back again by car, breaking my usual practice as I rely upon the walk there and back to give me some necessary exercise. But going by car saved over half an hour from the period in which I was out of the house and my son stepped into the breach to sit with his mother and ensure that she came to no more harm.

After lunch, I thought that it would be a good idea to give Meg a change of scene so I organised our afternoon cup of tea outside the house where we can sit on a garden bench overlooking oour communal green area, the lawn of which received its second cut yesterday. It is interesting the things you notice when you are sitting down and not rushing round from pillar to post because I noticed in one of the borders fronting our communal area a great mass of white blossom. A closer inspection revealed that this was actually our plum tree which last year yeilded practically nothing but the previous year was laden wih fruit. So I am hopeful that this year as we have plenty of blossom we do not have a late frost that nips the young fruit in the bud so that we can get another good crop this year. Whilst gazing around in front of us, I also had the idea that we could possibly acquire one of those free-standing, fairly tall rectangular planters into which we could plant something really colourful so that when we sit out in the future, we have a floral treat with which to delight the eye. My next door neighbour has affiliations with Webbs, the huge garden centre whose head centre is just down the road. I know that he had recently acquired several of these planters acquired as a job lot so that next time I see him, I must remind myself to ask him if there are any more where his own collection came from. Once I got inside the house again, I made a telephone call to see if I can get a medical overview of Meg’s health which I feel needs some face-to-face observation and not just a telephone consultation which is the default mode of access in our GP practice these days. I need to phone up at 8.00am tomorrow morning to try to secure this but am not particularly hopeful. I also phoned our Irish friends who live just down the road for some practical advice and got some useful information with which I ought to ply the doctor.

A lot of things seem to be on hold this afternoon whilst we all wait to see what might happen in the Trump appearance in a court in Manhatten. There are a lot of indications that Trump, a supreme narcissist, is absolutely relishing being the centre of attention as the courtroom drama plays out. But the interesting thing is that the court only ‘unseals’ the actual nature of the charges against the defendant. In the case of Trump, there might be as many as 37 ‘counts’ with which he is charged and whilst I am sure that many of these can be evaded, I am asking myself whether the credibility of the American legal system is challenged if Trump manages to evade conviction in each one of these cases. But the New York laws are very strict on the role of the media so we shall not see Trump in handcuffs and almost certainly no video of Trump actually in court (although one or two stills may appear) The Trump campaign has received a great boost to their coffers since it became known that Trump was due to appear in court. Whilst fervent Trump supporters are reinforced in their belief that Trump can do no wrong, the (few) uncommitted will probably not feel inclined to give Trump the benefit of any doubt at all.

The day dawned cold and bright so we anticipated that eventually it might be a fine day for a walk in the park. But first thing this morning, I needed to check on the condition of Meg’s hand which she injured on cut glass when she had a fall yesterday. I had put a cotton white glove on her left hand so that if any plasters became detached during the night, we would not a seepage of blood all over the place. By the cold light of day, the injury to Meg’s hand seemed to be confined to one particularly deep cut on her little finger but the other abrasions were sufficiently superficial to ignore and let them heal themselves. I found a variety of plasters and so I plastered up Meg’s hand sufficiently well so that she could wash and dress without too much difficulty. Although I had originally intended that we would visit the local Minor Injuries unit in a local hospital, on reflection I thought that they would probably take off one plaster and put on another so there was not a lot of point in spending hours in a local hospital, particularly as Monday morning would have to be a bad day for minor injuries. So Meg and I breakfasted and then set off for the local park, via the newspaper shop where I picked up our reserved copy of our daily newspaper. In the park, it was pretty cold so we drank our coffee and were preparing to return home when we were greeted by a lady who recognised us from our walks in the park throughout the months and years. As is often the case, the dog always bounds up looking for treats which then leads on to apologies for the pet’s intrusive behaviour before the conversation leads on to other things. It transpired that we had a shared interest in damson jam and damson gin. As I have several bottles of ‘spare’ damson gin in the garage, waiting to be drunk, I said I would bring one along with us next Thursday, on our next park visit. Our new found friend promised some damson jam in return and we discussed whether we both might try our hand at making some rhubarb gin. This is something that neither of us has ever done but if we are donated sticks of rhubarb, then we both might try our hand at it.

After lunch, the weather was still set fair and may even have warmed up a little since this morning, so I thought it would be a great afternoon to give the lawns their second cut of the season (the first being exactly a week ago) I made sure that Meg was wearing a nice warm coat plus hat so I sat her down on our bench at the front of the house so that she could observe my progress whilst I cut the communal grass at the front of our house. I must have been gone about a couple of minutes to don my gardening trousers and boots but when I returned, Meg was nowhere to be seen. I made a quick ‘reccy’ up and down the main Kidderminster Road to see of she had decided to visit our Italian friend again but then found her, safe and sound, inside the house of our next door neighbour enjoying a cup of tea and a biscuit. Naturally, it was good to be reunited with one’s wife but we spent a pleasant hour in our neighbour’s company before we had to take our leave of each other to get our jobs done. So the lawn mowing was started fairly late and our newest neighbours, recently returned from a two month sojourn in India, offered to lend a hand. He has a gardener calling around tomorrow so there is always the possibility that this gardener might be able to spare us some hours each month, particularly as his van and tools will all be immediately to hand. The lawns having been successfully cut for the second week, it was time to come in and immediately prepare a light tea for Meg and myself.

We are hoping that the weather stays fine for the next few days as tomorrow is our <i>Waitrose</i>+Pilates routine for a Tuesday and the day after that, if it is not pouring down, we intend to pay a visit to Alcester which is a pretty Georgian town some 15 miles distant. If the weather turns out to be rainy and blustery, we may have to revise our plans but, as we all know, April can be the most fickle of months. Still, it is rather fairly heartwarming to know that the seasons are on the turn and we are more than likely to bump into, and to chat with, neighbours as we all start to think of the outdoor jobs that needed to be started now that Spring is here. I like to give all of the gullies separating our lawns from the adjacent flower beds a really good working over at this time of year because apart from improving the appearance of the garden, it also gives the opportunity to attack any large perennial weeds before they start to proliferate again.

Today started off in a fairly tranquil fashion although it did not end that way as we shall see. This morning, Meg and I got up and treated ourself to our Sunday morning ritual breakfast which was a bowl of cereal together with some diced apple seated in front of the TV for the Lorna Kuenssberg Politics show. Nothing was at all dramatic but we did have Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, who was busy denying that any of the massive holdups in the port of Dover had anything to do with Brexit at all. I have noticed this particular trait of right wing politicians that they will deny that any adverse effects ever flow from any of their actions in the past. In the case of the Dover stoppages, I have noticed a consistent trend all the way through supposedly neutral Sky News presenters through a variety of right wing politicians consistently denying that any of the delays occasioned by extra passport checks had anything to do with Brexit at all. I find it very strange that something can be denied which is plainly obvious to all of the rest of the population. Of course, it is always said that the situation is much much more complicated than this (but most events are caused by a multiplicity of factors, some being necessary conditions and some being sufficient conditions) so I think this ‘but things are more complicated than that’ excuse is a good way of denying what you do not want to admit.

By prior arrangement, we met up with our University of Birmingham friend for our Sunday morning chat. We discussed with him the Richard Dimbleby ‘Spaghetti Harvest’ which was supposedly set in in the Ticino district of southern Switzerland – which actually does exist and which he knew about. As it happens, he had seen the famous/notorious Richard Dimbleby broadcast originally broadcast on 1st April, 1957. There is a slight twist to this story, though. The BBC did receive some complaints at the time by listeners who felt that an august body like the BBC should not be engaging in ‘spoof’ news. The BBC also received a large number of enquiries from listeners who wondered where they might either see or even obtain some of these fabulous spaghetti plants. The BBC kept a straight face by informing listeners that they could obtain some spaghetti and stick some of it in a bottle of tomato sauce and then ‘sit back and see what happens’ Afterwards, we discussed with our friend some much more weighty matters. He had recently been chairing a lesson on philosophy in a U3A (University of the Third Age) group of which he is a part and had done somne background reading in order to prepare for his chairmanship. For my part, I promised that I would dig out one or two of the ‘elementary’ philosophy books that I have hiding somewhere in my collection of academic books. In my final years at the University of Winchester, I taught a course called ‘Thinking About Management‘ and the initial part of this course was a section entitled Thinking about the Thinking process. Some of this drew upon some of the elements of Aristotelian logic with which I happened to be familiar because I actually have a GCE A-level in Logic. This was a course which was completely self-taught although I did purchase some rather ancient duplicated notes from a correspondence college called Wolsey Hall, Oxford (which I knew about from my mother because she too had used their notes when she was amassing the qualifications to enter Teacher Training College in the mid 1950’s) I studied Economics in a similar way (because I was so desperately short of mony) and Logic (because it was the shortest syllbus I could find). To cut a long story short, I had absolutely no idea, not having had any tuition in either subject, whether I wuuld pass or fail but in the event scored ‘A’ in Economics and a ‘B’ in Logic which grades effected my entrance into Manchester University.

Now for the events of this afternoon. Having preoared and eaten our Sunday lunch, I prepared cups of coffee for our post-lunch drink which I took through into our sitting room. Meg had evidently also come into the room with a glass cup containing cordial but then had a stagger and a fall leaving a trail of coffee, cordial and masses of blood all over the living room carpet as the crockery had broken into a myriad of shards. I then had in short order tried to wipe off the worst of the blood from Meg’s hands (and the rest of her body), somehow get her into a chair (but this was not easy with a prone body). I then set to work attacking the blood stains which seemed to be everywhere and the coffee stains whilst, at the same time, assessing and plastering up the wounds that Meg had inflicted on herself. It seems that most of the cuts were located on the fingers of her left hand and so tomorrow I will take her along to the ‘Minor Injuries’ unit of the local hospital in order to get a more professional assessment and wound treatment that I could manage.

Today is evidently the 1st April upon which, traditionally, people used to play practical jokes upn each other, this being the one day of the year when such japes were allowed. The practice was known as an ‘April Fools Day’ joke and there have been one or two famous examples. The best known of these was performed by Sir Richard Dimbleby, the revered broadcster on 1st April, 1957 in the BBC Panorama programme. The ‘item’ started with reports from Switzerland, where the combination of a mild winter and the virtual disappearance of pests like the spaghetti weevil, has resulted in a bumper spaghetti crop. It showed a family carefuly cultivating the ‘spaghetti harvest’ which through the aid of a selective breeding programme had produced lengths of spaghetti of a uniform length. The film showed a family carefully cutting the strands of spaghetti and then carefully preparing the crop for resale. The spoof was carried forward because the programm assistants had laid strands of ‘spaghetti’ carefully over the branches of some convenient bushes and of course, in 1957, the whole sequence was shot in black and white. Thereafter, large sections of the population and perhps even a majority went round discussing what they had seen on television chatting with each other that they never knew that spaghetti actually grew on trees. There are some cultural factors to be borne in mind at this point. First of all, Richard Dimbleby was the most serious and respected of broadcasters and nobody imagined that he would have ever had fronted up a spoof such as this. Indeed, some complained to the BBC that a serious programme such as Panorama should only be engaged in serious television and not this sort of practical joke. In 1957, of course, the era of mass flights and cheap continental holidays had not yet got underway and so most of the population was not exposed to spaghetti apart from the squiggly little red bits in a tomato sauce sold by Heinz. So it was quite easy to pull this particular stunt which has been talked about for years.

Last night, we received a telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend setting up another rendez-vous for the three of us in the Waitrose café and so we met there this morning, together with one of our pre-pandemic friends who is often there on a Saturday. After a chat of over an hour, we all then disappeared into the shop to buy some bits and pieces. In our own case, we wanted to buy some mint sauce from which we could make a mint yogurt to accomany some onion bhajis that I had bought the other day to make for a more interesting Saturday midday meal. This actually did turn out to be quite a different meal because it comprised mainly salad elements that I had assembled but the onion bhajis were heated in the oven for 20 minutes. We finished up, though, with a much fuller meal than we had intended. For most of the afternoon until it was time for us to attend our normal church service, we had a quiet afternoon listening in the main to ClassicFM but also processing the diminishing pile of newspapers, the past copies of which we gut for relevant articles.

Just when you think that COVID had gone away, we will all receive a reminder of it next Wednesday as that is the date upon which the next round of vaccine is to be rolled out. Initially, this will be ofered to all in care homes, the immuno-compromised and anyone aged 75 and over. As Meg and I fall into this latter category, we might expect a reminder on our NHS app some time from Wednesday onwards inviting us to make our appointmemt. Just to show how the seasons are rolling along, today we are experiencing the most horrendous traffic jams through the port of Dover as would-be holiday makers are desperately trying to flee this sceptered isle seeking a little continental solace. One word that has been used to describe the situation in Dover is ‘carnage’ and a critical incident has been declared, with some coaches delayed for about 12 hours. The delays seem to be caused by the total volume of traffic (and I wonder whether are sufficient staff to cope with the holiday rush in any case) and much longer time checks, following Brexit, to check on British passport holders. Some travellers may not fully appreciate that a certain of unexpired time is needed on your passport before you can pass easily through the system. The rules seem complicated and vary from one country to another but unless you have six months remaining on your passport, you may run into difficulties. Of course, the population voted for this when they voted for ‘Brexit’ but I wonder whether the delays and difficulties were ever fully appreciated. Having said that, some of those who voted for Brexit may well have died by now leaving the possibility that Brexit is now regretted by the majority. Even though we have had a mild-ish winter, I am sure that mnay people may be relishing an Easter break but if the journey has got off to a really harrowing start, you probably need a day or so to recover once you reach your destination.

We slept in for quite a while this morning – after an early morning cup of tea, we both fell fast asleep and consequently were running to chase our tails for most of the morning. Our domestic help called around today and we always seem to have a lot to chat about. Eventually, Meg and I got ourselves together and breakfasted and then went out on the road to collect our newspaper. This having been done, we then went in search of an out-of-town Age Concern shop which our domestic help told us about as being incredibly friendly as well as reasonable. So we found the shop without very much ado and thought we would see what they had to offer. The shop was absolutely teeming full of people, perhaps because it was such a wet day outside. In any case, although we did not find new clothes of Meg’s size, there were several designs of skirt that we could eaily have bought if they had been of the right size. My eye did alight upon quite a stylish mahogany table lamp which we purchased. When we got it home, our domestic help and I gave it a good polish up and a minor running repair before we installed it on a similarly shaded mahogany table in our newly refurbished music room. It already had a ‘soft light’ very low energy 3W lightbulb and so provided a beautiful occasional lamp source that fitted in well with our existing scheme. I must add that our domestic help and myself share the same weakness if it be such, which is to locate an item in a charity shop which looks a little neglected but is more than rescuable and with only a little tender, loving care can be rapidly turned around. So that was quite a productive morning’s work on a day when it was raining cats and dogs at sporadic intervals and was not the sort of a day where much of a walk was in prospect.

An interesting political development is coming to us from across the Atlantic where Donald Trump has been indicted by a Grand Jury in New York and will probably appear in a court next Tuesday. There are many curious parts of the American legal system which is a bit difficult for this on this side of the pond to get our heads around but here goes. For a start, th exact nature of the charges against Donald Trump will not be revealed until they are ‘unsealed’ by a judge next Tuesday. Negotiations have already taken place so that Donald Trump will not appear in handcuffs when he makes his court appearance next week – the interesting question is whether he will be fingerprinted as well which is part of the normal procedure. One would have thought that it might have been an ‘open and shut case’ given the known mendacity of Donald Trump but the inside story is that it might be quite difficult to get the charges to stick, particularly if the lawyers drag out the proceedings. Even if convicted, there is nothing in the US constitution that would debar Donald Trump frrom making another bid for the presidency. It seems that Donald Trump and his supporters might even be relishing the indictment as it is feeding into a narrative that it is a politically inspired witchhunt typical of the technigues used by authoritarian regimes to hound anybody who dares to oppose them. If America was not divided enough politically, then this case will serve a culture war of the highest intensity between the Trump supporters and his detractors. There does not appear to much of a middle ground in the contemporary USA. The Democrats for their part and the rest of us neutral observers are not really throwing our hats into the air at this stage. Trump has a multitude of legal actions still pending against him, many of which (such as mis-stating his income in order to evade taxes) and there are some of Trump’s prosecutors who are privately worried that if Trump successfuly evades this particular legal action, he may well be able to use it as a precedent to argue that every one of the charges against him is politically motivated and hence it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he may escape legal sanctions. One is tempted to think of other miscreants in high office such as Silvio Berlusconi who managed to somehow come up smelling of roses despite a multiplicity of evidence and legal charges against him. Those on the extreme right of politics (Berlusconi and Trump) with expensive lawyers and a conservative minded judiciary can often evade the justice that one would imagine would be meted rapidly to lesser individuls i.e. the rest of us.

An interesting report into the workloads of teachers has been commissioned by the Department for Education (dfE) but not released – for fairly evident reasons. Almost a quarter of teachers in England are working 12-hour days, according to a leaked government report. Some 22% of teachers said they were working 60 hours a week or more. The research, commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE), was carried out in Spring 2022 and has not yet been made public. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has said a new taskforce will be created to help reduce teachers’ workload by an average five hours a week.

Thursday is my regular supermarket shopping day so I was happy to liberate some money fron an ATM before I go to my regular supermarket before it opened its doors at 8.00am. Today seemed a heavier shop up for one reason or another but then it was a case of picking up our newspaper and trekking home. Here I cooked breakfast for Meg and myself and then started the unpacking process which seemed to go on for ever with five bags of shopping. It always amazes me that two little people can consume so much over the course of a week although we tend on the abstemious side. Meg and I had intended a little trip out today but thought we would wait until we got the shopping unpacked and ourselves all showered for the day before we made a final decision. Eventually, we just had a quiet morning in the house but I did engage in doing a long delayed job which was to gut a pile of newspaprs for some interesting articles so that we could have a throw out of old newspapers and a tidy up before our domestic help arrives in the morning. We lunched on the remainder of the beef left over from the weekend, together with a baked potato and some ‘primo’ cabbage. We thought that the weather looked as though it might improve in the afternoon so we aimed to get our post-prandial tea out of the way before we ventured out this afternoon.

This morning as I was shopping, I bought a greetings card with no message inside with the intention of writing a ‘welcome home’ message inside which would then be dropped into our new Asian neighbours who have spent the last couple of months back in India. The minute they had returned, they were having heir inherited kitchen ripped out and a new one installed. Meg and I thought we would try and undertake a riverside walk at the Webbs garden centre just down the road and would drop the card off at our neighbours on the way out. After we had rung the doorbell we were warmly invited inside so we quickly abandoned our initial plans and accepted the offer of a cup of tea and a biscuit and a chat. They told us of some of their interesting visits within India – the knowledge that we have of India is confined to what we have gleaned from various novels like Passage to India and Midnight’s Children as well as films and TV series such as Gandhi and Jewel in the Crown. Of course, our knowledge base is likely to be incredibly fragmentary based upon our reading and viewing history plus litle fragments of what we may have learned at school. In primary school in the 1950’s we were told about the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ which must have been an incredibly partial and one-sided account of history. The English are not very good at revealing past atrocities (the Amritsar massacre come to mind) and when we taught about the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ we were not informed of the antecedents for which the ‘Black Hole’ was a reprisal. I wonder if modern curricula are much better at explaining these darker periods of our colonial history but I have my doubts. In my teaching days, when the opportunity arose, I asked students if they had ever heard of the (now infamous) Triangular Trade. I don’t think that any of the students that I taught had ever heard of this so I explained how the British used to export manufactured goods even including railways to the West coast of Africa, then of slaves from here to the West Indies and finally sugar and molasses back to Britain. This, of course, is why sweet making manufacture was located in Liverpool as supplies of raw sugar were transported across the Atlantic. It goes without saying, of course, that the British made a profit on every leg of the triangular trade. However, it is true to say that towns such as Bristol in particular as well as Liverpool are coming to terms with the uncomfortable fact that a lot of the prosperity that they had once enjoyed were a direct consequence of the slave trade.

Meg and I received our notification the other day that we had postal votes for use in the forthcoming local elections. Normally, it is said that performance in local elections is no real guide to what would happen in a general elction. But this time around, it is a little different as we know that a general election has to be fought by the end of 2023. There is plenty at stake for both sides. For the Labour party, the local elections may well be a big springboard for an eventual push towards a general election campaign. For the Tories, it will be an opportunity to judge whether Rishi Sunak is actually turning the Conservative vote around after the traumas of the Johnson and Truss regimes. The interesting question here is one of momentum and the ability of local elections to motivate one side towards further campaigns or to dishearten the other side to campaign in a general election. It can be difficult to campaign wholeheartedly for a party if the local party has just been trashed in the local polls.

This was one of those days with its fair degree of frustrations but everything worked out OK in the end. When I got up this morning, I knew that I needed to make a doctor’s appointment to review medications for myself and also for Meg. I really wanted a face-to-face appointment and remonstrated with the receptionist who would only offer me a telephone consultation and, only then, at the doctor’s discretion, could I have a face-to-face consultation. I was unhappy about this and went on the net to see if I could demand a face-to-face consultation. I found out that when Matt Hancock was Health Secretary at the height of the pandemic, he had ordered all doctors’ surgeries to only offer telephone consultations and this practice has continued after the pandemic. Apparently the government and the healh service chiefs are reported to be ‘very worried’ about the difficulty of not getting face-to-face consultations and not without cause as there have been one or two celebrated cases of misdiagnosis over the phone. Having accepted a telephone conversation, the phone rang when I had just got into the shower but as I emerged and got to the phone before the ring tone had ceased and I was still too late. I suspected that this would really mess up my morning because Meg and I would probably have to stay near a phone all the morning and I suspected that we had gone from the front of the queue to the back. In the event, the phone rang again after about half an hour and we got one of the doctors from the practice that I did not know and I could not remember whether a fellow patient at the practice had not had a good experience with her. However the consultation went pretty well. Meg is going to be put on to two types of medication that may suit her a lot better – the doctor indicated that she thought the existing medication prescribed by one of her fellow GPs was not very suitable. Then having got Meg sorted out it was my turn and I managed to get some reassurances after my routine investigation last Thursday. So at the end of the morning, we felt not displeased with the outcome. As the morning had advanced somewhat by now and weather outside was raining fairly hard, we decided to cut our losses and pay a quick visit to Droitwich which is only eight miles down the road. This was fine and we enjoyed our usual coffee and toasted teacake before visitng the charity shop next door. The only thing that attracted our attention was their collection of CDs which were being sold off for 50p apiece. I had a spare £2 coin so I selected four classical CDs that were all recorded by very good artists and I looked forward to playing them later. The only thing to mar my enjoyment was that I was looking forward to playing a world class rendition of a Chopin piano concerto only to discover that there was no CD inside the case. I often find that a CD case has gone missing somewhere so I am not unhappy about now having an extra one. We then turned our attention to the Wilko hardware store where I can be relied upon to buy something I did not know I needed until I saw it in the store. Then it was a case of getting home and having a delayed lunch of beef, carrots and sprouts.

There are a couple of interesting stories about the Royal Family whose affairs, I must admit, I do not follow at all. But apparently on a recent walkabout when asked whether Harry would attend the coronation of Charles III, he is heard to reply that ‘it would be nice’ At the same time, some new stamps are being released with the King’s portrait and this breaks with tradition by showing the monarch uncrowned. These are just two tiny little straws in the wind, but perhaps they are an indication that the King wants to start his reign by having a coronation that unites rather than divides the family. The portrait on the stamp reflects the fact that Charles had expressed a desire that any portrait should be ‘simple’ i.e. without the evident symbols and trappings of monarchy.

This afternoon, Meg and I were enjoying listening to the CDs which we had just purchased when into our lounge sauntered Miggles, our local adopted cat. She wandered across the room to greet us as though this was the most natural thing in the world. I then realised that we had opened the kitchen window a little as we were cooking sprouts for lunch and although I take some culinary precautions to ensure that a ‘sprouty’ smell does not invade the house, I had evidently not closed the window. Miggles, who is however the optimist as far as titbits are concerned as well as opportunistic, had evidently jumped up though the slightly open kitchen window and then made himself at home. Naturally, the cat was soon shooed outside but when I had to venture out of the house to drag the dustbins to the end of our little private road (a weekly chore), the cat observed my moves and followed me back to the house, no doubt hoping to repeat the past little adventure.

I do not know whether it makes one feel better or worse that the wet, windy and blustery weather is being experienced over the whole of the rest of the country. But Meg and I did not mind too much because on Tuesday morning, we always treat ourselves to a visit to the Waitrose café where we hope to meet up with people. We met with one of our pre-pandemic friends and exchanged news about our various comings and goings since the last time we met. An interesting little incident occurred when a women who had been occupying a seat in the café and was working on her laptop was eventually challenged by the store manager and was politely asked to move on as she had not purchased a coffee to ‘justify’ her existence. Her excuse was the lamest I have ever heard and was to the effect that she could not find anything that she wanted to buy. As she left, one of the other customers exclaimed with an audible ‘Well Done’ to the manager as he walked past. There was no rancour or raised voices in this particular exchange but I wonder if the woman will bother to return to Waitrose again after this little incident. When we got home, I got my Pilates gear together and then walked down without getting wet, I am pleased to say. Our Pilates teacher always asks us how we are feeling at the start of every class (the benefit of having a small group) and then if necessary she can amend the exercises for any one of us if we happen to have a little niggle. I observed that I ached a little after the exertions of the lawnmowing yesterday and two of my fellow classmates had also taken advantage of the fine weather yeserday afternoon to start their lawnmowing as well. The class proceeded at its normal pace and then it was home for a fairly delayed lunch of quiche complemented by some plum tomatoes.

Rishi Sunak is appearing before the Liasion Committee of the House of Commons this afternoon. This committee is composed of the chairs of all of the other select committees so the Prime Minister can expect to be questiond in detail and at length about any aspect of government policy. To say that one has to be at the top of one’s game must be an understatement because to be grilled by this committee must be a daunting prospct. Boris Johnson was badly mauled by this committee but then Johnson’s lack of attention to detail was well known. Rishi Sunak, by contrast, has the reputation of being a master of detail but he did not exactly cover himself in glory in his showing before the committee today. During questioning on migration, Mr Sunak also rowed back from suggestions that flights carrying migrants to Rwanda will take off this summer. He intimated that flights to Rwanda will take place as soon the legal proceedings have been completed. This seems to be a watering down by the commitment made by Suella Braveran, the Home Secretary, that flights to Rwanda would commence by the summer. On other subjects despite intense questionning, Sunak seemed to revert to a broad statement of government policy whereas the committee wanted some more meat on the bones.

We have seen quite a lot of bare politics ‘in the street’ in the past few days. In particular, the sights of violent confrontations in Paris reminds us that the French seem able to turn up on the streets once in every generation or so. I think this was first very evident in 1968 when students were the leaders of insurrectionary politics in France. But today, I must say that I cannot quite remember what was the actual reason for the riot. I needed to consult the web to remind myselfof the traumatic events of 1968 which, incidentally, was the year in which we graduated. In the decade preceding May 1968, the French student population had nearly trebled, from about 175,000 to more than 500,000. It was an era of international ‘youth culture,’ yet French society remained autocratic, hierarchical, and tradition-bound, especially in the eyes of French youth. What is perhaps surprising to us these days is that it was the French Communist party who organised the transition off the streets and back into the factories. No doubt, the French Communists felt that they were losing their position as the party that spoke for the organised working class in France and were thoroughly upstaged by the students. Of course, the French authorities at the time made matters worse by sending police into the Sorbonne whist the rest of Europe watched at the time in a kind of fascinated horror. But over the years, we have seen French farmers often taking militant action in support of their demands – the nearest equivalent that we have ever seen have been the demonstrations against the poll tax which helped to bring down the then Conservative government. There were enormous demonstrations in the UK against the invasion of Iraq under the premiership of Tony Blair but somehow the French seem to have a lot more flair to living their politics on the streets, approximately once in each generation or so.

So Monday morning dawned nice and bright after what would have been quite a frosty night, I imagine, as the skies were so clear. After Meg and I got ourselves showered and breakfasted at a fairly leisurely pace, it was time to venture forth. We had to get our logistics right this morning for reasons that I shall explain. After we had picked up the newspaper, we went straight to the park where we enjoyed a pleasant little sit in the sunshine. Some of the flowering trees in the park are already in full bloom whereas others will achieve that happy state in only a day or so now. We have a flowering cherry in our back garden which we planted about 12 years ago now and which has matured nicely. When viewed from our bedroom window it looks so magnificent that I made a mental note to myself to go and get a photo of it on my iphone in the next day or so whilst it is at its best. In the park, we exchanged greetings with Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who was now nearly completing his (simulated) walk across the Rockies and we also had a quick chat with some old Irish friends of ours. We also bumped into the couple we know who live in the Lickeys but they/we did not stop for a chat as we were already deep in conversation with our Irish friends. Then we set forth to buy some coffee of which commodity we are nearly out and finally called in at the garage to get 5 litres of the highest quality petrol for the lawnmower. I finished up buying ‘E5’ which 5% ethanol rather than the cheaper ‘E10’ which is 10% ethanol. As I suspected, and a quick search on the web confirmed, it is always a good idea to get fuel with the lowest possible ethanol rating and the highest possible octane rating for the lawnmower. Ethanol can attract water vapour making the engine difficult to start or to run erratically. I bought my fuel as the last call in the morning because I thought that there was a fair possibility that I might give the lawns their first cut of the season this afternoon and I wanted to get the fuel home as soon as I could so that I did not want to smell the car out. As soon as we got home, I started preparing the midday meal and I started off by making an onion gravy (as per usual) But when I went to the slow cooker with the joint of beef inside, I had set the timer but in my haste this morning neglected to actually start it. Hence when it came to dishing up the meat, I found myself staring at an uncooked joint. Fortunately, I had something in the freezer which is helpful in the case of emergencies like this. A few weeks ago, I had bought from my local Aldi supermarket some cooked sliced chicken and so I liberated some ‘fingers’ of these to add to my onion gravy and this saved the day.

This afternoon, the weather was set fair and it seemed a glorious spring day so it was a great opportunity to give the lawn its first cut of the season. At the start of the season, the mower needs to have its quotient of oil of which I nearly had enough but I can top it up if ncessary in a week or so. I ensured that the air filter had been soaked in oil as per the insruction manual then fueled it up with the good petrol bought this morning. Then there is always the moment of trepidation whether or not the mower will start after a four month sabbatical. To my delight, it started on the first pull of the starter cord and then proceeded to run sweetly for the rest of the afternoon. I set the mower on its highest setting and then reduced it by one notch for the second cut (which I perform at right angles to the first one) and both the front and back lawns were done in the normal time. I do give myself a little break in between the mowing of the communal area front lawn and our own individual back lawn but I know that once you start the mowing pocess, the act of cutting releases a hormone in the grass shoots which encourages them to grow again. So once the cutting season starts, it will be a weekly job between now and the first week of November when the season finishes.

The political news has been dominated by the news that the vacant leadership of the SNP has been won by Humza Yousaf who was the ‘continuity’ candidate but is the first ethnic Asian (and Muslim) candidate to occupy that role. I suppose that the rest of Europe may be a little surprised that we have a Hindu PM of Indian extraction resident in Downing Street whereas in Scotland we have a Muslim First Minister of Pakistani heritage. As Yousaf gained about 53% of the vote and some of these were second preference votes, then he may have quite a hard job in front of him to unify the SNP after a fairly rancorous election campaign.

Today was a slightly blustery day with a fairly cold wind and did not really invite a walk in the park. But we had always intended to meet with our University of Birmingham friend in the Waitrose café which we did and enjoyed a really pleasant hour and a half in each other’s company. We agreed with each other that we had been meeting quite a lot whilst the weather was inclement but as the weather improves (hopefully soon!) we shall resume our normal rendez-vous in the park. A lot of time we were with each other, we told each other jokes and amusing stories – once we both get ‘on a roll’ then one story leads to the next. Eventually, the time came for home and after we had arrived home, we regaled ouselves with soup-in-a-cup which we often do when the weather is a bit chilly outside. We decided to postpone our normal Sunday lunch and thought we would use up the meatballs of which we cooked half yesterday and we had some of the onion gravy left over for today. In our kitchen, we have a planning whiteboard upon which we write our appointments so that we can see the whole week, or month for that matter, at a glance. We have nothing at all in prospect by way of formal appointments this week but tomorrow we will go out on the road and pick up some petrol (and perhaps mower oil) so that I can make a flying start on the lawns as soon as the weather improves. I have been paying careful attention to the weather forecasts for the next few days and it may well start off frosty and with temperatures below average for the time of year. As soon as we have a hint of dryish and reasonably mild weather, I will get the trusty old mower into operation and get the first cut of the season performed. The grass is always a little high and the mower needs to be on its highest setting for this very first cut but afer that, we tend to cut at weekly intervals and any stray bits of grass get well and truly mulched in after the first week.

I absolutely love it when a ‘sting’ operation is performed upon MPs to expose their greed and venality. What has happened recently is that the anti-Brexit campaign group, ‘Led By Donkeys’, had created a sham company before approaching 20 MPs from different parties asking if they would join the phoney firm’s international advisory board. Former Conservative cabinet ministers Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng were told that a fake overseas company was looking for MP advisers. Mr Hancock and Mr Kwarteng both set out five-figure sums for what they would expect to be paid to advise a non-existent firm in South Korea. There is no accusation of wrongdoing, with MPs permitted to seek employment outside of parliament. But when asked whether he had a daily rate during an online ‘interview’, Matt Hancock indicated that his daily rate would be £10,000 sterling. The amazing thing about this story is that Parliament only has the weakest of controls over this kind of behaviour. We have seen something a little similar to this when Boris Johnson was the Prime Minister because a Conservative minister, Owen Patterson, was forced to resign after he broke the rules on lobbying for a client. MPs often attempt to justify their taking of outside employment whilst also being in receipt of a parliamentary salary. This argument would have a lot more moral force if MPs provded their services for nothing or ‘pro bono publico’ (for the public good) On the other hand, they could charge an appropriate fee and then immediately donate it to a worthy charity. But somehow, these ‘pure’ motives never seem to be very much in evidence. In practice, the defense that MPs deploy when they say that they need to keep in contact with erstwhile trades and professions in order to make them better parliamentarians is actually so much hypocrisy because all of the large payments made always seem to end up in the back pockets of the MPs themselves. Some give a certain amount of cash to their own constituency association but this itself could be seen seen as a type of corruption in that constituency associations may feel disinclined to deselect a sitting MP who happens to supply them with oodles of cash. So any payments could be seen as a sort of ‘insurance policy’ to keep an MP sweet with his own constituency association.

To show that spring is here, it was Boat Race day today that I did not watch as I was watching the Italy-France Womens Six-Nations rugby. But I have a ‘thing’ about the Boat Race because I have never seen one yet in which the eventual winner is not clear after about the first ten seconds. There must have been instances of how one team pulls ahead and is then overhauled by the other – but it is just I have never actually seen it. The Grand National will be in three weeks time, though, which is still quite a long way off because occasionally the Boat Race and the Grand National happen to be on the same day – this occurred in 1981, 1992 and again in 2015.