Today after a leisurely start, Meg and I decided that we would go for a walk in the park, given that we are tending to use the Waitrose coffee bar somewhat more these days (if only to meet up with friends and acquaintances) But when we got to the park, although the weather seemed bright enough, there was a particularly icy wind blowing and whilst we had our flask of coffee in our rucksack, we decided that the last thing that we wanted to do was to sit down on a park bench and get thoroughly chilled by a cold wind. So we decided to do a circuit of the park round the lake and we thought we then make for home and enjoy our coffee at home. This we did and then we had a leisurely look at all of the supplements in the Saturday edition of ‘The Times‘ For lunch, we cooked ourselves some chicken mince which I found in the recesses of the freezer and then cooked some Primo style cabbage and a baked potato to accompany the meal. We knew that today was going to be another Rugby weekend and so we made sure that we had got all lunched up and then washed up before the Ireland-Italy match. One might have thought that this was going to be one of the most one-sided matches of the series, as Ireland are probably the stand-out team and the team most likely to win the tournemant whilst the Italians will probably not win a single game and finish up at the bottom of the table. But whereas a few years ago, one wondered whether the Italians could field a sufficiently good team to participate in the competition, today was entirely different. The Italians have a young and very fit team and they now play with a free running adventureness which makes for a thoroughly entertaining match. The Irish won the match now having an unbroken run of success so far in the competition but the Italians made them work really hard for their success. At one point, three quarters of the way through the match, the Italians were only four points adrift from the Irish so the game actually turned out to be a fairly tight one. The Irish did get the ball over the line on two other occasions, one in each half, where the TMO ruled (in the event, quite correctly) that that the ball was not properly grounded and therefore a try was not to be awarded. The other match this afternoon is the England-Wales match but we shall be able to watch about the first 35 minutes of the first half before we go off to church. Hopefully, we will pick up the second half when we return from church provided that our PVR has recorded the series correctly or, failing that, we hope that we can get it on i-player.

This morning, whilst browsing on the web, I happened to see a spare remote for one of our little micro HiFi systems that I have acquired through eBay recently. Remotes, particularly for older systems, are evidently lost quite easily and it can be quite hard to match up the original. It is possible to buy other remotes that advertise themselves as ‘compatible with’ but there is always an element of doubt whether although these will work with the full functionality of the original. So seeing a remote that was an authentic duplicate of the original, I successfully submitted a lower bid than the asking price on eBay. I know from a study of the relevant manual that there are certain things for which the remote is essential. For example, on my existing remote I can press the ‘FM’ button for a second occasion and this switched from stereo mode into mono which as it happens is an excellent way to almost completely eliminate the FM hiss if this should prove to be troublesome. But having ordered this remote, I then studied the details more assiduously and it became evident why my lower offer had been accepted as the vendor did state that the battery compartment cover was missing. I was a bit dismayed by this but decided to improvise a battery cover for the remote when it arrives. I was using a metal ruler to precisely fashion my duplicate cover when I had a stroke of luck in that the width of the ruler was the exact width of the missing cover. So after successfully cutting a bit of the ruler off, I successfully made a metal replacement cover the correct size for the remote. The original cover I will then use in the duplicate copy when it arrives. So all in all, I was very pleased with my little bit of handiwork which worked far better than I could possibly have envisaged and in which I admit I had a little bit of good fortune to assist me.

I am looking forward to the next few days in the political sphere to see whether Rishi Sunak successfully sees off the Brexit ‘rebels’. Matthew Paris in ‘The Times‘ was urging Rishi Sunak to be bold and isolate the rebels by making a vote for the revised Northern Ireland a vote of confidence in the government and see if the Brexit rebels dare to bring down the government and precipitate a general election.

Here we are at the end of another week. When I announced to the wife of the newsagent that for the Lenten period, I was abstaining from fast cars, loose women, gambling, alcohol (and chocolate for good measure) she laughed and told me that she would believe it when she saw it. Bearing this insult with good grace, Meg and I progressed to Waitrose where by appointment, we met with our University of Birmingham friend. For whatever reason, we chatted and chatted and when it was time for us to go realised that we had spent the best part of two hours in conversation. I must say it is more pleasant than sitting on a windy park bench and our topics of conversation ranged over science, family matters, our educational experiences and goodness knows what else. We were both speculating that having got to a certain stage in the life cycle, we are both relieved that we do not have to shepherd adolescent children through the times of tribulations of the modern world. At least when we were young, we participated in the sorts of activities, hobbies and past-times typical of the day. One that I remember was a firm called ‘Keil Kraft’ and when I went onto the internet to ensure that I was not suffering from false memory syndrome, there is a fascinating film on YouTube largely shot in the 1950’s and early 1960’s of the Keil Kraft factory. The video is about 15 minutes long but I only indulged in watching the first few minutes of it and if time permits I may indulge in the rest a little later. One of the more amusing bits of commentary that accommpanies the film announces that ‘no fingers were lost in the making of this documentary’ and when you saw the chunks of balsa wood fed into a circular saw with unprotected fingers only inches away from a fast revolving circular blade, you get a real feeling for how things were then. The models were just printed designs on sheets of balsa wood which you then cut out with a craft knife and glued together before covering in tissue paper, ‘doping’ it to shrink the tissue paper and finally painting it. The first one I made of these was the ‘Hurricane’ WW2 fighter aircraft and there was a brief glimpse on the video of the kit I purchased in about 1960. The firm did diversify into plastic models but it never quite captured the imagination in the same way.

Once home, we cooked ourselves a lunch of a pre-bought fish pie which I supplemented with carrots and sprouts, par-boiled and then fished off in the oven glazed with a little honey (a trick to stop sprouts smelling out the whole house) This was delicious and although I had bought some white wine to accompany the meal, I did not serve any of it up because I had forgotten when I bought it that I was going to give alcohol a miss for the next six weeks. This intention may not survive any social engagements that we have from now until Easter but at least I will have made a little bit of effort.

Today the media has been dominated by the news that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is one year old. The staff in Waitrose had put up notices asking for a miniute’s silence at 11.00am which we observed whilst having our coffee this morning but how widely observed it was in the store, it was not easy to tell. At the United Nations, there was an effort to get all of the delegates to observe one minute’s silence to honour the dead in the Ukraine but the Russian delegate interrupted the one minute to argue that all of the dead, i.e. including the Russians, should be honoured by the one minute silence. Whoever comes out with most credit from these parlour games, it is hard to day but Russian support throughout the world is limited to a handful of nations. The Chinese may be about to announce some peace proposals that may just amount to a ceasefire which would leave the Russans ‘in situ’ as occupiers and this would be rejected out of hand by the Ukrainians. Which way the Chinese jump may be critical but of course one never knows in the world of high-level diplomacy that there might be a position taken in public whereas behind the scenes other factors might be in play. If the Chinese were to supply the Russians with significant miliary aid, this might prove to be a serious escalation. It is rumoured that the Chinese may be about to supply a new generation of drones to the Russians but again it is possible that like governments in the West, the Chinese might be saying that will supply military assistance but without doing anything very much. Some other political developments are brewing as Tory MPs are being put on alert to expect an announcement over the Northern Ireland Brexit renegotiations early on next week. So the next few days might prove to be a critical test of the Rishi Sunak premiership and thus it may be ‘make or break’ time for the Brexit rebels in the European Research Group.

Thursday being my normal shopping day, I arrived at my local (Aldi) supermarket expecting to see the shelves denuded of tomatoes, peppers and the like. To my amazement, the supermarket was better stocked with these products than normal and there were no signs informing custmers that they should limit themselves to only two of the shortage items per customer. The supermarket appeared to me to be better stocked than usual, which is amazing under the cirumstances. One does not think of Morocco as having early falls of snow at this time of year so the TV images are quite dramatic. There was a discussion of the reason for the present shortages of certain food stuffs on Radio 4 this morning and I was surprised that the correspondent who was discussing the supply chains that were under pressure mentioned of course the adverse conditions affecting Northern Africa and Southern Spain but also mentioned the contribution of Brexit to collapsing supply chains. I heard one government minister when asked to comment upon the shortages of foods in British supermarkets argue that this was a great opportunity for British suppliers to step in. One can only imagine the world on which certain government ministers must live of they imagine that there is a ready supplier of English tomoto growers who can step in (with sufficienty large and ripened tomatoes) within days. Then it was a case of collecting the daily newspaper, getting home to cook the breakfast and finally unpack all of the shopping.

We had decided yesterday that as today might be a bit of a wet and windy day that we make a small excursion to Droitwich as we quite often do as it is just down the road from us. We frequented our favourite coffee bar and indulged in one of their enormous teacakes which we evidently shared between us. Then we paid a visit to the charity shop which is just next door and we were quite fortunate on this occasion. We found a very elegant lined skirt for Meg which she is yet to try on but is the right size and tomorrow morning will be soon enough. I was also fortunate in acquiring a shirt in my size and favourite colour. Finally, by way of a bonus for both of us I perused the supply of CDs and acquired a double album collection of Maria Callas which cost me the princely sum of 50p. This has 2 x. 12 tracks on each of the two compact disks and we happen to know practically every piece. They were recorded between 1953-1956 when Callas was probably in her prime and aged in her early 30’s. After lunch, we played the first of these disks to ourselves and really enjoyed the clarity of the performance. We had a lunch of quiche, leeks and tomatoes and then settled down to a little cleaning and restoration job that I had scheduled for myself. In the late afternoon, we entered into a Skype video discussion with one of our former University of Winchester friends and, as we had not chatted for a bit, we had quite a lot to share with each other. Our friend’s wife is due to undergo surgery in about ten days time so the couple are making sure thay are not exposed to any COVID which would delay the operation. All in all, we chatted for about an hour and a half altogether, some being political discussion and wth the recounting of amusing incidents that we had both experienced in the course of our teaching careers. Naturally, we are full of hope that the surgery will assist my friend’s wife to get back more to a degree of normality and we are keeping our fingers crossed that none of the disputes affecting the NHS will cause the operation to be cancelled or delayed.

There is news this evening emerging from the Tory party which may well be a sign of the times. Senior Tory MP Damian Green has been rejected as the candidate for the newly created Weald of Kent constituency. The move has fuelled speculation that grassroots Tory campaigners are targeting parliamentarians seen as responsible for Boris Johnson’s departure from No 10. Mr Green was effectively deputy prime minister under Theresa May until she sacked him in 2017 after an investigation into claims that pornographic material was found on his Commons computer. An MP for Ashford since 1997, he currently chairs the One Nation caucus of centrist Conservative MPs and has been critical of Mr Johnson. If this tendency is repeated across the country, it means that any moderate or Centrist MP may find it difficult to retain their seat. Constituency associations are always on the extreme wing of their respective parties – the left in the case of the Labour Party and to the right in the Conservative Party. Eventually, the Tory party will become a more and more anti-European, Brexit inclined party and the ultimate outcome of all of this might either be the re-instatement of Boris Johnson as the Tory Party leader and another period of sleaze-ridden and incompetent government (as ministers will be chosen for their ideological purity rather than native ability). Evidently, the lesson of the Liz Truss experiment for which we are still paying has not cut much ice with the Tory party faithful.

Our plans for the day had to alter somewhat after we received a text from our Italian friend down the road who was due to come around mid-morning for a long-delayed coffee. But our friend had got a very bad cold and (thoughtfully) did not want to come into the house and infect us so we had to devise a Plan ‘B’. The weather was rather inclement today with rain and a blustery wind and we did not really fancy a walk in the park. So on the recommendation of our domestic help, we sought out a new hardware store on the outskirts of Droitwich some seven or so miles distant where we thought we might be able to purchase the items that I was unsuccessfully looking for the other day. As this store was bigger than its sister store in Bromsgrove, we assumed that it might have in stock what we were looking for. But Sod’s Law seemed to be in operation as they were restocking parts of the store and what we were were looking for, they did not appear to have in stock anyway. So it turned into one of those shopping expeditions in which one says to oneself that it may be useful whilst we were there to buy x,y, and z so our trip out was not entirely wasted but not particularly successful either. I busied myself sorting out some audio when I got home and then we made ourselves a curry from leftovers. Neither of us was particularly hungry but we had a satisfying meal of some chicken in its sauce prepared the other day and served on a bed of rice with some petit pois.

I think I might apply for a job as a leader on the ‘I’ newspaper. My reason for saying this is that yesterday’s blog echoed the ‘I’ front page when I suggested that Rishi Sunak should call the bluff of the hardline Brexiteers in the so-called ‘European Research Group’ and first sack them and then withdraw the whip (in effect, throwing them out of the Conservative party) if they subsequently do not support the government. One or two of the ministers who were threatening rebellion and resignaton might have discerned the way the wind was blowing because although they are fighting their corner hard, they are now starting to intimate that they might not push their opposition to the point of resignation after all. The important thing about such scenarios is that nobody really knows how much ‘power’ they have or do not have until it is put to the test – rather analogous to putting oneself on the labour market and to seeing if you are hired or not. Once the bluff is called of some of the extreme Brexiteers, it may well be that they are only ‘paper tigers’ as they contemplate no ministerial job, losing their MP’s salary and effectively being out of power for many a year once the next election is won and then lost. Although he may not like doing it, Rishi Sunak can always face down the rebels and rely upon the votes of the opposition parties to keep the Northern Ireand protocol more or less intact after the recently negotiated refinement are put into effect.

This year I thought it might be quite useful to announce to the world that I have made several resolutions for the six week period of Lent, when traditionally one does without one or more of life’s comforts. This year, I have decided and announced, that I intend to give up the following things for Lent. The list includes fast cars, loose women, drinking and gambling. To this list I have also added chocolate as well to give my Lenten abstinence a bit more bite, as it were. I have often thought, with a wry inward smile, that if you look at both Islam and Christianity the periods of both Ramadan and of Lent just happens to coincide with the times of year when foodstuffs are at a natural shortage before the newly sown crops of the current year mature. So periods of necessity when food is short are clothed in a religious precept to cut down on one’s normal intake of food and drink – which is very convenient when you come to think of it.

The war in Ukraine is now approaching its first anniversary – hence Joe Biden made his clandestine trip to Kyiv and Putin has been talking to a flag waving Russian audience. Incidentally, some commentators are now saying that Joe Biden the veterate politicin has actually ‘played a blinder’ and is successfully refuting many of the more outlandish claims being made about Nato by the Russian leader. But I must feel that I always feel a shudder whenever I see flagwaving cheering crowds showing their adulation for a ‘strong’ leader. Evidently one is reminded of rallies during the Nazi era but one is also reminde of it during American party conventions when a presidential candidate is chosen. Even ‘Last night at the Proms’ which I used to enjoy leaves me feeling uneasy in these post-Brexit days. The BBC for its part has to be incredibly careful how it manages the filming of such events and tries to dilute the evident nationalism by focussing cameras on flags other than the Union Jack.

Today being a Tuesday is the day to which we look forward because we meet with some of our pre-pandemic friends in the Waitrose coffee bar. As it turned out, there were four of us today and we formed a jolly little group, exchanging all of our gossip of the week. In fact, some of the Waitrose staff came over and had a chat with us as well – I think they rather enjoy seeing some of the old crowd back together again and although we try not to be especially noisy, we do tend to have more than our fair share of laughter. I suspect that one of the reasons why we all look forward to these Tuesday morning gatherings is that three of us are all looking after spouses with similar conditions and needs, so it is a bit of therapy time for us carers so that we can have a bit of a chat and a joke and it helps to get us through the week. Tuesday is also my Pilates day so I have to ensure that after we have got home, I have got my Pilates kit ready and that Meg is well supplied with food, drink, TV, newspapers and music if necessary so that she can look after herself adequately whilst I am out of the house for a couple of hours. All worked well today and I had put some food in the oven so when I return there is a hot meal waiting for us which can be dished up within minutes of my return. The local cat who has adopted us, Miggles, tends to espy me from a great distance and come running towards me when she sees that I have returned from a journey out. I encourage him/her to leap over the (tall) back door gate at the side of the house but being opportunistic, the cat will seize the opportunity to sneak in through the front door and generally make for the kitchen where there is a sachet of cat food to which he/she can look forward. Miggles also takes the opportunity to have a roll around on the ‘runner’ that we have leading to the back door in our utility room outside the main kitchen and has a particular penchant for head rubbing my gardening and other outdoor shoes which are housed there. Miggle never had a very loud or distinctive purr. As purring is such a distinctive thing, I thought I would find what the internet has to say on the subject and discovered that
‘The purr of the cat originates in the brain. The brain sends neurological messages to the muscles of the larynx (voice box) that causes them to twitch at a rapid rate – 25-150 vibrations per second. Then, as the cat breathes, the vocal cords separate and create the purring noise. Every cat has a unique purr sound – some purrs have a high pitch, while others are just a low rumbling. Some purrs are so very faint you can hardly hear them, while champion purrers sound like miniature engines. The act of purring releases endorphins within the cat’s brain…‘ Well, all I can say is that Miggles did not use to audibly purr and now does quite a lot, so I must be doing something right.

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting and intensely ‘social’ day for us. For a start, our domestic help calls around and this is always the occasion for the exchange of much chat, often involving family members. Then in in the morning, our Italian friend is going to call around for a coffee and this will be a great time for all of us. Then in the late afternoon, after an email this morning, I am going to videochat with a University of Winchester friend with whom I have not been in contact for some time and we have a lot of news to exchange with each other (principally about family members that we are helping to cope with various afflictions).

The political news today is rather dominated by the efforts of Rishi Sunak to come to a final resolution of the ‘Northern Ireland’ Brexit problem in which the hardliners of the DUP and in the UK, the hardline Brexiteers organised into the ‘European Research group’, seem determined to try to wreck any deal in which they perceive that UK sovereignty is not paramount. To my (simplistic) mind, once any group or government engages in any collaborative activity, one’s freedom of manouvre is always ceded somewhat in order to achieve the common good. In the Brexit case, though, one gets the impression that hatred of anything ‘European’ is so visceral and deep-rooted that no compromise or deal will ever be sufficient. The Times this morning is reporting that several Ministers are threatening to resign if they do not get their way over the Northern Ireland protocol and this ‘threat’ is making negotiations more and more difficult, although it is reported that a deal is very near but not quite achieved. Rishi Sunak could always say ‘Good – I will accept your resigation’ and then if they vote against the Government, the whip is withdrawn and they are effectively thrown out of the Conservative party. This is exactly what Boris Johnson did to the likes of Anna Soubry, David Gauke, Dominic Grieve and several others so why not use exactly the same tactic against the extreme Brexiteers?

Today dawned as a beautiful bright and clear day. Meg and I enjoyed very much the production of ‘La Bohème‘ which was shown on BBC4 last night. This was an English National Opera production and the quality of the acting was absolutely superlative – probably the best we have seen and the singing was of a very high order as well. We shall have to wait until Friday to see what our University of Birmingham friend makes of it all, as we had encouraged him to watch particular the scene in Act 1 where Rudolfo and Mimi ‘become an item’ in popular parlance. Today, I wanted to go to a local hardware store to pick up some little storage containers but the kinds I wanted and had purchased only about about a couple of weeks ago had totally vanished. The store had also been reorganised to make way for an influx of gardening gear so after a fruitless search, I left empty handed. So we made our way to the park which was absolutely teeming with cars by the time we got there. A combination of fine weather and the arrival of half term meant that the park was full of grandparents with their grandchildren in tow. For the first time in three years, we found it very difficult to park and had to make several turns around before we could find a parking space of our own. We had not taken any elevenses with us so we had a brief sojourn on our normal park bench before turning for home and enjoying a cup of coffee in our own home. I know it sounds a bit curmudgeonly to say this but half-terms seem to cause quite a large amount of disruption to the ‘normal’ rhythms of life. We knew that our chiropodist was due to call at some time today but I pressed on making a type of ‘Spanish chicken’ for our mid-day lunch (seared chicken added to a mixture of fried onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms) to which we add a white sauce and baked in the oven for an hour and a half. I always tend to overcook chicken on the basis that raw chicken may be contaminated with salmonella and rather a somewhat overcooked chicken meal than a stomach upset – or worse. The cooking turned out to be nice and tasty and we even had some of the cooked ingredients left over to form the basis of a curry later in the week.

The news has been rather dominated in the early afternoon by the news of Joe Biden’s surprise and previously unannounced visit to Ukraine to demonstrate American soldarity after practically a year of war. By appearing in Kyiv and filmed within the city, Joe Biden has scored quite a propaganda visit over the Russians. They, in turn, are no doubt arguing that Ukraine is only a kind of ‘Trojan horse’ for America’s imperialist ambitions and are spreading their own messages around some their own friends in Africa and Asia (but not Europe, needless to say). As the war grinds on, it is becoming quite evident that we might be in for a long haul. Russia seems to have vast supplies of (rather ageing) military equipment and, via conscription, of manpower as well. The story is told and probably with a high degree of accuracy, that when raw recruits from Russia were captured in the early days of the war, their Ukrainian captors would sit them down with a cup of tea and a mobile phone and tell them to phone their mothers to inform them what was happening. Although it has to operate clandestinely, we do know that groups of Russian mothers form a source of quiet opposition to the Putin regime. It is also evident that their sons have no idea what the war in the Ukraine is all about.

The breaking news this afternoon is that the junior doctors have voted to take strike action at a date in March and for a full 72 hours as well. Some 77.5% of those eligible to vote had in fact done so and an astounding 98% had voted in favour of strike action. Unlike the ambulance drivers and nurses, it does not appear at this moment that the junior doctors are making provision for any emergency cover – no doubt, the junior doctors feel as though the full consultants can provide the necessary cover. A full 72 hour strike might be an immense blow to NHS management and given the amount of work that junior doctors perform, the impact of this strike might be immense. The junior doctors have long felt they they have had a grievance as workload and waiting lists are at record highs whilst junior doctors’ pay has been cut by more than a quarter since 2008. There has been a scurrilous book written by a junior hospital doctor named Adam Kay a few years ago (‘This is going to hurt’) but the book leaves one in no doubt about the stress involved in being a junior hospital doctor nowadays. The book was made into a TV series which somehow did not convey the full picture of the stresses involved revealed in the wards and I believe that Adam Kay himself has subsequently left the medical profession.

Today being a Sunday, we enter into our Sunday morning routine which is to get ourselves up and showered and sitting in front of the Lorna Kuenssberg program by 9.00am. Today’s program revealed nothing particularly startling and Penny Mordant was evidently the face to go round the TV studios this mornimg. I do not know whether the Sky News and BBC studios are adjacent to each other but whoever is designated to speak for the Government, or the Conservative party, seems to pop up on one channel and then the other at lightning speed. Last night, Meg and I had an entertaining evening as after the church service we trooped into the Parish Hall to chat with other members of the congregation that we knew and also to have a word with the bishop who was visiting the parish. I was not at all sure what topic of conversation I could enter into with the bishop but in a moment of inspiration I told him that we had one son whose patron saint was St. Martin de Porres who was one of the first Latin American saints (although he was actually of mixed race being the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a woman of mixed African and Native descent.) Our son spent a year in a Mexican University, having been awarded an international scholarship before he attended his university course in this country. He informed us that the mothers of girls to whom he was particularly well disposed were always incredibly pleased that their daughters were friendly with our son because they assumed that someone whose patron saint was St Martin de Porres could only have the best of intentions towards their daughters. In any case, our Spanish friends used to inform us with a wry smile that illustrations of this saint who had to accept a lowly position as a cleaner in a monastery before he was accepted into the Dominican order in Lima, Peru always showed him with a sweeping brush in his hand. From this, there was always an assumption that any house with a devotional aid to St Martin who be kept free of mice. Whilst we were at the reception in the parish hall having a cup of afernoon tea with the bishop, Meg and were cajoled into being part of a rota (one week in four) to act as ‘meeters and greeters’ for the evening service on a Saturday, which we attend regularly. Evidently, we shall have to see how this works out.

This evening there is going to be a broadcast of ‘La Bohème‘ which is one of our favourite operas. We met up with our University of Birmingham friend in Waitrose coffee bar as we had agreed and then gave him a brief synopsis of the plot of the opera, as well as locating and playing a rendition of ‘Your tiny hand is frozen’ on our iPhone so that our friend could recognise it. Althpugh not a fan of opera, we told him at which point in the first Act this aria is likely to be sung so that he could tune into it and see if he enjoyed the rendition. We also got into an extended discussion of some classic films that our friend had seen (one about Saladin and story of the Crusades) as well as aspects of French culture. Our friend has a French conversation class once per week and I suggested several topics that might prove interesting, one being the term given to those who supported the Vichy government during WWII and also the famous film about Martin Guerre. He was a French peasant of the 16th century who was at the centre of a famous case of imposture. Several years after Martin Guerre had left his wife, child and village, a man claiming to be him appeared. He lived with Guerre’s wife and son for three years.The false Martin Guerre was eventually suspected of the impersonation. I thought that this might be an interesting film to attempt to track down and see as being a topic of conversation in the French class.

This afternoon, the media has been dominated by the discovery of a body in the River Wyre in Lancashire and there is a very high probability that it is the body of the missing woman, Nicola Bulley, which has attracted so much media attention since she seemed to have vanished without trace some three weeks ago. No formal identification has yet taken place but no doubt the story will drag on for several more days whilst formal procedures (identification, followed by a post-mortem) will have to be undertaken. When all of the media interest had subsided, which it surely will, Lancashire Police will still have some difficult questions to answer to a variety of bodies why they decided to release quite sensitive medical details into the public domain when such details did not seem to be relevant to any further searches. Many commentators are saying, and with justification, that analagous medical details would not be released if the missing person were to be a male rather than a female. Given that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have all jumped in to comment on the police procedures in this case, I would not be surprised if resignations or ‘early retirements’ will not ensue quite shortly.

Today dawned a little gloomy and overcast but nonetheless we were determined to make the best of it. Next week is going to be rather a strange week as it is a half-term week over most of the country. Consequently, many of our friends are drawn into grandparenting duties or similar and domestic arrangements are probably adjusted in many households. Last night, we texted our Italian friend who happens to live down the road and were delighted to get a reply back quite rapidly accepting our invitation to coffee next Wednesday morning. Apart from bumping each other as we walk down the road (my mother used to call these quick encounters ‘like ships passing in the night’ but I am not sure why), we have not had the chance of a good chat for quite some time now. We have quite a lot to catch up on as I am sure things have happened in our respective families that we would like to share with each other. At the same time, we also texted one of Meg’s cousins from whom we have not heard from some time and we know, via a Christmas card, that she had a serious operation last year. So we are anxiously awaiting some communication that all is well and that perhaps we can meet up for a lunch in the near future. It is always slightly ominous when one doesn’t get a reply within a day or so, but I am sure there is quite an innocent explanation.

This morning, we decided to give Waitrose a miss so that we do not get over-habituated to it and made for the park instead. The weather was quite mild and a little blowy but as soon as we started to drink our coffee, a very fine drizzle started to descend upon us. In the distance, I saw a figure that I could have sworn was one of our friends from down the road but as he had a little dog on a lead, I dismissed him from my thoughts. But spotting people in the park is a little like aircraft recognition in WWII where the population was taught to quickly recognise aircraft shapes to work out if it was ‘one of ours’ and therefore wished the equivalent of ‘Godspeed’ or an enemy aircraft in which case it was prudent to dive for cover. But as the figure with a dog approached, it turned out that it was our friend from down the road and hence my recognition of his shape and gait had been quite accurate. The dog belonged to his son and whilst the younger members of the fanily were off skiing somewhere, our friends were left dog sitting. The weather very gradually cleared up but we had a good long chat over a whole variety of topics which proved to be very pleasant. Eventually, we felt impelled to go as we were a little cold and wet and had acquired ‘square bottoms’ from sitting too long on the park bench. Once we got home, we partook of the obligatory cup of tea and then proceeded to cook a fairly typical Saturday lunch of mince and onions, a baked potato and some broccoli. Then we had a quiet afernoon reading before we start to prepare ourselves for the outing to church in the late afternoon and a little ‘do’ in the Parish Hall immediately afterwards when we will be meeting with an diocesan bishop.

Although I do not follow football affairs at all closely, two footballing items have attracted my attention today. The first is the fact that the Quataris have emerged as potential bidders for the club of Manchester United at a price which may be in the region of £5 billion. I must confess, I am uneasy about one of our iconic football clubs becoming the plaything of extremely rich men and not even English investors either, if that does not sound too xenophobic. I am sure that in some sports, the governing bodies demand a degree of local fan involvement so that the ‘fan base’ is sold as as a commodity like the football club itself. Another footballing story is that Brexit may mean that the UK clubs cannot bid for promising yoongsters until they reach the age of 18 but European countries have no such restriction upon their activities and can therefore snap up young talent at will. Whilst on the subject of Brexit, it was interesting that on the ‘Any Answers‘ program broadcast as a follow-on to ‘Any Questions‘ on Radio 4, some prominence is now being given to voices of callers who admit to voting Brext in the referendum but are now starting to realise that this was a terrible mistake. Normally, the BBC tries to keep clear of voices like this but the issue was raised in connection with the Northern Ireland protocol which Rishi Sunak may be inching towards a resolution. It is also interesting that pressure groups on the extreme right want the Sunak initiative to ‘fail’ as if it were to succeed, then Rishi Sunak will gain immense credit for it and those on the extreme right really want him to fail so that Boris Johnson (or someone similar) can be recalled as Leader of the Conservative Party.

Today was a beautiful fine day and the kind of day that made you want to get up and get outside to enjoy the almost spring-like sunshine. Meg and I were just having breakfast when we received a telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend, enquiring whether we might meet for cofffee in Waitrose, which invitation we readily accepted. Once there, I had brought along with me my trusty battery charge indicator which I find a most useful bit of kit. There we tested out a range of batteries that our friend had brought with him and then divided the batteries into left and right coat pockets to distinguish the good from the dud. I then attempted to show our friend the bouncing battery test (it seems fanciful but dead batteries bounce quite a lot, charged batteries only a little – it is all a matter of the chemical composition of the ingredients and how they change during the act of being discharged.) Our friend was completely sceptical but a chap on the next door table was quite intrigued so I resolved that when got home I would ‘Google’ this strange effect to email onto our friend. This I did and indeed, it is all a matter of chemistry and the bounceability of zinc oxide as well as the distribution of fluid throughout the battery. When we next see our friend on Sunday, I will claim a free cup of coffee as recompense for his sceptism. Mind you, as a born empiricist and experimentalist, I did tell him about various experiments I had conducted as a teenager – this involved electrolyis (a total failure), the action of concentrated nitric acid on an old ‘penny’ (a total success) and an attempt to dissect a one-legged frog which had been chloroformed by a science teacher at school and which I had assumed was dead. It was only when I saw a beating heart I nearly dropped my rusty old scalpel whilst the rest of my classmates looked on, munching their sandwiches. There is an explanation attached to all of this. Immediately after our GCE ‘O’-levels, there was no point teaching us anything until the term ended so we were allowed to do almost anything that took our fancy. One master encouraged us to give a lecture on any of our pet interests and as I intended to follow a career in surgery (thwarted by an initial failure in ‘O’-level physics) I gave a ‘state-of-the-art’ lecture in the plastic surgery of the human female breast. How I researched this at the age of sixteen and without the benefit of modern technology or any books published within the previous twenty years I do not know. I think the lecture went down fairly well with my contemporaries (it was an all-boys direct grant grammar school) but certainly more succesfull than my rejected offer to perform an ovarectomy (spaying) on my next door neighbour’s cat. As it was such a beautiful day, I persuaded Meg to walk with me down the Bromsgrove High Street where we popped into Poundland to buy a piece of electrical equipment and some little plastic storage containers of which I have a need.

I had a bit of a lunchtime dilemmma because on the spur of the moment, the last time I went shopping I had bought some smoked haddock for our Friday meal. Althoough I enjoy the taste of smoked fish, it is always a bit of a dilemma how to cook it without smelling the whole of the house out. Today, I decided on a strategy of poaching it gently in some hot milk, supplemented with some dried potato and a leek and potato packed soup to act as thickening agents. I made sure I had the over the hob fan working as well as the window wide open and this combination of strategies had the desired effect. We really enjoyed our meal which we ate with a baked potato and some green beans and marked this down mentally as a ‘success’ story for the next time.

Sky News has an interesting little story about Vladimir Putin – but it may just be Western propaganda. It is reported that Putin will ony travel around the country in an armoured train, fearing an assassination attempt as Nato may try to bring down any jet plane in which is is travelling. It is said the Russian president believes the armoured train is a more secure way to travel and that nobody will know where he’s going. The train is so heavy that it needs three locomotives to pull it, and it has special equipment for secure communications. In the same post, it is said that of the convicts released from Russian gaols to man up the Russian front line in the war in Ukraine, approximately one half have already died or been injured – in other words, put out of action. We know already that convicts have been seen as expendable in this conflict but it does reveal a cynicism and lack of respect for human life that does leave one practically speechless. Nonetheless, what we know about the biography of Putin would indicate that this lack of concern for fellow humans is a consistent trait of his personality.

Thursday is my shopping day so I was up bright and early to join the little queue of 2-3 people who wait outside the store, waiting for it to open. One or two of the things that I buy regularly were missing from the shelves this morning so I have to make a mental note of the extra things I need to top up with the next time I go to Waitrose in a day or so. The morning was a little foreshortened by the time I had got the shopping unpacked and the breakfast cooked, eaten and everything washed up. Meg and I did not bother to venture out today as the weather was a little overcast and both of us felt a bit knocked out so we just had a quiet morning in.

If an announcement is imminent from No. 10 and nobody is sure of the exact timing, then it is quite common for there to be a gaggle of reporters and photographers who have to while away the time somehow waiting for the forthcoming announcement. The comings and goings of Larry, the Downing Street cat, is then often the subject of much press attention. Incidentally, Larry in appearance looks as though he could the parent of Miggles, the cat who visits us every day, today being no exception – I think he spots the car arriving back from shopping and then makes his presence felt. It is rumoured that Larry is a bit of a bruiser and certainly has spats with Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat, with whom he is a fierce rival. But you can always tell when a journalist is sitting in front of his word-processor and wondering ‘What shall I write about today?’ and, in the absence of any breaking political news, it is always possible to put words in the mouth of Larry who comments upon the comings and goings in Downing Sreet. We had one such piece yesterday when Robert Crampton was writing in ‘The Times‘ giving us such offerings as ‘that dog Dilyn (the stray adopted by Boris and Carrie Johnson) could not control his bodily functions’ After commenting on a range of recent Prime Ministers came the observation that ‘there was that other peculiar woman (Liz Truss). I had forgotten about her. Barely moved in and then moved out again’ and so on and so forth. Putting words in the mouths of animals owned by politicians is not a new venture as Roy Hattersley, the veteran Labour politician and one time Home Secretary wrote a book called ‘Buster’ which was the political world as seen through the eyes of Roy Hattersley’s dog. ‘Buster’rather disgraced himself as he caught and killed a duck in St.James Park for which offence Roy hattersley, even though he was Home Secretary at the time, had to lead guilty by letter and then pay the ensuing fine.

In the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, the missing Lancashire dog walker, the local police seemed to have made a massive blunder. After revealing to the press that Nicola Bulley was a ‘vulnerable person’ and refusing initially to divulge further details for the sake of the family, the police seemed to be working quite professionally. But then they had a complete ‘volte-face’ and put out a statement stating that Nicola had in the past suffered with some significant issues with alcohol which were brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause and that these struggles had resurfaced over recent months. These medical details seemed to go way beyond that which was necessary to inform the public of the progress of the police investigation and Lancashire police are now themselves subject to quite a degree of criticism. The independent Office for Police Conduct have now got involved and, no doubt, the story will further develop from this point on – I wonder if eventually heads might roll?

There has been a ruling in the High Court today that the UK scheme to settle millions of EU citizens risks creating illegal migrants overnight is unlawful. There was the possibility that millions of EU citizens did not apply in time and they could be declared as illegal immigrants and then deported (forcibly, I wonder?) In a highly critical judgment, the court said the scheme breached the UK’s Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. The watchdog for EU citizens’ rights argued the scheme could strip people of rights if they did not register in time. Quite unusually, the Government have admitted that they will not appeal against the ruling and so this is yet another example of a Home Office which is completely dysfunctional and seems to run from one disaster to another. The scandal of Windrush is still fresh in the minds of many people. Descendants of the Windrush which arrived from the West Indies in 1949 bringing many West Indians to the UK to solve severe labour shortages were declared to be illegal immigrants even though they had lived and worked in the UK for decades. As children, some people might have been entered on a parent’s passport but if this had not been retained after the death of the parent, the children were assumed to be ‘illegal’ After the scandal was exposed, the Home Office was meant to be offering a compensation scheme but even this initiative has run into the rocks.