What an interesting day today has turned out to be. Meg and I always look forward to a Tuesday because it is the day when we meet up with our Waitrose friends for a communal natter. Today, though, we were somewhat thwarted in our usual get-together because the cafeteria in Waitrose was having a problem with its hot water supply and under the strict regulatory regime that Waitrose operates, the cafeteria was forced to close. But one of the staff who we know well took pity on Meg and myself and gave us a free cup of coffee and a pastry on the house for which we were duly grateful. Although we pay higher prices in the store than elsewhere, there are often some goodies thrown in our direction which, evidently, reinforces our loyalty towards the store. We did meet up with a couple of our friends but we had to content ourselves with standing in a convenient little corner of the shop to have a chat with each other. We learnt that the husband of one of our number had died in the last week which would normally seem to be quite a traumatic event for his wife and family. But he was in his 90’s and suffering from Alzheimers so after a brief stay in hospital, followed by his demise, I think, this came as a blessed release for him and other family members. It was a very cold day today but Meg and I thought that we would make a flying visit to the major Aldi where the products that we were looking for were completely out of stock. So I took the opportunity to buy some other bulky items which will lessen the load a little for when I do our main shopping on Thursday morning. After we returned to our house, we had a perfect storm of little happenings all of which complicated our entrance into the house. An Amazon delivery van had been making a delivery and it blocked our turning into our immediate driveway. Once this had been prompted to get out of the way I had to cope with ‘Miggles’ our neighbourhood adopted cat sensing some breakfast was in the offing and desperate to get inside the house whilst I was getting Meg out of the car and coping with two bags of shopping. Then the care assistant turned up a little early but we did not mind too much because this particular care assistant hails from Peru and we get on well with her. She revealed that having been exposed to some fragments of operatic performances on YouTube (on our smart TV) she and her partner rather fancied a trip to the opera and they had got themselves booked in to see ‘La Boheme‘ at English National Opera. She knew nothing about the opera or the story line so we have her a quick reprise plus a viewing of a rendition of ‘Your tiny hand is frozen‘ (Que gelida manina) so that when she goes to the opera, she will have some idea what is in store for her. I told her that she would need a good supply of handkerchiefs and/or tissues to cope with the dramatically sad ending (which always reduces me to tears or to ‘eye glistening’ at the very least. I then shot off to do my Pilates class (which is why the carer had turned up in the first place) but only managed about three quarters of an hour of this but my instructor and two class mates treated me a little like the prodigal son as, unfortunately, I had to miss last week’s Pilates class. So after a swift return home, we dined on fish cakes and microwaved vegetables, our normal ‘quick’ lunch after I get home after my Pilates class.

This afternoon did not entirely run to plan either. Last night, I had listened to an Andre Rieu concert on Sky Arts and I wanted Meg to sample one of these. These concerts of generally light classical music and some well known popular music pieces are put on with a maximum of showmanship and audience participation. They are certainly not to everyone’s taste and I can imagine some classical music purists rolling their eyes in horror. But these concerts are enormously popular in the Netherlands and elsewhere and I believe that it is necessary to book for months or even years in advance to attend one. But after one has watched for a little, the enthusiasm and emotion of the audience gets to the viewer and you find yourself carried along by the whole experience. So it was today and what was meant to be a ten minute taster turned out to be a whole afternoon’s viewing of a concert held in the main square of Maastricht. One interesting innovation was taking a choir and little orchestra from one of the South African townships and then having some play something simple but effective (an orchestral version of Pachobel’s canon) which must be an incredible experience for the kids themselves and may well have brought some resources from a moneyed European audience into their home communities. One cannot imagine anything like that from a British musical entrepreneur but it works magnificently well with a Netherlands venue and audience. The nearest equivalent is Gustavo Dudamel who has nurtured a young classical orchestra from some of the poorest areas of Venezuela to give lively (ie often standing-up) performances.

Today was the day when we were to attend the funeral of our newsagent from whom I have bought a copy of my newspaper each day for about the last three years or so. We got up in plenty of time, knowing that it was one of the scheduled days when the carers were due to call around. They did do so but two hours late by which time we were all up, washed, dressed and breakfasted. I am not sure what had actually happened this morning but we have to cope with carers turning up at unpredictable times. The weather was bright and cold with quite a strong chill wind factor, so it was not a particularly pleasant day to be outside. Nonetheless, we treated ourselves to a coffee in Waitrose knowing that we needed to SatNav our way towards the crematorium in Redditch for a service scheduled for 12.30. We gave ourselves a certain amount of ‘getting lost’ time but the crematorium was not as far as it could have been and there was fast dual carriage access to it nearly all the way from Bromsgrove. We got there half an hour before our scheduled slot but fortunately there was a warm and comfortable waiting room although we were certainly the first to arrive. Eventually the rest of the crematorium party turned up and I assumed that as our newsagent hailed originally from Bangladesh (although it was still pre-partitioned India at the time of his birth) that many Asian relatives would be in attendance. But most of the attendees seemed to relatives of the newsagent’s wife and I think that I was probably the sole representative of his customers. I recognised a couple of his nearby shopkeepers in attendance and the whole funeral party was about 25-30 all in all. It was quite an emotionally charged experience because his wife was particularly distraught and broke down into floods of tears whenever she embraced her relatives and indeed ourselves. I gained the impression, though, that she was delighted that we had made the effort to attend and we were pleased to have done so. The service had no particular religious elements but a lot of recollections and tributes to a life well lived. I think that his wife was so particularly upset because our newsagent’s wife and the newsagent himself were running their business, six days a week until his death in late November. I think that he may have worked at the age of 80 until only about a couple of weeks before he died (of asbestosis). So he and his wife had no retirement to speak of and of course his wife had been suffered the deprivation of both her husband and her employment within an incredibly short space of time. This did make me recall when we attended a funeral of the wife of our next door neighbour in Hedge End, Hampshire. After the funeral, as Meg and I were having a quick walk around some of the pleasant walkways in the estate where we used to live, we were recognised by a lady who was also at the funeral. She told us a story that she and her husband managed ‘The Hungry Horse’ restaurant (in a converted barn but owned by a brewery) The story that we were told by this lady was that husband died on a Tuesday, I think but the brewery felt that they needed a couple to take over the running of ‘The Hungry Horse‘ so the lady who was talking to us explained how she lost her husband, her job and her accommodation within about four days (which sounded traumatic then and still does today).

This afternoon, Meg and I were going to give ourselves the treat of watching the film of the Thomas Hardy novel ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ and this took up most of the afternoon. This version was the one with Julie Christie and Terence Stamp but I think I have seen a later version which I enjoyed just a little more. The scenes of the Dorset countryside are always stunning of course as well, as well as the evocation of mid 19th century rural life.

As we suspected, now that the House of Commons has reassembled after the Christmas recess, there is a lot more movement on the resolution of the Post Office ‘Horizon’ scandal. It looks as though the Business Minister and the Justice Minister are talking to each other, and to the judiciary, about the ways in which appeals and compensation can be fasttracked across at least 700 sub postmasters and perhaps even more. I feel that the the policians have realised, a little belatedly, that ‘normal’ politics has failed as it has taken a TV program to highlight to the public what has actually been known for years. The Sophie Ridge show this evening on Sky News was almost completely devoted to this issue and I would imagine that MPs of all parties want a resolution to what is being called the greatest miscarriage of British justice of all time. Even the Liberal Democrats (who supplied ministers to oversee the Post Pffice at the time of the coalition government) hardly covered themselves in glory, believing the Post Office but only now claiming (as Ed Davy is doing) that they have been lied to. But this is political naivety of the highest order – big powerful corporations will routinely lie to protect their commercial interests and the politicians should be are of this and be able to ask searching questions.

Last night, Meg and I attended a really enjoyable Twelfth Night’ party with our Irish/Anglo-Indian/French friends down the road. There were eight of us altogether which is a very nice number for a party of this type and, at a suitable time in the meal, we all ate a portion of the special cake which our French friend had prepared especially for this occasion. One of our Irish friends found the token hidden inside the cake and so awarded the title of ‘King’ for the night and was allowed to choose his ‘Queen’ (actually his wife) for the night. We had lots of delicious food, much of it traditional to the occasion and so Meg and I went home, well satisfied but some two hours after Meg’s normal bedtime. So we were not unhappy to sleep in a little this morning, particularly as we might have quite a busy day (for us) tomorrow. So after a delayed breakfast, Meg and I got ourselves ready and then popped down to Waitrose for a Sunday morning coffee – we did not expect to see any of our usual friends there on a Sunday morning but no matter. Once we got home, we dined on some chicken thighs, jacket potato and beans and what we had intended to be a scaled down meal after we had been feasting all last night, proved to be a somewhat bigger meal than we thought we would like.

After lunch, we accessed ITVX hoping to see the factual program made by ITV about the Post Office ‘Horizon’ (computer system) scandal but this composite program did not seem to be on offer so Meg and I viewed the last of the four docudrama programs broadcast during the week. This was itself factually based and one of the extraordinary things to emerge after 90+ appeals were made to the Court of Appeal was that of the £56 million awarded by the Court, something like £44 million would accrue to the lawyers (and their ‘funders’) only leaving the claimants with about £20k each which in no way covered their losses of earnings, businesses and so on. But this story continues to evolve and has made the main lead of ‘The Sunday Times‘ this morning. The latest evidence seems to be that over 700 sub postmasters have been sanctioned (some even serving gaol sentences) and a government enquiry is still proceeding. It also appears that the vast majority of the wronged sub postmasters have to appeal to the Post Office with the burden of proof upon themselves that they have been badly treated after which, presumably, they would have to apply to the Court of Appeal to get convictions annulled before we have even started to talk about compensation claims which could take years. Given that this scandal has already taken 20 years to get to this stage, the largest ever miscarriage of justice in the UK, the scene is being set for legal battles for years and years into the future. According to Sky News this afternoon, the government is ‘considering’ shortcutting these procedures but this might take special legislation. I would have thought that the government could have allowed a Private Member’s bill and passed an Act within a day were it to be so minded and certainly the imminence of a general election may concentrate minds. But of course, this might be crowded out by other concerns (the Rwanda scheme, floods etc.) to name just two. Late on this afternoon, I watched part of the Lorna Kuennsberg interview with Rishi Sunak, where the Prime Minister was pressed quite hard over a range of issues, including the truth of the observation that Sunak was initially lukewarm about the Boris Johnson ‘Rwanda’ scheme. Naturally, there was a lot of waffle and obfuscation and I witnessed Kuennsberg do what I wish many more interviewers would do and repeatedly say to their interviewee that they were not answering the question and putting the heart of the question to them again. Of course, we got more deflection, evasion, answering a question that was not asked and every other trick in the book to avoid a direct answer to an embarrassing question. It is no surprise that the population is losing faith with the political process when politicians (all stripes) refuse to answer direct and simple questions that are put to them – and I am sufficiently cynical to imagine things will not change after a change in government.

Living near the top of a fairly small hill, I can only imagine how people feel who live at the bottom of hills where water congregates. The flooding which was predicted to happen only once a decade or so is now happening almost every year and, of course, this is all attributable to climate change. I felt today that people who were suffering traumas in their lives as a result of the recent cost of living crisis and chronic health concerns have got quite enough to cope with without flooding added to their difficulties. But one has to point out that local authorities have bowed to pressure from builders and allowed all kinds of building on land regarded as a flood plain so perhaps we should not be surprised. I wonder to myself whether more work could be done ‘upstream’ so that farmers might allow their land to be flooded when occasion demands (at a cost) so that more major damage was not done downstream.

Meg and I had a bit of a lie-in this morning, which we quite appreciated. Normally our day starts some time after 6.00am when the carers come along at about 7.00am but at the weekends, we do our own thing so we enjoyed the extra hour in bed. Mid-morning, the parishioner from our local church came along to conduct a little service for us and this visit is always very much appreciated. Apart from the religious elements, we always have a chat about things and our parishioner is pretty knowledgeble about things in the locality so this is useful for us. After she had departed, I popped Meg into the car and we trundled down the hill to pick up a copy of our daily newspaper. In about a week or so, we will resume service with our regular newsagent but first there is a little matter of his funeral to attend. This is to be held in the Redditch crematorium but is at 12.30 where it conflicts with a doctor’s appointment (face-to-face) which we have. Although I do not like cancelling appointments with doctors given the long times one has to make an appointment in advance (currently the best part of three weeks) but under these circumstances, I feel we have no alternative. I always attempt to buy something a little different for our meal at midday on a Saturday and for today I had bought what was labelled as a ‘lamb hotpot’ Apart from some sliced potato on the top and some miniscule portions of carrot, it was mainly a lamb mince. So I think I must not be seduced by so called ‘ready’ meals but revert to my current practice of always cooking our meals from our own ingredients. In the early afternoon, our domestic help and her husband called around, by prior arrangement, to pick up a spare freezer which we had in our kitchen. This had belonged to my son and his wife and we had no real use for it so it has been relocated to a good home. When we had a large house in Leicestershire, we did allow ourselves the luxury of a second fridge in the garage but I seem to remember that instead of trading it in we decided to make it a ‘yogurt and beer’ fridge. In those days, we had a yogurt maker which was just a plastic box type of thing that supplied a minimal amount of heat to the contents. We used to make up our own yogurts with a bit of yogurt to supply the culture and then, I think, some condensed milk and some flavourings. It enabled us to eat lashings of yogurt quite cheaply. We also made our own beer, in keeeping with most of the male population in the 1970’s when the Chancellor of the day relaxed restrictions upon home brewing and many men went mad with their supply of half height plastic dustbins and some ready made kits, of which the best that I remember was called ‘Tom Caxton’ I used to make a lager and also a barley wine which blew your head off when I made it with double the amount of sugar (to approximately double the alcohol content) We all grew out of that fad, eventually, but it was fine whilst it lasted.

Before our little Epiphany party this evening, the thought flitted across my mind whether there was any easily improvised fancy dress that I might sport this evening. My first thought was to create a kind of doublet-and-hose in the manner of a mediaeval king, utilising a pair of Meg’s tights and then one of her kilts made double in its middle by the strategic use of abelt (the ‘doublet’ part) It did not take me too long to reject this idea as insufficiently realistic and lacking in effect so then I hit upon the idea of constructng a crown, in either silver or gold, from some paper doylies.On looking at our fast depleting store of such items, I only had one gold doyly left and no silver ones so this idea soon bit the dust. I am not averse to a bit of dressing up on occasions, the boldest of which was a pair of skimpy flame-red briefs worn under my Father Christmas outfit and flashed at the end of my turn. This is captured as a bit of video on my phone and on the basis of that we were offered a free coffee and a light meal (gratis) when I revealed this bit of video to a friendly cafe owner in La Coruña in Northern Spain. I must say that I have not been tempted to attempt the same here in Bromsgrove for fear of being arrested on the spot, at the very least. So I think that tonight, we shall just content ourselves with taking along a bit of ‘fizz’ to help the evening along.

The weather forecasters are preparing us for a spell of cold weather that may last as much as a whole week. It looks like a high pressure area stuck over the county which will give us clear skies by day but frosty nights and temperatures that drop below freezing at night. Now that we are forewarned, I will get my tried-and-trusted windscreen protectors in place so that if we need to go anywhere in the morning, I shall not have to do a massive defrosting job on the car.

Today is not quite the twelfth night of Christmas but certainly the day before and the time when we had scheduled our Christmas decorations to come down. Our domestic help calls around on a Friday and as she helped us to put up the decorations a fortnight ago, we enlisted each other’s help to take them all down again. Principally, we have to ‘undress’ our silver Christmas tree and then put it and the baubles safely away. This does involve eventually accessing the loft where all of the Christmas decoration is stored in a nicely accessible time, ready for the same thing again in 50 weeks time. After the Christmas tree and other decorations were removed, we had two little cribs (one we have had for years, the other a traditional set which we bought just before Christmas) and these are now all put into away in the bottom of a wardrobe in our spare bedroom, again easily accesible for when we need them again. I always have the same rather conflicting feelings about this time of year, the first of which is a certain amount of relief that Christmas and Christmassy things have all been out away for another year. But it is also true that our hall which provided a home for the Christmas tree looks rather stark at least for a few hours once it gets restored to normality. Actually, it is not actually the case that Christmas type things are absolutely over because we still have our Epithany/Reyes Magos/Galette des Rois little party tomorrow evening with three sets of friends (plus ouselves) joining forces for a little fiesta celebrating Twelfth Night in a very continental fashion. As we had spent a fair proportion of this morning putting away our Christmas decorations, we decided just to have a quick visit down the road to the Waitrose cafeteria to pick up a newspaper and to have our morning coffee. None of our regular friends were there but we would not expect to see them there until tomorrow morning in any case. On the way down into town, I popped into my newsagents to enquire if there any details about the funeral we wish to attend on Monday. The young lad in the shop was an employee of the new owners i.e. not family, and did not know anything about the funeral arrangements. But he phoned the owner for me and I spoke with her, giving her my mobile number and requesting to be kept informed about what time the funeral was due to be.

Over the past four days, ITV has been screening a docudrama entitled ‘Mr. Bates vs.the Post Office’ illustrating in 4 one hour episodes one of the biggest scandals and miscarriages of justice in modern times. Basically, the Post Office introduced a new computer system called ‘Horizon‘ which was not fit for purpose and when shortfalls were wrongly identified by the system, the sub postmasters had to make up the deficit from their own savings. This caused many of them to lose their business, their houses and resulted in a plethora of wrongful convictions and some suicides. After the series of four programmes had been transmitted, ITV published a documentary (rather than a docudrama) to show ‘the real story’ This was shown last night but I thought it would be good idea if Meg and myself could view this on ITVX this afternoon. But it was not yet listed on the schedules so Meg and I started to watch the final and concluding episode, first shown last night. But then the doorbell rang and it was our hairdresser calling round for a routine appointment. Although we had her on our planning board and I reminded Meg that she would along this aftenoon, we both forgot that she was coming. She has many clients of a similar age and health status to ourselves and we always receive sympathetic treatment from her hands.

One little job which Meg and I can do together relates to the Christmas cards we have received over the festive season. We used to throw them away quite quickly but this year we have retained them all and we think that a re-reading of the various bits of family news would be a pleasant task for the days ahead. One thing that we often do at this time of year is to work out which relatives and friends we wish to see and in which order. Then we need to make a little planning calendar so that we can schedule who we go and visit in the weeks to come. Of course, we are assuming that the weather will continue to be kind to us but I am always sustained by the fact that the days are getting longer by a smidgeon every day. But the factor that may prove problems for us in seeing friends and relatives is the local flooding situation. Worcestershire and Gloucestershire seem to be particularly prone to flooding and although some local flood defences are in place, these are often tested to (and sometimes over) the limit. To illustrate this, a town quite near to us, Bewdley, is very prone to flooding and a TV report showed some local residents who where arguing that an extra course of bricks (or even two) on the local flood defences could make a dramatic difference for them.

Thursday is my shopping day so a different routine swings into action. I make sure that Meg is up, washed and dressed before I leave for the supermarket. Then my son sits with Meg and works at my little Music Lounge work station until I return which is generally an hour and twenty minutes later. Today, everything went beautifully as planned and then I started to unpack the shopping unil the carer arrives, which she does on a Thursday later in the morning and I have a chance to step forth and buy the things unavailable in my local food supermarket. The carer who calls on a Thursday comes originally from Peru so we take the opportunity of a few exchanges of words in Spanish and explanation of the type of customs e.g. asssociated with the 6th of September which is ‘Epiphany’ in the UK but ‘Reyes Magos’ in the Hispanic world. What I do not know is to what extent Meg can remember the Spanish in which she used to be so fluent but I hope that the carer from Peru might help to unlock a bit of it for her. After we had a little chat, I went on the road to buy some cosmetics and bits-and-bobs. Of course, I cannot resist the temptation of popping into some of the charity shops of which there are half a dozen along the Bromsgrove High Street and bought some cosmetics of which we were in need. But I also acquired two further little items both of which took my fancy and were pretty good finds under the circumstances. One was a small cushion the colours of which perfectly match the new leather armchair which I bought for myself just before Christmas so this has been claimed as my own. But the second was a flower vase with quite an ornate peacock design on it and I surmised that it must have been applied by a transfer process as there is no way that it could have been handpainted given the level of detail upon it. I thought that it looked vaguely reminiscient of a vase that we already own and, although they are of somewhat different different designs, it is evident from studying the peacock transfer that they must have come out of the same stable and therefore from the same pottery. There is no hallmark associated with it and if there were to be one, this would have increased the value tremendously. But as things stand, they form a quasi-matching pair and I am left to marvel at the coincidence of finding a match like this and, of course, if we were in closer contact with any of our relatives who were steeped in the history of designs from the English potteries, then we may have discovered some chapter-and-verse about their provenance. Suffice it to say that for the incredibly low price for which I picked up these pieces (i.e. less than my unit of currency which is the price of one cup of coffee) these pieces are mass produced and pleasant enough without ever being labelled as valuable. I might just do a ‘Google Images’ search, though, later on tonight which might thrown some lights on the history and provence of the design.

I got home at midday and the specialist nurse who had been booked to come round and give some advice on Meg’s condition was already at the house, having arrived early. She was moderately helpful and may be instrumental in getting some additional medication to help things along. Of course, one does not expect any dramatic breakthroughs in terms of medication or practical aids at this stage but it is generally a case of discussing ‘tweaks’ and working out what works in any particular case. At least, I know she is available if I need some more specialist help later on and it is always a good idea to be able to put a name to a face under these circumstances.

There are some developments on the political front today as Rishi Sunak has announced there will ‘probably’ be an election later on in the year, pointing to an autumn poll. From the Tory point of view, this allows for some huge tax handouts a.k.a. known as ‘election bribes’ to be handed out in the Spring budget and for the electorate to feel the benefit of these as they work their way through the economy. In addition, there is always the ‘something might turn up’ factor and I am always reminded that Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular prime minister of all time just before the Falklands invasion which came as a godsend to her. Inmediately, after the successful re-capture of the Falklands (Malvinas to my Hispanic friends) her popularity rating soared to new heights and she won a huge election victory shortly on the back of this military triumph. Although the Labour Party is massively, and consistently, ahead in the opinion polls, I fear that this election may one of the dirtiest ever to be fought in British politics. Also the malign effect of misapplied AI (Artifical Intelligence) and the prominence given to fake news, I would not be surprised if the Tories managed to pull back quite a bit of lost ground.

Today was quite a sad day for Meg and myself. As the Methodist Centre is not back into full operation until next week, we decided to call in at our favourite cafe in Droitwich. On the way there, I made a detour through the town to see if my usual newsagent had reopened. The shop was being prepared by an Asian female and although she had no newspapers in stock today, I informed her that Saad (our newsagent) used to keep a copy of ‘The Times‘ behind the counter for me to ensure that I could be assured of my copy. But I was informed that the elderly newsagent had died some two weeks before which came as quite a shock to me. I knew that he was suffering from a very serious lung condition but my reading about this condition on the web indicated that his life expectancy might be between 6-12 months and certainly not the week or so. I think that he was in his 80’s and was certainly working until a week or so before his death and I can’t imagine how distraught his now widow must feel. The funeral is to be next Monday and although I have no other details as yet and a possible clash of commitments, I am going to see if we can probably attend the funeral. So then we progressed onto Droitwich with heavy hearts, and then parked quite easily, picked up a copy of our newspaper and made our way to the cafe where we indulged in our usual fare (a pot of tea and a huge bacon butty between us) After this, we thought we would progress down into town and visit some of the charity shops we had not frequented for a month or so now. I wanted just a simple item which was a coffee or teatray on which we could rest our refreshments whilst sitting together on new settee. In the event, I did not find exactly what I wanted but ‘en passant’ I found a smart top for Meg which she can try on in the morning. We noticed, as we were passing by, that Poundland had taken over the old Wilko store and we had a quick whizz around. I have the feeling that Poundland probably took over a lot of the Wilko stock or at least suppliers because the store did not look too far removed from its precessor. We availed ourselves of a melamine coffee tray into which we fitted a heavy glass display dish and the two items complemented each other well and will serve our intended purpose very well. As we were walking through Droitwich, we were hailed by a person who knew us from our park meandering days and it transpired that she worked locally and had probably seen us emerge from the cafe. So we had a pleasant chat about times past and we indicated to her that we did not venture forth into the park as much as we used to do when Meg was a lot more mobile than she is now. When we got home, we had to race around and make a rather delayed lunch but this was not too difficult as all we had to do after putting the quiche into the oven was to prepare some runner beans and tomatoes to make the meal complete.

Further news is now emerging about the terrible aircraft fire in a Tokyo airport yesterday. But first, we have to say that it was little short of miraculous that the entire passenger and crew list of 379 were safely got out of the burning plane although there are a small number of injuries as people slid down the exit chutes. There is some chatter that Japanese society, which is incredibly ordered and compliant, probably helped to save the lives of everybody on board and one can only speculate that a planeload of Brits would have probably been a lot more argumentative with a consequent loss of life. It now appears that the light aircraft that collided with the Airbus was supposed to be in a holding area and had not been cleared for take-off i.e. they should not have been on the main runway at all. The pilot of the small fixed wing is very badly injured and all of the rest of his crew lost their lives.

Last night, I wondered if any of the radios upon which I used to listen to ClassicFM and had been rendered obsolete with the ClassicFM upgrade from DAB to DAB+ were at all capable of salvation. One radio cannot receive DAB+ and does not appear to have an FM mode so it will have to be junked. But in every other case, I have managed to access the FM mode upon which ClassicFM is still transmitted and the quality is surprisingly good given the fact that FM is so susceptible to background hiss and what-have-you. But a bit of experientation and fiddling with aerials has produced surprisingly good results. The reason this had not been discovered before is that if you have a DAB radio and one can access all one’s favourite stations, then there has never been a reason, or an incentive, to access the FM mode which some DAB radios still possess. So that makes me quite a happy bunny because I am now in the position of having practically of the functionality and the ease of access to ClassicFM which look so threatened only a day or so ago.

So today is the day when we are starting to return to a degree of normality after the Christmas and New Year break. We are still slightly in the holiday break, however, as I suspect that it will be next Monday before things return to ‘normal normal’ as it were. Today when it started (i.e. just after midnight) is when the ClassicFM switch over from DAB to DAB+ was due to take place and when I was up in the night, I discovered the worst and the best. To start with the worst first, four of my Pure Radios in various locations failed to received DAB+ plus one of my recently acquired Panasonic mini-systems. But there was some better news in that practically all cases, there was a proximate source that received ClassicFM that would serve the purpose in that particular location. But the much better news was that in each of the three locations that are in almost constant use (in order of priority, the bedroom, then the kitchen and then our en-suite shower room), I had already had DAB+ so continued reception was assured. The location about which I was most relieved was our bedtime radio because I rely upon this, for for Meg and myself, to program this so that it switched off after a specified period of time and I have learnt to adjust the volumes to be just about audible if you want to listen but sufficiently quiet to drift off to sleep as well. So at the end of the day, the changeover which could have spelled a lot of disruption was managed to give me the functionality that I had previously enjoyed. Today was the day when the ‘early morning’ carers were not scheduled to call so we slept in for a little (but I had been up in the middle of the night doing some messing about with my DAB/DAB+ radio receivers) It was raining cats and dogs this morning but, nonetheless, after we had witnessed the terrible sight of the Japanese airliner ablaze across the whole of its fusilage in a Tokyo airport, Meg and I ventured forth to Waitrose. This really was as quiet as the grave but two of our friends turned up whom we were heartily glad to see and we had our customary chat and a laugh. As it turned out, we were the sole cafeteria clients for the morning insofar as I could tell.

Today was the day when I should have gone to undertake my Pilates session but Meg was feeling particularly fragile and it really was a 50:50 call whether I should go and risk Meg having a stressful hour and a half plus with a carer or stay with her for the morning. The carer was someone we had not met before so we decided to let her stay and make Meg’s acquaintance (useful for futher occasions?) and have an extended chat with her. As she was of Pakistani origin, I managed to fill a good hour with various stories, the first of which was the wedding gifts which the mother of our Sri Lankan flatmate bestowed upon us when we were married in 1967 (a tea chest of tea, a sari shot through with silver thread and a 1lb tin of saffron!) We also intimated some of our experiences whilst we worked at Leicester Polytechnic of which one was the extended story, absolutely with no hint of exaggeration, as to how Meg had collaborated with the ‘secret’ part of the British state (police, border agencies) to smuggle a Muslim student out of the country with new papers in order to avoid an arranged marriage. Our student finished off, via my mother in Leeds, to get to a sympathetic aunt in Copenhagen. The sequel to this story is that after the successful transit out of the country, the police advised us to take a different route home each day for about a fortnight so that the mentally disturbed father, the possessor of several legal firearms, did not smell a rat and come after us. I must admit there are not many stories that lecturers in Higher Education could give that parallel this one.

Meg and I then had our normal Tuesday lunch day meal of fishcakes and easily cooked vegetables. After our afternoon cup of tea which we conventionally take after the clock has struck 4.00pm, Meg sat on our new two-seater settee and I put on a concert on Amazon Prime of choral performances that we have often played before but of which we never tire and always brings solace to the weary soul. I was also delighted to have improvised a little to provide Meg with a little table for her afternoon cup of tea. Instead of buying another table and perhaps adding to the clutter, I took a little melamine tray which I keep for the purpose inside one of our piano stools adjacent to the settee and this swings into purpose just when required and is easy to put away again. Tomorrow is the day when we would normally go the Methodist Centre for a coffee but one of our friends told us this morning that it was not opening this week so we may well have to make other plans for the morn. Droitwich is a possibility if the road is not flooded, which it might well be.

So here we are at the start of a new year. I stayed up last night in order to see in the New Year and sent off various ‘Happy New Year’ messages from my iphone contact list. It always strikes me as odd that the first thing one does in a new year is to consume alcohol but I did treat myself to a thimble sized glass of a single malt. I only watched a few minutes of the fireworks and got myself off to bed at the earliest opportunity. Yesterday afternoon, Meg and I watched ‘The Jungle Book’ in which the animation was superb. I only mention this because I have an early memory of being read portions of this book. My mother always had a life long interest in scouting and, indeed, I have a photograph of her with a cast of hundreds in a meeting of all of the local scouts in Hull when she must have been about 18. What her role was in this gathering, I am afraid is lost in the mists of time. But my mother, when working as a local government officer and before she went to train to be a teacher, ran the local Cub pack and, at the age of eight or nine, was automatically part of this cub pack. But I have quite vivid memories of my mother sitting the cubs in a circle round a make-believe campfire (actually, just a candle room on a block of wood in an unlit basement room) whilst she read out portions of ‘The Jungle Book’ – in the Rudyard Kipling terminology, evidently my mother was ‘Akela’. My memories consist of this group of young cub scouts listening with rapt attention and in absolute silence whilst my mother each week would read out a portion of ‘The Jungle Book’. I am sure the experience of running a cub pack would have served her in good stead when she applied at a mature age to undertake teacher training in the 1950’s when it was almost unheard of for mature students to enter a training college.

We always thought that today was going to be an ‘itsy-bitsy’ kind of day because one never knows which shops are open and which closed. The day started off with clear skies (although this was not to last) so we thought that a trip to the park would not be unpleasant so we made up a flask of coffee and determined to go there, after we had made a trip to a local garage in order to pick up a copy of our daily newspaper. I had assumed Waitrose would be closed but as we whizzed past, it appeared to be open so we changed our plans and parked the car. But as I was getting the car parking ticket, one of the store assistants who knows me well came dashing out to inform me that the cafeteria part of Waitrose was not open this morning. So I collected my newspaper and we then journeyed on to the park as was our original intention. We had our coffee and then some nibbles and then started out for home as we knew that during most of the day, the ‘Drama’ channel was going to screen several episodes, end-to-end, of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’. But we were just approaching our car when we bumped into a couple of very old park friends with whom we get on tremendously well and with whom we have been to have lunch on several occasions in the past year. We quickly caught up on each other’s news but by this stage, Meg was gettiung a little chilled in her wheelchair so we raced home and got ourselves tuned into the Jane Austen of which we had only missed a few minutes.

The next day or so is going to prove interesting in my ‘audio’ life. The explanation for this is that Meg and I have become habitual listeners to ClassicFM and we have several radios, typically purchased for very reasonable sums, on eBay and the like, in many rooms of the house. But ClassicFM have decided that they are going to enhance the listening experience of their listeners by upgrading their transmitted signal to DAB+ and hence are turning off the unenhanced DAB signal. The upshot of all of this is that many of our radios will not now receive ClassicFM amd therefore not fulfil the purpose for which they were principally bought. The ‘switch over’ date is either tomorrow of Wednesday but I am not quite sure when. When that happens, it will bve a case of trial and error to see which radios will receive the enhanced DAB+ signal and which will not. An alternative is to switch to the FM signal which in some parts of the house (and some audio units) produces a more than tolerable listening experience but others give you the terrible FM ‘hiss’ In our particular house, I have discovered that the horizontal positioning of an antenna often, but not invariably, gives better results but there is quite a degree of unpredictability, as well as trial and error involved in the whole process. So when the changeover actually occurs (and it may for 6.00am on Wednesday but ClassicFM are being a bit coy about this) I shall have to go around the house and consider my options on a case by case basis.

Meg and I slept in for a little while this morning which is surely a good thing. By the time we had got ourselves up and ready for breakfast, it was time for the Lorna Kuennsberg show except that in this holiday season, it was not being aired. So we made do with the Sky News rolling news program until our Eucharistic Minister called round at 9.45. We were delighted to see her and thanked her very much for the Christmas present which was the book of ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ upon which the delightful cartoon (shown again on Christmas day) was based. We exchanged news of each other’s Christmas activities and I also took the opportunities to discover what she knew about the various happenings in our local church. During the course of her visit, we received a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend and we agreed to meet in the Waitrose cafeteria later on that morning. As we entered the store, we bumped into our Irish friend and our Italian friend – so big hugs all round with two of my favourite female friends. We had our coffee and a nice chat with our University of Birmingham friend and then the time came for us to part but we took the opportunity to buy some provisions in the store before we left. Then it was a case of getting home and cooking our Sunday lunch which was mainly a case of using up provisions that we already had in stock. But whilst in the store this morning, I took the opportunity to buy some reduced chorizo flavoured sausages which will provide quite a treat for us tomorrow. We have contemplating how best we might spend the morning tomorrow as it is New Year’s Day and the majority of shops, as it is a Bank Holiday, will probably be closed. I consulted the web to explore whether the Touchwood Centre in Solihull might be open tomorrow as we know there is a John Lewis store within it. We discovered that the John Lewis store and other shops would be open today but not tomorrow which is not exactly the sort of news that we wanted to receive. On the other hand, the Merry Hill Centre down the motorway is open tomorrow but does not contain any of the shops that we are minded to visit. So we are still contemplating the nature of our little trip out tomorrow, not knowing what is open and what is not.

No doubt, each family in the land has its own little rituals associated with New Year’s Eve which, of course, is today. Some couples would always make it a priority to either throw or to attend a New Year’s Eve party with family and close friends, the idea being of course to stay up until midnight to see the New Year in. Meg and I have never gone in for that sort of thing but there are various things that I like to have done on New Year’s Eve. This is to ensure that in our principal living rooms, we have a copy of the appropriate calendar so that tomorrow maorning (or even later on this evening) we all have 1st January ready to display. Of course, the Scots make a big thing of Hogmanay which is more important to them than Christmas Day and they have the tradition of ‘first footing’ in which a tall dark stranger is meant to enter the house by the front door, consume some whisky and perhaps some other comestibles on the way through the house and then leave through the back door. This is meant to symbolise the spirit of the New Year entering the house and chasing the remnants of the old year out of the back door. I also seem to remember that the stranger should be bearing a piece of coal (as the provider of light and warmth?) in their hand and perhaps some other artefacts as well. My mother, although not Scottish, used to engage in a scaled down vesrion of this ritual. Being a one parent household, there was rather a dearth of tall dark (male) male strangers so my mother had to improvise. This usually consisted of typing a small lump of coal around the neck of our our typically bewildered cat, which did have the virtue of being practically black all over. The cat was then thrown out of the back door just before midnight, being left along for a crucial minute or so and then being called back in in the New Year bearing the coal round its neck. What the cat thought of this charade I am afraid I never knew. But we did introduce the practice to our next door neighbours in Hampshire (as the husband was naturally dark in complexion) and they participated in the suitably pagan rite just for the fun of it. When we meet with our group of friends at our little gathering next Saturday night, I must remember to ask them if there are any similar traditions here in the Midlands. As it is, we are looking forward to next Saturday where we will consume, by courtesy of our French friend, a specialised confection which she will bake called ‘galette des rois’ and the recipient of the lucky token hidden inside the cake can be King or Queen for the night.