By this morning’s post, I received the collection of 6 classical CD’s for which I paid 0.99 and for which I assumed I was going to be outbid but in practice I won the auction. I did pay £3.50 for the postage but when I glanced at the stamps that had been used, the package had cost £4.50 to post. I did feel a tang of regret for the person who had sold it to me because with the low auction price being all used up to assist on the postage, I had, in effect, received the CDs for nothing – and, by the same token, the seller had received nothing for his CDs. I have started playing these CDs and one was a series of violin concertos played by Nigel Kennedy. I did notice that the performances seemed particularly arresting and when I read the program notes booklet written by Nigel Kennedy himself, the information was given that the performance was under the baton of an oustanding Dutch conductor. All of this suddenly became extremely relevant because when one of the concertos ended, there was a burst of applause so the performance had evidently been recorded live. This helps to explain why I was particularly struck as I listened to the recording for the first time as live performances always have that extra ‘something’ that helps to enhance the overall listening experience. This morning, after we had breakfasted, we collected our newspaper and made our way into Waitrose to treat ourselves to a coffee. Eventually, our University of Birmingham friend turned up and we spent a good half hour chatting before we needed to go on our prospective ways but with an agreement to meet again tomorrow. When we got home, we had a cook-in-the-oven fish based meal complemented with some Cavolo Nero and then wondered what the afternoon had to bring.

There are some interesting parallels between the shenanigans of both British and American politics at the moment. In this country we have suffered the trauma of three Prime Ministers within the last year and seen an experiment in far-right, libertarian politics which almost immediately blew up and which ultimately forced the resignation of Liz Truss. But on the other side of the pond, we are experiencing quite a drama in the ranks of the Republican party. Although they lost control of the Senate, the Republicans narrowly gained control of the House of Representatives. What should now happen is that Republicans select a Speaker from amongst their ranks and then the ‘normal’ business of politics, which includes the swearing in of newly elected members, can then proceed. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is an entirely partisan figure. In practice they are the leader of the majority party, which makes them the equivalent of prime minister in UK terms. But there is a small ultra-right wing group of Republicans who refuse to endorse the current Republican Party leader Kevin McCarthy who has failed in every round to secure the 218 votes needed to win. The House will now carry out a 12th round of voting later today and, as things stand, it has been about one hundred years since the Republicans last failed to agree a leader. It is difficult to see how this impasse is going to be resolved as the extreme right will brook absolutely no compromise and, as the Republican majority is so small, the recalcitrant right wingers hold the whip hand. It is possible that the process of ‘democracy in action’ may see America lose all moral authority in the world as it is hardly in a position to lecture others on the princples of sound government when their own version of democracy is such a shambles.

On the home front, there is now a report that many voters for Brexit are now experiencing ‘buyers remorse’ Among Leave voters who now regret voting for Brexit, the top reason given for their change of heart is a general sense that things have got worse since the 2016 referendum, according to a new poll. Before Christmas, pollsters at YouGov asked 616 people who voted to leave the union but have since changed their minds for their reasoning. It came after the pollster found in November that a record 19% of Brexit voters now think it was wrong to vote for Leave. Instead of providing options to choose from, people were free to give their own reasons. Of those surveyed, the most popular reason – held by a quarter of people – was that things have got worse since 2016. The next most popular answer – given by 19% of respondents – was the state of the economy or rising costs. A total of 11% felt they were lied to or things haven’t gone as expected since then. But the present attitude of the Labour Party, which has not opposed Brexit, means that both of the major political parties are out-of-step with the majority of public opinion. Could it be that the ‘red wall’voters (ex Labour voting MPs from declining industrial areas who voted Tory in the last election) are now such an important group that they are still wooed by Conservative and Labour like? At some time, we must draw closer again to our major trading partner which, of course, is the EU.

Today was always going to be quite a busy day but everything worked out OK. Firstly, I needed to go and get the shopping done and whereas a few weeks ago, there only used to be one or two people waiting for the store to open, today I was eighth in the queue so the habit of early shopping seems to be catching on. Fortunately, though, a lot of the Christmas excess stock had been cleared away so this made the whole shopping process so much easier and this was what I call a ‘light’ week in any case. After I had picked up the newspaper en route, I got home and cooked the breakfast and got most of the unpacking done before it was time to get Meg to the dental hygienist in about three quarters of an hour’s time. This worked out fine as well and our friendly hygienist made some appointments for us so that Meg and I can synchronise our visits (as they had got out of sync after I had a special session just before I had a crown fitted) Then it was a case of getting home and having our elevenses before our hairdresser called around. She was slightly late but this is par for the course but it did mean that it was all rather late before we could have our lunch of quiche and some fried vegetables.

I started the reconfiguration of the audio that I have in various parts of the house when I purchased a reconditioned Polaroid BoomBox for the princely sum of £15.00 which included postage. I was very impressed by this product and I still am because the quality of the sound was superb from fairly large speakers and as well as the CD player, one could Bluetooth music over from an iphone and there was, of course, an FM radio available as well. I was idly looking through the listings of eBay to see if other Boomboxes were on offer at a similar price and then stumbled across a little technology company in Cambridge who trade under the name of OakCastle. Following some links, I discovered a firm called XSonly and they evidently specialised in selling off ‘overstocks’ as well as refurbished products. What took my eye was the fact that one could buy a model similar to the Polaroid but with a USB port that could evidently play music files stored as MPs on a pendrive (USB stick) and the model sported an aerial for the FM radio (which the Polaroid lacked) But the company also advertised a product that was advertised as ‘Opened – never used’ and this seem to indicate a unit that was not refurbished nor of the Quality A,B or C which is often used to describe goods with some cosmetic damage. This product was advertised as £19.99 and, if it were absolutely new, then it would be possible to extend the warranty of one year to a manufacturer’s warranty of three years. I have two projected uses for this Boombox. The first and most important use is that with a memory stick inserted, one has hours of music of one’s own choice available and there must be occasions when this is superior to ClassicFM to accompany one through the night. My unit arrived today and I am delighted with it. The colour is a more subtle shade of blue than the images on the web tended to convey. But most importamtly, it was supplied in the manufacturer’s box with the manufacturer’s packing and accessories. Naturally I have given it a bit of a workout and I was delightd that the USB stick was recognised immediately and started playing shortly afer it was inserted. I have only used a small fraction of an 8GB memory stick and already an experiment had indicated this has given me more than two hours of playtime. The FM and CD player work as anticipated but the Bluetooth function has not been tried out yet. As soon as I had ascertained that all of the basic functions worked, I got onto the manufacturer’s website and got an extended warranty for three years with absolutely no problems at all. So all in all, happy days and I can use this little bit of technology to give me whatever music I could like whenever I am doing a kind of job, for example in the study, when I want more than ClassicFM can provide. Just as a final piece of technology news, my computer mouse ‘died’ on me yesterday. Naturally, I thought about changing the batteries but the fault could lie in the nano-receiver which occupies one of the USB ports or in the mouse itself. I got onto Amazon and bought one of their standard wireless free mice, manaufactured by Trust and it arrived today. I am pleased to say it worked immediately (once I had removed the cellophane from the battery they had supplied with it) The laptap I am using in the lounge does have a track pad which is always useful when a mouse dies on you but after years of using a mouse, I am rather set in my ways and much prefer it if I have the choice.

Today was the day when our domestic help calls around and together we set to in order to take down the Christmas decorations. Fortunately, it was a case of ‘many hands make light work’ and the major work was probably the ‘undressing’ of the Christmas tree. We have managed to get everything we needed in a neat pile and tomorrow my son and I will make a venture into the loft where we store everything in a neat pile such that it is instantly findable next year when we repeat the exercise. In fact, last year once the Christmas tree had gone, the hall seemed so bare and denuded of light that I almost immediately went out and bought a plain but very tasteful occasional lamp which runs on an incredibly economical LED-based light bulb where the costs even at today’s inflated prices are a few pence a year. We tend to leave this on during the night time and as a daytime security light when we leave the house so it has resumed its place and its role in dark corner of the hall. Today, we got several Christmas cards which may either have been posted late or else got delayed in the stike-prone Christmas post. But another thing that arrived by today’s post was a little solid but extendable conventional solid aerial to go on our legacy Sony system to replace the white cord that looks a little unsightly, even if disguised. The new little aerial works like a dream and had a variety of connectors supplied with it to maximise the chances of a successful fitting. I find that in particular location, I get the best possible connection on Classic FM (fortunate!), followed closely by Radio 4 but Radio 3 tends to be quite a challenge (presumably because of the paucity of people who listen to it and therefore low transmitter power?) Because this aerial has worked so well, I immediately sent off for another one as they were cheap enough and this can then replace the one remaining wire aerial we are still using.

Eventually, although it was quite late by this time, Meg and I set off to collect our newspaper and then go for a saunter the length of Bromsgrove High Street. We called in at our neighbourhood Poundland and as well as buying some cleaning products, we found two more of the little plastic containers that they stock which has the advantage of having a little handle and also happen to be just the right size to accommodate about 20 CD’s. I have some more CD’s arriving in a day or so after an offer of mine was accepted on eBay and so any ‘currently played’ CDs are available quickly to us. Incidentally, whilst hunting around my other CD stocks which I have in about three places, I discovered a set of three called ‘Classical Calm’ and so these have become an addition to the stock I have in the proximity of our kitchen system. We did have a browse in some of the charity shops and bought a stunning and stylish looking little fabric utility bag, well protected with a lot of zip compartments and complete with a couple of matching purses. We did not see anything else that took our fancy and therefore made getting home a priority so that I could get on with cooking a late pasta meal.

Rishi Sunak has been receiving a lot of press coverage this afternoon as he attempts to give the current government some degree of vision for the future. The current pledges are to to halve inflation, to grow the economy, to reduce debt, to cut hospital waiting lists, and to stop migrant crossings. Many of these will happen anyway such as inflation coming down- and is growing the economy of 0.01% next year really worth the paper it is written on? Some commentators, such as Beth Rigby of Sky News, have pointedly asked the Prime Minister why when the NHS is on its knees and there is a massive cost-of-living crisis, an unelected Prime Minister and the third in a row should be believed or given any credibility for a moment? Given the scale of problems that most families in the country are facing at the moment, the impression is rather being given of ‘the boy who stood on the burning deck’ This is a literary illusion which is quite well known but the full reference is ‘The boy stood on the burning deck. Whence all but he had fled.’ It is the story of Louis de Casabianca at the Battle of the Nile, a boy sailor who remains at his post until it finally explodes in a deluge of smoke and flame. The other story this afternoon is the news that as people are desperately trying to fight off seasonal coughs and colds not to mention ‘flu, the common over-the-counter remedies seem to be in very short supply. There must be a story within a story here but apart from factors being quoted such as ‘supply line deficiencies’ and ‘heavy seasonal demand’ I have not yet managed to find a plausible explanation why the country seems to be running short of such basic commodities. It all adds to the sense that the whole counry is falling apart before our very eyes.

So a Tuesday has dawned which means that we enter into our Tuesday routines. After we pick up the daily newspaper, Meg and I go to our local Waitrose because, in normal circumstances, we meet up to three of our pre-pandemic friends here each Tuesday morning. But today, everything seemed unusually quiet and none of our normal friends made an appearance. The counter assistant remarked how quiet the store was and the rest of the town as well, so that it appears that after the New Year holiday and celebrations, it is taking a little time to settle down and things to get returned to their ‘normal’ routines and rhythms. The weather was not particularly cold today but it was certainly wet and blustery and it seems that these conditions would be similar across much of the country as a huge band of rain sweeps its way across the country. So I made my way down to my usual Pilates class and, needless to say, after a gap of a week and filled with lots of Yuletide goodies, we all found that what comes easily to us took that little more effort this week. On my way home, I popped into our local Asda because I wanted to buy one or two of those ‘thin’ type calendars, one of which we hang up in the kitchen to record birthdays throughout the year and the second of which we have in our bedroom more because of custom and habit than any other reason. There was not a great deal of choice but avoiding Disney/cute kittens/puppies, settled on a National Trust ‘Coast and Countryside’ for one location and ‘Baby Animals’ for the other. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is the day when our domestic help calls around and very welcome she will be as we have not seen her for a fortnight. Tonight, I might do a quick scurry around removing some of the Christmas decorations and tomorrow our domestic help and I can ‘undress’ the Christms tree and this, too, can be put away until next year. I normally spend the minimum of time necessary to decorate the house so that clearing away the decorations can also be done expeditiously when the moment arrives.

At the top of the political agenda today is the most enormous pressure under which hospitals and particularly their A&E departments are facing at the moment, with a flood of potential patients even exceeding those at the height of the pandemic. The political commentators on ‘Sky News‘ are making the point that this is not a sudden emergency but one in which the demands upon A&E has been increasing steadily over the past ten years or so. The point is also being made that up to a third of the hospital inpatients have been certified as medically fit but with the absence of social care provision, there is no place to which these patients can be discharged. A lot of social care was technically provided by local authorities but their budgets have been squeezed and squeezed so much after years of austerity that local authorities can no longer afford to pay. In fact, many workers in the social care sector now find it much more worth their while to leave their employment in social care and enjoy higher rates of pay as a supermarket checkout operator. Meanwhile, much of social care has been privatised and is run by rather nebulous private equity firms who engage in a variety of financial dealings. One such is for the residential homes themselves to be owned by a separate company, often with headquarters in a tax haven, whilst the care home operators have to use a large part of their budget paying ‘rent’ for the use of the residential home building. The story is told, and not offically denied, that in the early days of the pandemic when it was thought that the NHS would be completely overwhelmed that the government called an urgent, top level meeting with the care home industry. The chiefs were told it was imperative that hospital wards be emptied as rapidly as possible with the social care provision providing the care places needed. The are home chiefs replied to the government that they would comply but it would cost (probably in the millions) The government agreed and paid over millions of pounds to the care home operators. Within minutes of receiving large cheques from the governmnt, most of this money was siphoned off into obscure off-shore private equity companies and tax havens never to be seen again. So the solution to this problem is to allow local authorities to run the residential care that they used to do decades ago, fund them properly, pay the staff the relevant rates to constitute a career structure and to fund all of these through increases (steep if necessary) in National Insurance rates. Of course, none of this is going to happen and the sector limps on from crisis one winter to an even more severe crisis the following winter and so on. Meanwhile, the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, is blaming ‘flu, COVID and Strep A cases which does nothing at all to address the underlying issues outlined above and for which the government have been responsible for the last decade.

Today is one of those strange days when one is not quite sure whether the Bank Holiday associated with New Year’s Day has been transferred to the following day or not. Meg and I decided that we would make a trip along the Bromsgrove High Street but before we got there, we made a call to see our Italian friend who lives just down the road to see if we can get together for a coffee and some nibbles. She has had a bad cold of late but we are hopeful that in a few days time we can get together as we have a fair amount of news to impart as we have not seen her for an extended chat for quite a long time now. When we eventually made it to the High Street, it was no surprise that some coffee shops were open but there was a very mixed pattern in the remaining shops with most actually being closed today. We had just about got to the far end of the High Street when I received a telephone call from our chiropodist. To my chagrin, she was waiting outside the house for us as although we had her appointment on our planning board, I had forgotten to look at the appointment this morning and assumed that we had a completely free day. So we raced home and had our feet done, by which time we needed to prepare lunch in any case. I was feeling a little fortunate this morning as a day or so ago, I had made a speculative offer on a set of 6 classical CD’s (Beethoven symphonies, Fauré’s Requiem, some Nigel Kennedy and that sort of thing) for the princely sum of 99p and nobody else had bid so I won the auction. Admittedly I have some postage to pay on this lot but I am still very pleased with what I had got. This afternoon is one of those nondescript, dull afternoons where nothing much seems to be in prospect but now that we have the internet working on our TV we can browse the net to see if anything takes our fancy.

The media is rather full of scary health warnings this afternoon. There are now 100 times as many people requiring hospitalisation and critical care for flu then the equivalent time last year. It looks as though we are now seeing a double whammy of both ‘normal’ flu as well as new variants of COVID. One of these new variants is called XBB 1.5 and is causing some significant concern. Some studies have found that the strain is capable of evading antibodies from previous COVID infections or vaccinations so will this sweep the country? Meanwhile, hospitals throughout the country are reporting that they are absolutely in a critical state and two authoritative sources are saying that the number of ‘excess’ deaths due to delays in admission to hospitals may be causing up to 500 ‘excess’ deaths a week. This figure is a disputed one and undoubtedly, it is a difficult job to disentangle the relevant statistics. However,Parliament is still in recess and although the Liberal Democrats have been calling for an urgent recall of Parliament, it looks as though nothing much will happen on the Parliamentary scene for a few days yet.

Denis Healey, the veteran Labour politician used to say that ‘in war, the first casualty is truth’ This is particularly true in the case of the Ukraine, I suppose, but there is a report that the Ukrainians have struck at an army battacks in the Russian occupied Donetsk region. The Russians are publishing a figure of 63 soldiers killed whilst the Ukrainians are suggesting that ‘up to’ 400 may have been killed and another 300 injured. But a former commander of pro-Russian troops in east Ukraine who has emerged as one of the highest-profile Russian nationalist military bloggers has said the death toll was in the hundreds. Whatever the truth of the situation, it appears that the American supplied missile system which is incredibly accurate has actually wrought the damage.

Christmas time always brings with it the messages written inside Christmas cards (and occasionally emails and text messages) and it always good to get the latest news from those who you normally communicate with at this time of year. However, one rather depressing feature in 2022 is the number of our friends who have experienced quite severe illness recently. Of course, we are all aging together collectively and a certain degree of deterioration is only to be expected. But even making allowance for this, it appears that many of our friends have been particularly hard hit. I remember with some affection when Meg and I used to go off on Saga holidays for a two week (and occasionally a four week) break in January each year, to pull the teeth of the winter. One met many interesting people and in general our fellow guests were always lively and interesting company. But there seemed to be an unwritten rule that one never discussed health isssues because we were all of the age when things were going wrong with each one of us so there was no point going on about it. Those days, and holidays, are behind us now but we have a lot of happy memories of the times that we had.

Today has been quite an interesting day for a variety of reasons. I have quite accustomed to watching the New Year in on my own, complete with a small glass of whisky and my mobile to message New Year greetings to family and friends. Meg is normally tucked up safe and sound in bed but on this occasiopn she decided to stay up and watch the proceedings. So we saw the New Year in together, drank our whisky and then I installed Meg in bed whilst I pootled around a little before finally coming to bed. First thing this morning, I decided to embark on a little audio experiment. I have discovered a CD hidden in my collection with two of my favourite choral works upon it and I wondered how well it would sound on the little BoomBox (CD player) I bought recently and installed in the bottom of a bookcase. The volume control was turned up to maximum and did not distort the sound but I wondered if I could give things a little tweak by moving the BoomBox to sit on a little stool nearer to our settee which actually gives me an extra metre and a half which certainly improved the volume of the sound somewhat. I was just wondering what the effect of a longer power cable would be as the existing one is a fairly standard 1.4 metres long. My glance fell onto the bookcase and on one of the shelves was a bit of coiled wire and wondered what it might be. It turned out to be a power cable which was 2.9 metres long i.e. exactly my heart’s desire and I had no idea I actually possessed it. (How does one explain that, by the way?) So my little audio experiment ended with complete success and Meg came to join me on the settee whilst we listened to ‘How Lovely are they dwellings’, probably the most famous and certainly the most played track of Brahm’s German Requiem. By now, the morning was advancing somewhat so we made a quick oats-and-bran type breakfast as we had intended meeting our University of Birmingham friend in the Waitrose coffee bar. However, our breakfast was (pleasantly) interrupted by our friend who suddenly had the thought that Waitrose might not actually be open so we decided to meet on our usual park bench, each bearing a flask of coffee. This we did and I brought along a container of Stollen which we put between us and all enjoyed. We must have spent a good half hour or more chatting away before the chill started to get to each of us (an occuptional hazard of sitting on a park bench rather than walking) so we all struck out for home. Once we did reach home, Meg and I enjoyed one of those fish meals that cook in the oven and I have to say that we really enjoyed it after the surfeit of Christmas fare to which we have subjected ourselves over the last few days.

The afternoon brought two particular treats, completely different but delightful in their own ways. I must confess that I am not a great listener to Radio 3 which can be completely esoteric much of the time but we do enjoy a rendition of either The Messiah or a Matthew/John Passion broadcast typically over the festive seasons of Christmas and Easter. But I noticed in the listings that there was going to be an hour long programme illustrating the music of William Byrd (Elizabethan contemporary of Thomas Tallis) with commentary from seasoned choristers who had an intimate knowledge of Byrd’s work. This was one hour of relaxing and uninterrupted pleasure (and justified the relocation of one of our DAB radios so that we could listen to it easily) Shortly afterwards we viewed a very well reviewed animated cartoon entitled ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ which was inspiring and philosophical and designed to be enjoyed by people of all ages. Some people do not have favourable impressions of this film but the artwork was stupendous and I personally found it absorbing and inspiring. So we had two bonuses this afternoon. In the late afternoon and frustrated by an inability to watch any internet-sourced TV (I only got a blank screen when I tried to access it) I pulled out the television to see if there were any evidently loose connections. I did not not find anything but I made sure that every connection was well seated and when we got the TV back into position, we found that things were now working. So absolutely delighted by all of this, we promptly got onto YouTube and got a broadcast of ‘La Traviata‘ up and running, sung by Renée Fleming and Rolando Villazon. This we have seen several times before but we never tire of it so we are basking in the tunefuleness of it all whilst we have got everything working as it should. Occasionally I have buffering issues when accessing YouTube but we are hopeful of no interruptions today and so far, so good. What an audio/TV filled day but one that has made today both super relaxing, enjoyable and memorable.

We wake up today to the last day of the yer of 2022 and I imagine that for many people, it is a year best forgotten. The New Year is always a time of good intentions, wonderfully expressed on some sports gear whch I saw advertised in the Aldi supermarket middle aisle a few years ago. I think that the caption read that ‘Exercise is for all year, not just for January’ and one wonders how many good intentions actually persist beyond the month of January. According to the long range weather forecast, we should prepare ourselves for another spell of freezing cold, Artic air during the month and we could well have several public sector strikes occurring at the same time and reinforcing each other. Many will have credit card bills to pay now that Christmas is almost well and truly over and one would anticipate that the amount of footfall that the average High Street will experience will be radically reduced and quite a few retailers may well go to the wall. Today, Meg and I picked up our copy of the newspaper (about which more later) and then made for Waitrose coffee bar. Here we met up with a couple of our pre-pandemic friends and then our University of Birmingham friend turned up by prior arrangment. Fortunately, I had taken with me some spare bottles of damson gin/vodka and a big slab of Christmas Cake which we had taken with us but which we did not want to have hanging over us indefinitely over the New Year. So we distributed our little presents according to who wanted what and then indulged ourselves in some of the luxurious Waitrose large mince pies which they originally sold at a price I cannot imagine many people paying but they seem to keep halving the price every day until their supply is exhausted so at that greatly reduced price, we thought we would say goodbye to 2022.

The edition of ‘The Times‘ is always particularly interesting at this time of year. They devote a lot of the Saturday supplement (which today conveniently falls on the last day of the year) to some of the outstanding political cartoons of the year, as drawn by Peter Brookes, the cartoonist for ‘The Times‘. Reproduced are the one or two really prescient cartoons that are a commentary upon the political events of that particular month. What makes the cartoons so interesting is that Peter Brookes tries to combine the element of two current stories into one cartoon – if you have followed all of the political events of the year quite closely, then you can discern the connection between the two stories. Fortunately, a little commentary is added below each cartoon to jog our memories and remind ourselves of the events in question. This is a publication not just to be flipped through idly but lingered over with real pleasure because each cartoon always contains some little details to bring a smile to the lips.

We seem to have had quite a few little presents lately. Our Irish friends from down the road gave us some little Christmas treats both to eat and to drink so we have something with which to toast the New Year. And when we eventually returned home, our new neighbours had very kindly donated some of their freshly prepared parsnip soup to us to we will have this when we return from Church this evening. We are not quite sure what to expect in the church service this evening. I am not sure if New Year’s Eve has any real liturgical or religious significance in the church calendar. On the other hand, the death has been announced of the Pope Emeritus Benedict at the age of 95. It had been evident for some days now after the announcements of the present Pope that the life of Pope Emeritus Benedict was slowly slipping away and so I wonder whether any funerial elements will be present in tonight’s service. As it happens, Meg and I were in Spain with a cousin at the death of one of our recent Pontiffs – it may have been Pope Paul II. We heard solemn tolling of church bells at a most unusual time which may have been about 7.40pm in the evening and assumed that it must be an event such as the death of a Pope. The following day, the Spanish seemed to have organised an impromptu procession (a ‘romeria’ it may be called) and the local population had all got dressed up in their national costume and then processed under a succession of banners and candles (which, mysteriously, seemed to be suddenly available for sale) and we all processed from the cathedral church in Santiago to the city boundary (at which point we left so we do not know how it all ended)

New Year’s Eve has a tradition well known amongst the North British known as ‘first footing’ but when we lived in the South of England, people had not heard of it. Just after midnight, a tall dark man is meant to run through the house, entering by the front, bearing a lump of coal and leaving by the back, probably consuming a glass of whisky en-route. As I was part of a single parent household, my mother used to simulate this by tying a lump of coal round the cat’s neck and throwing it out of the front door – through which it would hastily reenter.

It was a busy day, one way or another. Very early in the morning, I rationalised one of those corners (is there one in every house?) where various things needed sorting out and putting away. I managed to rationalise a whole series of charging cables for mobile phones/iPads as well as a variey of plugs, adapters and other diverse charging cables. By and large, these are not interchangeable with each other so on another day, I will have to work out what cable works with which device. Then as it was a case of throwing our clothes on, collecting our daily newspaper and then heading for a friend of ours who is a French widow who had invited us for a ‘Christmas’ We were equally delighted to discover that our good friends, the Irish couple who happen to be the next door neighbours, had also been invited so we made up a very happy group of six. The conversation, jokes, reminiscencies and discussions about recent TV programs carried on apace for at least a couple of hours and then we popped home at about 1.30 in the afternoon. As we had been comsuming nibbles most of the morning, we did not need nor had we any real desire for much lunch so we did make do with a cup of packet soup before we started to think about the elements of our entertainment in the afernoon. On the spur of the moment, I did a last minute switch of two small occasional tables we have recently purchased to populate our newly commissioned ‘music room’. As a result of these switches, my heritage mini hi-fi system which I have relocated to our dining room to be used when we are entertaining now has its own little specialist table which is exactly the right size, and which occupies an unobtrusive niche and is a much better match with the surrounding furniture. The specialist little tables which I bought from the Oxfam shop in Harrogate now populate the ‘music room’ and the little table lamp which has an ‘autumnal’ look and feel shade now goes perfectly on the little oak tables. So all in all, although I was full of trepidation whether the switch would achieve the desired results, now that it is complete I am delighted I was bold enough to have performed it and I am more than pleased with the overall net gains.

This afternoon was devoted to a Christmas entertainment of our new neighbours who have been in their new house for about a week now. We had already bought a selection of party food when I visited the supermarket on Thursday so preparation was as simple as it could be. Instead, though, of balancing food on our knees, we decided to have our preliminary chats in our dining room and then, at an appropriate juncture, move into the dining room which we have recently tidied up considerably and where we can sit and chat with each other across the table whilst we eat. This revised plan was a great success, enhanced by the fact that I could have our newly music hi-fi playing some quality Christmas music gently in the background. When you meet new neighbours for the first time, there is always quite a lot of background information to impart and some of the questions we can answer whilst some (who is responsible for which fence) we cannot. I gather from the conversation at the end of the afternoon that they might be quite good soup makers as we were promised a sample of some parsnip soup enhanced with a bit of a specialist curry. Stretching back into my memory, I seem to remember that Baxters used to create a parsnip soup enhanced with a curry type spice but I may be mistaken in this. Anyway, I feel we have got off to a good start and I suspect that in the months ahead we may be sharing bits of our culinary tradition and delights with each other.

The media is naturally filled with the news of Pelé’s death who seems, by common acclaim, to have been probably the greatest footballer the planet has ever seen. The pundits are talking of Pelé, Maradonna and Messi but comparisons between them is difficult as they were of such different footballing styles. In 1958, he became the youngest goal scorer in the whole history of the World Cup and then scored twice in the final for the first of the three World Cups in which he played. Although the world’s greatest every player may have died, his legacy lives on. Neymar, the Brazil forward who moved level with Pele’s record of 77 international goals during the last World Cup, said: ‘Before Pele football was just a sport. Pele has changed it all. He turned football into art, into entertainment He gave voice to the poor, to the blacks and especially: He gave visibility to Brazil.’

This year, we have carried on with the tradition, well known in Yorkshire, to serve Christmas cake with a slab of cheese (preferably Wensleydale) on top of it. In my teenage years, in the the pub, the landladies used to serve this regularly to the patrons but I doubt the tradition survives to this day.

I got up at an early hour this morning and spent some time getting all of my Christmas card impedimenta (spare cards, envelopes, news labels, address labels, address books and so on) neatly put away for next year. Because getting the Christmas cards is always done in rush, then I find that all of this has to be tidied up at a later date and that later date is today. I need to ensure that everything is ship shape so that when the season comes along next year, I will be ready for the off.
Today was my normal shopping day at Aldi’s but when I got there at one minute to eight, I witnessed an extraordinary sight. There was a queue of about 20 people (mainly young men) and the minute that the store opened, there was a dash for one particular carousel in which a special sports drink, called ‘Prime’ was being made available in a special promotion. The special drink advertised as a ‘hydration drink’, contains mostly water added with vitamins and minerals and has few calories with no added sugar. I was told by a staff member that the drink sold at £10 but was retailed at Aldi for £1.99. This appears to have been a demand completely artifically created by social media (TicToc for example). It seems incredible to report this but according to Google, some people have been queuing since 6.00am this morning at some stores to acquire the drink and the queue has amounted to hundreds in other stores. The regular shoppers and I exchanged some mutters in which the common sentiment was that the world had gone mad, that people had more money than sense and similar sentiments. This should have been a fairly light week after the heavy Christmas shop of last week but as we are having neigbours around we needed to buy some types of party food and some extra alcohol such as a white, a red and a Prosecco to cater for all tastes.

After breakfast, Meg and I went on the road to a furniture warehouse which both receives and sells second hand furniture. We need a small occasional table for a particular use but when we got to the warehouse, it was evidently closed. It looks as though they may not start normal business for a few days so shall have to keep my desires in check for a few days yet. Then we returned home to have our elevenses at home. This afternoon, our son and daughter-in-law are due to call around so we did a bit of a tidy up before they arrived. Then we had an interesting afternoon, consuming some of a special sweet they had brought with them whilst we showed them some of the ways in which we had equipped and now use the room which we have now christened as ‘the music room’ My daughter-in-law and I spent some time discussing two outstanding documentaries that we just happened to see on the same channel last night. The first of these was an examination of the Bayeux tapestry in the light of modern knowledge and scientific research. By examining the tools of the craftsmen, for example, one can learn by what methods their long boats were constructed. The second program was fronted by Chris Packham (the naturalist) on the subject of Tyrannosaurus Rex. We now have the accumulation of much more scientific research that argues that this dinosaur’s history needs to be re-thought. For example, the absolute crushing force of the dinasaurs jaws has now been convincingly calculated. It is also probable that the dinosaur’s gait owes more to birds than to mammals and the huge tail was probably used as a counter-weight to the enormous head whilst it was running.

We have a situation in which travellers coming from China are not, as yet, tested when they enter the UK. It is now known that the main airport in the Italian city of Milan started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai on 26 December and discovered that almost half of them were infected. So are we risking missing new variants by not testing people from COVID hotspots? The UK, which was led by PM Boris Johnson when the pandemic took hold in 2020, has been criticised for its handling of the public health crisis, having been slow to spot the infections arriving and late with a lockdown compared to other major countries. The big worry for scientists and officials is new variants entering the UK which could be more virulent and more contagious than the ones already circulating. My own guess on all of this, and it is only a guess, is that the UK will impose restrictions but maybe it is a case of ‘too little – too late’

Tomorrow will be quite a full day for us as we have accepted an invitation for coffee in the morning with our French friend down the road. We have a slight clash of engagements as we also got an invite to visit our Irish friends who happen to live next door but we will have to seize another opportunity whilst we can. We are then entertaining our new neightbours from across the green who only moved in a week ago so this will prove to be a useful ‘getting to know each other’ afternoon tea.

The weather today has been wet and windy all day, but not particularly cold although unpleasant enough. After Meg and I had breakfasted, we made a little excursion along Bromsgrove High Street to buy a few things not available in the supermarket. We made a trip to the Age Concern furniture shop wondering if they have a small occasional table for which we have a need. As is often the case, the only thing we really fancied was already sold (and at a very good price just to rub salt into the wound) Undeterred, we pressed onto the well known Cobblers shop which had sold me a replacement watch strap a week or so ago. This had never functioned exactly as it should have done as the central spigot was just a tad too short which meant that it would not engage properly in its intended ‘hole’ thus popping out and rendering the watch strap (and hence the watch) unusuable. In the shop, the assistant confirmed our diagnosis that there was probably a manufacturing fault but rather than suppling us with a new watch strap just replaced the buckle at the end (which I did not know you could do). This now works perfectly and the shop replaced the buckle free of charge to us (they have an excellent reputation for quality service – I use them to glue back the leather band which runs around the rim of my leather hat when it works its way loose after a year or so) We then proceeded on our way and bought some cosmetics from one of the stores we use regularly in the High Street. So we proceeded back home to warm ourselves up with a packet soup in a cup before we started to prepare lunch. On our way into our house, we noticed that our new neighbour was bobbling about doing some outside work and so we seized the opportunity to ask him amd his wife around for the traditional Christms tea-with-neighbours (mince pies and sherry?) and they confirmed later in a phone call that they can pop around on Friday, to which we can look forward.

This afernoon, there was broadcast the full length feature film of ‘Dad’s Army’ with the original cast and although we had seen this several times before, it was the kind of film in which you can read in the background or what have you if you did not want to give the film your undivided attention. The scene in which two German airmen parachuted out of their stricken plane reminds me of story that I was told whilst I was resident in Hampshire in the South of England. The story was told that in the Battle of Britain a young German airman was shot down and the location of the parachute was located on neighbouring moorland by the local group of fierce women who provided a type of territorial defence source. These doughty women made their way rapidly to the location of the young airman who who was obviously terrified and knowing that he could not evade capture, he put up his hands as the universal signature of surrender and cried out ‘Don’t shoot’ The reply from the monstrous regiment of women was quintessentially English and was to the effect ‘We do not do that kind of thing – we are British. Would you like a cup of tea?’

A fairly extraordinary event is unfolding within the confines of China, with the rest of the world looking on in a kind of fascinated horror. With China’s strict zero-Covid policy scrapped, the virus has swept through the country, leaving over 50% of the population of Beijing thought to have been infected – and the city’s hospitals are feeling the strain. There are a few videoclips of patiets lying on the floors of hospital wards as there are insufficient beds and there is an assumption that 50% of the patients will die of COVID. The root of the problem lies in the fact that the Chinese relied upon an exceptionally strict lockdown policy in order to contain the virus, trying to stamp out transmission by effectively confining people to their houses for weeks at a time. As this was the major thrust of policy, comparatively little effort was paid to vaccinating the population – the elderly were left very unvaccinnated compared with us in the West and the Chinese elderly population were in any case a little suspicious of Western technology, favouring of course traditional Chinese medicine. The Chinese authorities are now reaping the whirldwind and one wonders whether they import much superior vaccines developed in the West at the risk of losing considerable face or whether they are prepared to watch their population die in hundreds of thousands. Presumably, this is quite a risk to the rest of the world as well and several countries are already insisting on a COVID free certificate before it will admit visitors from China. The Chinese, paradoxically, are soon to relax all of the controls upon their citizens travelling abroad so we have the possibility of a significant source of infection to the rest of the world. The attitude of the World Health Organisation seems unclear and I have not heard of any announcements from them to date.