We always knew that today was to be quite an extraordinary day in the political life of the nation, but more of that later. Today is the day when our domestic help calls around to do her bit and, as always, we always have a chat about holidays and the like. Our domestic help is going on holiday next week so we were coordinating plans for when we see her in a couple of week’s time. In the meanwhile, Meg and I made sure that we could walk down to the park and get back in plenty of time for Prime Minister’s Questions. It was a fine day but a little cloudy overall which made the atmosphere feel somewhat muggy but we wandered down, bumped into some acquaintances in the park and then walked back in plenty of time for parliamentary proceedings at 12.00pm. PMQ as it is is popularly known was quite an event to behold. To be sure, there were rows and rows of Tory MPs sitting in their place but they were generally stony faced. Boris Johnson as you might expect was full of his usual bluster which often ‘cuts it’ with his parliamentary party but not today. In fact, one could say that each evasion or inability to answer pointed questions got more and more damning. Keir Starmer put on a pretty devasting performance and although they were well rehearsed, there were one or two noteworthy attack lines. One of these was ‘the first recorded case of the sinking ship fleeing the the rats’ Another attack line that must have struck home was addressed to members of the cabinet who had not resigned with the line ‘what a z-list of nodding dogs’. At the end of PMQ Sajiv Javid who resigned yesterday as Health Secretary is allowed a personal statement – by convention, this is is listened to in silence i.e. without any interventions from other MPs. The attack was quite devastating although with the emotion of the moment, one or two lines were fluffed. But the adjective used most often was ‘excoriating’ and the thing that seemed to have driven Sajiv Javid to resign was the way in which ministerial colleagues had been sent out to lie, lie, and lie again about what the Prime Minister knew. The initial statements from No. 10 was that Boris Johnson had no knowledge of the Chris Pincher sexual antics but this story kept and changing and changing again until eventually Boris Johnson said that he could not remember that he had been informed of these! MP’s streamed out of the House of Commons and, in the meanwhile, the media such as Sky News were keeping a running tally of the number of ministers from the junior ranks had resigned.

At this point, we had a lightning lunch and then I shot into my local supermarket to do my weekly shopping. This is because my son and I have a joint appointment with our financial advisor tomorrow which rather gets in the way of our normal Thursday morning shop. So I raced around the supermarket and was fortunate enough to get all of the shopping done and unpacked before Meg and I sat down to watch the Liasion committee of the House of Commons. This is a very powerful committee in the House of Commons and is formed of the chairpersons of all of the select committees. The House of Commons invites the Prime Minister to attend this committee once or twice a year and it must tax even the most agile of Prime Ministers who have a superb grasp of detail. Now it is well known that Boris Johnson has never had a good grasp of detail and it was very evident this afternoon as he flailed around like a drowning man clutching at straws. All the while, Sky News was running a total of the number of resignations which had reached 38 by the end of the two hour session. Towards the end of the session, he was informed by one of the members of the committe that a delegation of MPs including the chief whip,the new Chancellor of the Exchequeur (only appointed last night) and the Transport secretary had formed a delegation of cabinet members to be joined by several others who were going to tell Boris Johnson that the game was up.

Channel 4 News has extended its coverage by an extra half hour tonight and the media are camping outside Downing Street and inside the Parliamentary lobby of the House of Commons itself scenting that a Prime Minsiterial resignation might be near, even this evning. If Boris Johnson does not go, then the 1922 committee have agreed to accelerate the elections to its executive committee next Monday. They will then change the rules to allow another vote on the PMs future and this might take place as early as next Tuesday or Wednesday. Given the number of ministerial resignations, it is mathematically almost impossible for Boris Johnson to survive that vote but it is possible that the cabinet have persuaded Boris Johnson to quit before then.

Today being a Tuesday is the day when we both meet with our ‘pre-pandemic’ crowd in the Waitrose cafe and also the day, later on, when I have my weekly Pilates session. Knowing that however fine the weather, we were still going to go down by car we did not rush unduly to get going this morning but we did take the opportunity to write an email to our friends in Scarborough to enquire whether we could put some arrangements in place to meet later on in August. Then we went down into town to collect our newspaper and arrive in the cafe at at about 10.30. There, almost on cue, we met with three of our regular Waitrose friends and also Seasoned World Traveller who we now often meet in the cafe on Tuesday. We had a particularly jolly morning this morning with another round of story telling and general good humour before we all went our separate ways. On Tuesdays, I take the opportunity to buy one or two things of which we are running short before we returned home and I got ready to go down for my Pilates class. I returned a telephone call to one of my Oxfordshire friends to arrange a luncheon date some time in early August. We have both been busy in the last week, he with his daughter getting married in a marquee in the garden last Saturday and myself with our well documented comms difficulties.

After lunch which is always a bit delayed on Tuesdays, we had a restful afternoon whilst observing, open-mouthed, the wriggling and squirming that is going in No. 10 at the heart of our government today. Things did not start well for the government this morning as Lord MacDonald, the previous senior mandarin at the Foreign Office revealed that the Prime Minister had been briefed in person of the fact that Chris Pincher had been warned about his activities (probably his groping tendencies) and he had not been exonerated. This put 10 Downing Street into a quandary as ministers had hit the airwaves in the last day or so having been informed (wrongly) that no specific allegations against Chris Pincher had been made. A Cabinet Office minister was then despatched to the House of Common to admit that Boris Johnson had been informed but that he could not ‘immediately recall this’. The Tory benches in the House of Commons were practically empty to receive this news but on the Labour benches, the news that the Prime Minister had had a convenient lapse of memory met with laughter from some, gasps of disbelief from others. In all of the years that I have been following politics, I cannot remember an excuse as lame as the equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework’ Because of all of this, I wonder what other developments may occur this evening as several Cabinet Ministers are unhappy in the extreme that some of them have been sent onto the airwaves to in effect lie for the government. The backbenchers are similarly unhappy and one suggestion that has emerged is that Tory MPs may well go ‘on strike’ i.e. refuse to turn up to vote through legislation, effectively making the business of government grind to a halt. So I am looking forward in particular to ‘Newsnight’ this evening as well as Channel 4 news that are both likely to be quite forensic in their examination of how the No. 10 machine is operating (or rather not operating) Tomorrow is going to be Prime Ministers Question time at 12.00, followed I believe, quite by coincidence, to a session where the Prime Minister submits itself to an examination of the government’s progress by senior MPs (a liaison committee which I think is composed of the chairpersons of Parliament’s Select Committees) So I think that Boris Johnson’s lapse of memory is going to come under the most intense examination, if not direct scorn, with members of the House of Commons.

Sporting events, and Wimbledon in particular, are dominating the airwaves for the next few days but tonight Meg and I are going to enjoy ‘Today at the Test‘ in which we can see the summary of one of the greatest run chases in Test Match history, in which England chased down an incredibly large total (of about 380 odd runs) to win the test match, and the series, against India who are one of the finest teams in the world. We have had a dramatic end to the day today. Boris Johnson gave an interview apologising for the fact that Chris Pincher had ever been appointed and almost implying he should have been sacked on the spot. At the conclusion of the interview, Sajiv Javid (Health Secretary) and Rishi Sunak (Chancellr) have both resigned and at least two junior ministers have resigned as well. The big question is how many more ministers will follow the two resignations from the Cabinet tonight although a few Cabinet members have sworn undying loyalty (although their days as Cabinet Ministers must be numbered) By the time we go to bed tonight at 10.00pm there may be even more resignations.

Today dawned as quite a bright and sunny day so Meg and I were looking forward to a walk down into the park today because in the last few days we have tended to make the journey to the park by car which shortens our walk somewhat. We enjoyed our walk today and bumped into a couple that we have seen on quite a few occasions in the past but not recently. It transpired that the husband has had a spell in hospital but was now recovering and had been out of hospital for three weeks now so Meg and I thought that he was making pretty good progress. Anyway, we enjoyed a chat with each other and our ‘Lickey’ friends told us about a utility program that rolls all your utilities (gas,electricity,phone, broadband and so on) into a single bill that seemd to get extraordinarily good value once you work out what you are getting for your monthly payment. I may investigate this in the future but at the moment am more concerned to get my BT full fibre broadband working for which I am going to need a new router and new phones (which BT will hopefully send me before my fortnight’s wait is up). Once I had dropped Meg at home, I immediately set off to collect my newspaper but, of more urgency, to pay a visit to the EE shop to see what had happened to my Voicemail. My son had tried to make contact with me a couple of days ago but the phone kept defaulting to saying’ Mobile not available’ or some such. Once I got down to EE, the member of staff tried two or three things and got my phone working correctly – there had been a ‘divert’ in place but neither of us could say how it got there in the first place. Even parking proved to be a little problematic as in the Waitrose carpark, run by Bromsgrove District Council, one of the ticket machines was ‘out of order’ whilst the other had been upgraded to accept only cards and not cash. As it happened, there was a operative collecting cash from the machines and he was soon surrounded by an angry two or three complaining customers that it was totally unacceptable to have a ‘cards only’ machine next to the disabled spot where it was quite possible that an elderly or disabled member of the population might be highly displeased by having to use a card (which they might not possess) all the time.

The Chris Pincher (former Tory Deputy Chief Whip) story continues to unravel. This is what happens in politics if you do not tell the whole truth immediately and attempt to dissemble. Two things have emerged today. The first is that Carrie Symonds (now married to Boris Johnson) expressed doubts about the appointment of Chris Pincher when she herself was Director of Communications at Tory Central Office. So the doubts about this individual were widespread. Now just today, No. 10 has been forced to amend its own story line. It now admits that Boris Johnson was aware of some of the allegations against Pincher, but felt he could not act in the face of unsubstantiated allegations. But even this narrative does not carry out a great deal of conviction. Whilst it is true to say that a person should not lose his post as a result of unsubstantiated rumours, it is a comletely different case if you are thinking of appointing individuals to a post where surely a certain amount of due diligence into a persons suitability should be undertaken. The fact that Pincher is a supreme Johnson loyalist who helped to orchestrate the ‘Save Big Dog’ campain which Johnson named the campaign to shore up his position and prevent him being challenged or unseated is pure sleaze. It is probably the case that the support for Johnson is slowly draining away, one might say day by day, and of course the longer the Pincher routine rumbles on, the worse it becomes for Boris Johnson as the story refuses to die and the notion of sleaze carries on and on. There are some political commentators who believe that the whole of this affair may prove to more damaging to Boris Johnson than the whole of the ‘partygate’ affair. First of all, of course, is the fact that Johnson’s judgement is shown to be poor. Secondly, the denial of any knowledge of Pincher’s background and proclivities now shows a Prime Minister who is more concerned about loyalty to him than normal standards of the probity needed. And, of course, it leads to the notion that Boris Johnson’s first instincts are always to lie, lie and lie again until the narrative has to be altered as more and more revelations come to light. There are going to be elections to the Executive Committee of the 1922 Tory backbenchers committee. A new committee may well change the rules and allow a challenge to Johnson within a year and that looks more likely than not, as things stand this evening.

So a Sunday morning has dawned again which means that I get up fairly early and then make my own way into town to pick up an early copy of our Sunday newspaper. Then the Sunday morning routine takes over which is  breakfast of cereal munched during the Sunday morning (politics) show, hosted by Sophie Raworth. The questioning of a government minister about whether Boris Johnson knew of the proclivities of Chris Pincher led to the following statement : ‘To the best of knowledge, the Prime Minister was not aware of any specific allegations’. Of course, the interviewer should have then followed with the question ‘Were you aware then of any general, if not specific allegations?’ but failed to do so. As Chris Pincher had a reputation as a sex pest and even Boris Johnson had said of him ‘Pincher ny name, pincher by nature’ (not denied by No. 10) then it beggars belief that Boris Johnson did not know or did not care about the reputation of the man who he appointed as the Deputy Chief Whip.  When the government minister called upon to defend Boris Johnson was asked how she knew that the Prime Minister had no knowledge of Chris Pincher’s reputation, she indicated that the source of her information was the No. 10 Press Office which is hardly the most reliable or objective of sources. One does get the feeling that eventually this MP will be thrown to the dogs and another by election will be forced upon the government, even though they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent it.

After we had some breakfast, Meg and I consulted the ‘Weather’ app on our phone to try to work out whether to take a walk or go by car if rain was threatened. In the event, we went by car which proved to be a judicious decision. After we had had our coffee, we were joined by Seasoned World Traveller but we did not have too long to chat because the sky darkened and we started to get rained upon. Accordingly, we walked briskly to our car and then got home to have an early lunch. We had a ‘spatchcocked’ chicken cooking away in the oven and it was just nicely done by the time we got home. We prepared the vegetables of a baked potato and some Savoy cabbage and then we found that one breast was easily enough for one meal. So we have at least two more meals of this chicken ( a breast and two legs), with the remains bagged up and ready for consumption later in the week.

After lunch, we studied the sky and then our weather app to see if we get the weekly lawn mowing fitted in this afternoon. Fortunately, the weather brightened a little and so I got the lawns cut only a day behind the normal schedule. It must be the time of the year and the combination of both rain and sun but the clover, both white and purple, seems to have gone mad on our communal grassed area but the mowing regime seemed to at least keep this under control. It seems that we may be having a few days of hot weather in the week ahead so this is a cue for me to get some much needed gully and border clearing done whilst I can.

I have started to think ahead a little of the trips and ‘staycations’ that we might have during the summer. The more I think I think about the hotel room we have booked at a four star in central Harrogate later in the month, the more convinced I am that with breakfast included we have got an incredibly good deal. It is my sister’s birthday in late August and as it is her 80th, we may well plan a further trip to the same hotel in August so I can treat my sister to some birthday celebrations. A very good friend of ours now lives near Scarborough and we may well make some plan to meet halfway, perhaps in York, where we can travel easily by train from Harrogate. We will probably be able to find a restaurant appropriate to our needs in the vicinity of the station so I think we shall try and get some arrangements made.

Now for a final political story. The Tories have promised that we shall have 40 ‘new’ hospitals by 2030 but the National Audit Office are going to investigate this claim as part of a ‘value for money’ initiative. It transpires that a ‘new’ hospital is so called whenever a hospital upgrades some of its facilities such as they do regularly in any case. Ministers and the health department have been instructed to refer to refurbishments or the construction of new facilities at existing hospitals as ‘new hospitals’. So the claim of 40 new hospitals is misleading in the extreme as we might expect from this government by now and won’t be delivered in any case.

After the wonderful day out we had yesterday, today was the day when we had to try to reestablish our comms networks. I started by getting through to the technical support of BT which happened to be an engineer working from his own home in Sheffield. He was extremely painstaking and was seeking to establish a full ‘log’ of the sequence of calls and actions promised two days earlier. He was very painstaking and methodical and promised that if he had to put me on hold, then he would monitor this so that if the line dropped, he could call me back on my mobile. I must have been on the phone to him for a good half hour after which I got transferred to a team which concentrates on re-connections. I had to go through the full procedures of setting up a brand new package with BT and a new telephone number will be allocated to me. When this happens, they may be able to port my old number back to me again but it was explained to me that this might not be possible and it was difficult to do. Nonetheless, I took the view that if broadband and telephone line were all with BT then this might be possible than if I had gone off with another provider. We are going to have four new handsets and a new router – the big downside to all of this is that nothing is going to happen until Monday, July 18th i.e. a wait of 16 days without the internet ‘proper’, email or a phone. But in the meantime, I am relying upon my iPhone and ‘hotspotting’ to the internet using this phone and so far this seems to work OK. If it transpires that my old phone number is dead and gone and cannot be retrieved, then despite the fact that I had recently renewed all of my business cards and address labels, then I might have to do the same all over again and friends/relatives some of whom are not IT savvy will only have an out-of-date telephone number (communicated on our Christmas cards amongst other things).

Meg and I were delayed in our walk to the park this morning so we picked up our newspaper and headed for the park. As it was spotting with rain, none of our friends were there so we did a tour of the pond and then came back home so we could drink our coffee in the comfort of our own home instead of sitting on a rainy park bench. Then we lunched on some salmon pan-grilled and served on a bed of lettuce and had a restful afternoon, reading the Saturday newspapers. In the late afternoon, it was time to go along to our normal church service. Today happened to be the feast day of St. Peter and as the church we attend is ‘St. Peters’ it was a type of saints day for the church as well. Accordingly we had a few extra ceremonies around the statue of St. Peter which adorns the back of church but we generally shuffle past on our way into and out of the church. In a couple of weeks time, the church is going to be the home of a ‘Bite-Size Classics’ concert  which is a part of the Bromsgrove yearly carnival type activities. The concert is free but donations are to be solicited to be donated to Ukraine refugees and I have no doubt that this will be generously supported. I suspect that some of the curious elderly population of Bromsgrove who have never seen the inside of a Catholic Church will no doubt come along if only out of a sense of curiosity. Apart from Edward Elgar probably having played the organ in the church (when it was still playable), the church is also noted as housing the grave of Tolkien’s mother. We happen to know where this is located because when our Christmas wreath is taken down (on 12th night) we have in the past put on this grave rather than throwing away the wreath entirely.

Little fragments of news have emerged from the Ukrainian conflict. The first is that that the Russians have lost one of their own landing craft when it was blown up by a (Russian laid) sea mine.The other fragment of news is that Ukraine has found a hard drive containing some 100 GB of Russian military data, according to the State Border Service. This mainly contains staff lists and some biographical data as well as some details of military hardware.‘Ukrainian law enforcement officers now have photos, characteristics, copies of passports, and other documents of the invaders’  the Ukrainian State Border Service has indicated. The local political news is that Chris Pincher, the Tory Deputy Chief Whip now notorious for a drunken groping of two males in the Carlton Club is now seeking ‘professional medical support’ presumably for alcoholism rather than his sex-pest activities.

Well, today is a  ‘White rabbits! White rabbits! White rabbits!’ day being the 1st of the month. But Meg and I had a special treat lined up for ourselves today as we had promised our domestic help that we would have a jolly day out enjoying ourselves in Alcester, which is a pretty little Georgian town not too far from us here. Meg and I have been there about three times before and there are two particular attractions to the town. The first of these is that there are about six or seven really high quality charity shops up and down the High Street and we a share a weakness with our domestic help of loving to browse for clothes, bric-a-brac and whatever other bargains seem to be going. Secondly, there is a very old coaching inn with parking just outside which does the most magnificent home cooked lasagnes and other similar meals which it makes avalable in the middle of the day at ‘pensioner’ prices which cannot be much more than cost price. So we set off for there mid-morning and after collecting our newspapers, we got there in good time and treated ourselves to a super coffee and stem ginger cookies at a venue along the High Street. Then it was time to get our shopping done in earnest. We bought Meg quite a stunning dress whilst our domestic help bought herself a decanter and glasses set. I treated myself to a lightweight outdoor rainwear jacket which will go nicely over my leather jacket if I happen to get caught outside in a shower, as well as a little case for a laptop which will be marvellous  for the occasions when we go away and we need to take our MacBook with us. By now, it was lunchtime so we did go off to our restaurant down the road and, true to form, we did have some magnificent lasagne and a crunchy salad which filled us up so much that we had no room for the delicious sweets they were throwing in for a couple of pounds extra. Then it was off to another charity shop or so and then we popped to a shop at the end of the High Street who always has a magnificent display of pot plants to buy and, once again, our domestic help had to have some of her favourites. A slightly disconcerting thing is that all during the day I have had my phone next to to me expecting to get a call from a BT manager somewhere in the country to resolve my comms problems from yesterday and, of course, the phone call never came. So eventually we got home having had a really enjoyable ‘day out’

During the course of the day, some political news has been developing. The Deputy Chief Whip of the Tory party, one Chris Pincher, resigned last night from his post as Deputy Chief Whip after a drunken spree at the Carlton Club (hangout of many Tory MPs). Wikipedia tells us that the  Carlton Club is a private members’ club in St James’s, London. It was the original home of the Conservative Party before the creation of Conservative Central Office. Membership of the club is by nomination and election only. In the drunken spree,Chris Pincher had groped two other men. The reaction from No. 10 and Downing Street was to accept the resignation and let the matter rest there, which of course it did not. After several MPs, both Tory and Labour, had complained to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance body, then eventually the whip was withdrawn from Chris Pincher so that he is, in effect, no longer a Tory MP. Some Tory MPs fear the Pincher fiasco could be more damaging than partygate for Boris Johnson – confirming, critics claim, his blind devotion to mates, terrible judgement and lack of ethics. Of course, the loyalty is due to the fact that Chris Pincher had helped to secure Boris Johnson’s election and subsequent survival of the vote against him but has has the effect of making a sleaze-ridden party appear even more sleaze-ridden. It may be the case that Pincher is forced to resign as an MP  – after all, a fellow MP was forced to resign for watching porn and surely groping two other men in a drunken spree must outrank this in terms of severity. That would mean in the fullness of time yet another by-election which the Tories would find hard to win under the circumstances but we shall have to see how the story unfolds in the days ahead. The finger is still pointing firmly towards Boris Johnson, though, as Pincher has had accusations of inappropriate sexual contact before, which he managed to brush off. So Johnson reappointed him as Deputy Chief Whip knowing that this MP had ‘form’ as it were, so it points to an incredible lack of judgement on Johnson’s part. 

I always suspected that today might be a fraught day and so it proved.  First of all, I got onto my internet provider to ask why my BT line had been disconnected after the super fibre cable was installed yesterday, Ominously, I had received a terse one line email which I read on my iphone to tell me my BT service had been cancelled. My internet provider said it was nothing to do with them so contact BT. This I did on about three or four separate occasions because each time I was out on hold the line seemed to go dead. To add to my frustrations, every time I was handed from one department to another (which happened frequently) I had to go through the procedures of validating who I was with a clutch of security questions. Eventually, I was told that the number I have had for nearly 15 years has been cancelled as of yesterday and cannot be retrieved. Eventually, I asked to speak to the operative’s manager who happened to be a lot more sympathetic. She indicated that something had gone badly wrong in the whole transaction beween the internet provider and BT and she would attempt to sort it out for me but it should take some time. She arranged to phone back at 3.00pm but no call came but eventually it transpired she was in a meeting so her manager had tried to take over the case. In the meantime, BT asked me to get onto my internet provider to find out what had happened. It seems that the information I was given – that I could take out a fibre plus contract and keep my BT landline was incorrect and I should never have been told this in the first place. Eventually, I landed up speaking to someone in the Contracts department who confirmed that I had been given the wrong information and I could therefore leave the contract with no penalty (or so they are saying at the moment) Eventually, I put to the manager’s manager in BT that the situation could be resolved if both broadband and the phone line could be moved onto in its entirety to BT. We are working on this as a viable option, we think, but BT are having to check whether the number taken away from me can be retrieved (even though I was told that it could not be) and for a contract price which is in the same ballpark as I am paying at the moment. We are having to wait until tomorrow to see what the final situation might be but there is an acknowledgement that the whole thing has been handled badly with mis-communication and wrong information supplied. In the next day or so a router will arrive from my present internet supplier which will have to be sent back and I will then have to wait for a BT router to be delivered and then installed. I have a feeling that this whole episode might go on for days yet but there is a glimmer of resolution – tomorrow we shall see. Altogether I was on the phone for about 2 and a half hours, constantly kept on hold, tarnsferred from department to department, told that it was a complicated case and so on and so forth. My feeling is that if everything in with one supplier (BT) this might be avoided in the future – but there is still an element of doubt whether my discontinued number can be retrieved. As is happens, there is a programme on Channel 5 tonight detailing how terrible cutomer service is in the UK  these days with massive ‘holding’ waits whilst a few over-whelmed staff try to deal with thousands of disgruntled customers – but I cannot bring myslf to watch it, being right in the middle of it so to speak.

After lunch we had our hairdresser turn up  to give Meg a perm and a regular haircut for myself.I was telling our hairdresser my tale of woe and she told me of a similar one where she is trying to open a bank account for her mother but is having to turn up (early in her own business hours) only to make an appointment for another time in the working day (when she will lose income if she attends) I wonder how businesses are going practically bankrupt because the companies with which they have to deal (banks, utility companies) are giving them such a run around and not solving problems when the businesses themselves are trying to make a living. We might see, of course, say welcome to post-pandemic UK where I am sure these sorts of sorry stories can be multiplied.

More sequelae from the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US Supreme Court last week. In Kentucky and in Florida, judges have been petitioned and have at least temporarily put a halt to the automatic ban on abortions that Kentucky and Florida were due to impose. This may well happen across the country as many civil rights groups are petitioning their own state legislatures across the country. What an unholy mess!

If this blog has been delayed, it is because we had our super fibre cable installed this afternoon and, guess what, but I am now left without internet access. The installer told me to get onto my Internet provider to supply a router and when I got through to them, I was told that we were scheduled for delivery of a router but it might take anything up to five working days to arrive through the post. In the meanwhile, we were told that our ‘normal’ broadband would function as normal but of course it does not. Hence I am writing a text version of this blog which will be transferred into WordPress as soon as (or if) I get internet access back again. Thinking that the installer was due this morning, Meg and I delayed our walk down into the park but when I checked my notes, I discovered that the installation was scheduled for between 1.00pm and 6.00pm and in the event, the installer turned up just after 1.00pm and was with us for about an an hour and a half. The new cable had to be dragged from the GPO access point near the street and then we needed a hole drilling in the wall so that the necessary gubbins could be fixed internally and externally. Quite a neat and tidy job was done and now we await our router. I begged the long length of thick string that had been used to drag the cable from its access point and as this would just have been thrown away anyway, I thought I could make use of it to tie up some errant rose bushes.

This morning, Meg and I went by car to the park. It was a beautiful day and well worthy of a walk but we had been a bit delayed waiting around for the BT installer to call around this morning before we realised it was actually this afternoon. In the park, we met with our Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who was making progress, according to the ‘app’ on this phone, somewhere in Japan. He had managed about 8,000 of the 12,000 steps he had scheduled for the day and after a chat with us was soon on his way for another circuit of the park. So we progressed back home, knowing that we would have to have a fairly early lunch so we could devote some time if needed to the installer this afternoon. After he had left, we decided that it would be quite a good idea to immediately make use of some of the thick string we had been given and the first priority was to get it around a tall and straggling standard rose. This was not an easy job as the branches were somewhat straggly and the thorns incredibly sharp but I got several lengths wrapped around its torso so that when the high winds and rain come along, its overall shape will be preserved. Thursday is the day when each fortnight our paper bin and our garden waste get emptied. Accordingly, every other Wednesday is a good opportunity to get rid of some of the holly leaves that get swept off the path each day into an adjacent gully. Once this was done, I pulled our own bins into their collection point and then did the same for our immediate neighbours and also for the vacant bungalow across the communal green area.

When our friend came to stay last week, she gave us a pot of winter flowering jasmine which ought to give is a splash of colour in the autumn and early winter when the rest of the garden might be looking a little bare. So I managed to replant this plant in a pot with some good compost and then put it into position at the edge of a bed such that it can use a drainpipe for some support although I do not know if it is a very ‘clingy’ plant. But it was good to see that the mature sweet pea plant that I planted the other day and kept well watered was now starting to flower so I hope that if we keep this well tended, it will keep on flowering right throughout the summer.

A day or so ago, I FaceTimed my sister in Yorkshire and had a chat with her and with one of my nieces who happened to be calling by. I established a time in late July when we might make a flying visit up to Yorkshire and the last week in July seems to be quite a good time for all of us. So later, I had a trawl through the internet and the hotel in the centre of Harrogate in which we stayed last autumn was offering quite a decent rate. I made sure that the room offer included breakfast and then got an even better rate by aceepting the offer to book in through an agency I have used before. So we have booked into this hotel for three nights in late July and are looking forward tremendously to our visit in about a month’s time. 

Today we enjoyed our Tuesday morning routine which is to make a journey to the Waitrose coffee bar, knowing that some familar old faces will be in evidence. As we suspected, three or four of our ‘pre-pandemic’ regulars were taking their coffee as usual as well as Seasoned World Traveller who seems to make a point of coming to Waitrose on a Tuesday. I wouldn’t say that we were a noisy crowd but we are a little on the excitable side. During the morning, several of the regular staff popped their heads around the corner to say ‘Hello’ to us all and I am now wondering if they rather like the whole of the previous gang coming back as it helps to justify and sustain the coffee bar enterprise as a whole. As it is getting towards the end of my normal ‘shopping’ week, I rather welcome the opportunity of popping round the shelves to pick up some things of which I know we are short. In common with other supermarkets, Waitrose is having to reorganise itself to comply with the new HFSS regulations (‘High in Fats, Sugar and Salt’). These regulations are designed to ensure that HFSS goods receive less prominence and should be denoted from positions at the end of aisles and near to the checkouts. For smaller stores, like our Waitrose, this means considerable reorganisation throughout most of the store, and the practical consequence of this is that many familiar items now have to be hunted for and the overhead aisle signs are no longer accurate. So this meant that I needed to hunt considerably for a few staple items such as tea which is no longer where I thought it was. After our jolly discussions, it was time to get home and start preparing for my Pilates session in the middle of the day, As rain still threatened, I thought it wiser to walk down into town wearing a waterproof in case the heavans opened.

In my Pilates class, our instructor kept us amused as we all tried to balance on one leg for a minimum of 10 seconds. A very important study had been published in ‘The Times‘ which shows that if you cannot sustain a flamingo type pose on either of your feet for 10 seconds, then you are at almost twice the risk of dying within the next ten years. Even more dramatically, those who could stand on one leg with their eyes closed  were most likely to be well in 13 years time (the study being performed upon people in their 50s). Those who managed only about 2 seconds were three times more likely to die before the age of 66. Now none of this is absolutely ‘new’ knowledge in that the relationship between balance and the aging process has been used by physicians for a long time. For example, it is well known to GPs that an 18-year can stand on one leg with their eyes close for at least 30 seconds whereas for a 90 year old it is likely to be 2 seconds. The point about eyes being closed is that one’s balance without input from the eyes to adjust the balance means that one had to rely upon very primitive parts of the brain’s structure to maintain balance and this ability deteriorates wiith age, even amongst athletes. Having recovered the article from our vertical filing system (the ‘green’ waste bin for papers and plastics that we keep outside out back door), the article is well worth a detailed study.  But there is some room for hope because there is evidence that balance work for just a few seconds a day can bring health dividends for us all.

Tomorrow all being well we should have our super fast fibre broadband installed. This should have been done about ten days ago but tomorrow is the day of reckoning. I am just hoping that once we have a new router installed, that access to the internet is trouble free for us because over the years – from email to banking – we have all become accustomed to life with the net for all of our daily living activities.

Today is the day when Gislaine Maxwell is to be sentenced after her conviction but there seems to be quite a lot of courtroom darama to be played out so I imagine that the sentencing process will take hours. It is always a rather gruesome part of American style court proceedings that prisoners appear shackled in chains – as though escape were at all likely. I am sure that this is a part of the humiliation process and although I am not a lover of things American, I would surely like to see some of our bankers and other high profile criminals to appear at the Old Bailey chained around their hands and feet. In the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, the sentencing may well appear to be academic. Maxwell’s lawyers are suggesting a 4-5 year sentence whilst Government prosecutors are pushing for Maxwell to be sentenced to anything between 30-55 years. In the event, she was sentenced to twenty years.

Today we knew that we needed to make a trip along Bromsgrove High Street because we knew that we had to visit an ATM and we also needed to visit a local stationers where I had an item on order. Having picked up our newspaper, we then treked along the High Street and picked up some cash. Then we picked up the blank ledger book I had pre-ordered from Rymans and also bought some cosmetic items of which we were running short. We took the opportunity to dive into a charity shop and I treated myself to a brand new long sheeved shirt of quite a subtle blue shade (and a very good make). I am finding that my supply of pre-Covid long sheeved shirts are now getting frayed around the collar and cuffs so I find I am needing to renew my supply. The we went off to the park and drank our much delayed coffee for which we were gasping by the time we were installed upon our bench. In the park, we met some of our regulars – Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker for a start and Seasond World Traveller just as we were leaving. In between, we also exchanged news with a couple we meet quite regularly in the park but we have only just around to exchanging names so that we can be on first name terms with them in the future. It was getting towards 2.00pm when we got home so we needed to make a super prompt lunch, which we did. I steamed some Hispi cabbge in the microwave and in order to save some time, we made some instant mashed potato with ‘Smash’ to which we added  a smidgeon of boiling water, some butter and an egg.This actually makes for a very tasy mixture to complement the remains of the beef which we slow-cooked yesterday.

After lunch there were a couple of outside jobs which went quite smoothly. The first of these was our outside washing line that had drooped over the years but when I investigated one end of it, it passed through a type of ‘O’ ring and then secured by a cleat. Fortunately, it proved to be very easy to adjust to the right height afer which the washing line was cleaned down and we got a supply of towels pegged out onto it. In my travels up an down to the paper shop there is a little patch of waste ground and I had noticed for some weeks past that there seemed to be a capping stone lying around with no evident owner. Whn I collected my Sunday newspapers, I liberated this and brought it home in a plastic bag but I must say it was tremendously heavy. I suspect on closer examination that it may have been made with vibrated granite but it was certainly not simple cement. This afternoon, I gave it up a good scrub in a bucket of soapy water and it is now several shades lighter and of quite presentable appearance. I have pressed it into service to act as a weight so that the green plastic table cover we have on our patio table does not take off in the wind and I think it will serve this purpose very well. I estimate that it must be about 3kg in weight so I am sure it is not going to displaced very easily.

In the late afernoon, I FaceTimed my sister in Yorkshire and was fortunate to have a few snatches of conversation with my niece who just happened to be calling upon her mother. My sister is taking the death of her husband quite hard and I offered what words of consolation I could. The purpose of my video-call was to see if we could establish the most suitable time in the next few weeks for us to pay a visit to Yorkshire, now that we have seen Meg’s Uncle Ken in North Wales. We have agreed a timeslot some time in late July which is a period of time after my niece has broken up from school and before she goes off on holiday to Portugal. There are a range of hotels that we can think sbout – we used to enjoy B&B’s in Harrogate but parking in Harrogate is a bit of a nightmare and so hotels do have the advantages of generally having some car parking space available.

Tonight news has come through of the shelling of a shopping centre in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. The shopping centre probably had about one thousand people within it and the dead and injured must be numbered in scores. Western analysts are saying that the Russians were probably using out-of-date artillery designed to combat ships rather than being ‘precision guided’ to a military target  on land and these 1960’s artillery shells are notoriously unreliable. Nonetheless, one has to ask whether hitting a civilian shopping centre, even if aiming for the industrial centre beyond it, must surely constitute a war crime.