It was just as well that we got the lawns cut and the mower put away yesterday because today was gloomy and overcast with the occasional shower. We had a provisional arrangement to meet with our University of Birmingham friend in the park today but after a swift telephone call between us, we both concluded that Waitrose coffee bar was a far better place in which to meet and so we did. After we had said our farewells to each other, Meg and I had a brief saunter along the High Street in which we met a couple of our Kidderminster Road friends who were in generally good heart, except that that the local authority had ordered them to cut back some of the conifers fronting their garden on the basis that they were occluding the pavement. They were not best pleased about this as, in strict legal theory, their conifers did extend across the line adjudged to be the pavement border but in no ways could the vegetation be said to be an obstruction. I wondered to myself if an envious or malicious neighbour had telephoned the council to lodge a complaint but we shall never know. Just to demonstrate how we are entering a sort of ‘silly’ season, I saw in my local supermarket when I went shopping on Thursday an advent calendar for dogs – no doubt there is a big pent-up demand for this amongst the barking mad. For their part, ClassicFM are putting on a special service of quiet and contemplative music this evening so that household pets are not unduly distressed by the sound of fireworks going off this evening (perhaps) They even have listeners emailing in with stories of how calming the ClassicFM policy has been in the past at bringing sanity to their pets but methinks that they might have a pruduction assistant in one of their back rooms busy composing emails (much in the same way that it is said that people fake but glowing reviews of products on Amazon).

By this morning’s post, the CD arrived of ‘Rigoletto‘ which I had ordered from Ebay at the incredible price of £2.99. But when I totted up the cost of the postage of the chap who had sold it to me, it had cost the sender about £2.55 so he only made about 45p on the deal. The CD,though, was wonderful and I enjoyed listening to it whilst I prepared our elevenses for later on in the day. After we had lunch, we entertained ourself with the Rugby League quarter-finals in which England were playing Papua New Guinea, often abbreviated to PNG. In theory, this should have been a very close contest but in practice the English team through some excellent play absolutely ran away with the first half so I did not bother with watching the second half. I decided to do some soup ready for when we return from church later on this evening – fortunately, I already had some root vegetables prepared and already frozen in the freezer, so it was qute a simple job to fry up some onions and then put the parboiled vegetables into the soupmaker.

The enquiry into COVID-19 and the nation’s preparedness for it hs just opened – no doubt this will take months and perhaps evn a year or so. What, though, is interesting is that the enquiry has asked to see Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp correspondence. If our memories stretch back that far, Boris Johnson did not even bother to attend the first COBRA briefings which was examining the seriousness of the pandemic shortly to hit the country and this delay may well have cost hundreds or even thouands of lives. A more contemporary narrative is that Johnson got the pandemic ‘sorted’ and takes massive credit for getting the vaccine programme under way. One has to wonder whether more comprehensive and balanced judgements may hold sway once the enquiry report is published but an awful lot of water will have flowed under the bridge by then and the public may not be particularly interested in attributing praise or blame to Johnson for his role in the pandemic.

Tonight is Bonfire Night but there is not much evidence of celebrations anywhere. If the weather is clear, then this is generally an occasion when youngish children can enjoy a bonfire and some fireworks but tonight is wet and squally. Furthermore, I suspect that family finances are a little too stretched to let some of them go up in a puff of smoke. There were a few fireworks last night when the weather was better and some families may be hoping for better weather tomorrow. But as a sign of the times, Waitrose were selling their pumpkin carving kits marked down to 15p a throw. In the little village where I lived in Yorkshire from the ages of 9-14, the whole village contributed towards the communal bonfire whilst the menfolk brought along (and drank) beer whilst women were expected to povide some homemade parkin (sticky gingerbread?) We kids had a fantastic time seeing if we could trace where the rocket staves had landed once they had ‘whooshed’into the sky.

Today had been forecast as the finest day of the week which was just as well giving that I wanted to give the lawns their last cut of the season this afternoon and for this, I certainly needed a fine day. Meg and I had quite a busy morning because there were a collection of things we needed to get done on the High Street. Having picked up my newspaper, our first port of call was Waitrose in search of eggs that were unavailable in our regular supermarket yesterday. To my pleasant surprise, Waitrose seemed qute well supplied with eggs and there did not seem to be an evident panic to buy the available stock so perhaps our experience of yesterday was just a ‘one-off’. Then we went looking for the stall that is normally there on Tuesdays and Fridays where the stallholder sells leather goods, watches, watch straps and watch batteries. I was disappointed not to find her and, having used her for years, hope that she has not ceased trading. So then I proceeded to our next port of call which was to buy some cosmetics at a shop which also sells lady’s knee-highs of which I needed a supply for Meg. Fortunately, what we particularly wanted they had in stock so we purchased what we needed and proceeded to a pharmacist at the far end of the High Street. As our normal pharmacy could not supply some medication for Meg which the doctor had prescribed, a community pharmacist attached to the doctor’s practice had rung around to find some supplies for us and had issued a new prescription and all we needed to do was to collect this. On the way back, we called in at our usual cobbler’s shop which sells watch straps and watch batteries and had a new watch strap fitted, the previous one having dropped to pieces. It has been quite disconcerting to go around with my watch in my pocket rather than on my wrist so now it is almost back to normal. On our way down the High Street, we popped into an Age Concern shop which is selling recycled and reconditioned furniture so this is always worth keeping a eye as I am looking for a small but elegant corner table upon which to place a corner light in our hall. This place in the hall took over from the Christmas tree last year and it will be not too long before the season starts again but I refuse to contemplate anything ‘Christmassy’ until the month of December is upon us. When we got to the park, we felt well in need of our coffee and we were delighted to be soon joined by our University of Birmingham friend which is quite a typical pattern for Fridays. Our friend had joined a University of the Third Age (U3A) goup in Kidderminster and had joined a discussion on ‘Moral Mazes’ (after the Radio4 program of the same name, I wonder?) Recently, the group had been discussing the role of grandparents in families and I was reminded of the role of the community at large. In particular, I rather like the expression originating from the Indian culture that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and I reminisced about the time when Meg and I lived in Hampshire and bought a house in a cul-de-sac in which there several childrn aged 3-11 or thereabouts and the parents seemed to take a collective approach to the children’s activities – for example supplying a plaster and a bit of parental support if a child had had a tumble from their bike. I shared with our friend the anguish that I feel that some grandparents must feel if their own offspring divorce and separate and contact with beloved grandchildren is lost if they move away or are absorbed into their ‘new’ families. Under these circumstances, I suspect that grandparents have very few, if any, legal rights and these might be difficult to enforce.

Meg and I had a fairly rapid lunch because I was anxious to make a start on the grass mowing in plenty of time. We had made a risotto out of some basa fillets which I had steamed and then cooked with a cauliflower (=low calorie) rice, tarted up with a bit of seafood sauce as an experiment. After lunch, Meg and I had a wonderful half hour or so relaxing in our newly created ‘relaxation’ space where we put on Brahm’s Requiem and just dozed with the strains of the music coming over us in waves. Then it was time to jump and start mowing and everything went to plan – the grass had certainly grown apace in just the last two weeks. Halfway through, our next door neighbour emerged for a chat and it was good to get his latest news. He is recovering from having three stents inserted into an heart artery by an eminent visiting Japanese surgeon and is making good progress so far. The mowing having completed, I got the residual petrol emptied and this season’s oil removed in record time and was mightily relieved to get my trusty machine put to bed for another winter’s rest before we start again next March.

Today is my shopping day so I arrived at my favourite supermarket a few minutes before it opened. All went as would be expected but the ‘eggs’ shelves was completely bare – members of staff informed us that the outbreak of avian flu was impacting upon their supply chain but in the next few days we will find out whether this a localised or a more widespread problem. After I had got home, breakfasted and then unpacked the shopping, the weather seemed to set fair so we decided to sally forth to Droitwich is almost just down the road. In Droitwich, we had our coffee and toasted teacake in a little cafe quite near to the Waitrose store because I wanted to go in search of a little antiques/jumble/curios type shop to see if anything caught our fancy. But it had unfortunately gone out of business so we proceeded to have a quick saunter through a charity shop which was just around the corner. We finished up buying a new Jaeger woollen top for Meg as well as a hat whilst I bought a shirt for myself which is just my size and colour. Then we went for a whizz around our favourite hardware store which is Wilko but I found the shelves a little empty of the things that I had hoped to buy. However, I bought some electrical supplies and some stationery. In the kitchen department, I was intrigued to find a couple of non-stick silicone egg poachers. As we have started to poach our eggs for our morning breakfast (although we have currently run out of eggs upon which to trial it), we will have to see if this lives up to its promise or not.

Before we went shopping this morning, a pleasant surprise turned up by the morning’s mail. On a whim, I had done a quick trawl on ebay and discovered a copy of Brahm’s ‘A German Requiem‘ which I always enjoy but I don’t think we have it anywhere on disk. This I had ordered about a couple of days ago not least because it was on offer for less than £3 with postage included but also the quality of the performers. It was Elizabeth Schwartzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau conducted by Otto Klemperer, which trio must be considered the finest performers in the classical world at the time of the original recording in 1962. EMI had digitally remastered this recording in 1986 and all in all, the performance was about 70 minutes in length. Last night,I had located a Sony CD/DVD portable recorder which I think I must have purchased at about the time of our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations to play our wedding music but I had put it in a bookcase and forgotten about it over the years. Meg and I spent a very pleasant hour listening to this outstanding recording in the new quiet music corner I have just created and it played equally well both on the Sony sound system inherited from my son and the recently discovered CD player. I was intrigued by the firm that had sold us this outstanding CD at such a reasonable price and it turned out that they were a small, specialised Scottish charity that specialised in reselling second hand goods (many of them donated?) and giving the proceeds to local charitable causes. I wondered if there was more where this came from and although the organisation itself did not seem to have other CDs available, I did find a superbly good recording of Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto‘, again for less than £3 and so this, too, was promptly ordered. However, later on in the morning, another pleasant surprise came along. I was doing an experiment to see if a tiny little notebook speaker that I had would increase the volume of the sound somewhat as the maximum volume on the CD player is adequate but could do with being a bit louder. In the course of my experiments, I relocated the player and turned it on forgetting that I had not connected the AC power supply. To my amazement, it actually started playing and I then realised that it must have an internal rechargeable power source which gets topped up, much like a laptop, every time you connect it to the mains. Naturally, the original manual had long since been mislaid but the day before I had managed to locate the manual on the web and downloaded it into my ‘Manuals’ folder. A quick consultation of this showed that the whole CD player would take about three hours to fully charge but this ought to give about 4 hours of play time. This was designed way back, I suppose, so that those taking long train journeys or European flights could watch their own DVD or listen to CDs to alleviate the tedium of the journey. I honestly did not know (or had forgotten) that the player had this play facility but am naturally delighted to have discovered it. It did cross my mind whether to go on the web and get a pair of really cheap notebook speakers but resisted the temptaion as the occasions that I might actually need a bit of enhanced volume might be few and far between.

We are really into the typical November weather being wet and blustery – but not particularly cold as yet. We are always pleased to see our domestic help whose day it is each Wednesday and I gave her a little present of some homemade soup (carrot and basil) for her to try. We went off to collect our newspaper and then started on a couple of visits that we needed to make. The first of these was to a furniture store which is set up so that individuals wishing to furnish a home can do at a minimal cost. Most of the furniture and household artefacts is donated by individuals who wish to de-clutter their own house but are more than happy to see any unwanted goods go to a good home and not end up in landfill. I particularly wanted to acquire a small occasional table to go into the corner of a room and as soon as Meg and I walked into the cavernous type rooms in which the furniture was stored, we saw something that caught our eye. This was a miniature drop leaf table which was oval in shape but the two sides folded down to create a small rectangular top. The wood was a mahogany or rosewood type of wood and it was in pretty good condition but with some minor scuff marks. What was particularly attractive was a tooled leather insert for the table top so this added to its charm. I needed this table to put a little table lamp upon it so after a little hunt around, we discovered a smallish table lamp but with an attractive ‘autumn leaves’ lampshade. I put the lamp on the little drop leaf table to see how they looked together and was then delighted to purchase the two of them together for £20. Then we went on the road to collect a purchase for the George store internal to Asda where I had ordered and paid for a little item on line and could pick it up at out local Asda store. As soon as I got the little dtop leaf table home, I could gave it a really good wipe down with a clean sponge and some warm soapy water and was pleasantly surprised by how restored it looked. I do have a little bottle of one of those special ‘scratch remover’ types of fluid which I have very successfully used in the past to renovate furniture and remove minor scuffs and the like. I then hunted around in my box of old light bulbs and discovered that I actually already had in stock a 60 watt mushrrom shaped bulb which Marks and Spencer had sold some years before calling it a ‘peach’ light. I wanted these items for a particular place in the corner of the room where I have created a little music and relaxation centre for the benefit of both Meg and myself when the occasion arises. The overall effect of the renovated little table with an interesting design of table lamp upon it, complete with its ‘soft light’ bulb, have created an effect far in excess of what i could possibly hope for when I woke up this morning. So I now have a little occasional piece which absolutely fulfills the function I had intended for it which was to create some warm and welcomingly looking relaxation space. The purchase from Asda was an occasional lamp with a small wooden base and a linen look shade of which I actually have another to illuminate a spare corner and this has now been pressed into service to illuminate the CDs which now have pride of place in an adjoining bookcase. So I have now managed to achieve what I wanted at minimal expense and hardly any ‘running around’. There was also a bonus to this in the mid afternoon. My son was just leaving the house and I mentioned to him that the CD component of the miniature hifi systm I had inherited from him seemed to be on its last legs as whether it started to play a CD disk or not was decidedly ‘iffy’. With a thumb he wiped clean the plastic lens cover to the laser unit with the player. This seemed to work short term but to make sure, I popped into the garage and located an absolutely brand new, and therefore clean, paintbrush which I use to give the lens cover a good clean. This has evidently been effective because I had a Renato Scotti (Italian soprano) disk in which the first track would not play but it would from the second track onwards. After my cleaning efforts, it now worked first time so that was another bonus to the afternoon.

This afternoon, Meg and I had a regular i.e. timetabled, telephone appointment with one of the doctors from our practice. We spent a lot of time discussing some of Meg’s medication which seems to be unavailable so he is going to try to expedite this or prescribe another. His advice was all a bit general but I was pleased that he seemed as concerned about my health as well as that of Meg as it is important that I am kept going to keep ‘the whole show on the road’.

November was heralded last night by some exceptionally strong winds and heavy rain and much of this persisted throughout the day. Having picked up our newspaper, we battled our way through the rain in the Waitrose carpark and even had to resort to an umbrella to ensure that we were not absolutely soaked on our way into the cafe. There, we met up with seasoned World Traveller and one of our regular pre-pandemic regulars and we enjoyed our weekly chat. We chatted about how our friend quite regularly played bowls and she was telling me about a recent match with a team from Solihull which the Bromsgove team expected to lose but actually won, much to the disgust of their opponents who responded by handing out a heap of sarcastic comments. They also say that croquet can be a vicious game with many undercurrents but I have never played the game so all of this is news to me. Finally, we made our way home and then I prepared for my weekly Pilates class which involved battling with the elements again. It was not too bad walking down to my class but the heavans seemed to open when the class was over so it was a pretty unpleasant walk home. The afternoon turned out not to be a restful one because as soon as lunch was completed and the dishes washed up and put away then our hairdresser came along, quite promptly, and Meg was due to have a perm which actually takes up a lot of the afternoon. We commiserated with our hairdresser whose father had died yesterday afternoon. Hw was a ripe old 96 year old and his death was anticipated but it is always a bit of a shock when the event actually occurs.

There is some news emerging this evening which suggests that Boris Johnson is courting several ‘speakers circuits’ which, if he is engaged and carries on with a variety of speeches for several years, could generate him an income of millions of pounds. I suspect that as he a supreme narcissist, Boris Johnson would not welcome a re-entry into the British political scene if it were not possible for him to be top dog anymore. Given the likely defeat of the Conservatives in the next election in two years time and then a possible ten years in opposition, I do not see Boris Johnson as being at all attracted to this type of political role so it would not surprise me if he were to walk away from British politics. Meanwhile, in the domestic British scene, a lot of attention is bing directed towards the feisty performance of Suella Braverman in the House of Commons yesterday. She actually gave vent to an infamous phrase the effect that the public needs to know which party is serious about ‘stopping the invasion’ of migrants on the southern coast of the UK. The use of the word ‘invasion’ has generated howls of protest but there is a massive political divide at work here. Members of the ERG (members of the European Research Group) who crowded in to the Commons yesterday to give support to the Home Secretary were ecstatic about the use of the use of the phrase whereas the counter-reaction was that this was deliberately inflammatory language designed to appeal to certain sections of the electorate. Even Braverman’s own deputy, the immigration minister Robert Jenrick has argued that he would not use language like this which has the effect of demonising some very distressed migrants.

The population as a whole are being ‘softened up’for some very wide ranging tax increases in the forthcoming budget in just over two weeks time. The Treasury has let if be known that they have ‘agreed on the principle that those with the broadest shoulder should be asked to bear the greatest burden’ and this effectively stamps out Liz Truss’s trickle-down economics. A further warning is being given that ‘given the enormity of the challenge, it is inevitable that everybody would need to contribute more in tax in the years ahead’ So it is pretty evident that a fairly hostile reaction is going to be expected from the nation’s elite but they have had it pretty good during the last twelve years of a conservative governnment and can probably stand the pain. One way or another, the country has got to find some £40-£50 billion and evidently this has got to come from somewhere if it cannot be borrowed. Although the public sector has already been cut to the bone, there is chatter of still more public sector cuts, probably to be achieved by only offering pay rises of 2% (when the inflation rate is 10%, so an effective 8% cut in pay).

Attention next week will switch to the American mid-term elections in a society which is bitterly divided. It is possible that the Republicans will be able to take control of both the House of Representatives and also the Senate which will make any Democratic legislation almost impossible to achieve in the next two years. The Republicans, many of whom believe that Trump was defrauded of the last Presidential election, are also seizing control of the electoral machine in various states which means that the Reublican party will control all aspects of the eletoral processes and even deny their own State legislators any oversight in the case of either fraud, malfeasance or voter suppression (which is quite likely in Republican controlled areas)

After a dullish start, we thought today was going to turn out to be quite a mild day. We popped into our local, friendly newsagent and I opined to the newsagent’s wife that I really didn’t like the month of November and although tomorrow is the first of the month, in my mind November is always the month to be lived through rather than enjoyed. But she informed me that it was her husband’s birthday towards the end of the month so that was something to which she could look forward. When the couple were getting me my newspaper, and thinking of our previous conversation, I remarked ‘Towards the end, then’ – but the newsagent thought I was referring to his life as a whole and remarked that he intended to live for a few more years yet! We all had a giggle at this misunderstading and then we progressed on to Waitrose where I needed to pick up a few things. I noticed that in the self-service coffee machine area, they had a notice informing customers that the ‘free to Waitrose customers’ was due to resume at the end of the week. I expressed my pleasure to one of the long standing staff members and they told me that although it involved more work for the staff keeping the machines topped up and maintained, they knew that it did pull the customers in. In the past, some customers had abused this system just popping in for a ‘free coffee’ so when the service resumes, one is going to have to swipe one’s Waitrose card to legitimise the free drink. Obviously, this was good news for us and the pandemic had evidently caused the demise of the service a year or so back but it is always good to see things resume. We had our normal comestibles and drink of coffee in the park and admired the autumnal colours, which is always a source of delight. On the way back home, we called by the house of our Irish friends on the main Kidderminster road as we had not seen them for a week or so. They had been away on an ‘instant’ holiday on a pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi – a trip in which Meg and I intended to participate before the pandemic and the travel restrictions put paid to our plans. But our friends told us that we had been saved from ourselves as the trip had proved quite arduous for some of the elderly and disabled members of the pilgrimage. Apparently, there was a lot of walking involved and in Assisi, in particular, up some quite steep hills which was too much for some. So Meg and I were relieved that this was a potential disaster avoided and, for once, home might be the better place to be.

We had our lunch at midday,finishing off the beef which we started yesterday. To make a change from the almost daily baked potato, I prepared some carrots and the portion for Meg I glazed in some honey just at the end of the cooking process so she was highly appreciative of this. This afternoon, I finished off the little projectI had set for myself which was to catalogue and document the CDs that I have relocated into our little ‘music room’. Last night, Meg had gone to bed early so whilst I was on my own, I took the opportunity to arrange all the 50 CD’s in alphabetic order and to write the composer and their composition into a little booklet I was saving for the purpose. Then I typed up this information into a HTML table I had composed on the computer in order to create a type-written version. This all worked out fine and I did literally a ‘cut-and-paste’ job from my printout into my little booklet which is now residing, ready for reference, on top of the CD’s. In order to make sure that the glue had done its work, I took the whole booklet and put into under one of the legs of our (heavy) kitchen table for half an hour to make the pages were well and truly stuck.

This afternoon, Suella Braverman is having to appear in the House of Commons to asnwer questions about the deteriorating situation at Manston processing centre in Kent, described by the chief inspector of prisons as ‘dangerous’ and inhumane. It appears that Braverman has been ignoring the advice of officials and may well have acting illegally by detaining asylum seekers more than the 24 hours specified by the legislation, all of this in order not to move the asylum seekers onward to hotels which is a policy she privately deplores. At the same time, if the Speaker of the House of Commons allows this, Braverman may now have to answer questions about the reasons for her resignation. She has now admitted to six further occasions of transgressions and has issued a long letter to MPs and the media to explain her past activities. All we can say at this stage is that the storm clouds are rapidly gathering over the head of the Home Secretary and critical, of course, is the reaction of the Tory backbenches where there is already some unease.

Today was the day when the clocks go back one hour, so a certain amount of clock adjustment is required around the house. Some appliances such as our computers and the DAB radios fortunately adjust themselves but some do not so I have to trail around the living rooms to get our clocks adjusted. This went off without a hitch, after which I walked on down into Bromsgrove to the newspaper shop in order to pick up my copy of the Sunday Times. This having been done, Meg and I breakfast in front of the Laura Kuennsberg show where the Suella Braverman episode received a certain amount of attention but the interrogation could have been more intensive- after all, bringing back a Home Secretary who confessed to a breach of security after six days (when they themselves are in charge of the security services)is quite something, after all.

Yesterday, I had a bit of a brainwave and decided to undertake a bit of a reconfiguration. I took the mini hifi stero system which used to inhabit some space on a kitchen table and relocate it, and some of the attendant CD’s, into a quiet corner of one of our downstairs living rooms. This has made a pleasant area to relax if one wanted to just play CDs and/ or listen to ClassicFM in a different living space to the television. I have ensured that I have the CDs to hand but may well get them into an alphabetical order and record them in a little book. When I have some spare time, I will get the CDs catalogued so that we can lay our hands on what we may wish to listen to with the minimum of searching. I cooked and ate the Sunday lunch on my own as Meg was not feeling particularly well and took to her bed in the middle of the day. After some hours of rest she got up and I got her to try out my newly created music corner so that she could have some relaxation that did not involve manipulating the Sunday newspapers or watching the television.

The attack on the house of Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US Congress continues to horrify. The assailant is reported to have cried out ‘Where is Nancy?’ after breaking into the Pelosi residence and subsequently fracturing the skull of her husband with a hammer. This ‘shout’ is rather redolent of what the mob said when the Capital Building was stormed and it was intent on locating both Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, the then Vice President. Did they intend to kill them, if they had been caught, I wonder? I can predict that the Democrats will argue that this is what happens when political consensus breaks down and there is no middle ground in American politics any more. I would predict that the Republicans will argue that the intruder was mentally deranged and ‘nothing to do with them’. We will see in the days ahead, which account has most salience or ‘traction’ as the modern political analysts would say.

In the late afternoon, a middle aged couple knocked on our door and were seeking some information about our immediate environment as they were thinking about buying the bungalow across the communal green area. This was actually quite useful as I could give them first hand information about how the BioDisk system worked and how it is maintained by the Resident’s Association. They seemd quite impressed by what they had seen but they still had another property to view so how close they are to coming to a positive decision, I cannot really say. I gave the couple one of my business cards and indicated that I would be happy to answer any further queries that might have if they wanted to email me. In a case like this, I suspect the agents are not particularly helpful to would-be purchasers so I was happy to give them whatever information they needed in order to come to an informed decision. Of course, people look at properties in different ways but I think that one thing that impressed them was the amount of space afforded by the loft which is practically the same as the footprint of the entire house.

The political sphere today is full of gossip. In the Suella Braverman case, a lot depends on how quickly she reported the breach of the regulations as she tries to give the impression that this was fairly rapid. But an email has come to light in which some two hours after the original transgression she had asked the unintended recipient of the message to ‘ignore and then delete’ it. Whether the breach was self-reported or whether it was enjoined upn her by the Cabinet Secretary,amongst others, is a contended question. Meanwhile, in the Sunday Times, there are some jaw-dropping accounts of the behaviour of Liz Truss when she was Foreign Secretary. By all accounts, she made it her absolute and overriding priority to make a photo opportunity in which she figured prominently, even if, for example, this meant leaving the leader of New Zealand waiting to greet her on the airport’s tarmac whilst Liz Truss was scurrying around trying to get her photoshot taken.

Today was dull and overcast but not particularly cold. We were a little delayed this morning because I had some problems updating the payment system on a photos website which acts as a host to our 50th wedding anniversary photographs and videos. Fortunately, I found a solution to this as well as eventually locating the specialised and personalised name that I have acquired in order to access the website and which I had temporarily forgotten. Whilst I was at it, I thought I would have a dig around my system and my websites to discover some of my original wedding photos and music. Some five years ago now, I retrieved our book of wedding photos (all in black and white in 1967) and successfully digitised them all. But I had a massive stroke of luck because out of the photo album fell a little page of lined notepaper which was the organists original notes of the music that was played. We had remembered some of these pieces but not all. But, armed with the list of music, I could then go onto the web and find MP3 tracks of music that could have well been the original so this, at the time, was a very successful venture. However, by putting the music tracks on one website and the wedding photos on a rolling display on another website, it is possible to see the original wedding photos with the ‘original’ music playing in the background. This is evidently not the same as a video of the original but is a very good substitute which means that if anyone is sufficiently interested, they can see the original photos of which there are only 13 in number but accompanied by the mp3 ‘soundtrack’ with some program notes on each of the six pieces of music that we had chosen and some background to each one. I do not make a habit of looking at these websites very often but it does mean that I tend to forget the URL’s so it is rather good to refresh my memory once in a while. To sort of test this out, I got J S Bach’s ‘Wachet Auf‘ to play along whilst I was writing this blog but I still have to remember how to move from track to track.

Once we had eventually got ourselves going, as it were, we picked up our newspaper and made it to the park. We didn’t bump into of our regulars in the park but this was not a great surprise to us so after our elevenses we got home and made a pasta type meal out of bits and peces that we had in the fridge. Saturday afternoons are always a little quiet because we start to go to church at 5.30 and then have a bit of supper when we return at about 7.00pm before we settle down to either watch an opera or another video that takes our fancy. Tonight is the night when the clocks go back and this means that in the afternoons and the evenings it will be really dark, to which I do not look forward. At this time of year,though, I cannot wait until December 21st has come and gone as it is means it will then be getting lighter at 1-2 minutes a day. We have quite a few social engagements throughout the month of November to help the autumn pass a little more quickly. Thinking ahead to Christmas, though, I have managed to secure a booking at our favourite hotel in Harrogate not in the week before Christmas which would be horrific but in the week before that. We have decided to extend our stay from our normal three days to four so we may be able to see more family members this time around. In fact, given the success of the ‘family tea’ which we had for my sister’s 80th birthday, we could do worse but repeat this little event but I will consult a bit further on this.

Earlier in the day, I had been in email correspondence with one of my Hampshire friends who had accepted my offer to stay overnight with us in late November – he is breaking his journey in order to pay to visit to Leek in Staffordshire to research some family history. Because a distant cousin of ours who lives in Australia and has a lot of reseearch on my father’s side of the family, we will probably have quite a lot to share with each other. My mother’s side of the family tree is somewht murky but I can disclose the interesting but tangled story of my mother’s side of the family tree when my friend come to visit.

The Chancellors Autumn Statement has now been upgraded to a ‘full budget’ and will take place on November 17th. It will be a model of financial rectitude, not to say austerity. One way or another, the Chancellor is going to have to find at least £40bn to fill the black hole and another £10bn to reassure the markets. Rumours at this stage is that nothing – Defence, NHS, pensions – will be spared so we shall shortly experience Austerity Mark II (Mark I being the Osborne version some Chancellors ago)

Today started as a rainy and blustery day where a storm was evidently working its way up the country. Meg and I had made a tentative arrangement to meet with our University of Birmingham friend in the park today but after a quick text and telephone call, we decided to meet in a cafe aong the Bromsgrove High Street to which we often repair when the weather turns foul. So we met in the cafe and had a good old natter about some of the students we had known in our teaching careers. I told our friend the story how one of my students, a very bright nurse who worked in the Infection Control/Quality Control unit at Leicester General Hospital, offered me some consultancy which was to lay the groundwork for what was to become my PhD. At the time, John Major had just taken over from Margaret Thatcher and he was actively searching for his one ‘big idea’ which would delineate his premiership from that of Margaret Thatcher. Major’s idea was ‘the Citizen’s Charter’ and its sibling ‘The Patient’s Charter’ (the position of the possessive apostrophe is significant but we will not go into that just now) A major source of discontent was the amount of time that patiemts had to wait in outpatient clinics before their appointment started and so this was one area in which quality improvement might be implemented. I devised a short but sharply focused questionnire which was administered to every single patient in all specialities and my job was to analyse the data statistically and to provide a series of reports by consultant so that hospital managers could implement some quality improvement strategies. This led to a series of papers and when De Montfort University changed its PhD regulations allowing a member of staff to write a PhD around a series of published papers, this was an opening that I could not afford to ignore. So the papers were written, presented to international conferences, a PhD was written around them and this led eventually to a new job at the University of Winchester. The point of all of this is that the initial opportunity was opened up for me by one of my students and to her, I shall be eternally grateful.

After we had our coffee, I took the opportunity to get some printer paper from the stationers on the High Street and also to get some cleaning products from one of the cut price stores. The weather had turned absolutely glorious by this stage in the late morning and as it turned out, we could well have enjoyed a turn in the park. But we are always happy to chat with our friends. Then it was a case of getting home and cooking our usual Friday meal of sea bass served on a bed of lettuce which is both quick and nutritious. In the afternoon, I went through a series of newspapers most of which seemed important at the time (all the events surrounding the death and subsequent funeral of the Queen) but could now safely be junked. However, I did find one or two health-related articles at the bottom of the pile which are certainly worth a good re-reading, filing away and then to be consulted regularly. One of these related to a recently published book in which the authors (who had worked in Worcestershire as it happens) were advocating a way in which one’s ‘hunger hormones’ could be tamed that would eventually help to tackle related problems of obesity, diabetes and related health conditions. From the account and four page excerpt given in ‘The Times’, this sounds a very interesting and no doubt evidence-led approach so I have orderd my copy of the author’s book which should be arriving tomorrow and which I shall study with some care and perhaps attempt to implement.

Halfway through the afternoon, I read my emails and am delighted that one of my Hampshire colleagues has accepted my invitation to stay overnight with us on a night in late November whilst he on his way northwards to engage in a little research into family history. With the pandemic, we have not seen each other for years and have a lot to catch up so we are looking forward very much to his visit. A week later, Meg and I will hopefully to be attending an ‘Old Fogies’ lunch time get- together which will be the first for several years after an pandemic-induced abstinence. This meeting, too, has to be re-arranged twice as every time we settle on a date on a Wednesday, a rail strike seems to be announced for the same day so that efforts to find a communal date for us together has been frustrated. One video clip which is emerged this afternoon is the new Prime Minister, visiting a South London hospital in which one of the patients berates him and tells him that he should pay the nurses more and then he replies that the government is trying to achieve this is then told ‘Then you must try harder’ I suspect this clip will ‘go viral’ and I would be surprised if it did not find its way into the major news broadcasts this evening.

Thursday is my shopping day so I got up early, got some cash out of the ATM and then stayed in the car whilst it was raining heavily until it was time for the supermarket to open at 8.00am. Then it was the normal whiz around and I collected the newspaper on the way home and finally made it home just after 9.00pm. After we had breakfasted and unpacked the shopping, the weather started to brighten somewhat so we made up our coffee and elevenses snacks and set off for the park a little later than normal. As today was quite a wet day, we had not expected to bump many of our regulars and indeed we did not but nonetheless we appreciated the fresh air, the walk in the park, the changing autumn colours and so on. I suspect that the full glory of the autumn colours may well come in a week or so after we have had some frosts. Yesterday afternoon, our University of Birmingham friend called round with an offer of some cake which may well have been some birthday cake – we made an arrangement to meet in the park tomorrow, weather permitting, but if the weather is absolutely terrible we do have a favourite coffee bar (not necessarily Waitrose) to which we can repair as we have done on Fridays in the past.

The Suella Braverman saga rumbles on, as you might expect. In Parliament, requests are being made to the Speaker that Suella Braverman attends the Commons to answer questions about inconsistencies in the accounts that have been given of the security breach. In particular, was there was one breach or multiple breaches? Were the papers that were shared totally to do with immigration or did some of them involve security matters? Did the Home Secretary volunteer the breach (as she indicated in her resignation letter) or was she hauled before a group which included the Cabinet Secretary as well as the Chairman of the Conservative Party? There is a little twist in the story this afternoon as David Blunkett, a one-time Labour Home Secretary, is of the view that members of the security and intelligence services may feel disinclined to share secrets with their nominal ‘boss’ if they fear that these secrets may leak. This worry is shared by some Conservative MPs as well and the smattering of Tories concerned about Braverman means this is is not simply just confined to the opposition parties. The point is being made that some of our allies and information sources may be reluctant to share information with us if the Home Secretary has a poor reputation for probity. Another question that I have asked myself is this. Surely at the time of her appointment some senior security staff have given her a briefing (read ‘tutorial’) on how to conduct communications when you yourself are in charge of Britain’s intelligence and security communities. Was this initial briefing, refused or waved aside? Assuming that Braverman was properly briefed upon taking up her post, then has she either forgotten it or has she chosen to ignore it? The Bravermans and the Patels of this Conservative party have in the past shown a scant regard for the niceties of ministerial behaviour and they may both have been promoted beyond their competence. In addition, reports have emerged (on the BBC website) suggesting that, as attorney general, she was investigated over the leak of a story involving MI5. So it looks as though she may have ‘form’ in this respect. But the ultimate protective factor is that they belong to the extreme right of the Conservative Party and therefore Sunak may wish to hang on to Braverman in order to appease the right of the party.

This afternoon, I decided to repeat my recent soup making activities and so I have made some carrot and basil soup. I was a little short of coconut milk but have substituted some soya milk in it place. I have just had the briefest of tastes of this and am moderately pleased with it but despite starting off with some fried onions, as most recipes suggest, I feel that it is a little on the thin side. So having transferred it from the soup maker into a saucepan, I think I am going to try a little powdered potato as a thickening agent and see how much of a difference this makes. When I went shopping this morning, I bought some celery as well as a swede so in the days ahead I know I can prepare a traditional ‘winter root vegetables’ soup which I have tried often in the past and where I have always achieved good results. If I see any celeriac on the supermarket shelves, then this has a wonderful reputation as a warming winter soup. Also, of course, there must be masses of pumpkins around ready for the autumnal festivities so this is something else with which to experiment in the days ahead. If I want to be more adventurous, there is also a pumpkin and ginger soup for which Jamie Oliver has a recipe which I have seen on the web.