Today was always going to have a different kind of timetable because our energy company (which we have just decided now to use) are going to have our smart meters updated today. We already have some smart meters installed but not the very latest versions that send readings directly to the energy utility, thus obviating the need for any meter readings. We have been given a time-slot of any time between 8.00am and 5.00pm but we will get a phone call some 30 minutes beforehand so that we can be ‘at home’. I decided to walk down into town early because I needed to collect my newspaper and get some money out of an ATM. All of this worked out well and I got home in plenty of time before the anticipated phone call came through. My installer was a young Asian lad  who seemed exceptionally conscientious and meticulous about everything he did. Naturally, as is common these days and no doubt following a protocol, smartphone snaps were taken of all critical things such as exisiting meter readings and then we were left without power for about 50 minutes. We had to ensure, of course, that all of our computers and other consumer units were switched off and I was a little worried that the alarm system of the house might not function correctly after an interruption to the power supply and that the central heating boiler would similar survive a power down.  In the event, both worked perfectly when power was restored and the various computers and other devices within the house power up again so I am now left with a system where I can check what electricity has been used (at 10 second intervals) or my gas consummption (at 30 minute intervals). Now we are just left waiting for our central heating engineer to call around and install our replacement kitchen tap and although promised at 4.00pm, we still have a no-show two hours later. Today, though, has generally been one of those days when everything has gone well as opposed to those days when Sod’s Law prevails (‘if something can go wrong, it will’).

At last, Boris Johnson has tried to draw the sting of the ‘sleaze’ allegations against him and his government. He has finally admitted the Conservative ex-minister at the centre of Westminster’s sleaze row broke lobbying rules – two weeks after the prime minister encouraged a bid to save Owen Paterson from a House of Commons suspension. Under questioning from a Commons committee of senior MPs, Mr Johnson acknowledged that Mr Paterson had ‘fallen foul of the rules’    on lobbying. ‘I think it was a very sad case but I think there’s no question that he had fallen foul of the rules on paid advocacy as far as I can see from the report’ the prime minister told the liaison committee.

Despite the best efforts of our vaccination authorities, it appears that a full ‘4th wave’ of the COVID virus is hitting many European societies. Angela Merkel, the outgoing German Chancellor , is reported as sayting that the 4th wave of the virus is hitting Germany ‘with full force’ as the seven-day infection rate hits a new peak for the 10th consecutive day. Mrs Merkel told a congress of German city mayors that new infections were higher than ever before and the daily death toll was ‘frightening’. The central government and leaders of Germany’s 16 states are due to meet this week to discuss new national restrictions. There are also concerns that Germany’s renowned Christmas markets could be cancelled for a second year running.The question that must remain is whether the UK can ever gets its infection rate below a certain level (of about 39,000 new cases a day) whilst the threat from other European societies remains.

The inflation rate has today hit 4.2% and shows many signs of increasing rather than decreasing. The big economic question is whether this rise in the inflation rate is just a ‘blip’ which like a wave might pass out of the system or whether it will generate further inflationary rises in the future. I have just read in today’s Times that gas prices rose by 17% in one day yesterday. Without wishing to sound smug, I am incredibly glad that about two weeks before the current fuel price increase hit us, I had decided to change my energy supplier and got a rate fixed for the next two years. Having said that, and perhaps inspired by the newly installed consumer unit for the smart meter, I am starting to look quite hard at appliances that are left on (TV on standby) and to turn off unnecessary lights when I see them. I do have an old ‘standard lamp’ where I have just downgraded the bulb from a 100 watt to a 60 watt version without a great diminution in available light. My optician tells me, though, that as you get older, your eyes probably require more light rather than greater magnification so it is a temptation to put in more powerful bulbs in various places.

Today was a Pilates day so we needed to make a fairly early start to ensure that we got everything done on time. We collected our newspaper and made our way to the park where we ate our comestibles on one of the ‘lower’ park benches. As we leaving the park, we ran across our acquaintance, the Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who was just completing his second lap of the park. We knew that he generally put in about 7km doing his regular tours. What we failed to realise was that after coffee and a bite of lunch he started off aagain to get another 3km under his belt (making 10km for the day). We were in plenty of time and we managed to get home with a good ten minutes or so to spare. This just about have me enough time to change into my track suit bottoms, grab my pilates things and pop some fishcakes to slow-cook in the oven for us whilst I was away. As I was returning from my Pilates session, a van was appraching the house who was the plumber/central heating engineer who had installed our kitchen tap now leaking vigorously even though it was only about 18 months old. After one look at the tap and examining the name of the maker, it was immediately pronounced ‘faulty’ and as it had a five-year warranty on it, there was no problem with it being replaced by a similar unit. After a quick call to his supplier, we were informed that we could have a whole new tap under the warranty which was reasonably good news. It has to be ordered first and then fitted secondly and who pays for the fitting charge is a moot point (the manufacturer, the central heating firm or ourselves) – however, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Normally, I do not comment on TV programmes but today I want to make an exception. Last night, when we consulted our TV schedules, we noticed that there was to be a production of the opera Rigoletto by Verdi, to be performed on Lake Constanz in Austria. What we actually witnessed is hard to describe in a few words but I will try. The set was ‘avant gard‘ in the extreme, with a giant clown’s head the size of house plus a huge hand and cuff to complete the scene. If I were to tell you that the mouth and jaw opened to form one balcony as did the two eye sockets (once eyes had been removed), the nasal cavity and the top of the skull providing additional performance areas. The singers had to be ‘miked up’ and transported from one part of the scenery to another by balloons, aerial wires and good knows what else. The rake of the ‘stage’ was so extreme that some of the circus performers who constituted the chorus  would fall off and into the lake with a loud splash. (whether this was by accident or by design I cannot tell) Gilda, the heroine was left stabbed and hanging in a sack over the stage whilst the assassin, Sparafucile’s daughter was attired as a knife-throwers assistant, doubling up as a  dominatrix and ‘helped’ in her some of seduction scenes (where she lured victims to their deaths at the hand of her father) by a bevy of ‘helpers’ who had exposed breasts the size of pumpkins – and often more than two as well for good measure. Shall I go on? This spectacle was performed before an audience of 7,000 people at a time with no intervals in the two hour performance. One had to view and listen to this with a type of split brain – one half listening to the music and remembering the plot whilst the other half was looking at the aerial antics of the cast members as they were whisked from place to place (you could see their safety lines at times). Did I mention that some of the circus performances were dressed as chimpanzees! And that the clowns head was eventually transformed into a skull by losing its eyes (I think I may have dozed a bit at this point)

The political scene was amazing today. Boris Johnson announced today that he he was going to suggest a ban on practically all second jobs, particularly those where MPs acted as paid political consultants or lobbyists. This announcement was made  at the exact second when Keir Starmer was announcing that the Labour party would legislate for a ban on such jobs. Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley Johnson, has been accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour towards a would-be MP (saying to the prospective MP for Romsey that she would have a magnificent seat whilst slapping her across the bottom) Ant the Yorkshire leg of the HS2 (from the Midlands to Leeds) is now being abandoned, although this was heavily trailed in the Sunday Times on Sunday) One wonders how many marginal constituencies lay along the route, now abandoned.

Apart from being the start of another week, I am driven to reflect upon the fact that when today is over (being the 15th of the month) then half of the miserable month of November will be over. I suppose it is a truism to say that as you get older, the days seem to fly past at an increasing rate and personally the date to which  I look forward at this time of year is 21st December. This is because after this date, the days are starting to get longer again by 1-2 minutes a day and even though there is bad weather yet to come, at least the days are getting (imperceptibly) longer. Meg and I knew that we needed to visit the High Street in Bromsgrove to get Meg’s spectables adjusted in our local opticians. This they do on ‘while-you-wait’ basis and it only takes a minute or so. After this I called in at Waitrose to replenish a few supplies and then we made our way to the park by car. As we parked in one of the more distant car parks, I could not help noticing a chap who seemed to be pointing his camera at the bare trees. I assumed that he had a app on his phone that identified the trees by their shape and foliage – I know that apps exist like this for plants and shrubs so I assumed that the chap I noticed was doing a similar thing for trees. As I approached him, he was very friendly but he showed me what he was actually doing which was to control a  drone he had just purchased with a controller that had on it a screen (to show what the camera on-board the drone was showing) The drone was apparently quite small its camera showed magnificent aerial views of the park which showed all of the trees in their autumn finery. We even manipulated the camera so that the two of us (the drone owner and myself) could be seen as minute pin pricks standing in the car park. I wondered aloud what were the implications for the privacy of individuals with the operation of drones such as these but the drone-owner assured me that to operate a drone like this was beset with a host of restrictions and regulations about what one could and could not do. It is said, of course, that Amazon are experimenting with drones and it may not be too long before a combination of a drone assisted by AI (Artificial Intelligence) will start to drop parcels for us just outside our front door.

As it was a Monday, lunch was easy to prepare as had one half of yesterday’s gammon joint so all we needed to do was to microwave soome baked potato and green-stem broccoli to go with it. After lunch, there was a little sweeping job which I needed to do at the back of the house. Our roof on the easterly side seem to accumulate little bundles of moss on the roof titles which eventually drop off and litter up our patio. Sweeping them up was a simple little job which I did when the daylight was just starting to fade. Then it was brought home to be quite forcibly that Miggles, our adopted cat, has not been seen for over a week either in our back garden or anywhere in the vicinity.  I am forced to the view that given the territorial nature of cats and as Miggles was adventurous in the extreme, I could only conclude that Miggles was no more. According to Google predation of cats by fox is extremely rare and it is much more probable that Miggles has come off worst in the fight with another cat, not to mention a road vehicle. Having given us hours of pleasure since he/she walked into our lives, I can only conclude that he/she has now walked out of them. As  Miggles often made an appearance at dusk to observe what I was doing (and snaffle a few titbits, I have to say), then I felt a few pangs of separation thinking that in all probability Miggles would never be seen again.  I write this without wishing to sound mawkish or over-sentimental but I do have a good series of photos and one or two videoclips to bring back some memories.

And now for some interesting ppolitical news emerging from the USA. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has surrendered to the FBI to face criminal charges for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the US Capitol riot. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on one count of contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a deposition and a second count for refusing to provide documents in response to a subpoena. He is expected to make his first appearance in federal court later on Monday after being taken into custody.

Today being a Sunday, I leapt out of bed (fairly) early as I collect my newspaper first thing on Sunday mornings. On my way down, I was ‘spotted’ by a coupele of Jack Russell terriers that were being taken for their morning walk. They used to belong to my old friend, the trumpet player Clive who unfortunately died about a year and half ago. But the dogs recognised me and came dashing forward barking (as is their wont) but with thir tails wagging ferociously by way of greeting. I walked with Clive’s daughter-in-law for a hundred yards or so until our paths diverged and we chatted about the jobs we had lined up for ourselves as autumn tasks in the garden. I treated myself to a little of Mozart’s ‘Requiem‘ on my trusty aged iPhone (used as an MP3 player) and got back just a little late but before missing too much of the Andrew Marr show. Today is the day after the ending of the COP26 Climate Change conference held in Glasgow. All seemed to be heading for a world ‘phasing out’ of the coal industry until the China and the India, at the very last moment, forced a change in the draft treaty so that ‘phasing out’ of the coal industry became a ‘phasing down’ which weakens considerably this particular commitment. The conference, as it was hosted in the UK (in Glasgow) was chaired by the cabinet minsiter, Alok Sharma, who could be seen fighting back the tears as he was forced to accept the Chinese/Indian amendments of the draft treaty at what might have been the 59th minute of the last hour of the conference. I have not seen any particular comment upon the way in which Sharma has performed his role but to chair an international conference and to try to achive consensus amongst twenty-five thousand delegates from 200 countries attending and around 120 heads of state must call for a degree of political skill. This might do him no harm at all in any leadership stakes that the Tory party might eventually have when (if?) they get tired of Boris Johnson.

On our way to the park, a car drew up alongside Meg and I and it was a friend of ours from church who manned one of the craft stores – she was giving us a little spiced ginger cake to enjoy in the park. We thanked her effusively and then met up with a gaggle of our park acquaintances where we engaged in some mutual joshing as well as some more serious conversation. Eventually, though, we started to get a little chilled with standing around so we made for home, knowing there was a Sunday lunch to cook. This is always a bit more work on a Sunday because we tend to slow-cook a joint of meat (unsmoked gammon today) which we always divide into two, once cooked, and save half for another week. This is obviously part of our strategy not to overdo the amount of meat that we eat but it has the exceptionally minor consequence of our doing our miniscule bit to save the planet (by minimising the methane production associated with the rearing of animals for domestic consumption) This afternoon, we really enjoyed watching the English women’s rugby team win their match against Canada by a score of 51-12. Actually, this score flatters England and the Canadians proved quite a tough prospect – this brings the running total of the England women’s rugby team  to 17 wins in a row. Next week’s match will be against the USA who may prove a tougher nut to crack. Incidentally, the match commentators on more than occasion apologised for the bad language uttered on the pitch, although I must admit I didn’t actually catch any of it.

The latest COVID news has some interesting twists and turns. Austria is putting all unvaccinated residents into lockdown from midnight on Sunday, the government has said. Anyone over the age of 12 who has not been double-jabbed will only be allowed to leave their homes for work, school, exercise and buying essential supplies. Part of the explanation for this is that Austria has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe and an infection rate of 775.5 per 100,000 people compared with the UK equivalent of  348.7 per 100,000. The other interesting bit of news is that there seems to be a cross-over between climate change deniers and vaccine-benefit deniers. COVID-19 conspiracy groups who have attempted to undermine efforts to bring the pandemic under control are increasingly sharing climate change misinformation. One suspects that ‘climate change denial’ came before vaccine denial but now there seems to be a mutual feedback. Only a few days a group of women protestors stood by the side of a busy roundabout in Bromsgrove (where traffic was forced to slow down) with rediculous anti-vaccine sloganser written on them. I did my bit by shouting ‘Murderers!’ at them as I walked past them (on the other side of the road, I hasten to add)

We didn’t make a particularly early start this morning as we had a few domestic jobs done and then sauntered down to the park, where we knew already that we would meet up with some of our park ‘buddies’.  We were not disappointed, either, because we met up with our University of Birmingham friend, Seasoned World Traveller and Intrepid Octogenarian Hiker.  Our conversation often turns to the subject of politics and today we were asking the question for how long the UK will continue to vote, and to think, Conservative as the sleazes multiply and deepen. Having said that, there was one opinion poll (possibly a ‘rogue poll’) which indicated that the Tories having been 3 points ahead of Labour were now six points behind – and that all within a week (according to ‘The Sun‘) As always, the Sunday newspapers may well give a deep analysis to this week’s events but it does appear that the Tories are deeply divided between those representing affluent southern seats and the so-called ‘red wall’ Tories who won seats from the Labour party in the (industrial) areas of the Midland and the North. The latter group of MP’s being younger and having attracted ex-Labour voters are extremely critical of the ‘Toff’ tendency in the Tory party where MPs sit on large majorities and often ‘feather their own nest’ by taking on lucrative second jobs (for which they often tout in the first place) We have used over the years to seeing great splits in the Labour party between the leftwingers and the more moderate factions but this is now mirrored in the Tory party. Well, it is going to make for some interesting politics in the next few days. There was one contribution on ‘Question Time’ which really attracted the media’s attention. This was the observation by Alastair Cambell, the ex-Labour party press spokesmen. He has argued “He breaks the rules on the Ministerial Code relentlessly…If the Prime Minister consistently, regularly, breaks the Ministerial Code why shouldn’t other ministers think they can do exactly the same and get away with it?… We’ve just got to face up to the fact we – sadly, in my view – have elected a prime minister who has no moral compass whatsoever.” The interesting thing about this very personal attack on the Primne Minister is that it has already attracted quite a degree of support and so far, as far as I know, no Tory MP has come to Johnson’s defence.

The weather in the park today was decidely autumnal. Many of the trees had lost their leaves and those that had not displayed some wonderful russet colours. We especially noticed as well that the fallen leaves, in many places, had been dessicated by early morning coolness and a variety of animals (young children, dogs, squirrels) were enjoying a romp throughout the leaves where they had aggregated into clumps. The temperature, though, is not especially cold and so we must say that we have had a pleasant autumn so far. Can the frosts, snow and ice be far behind?

Today was the day when at Church we had a pre-Christmas craft fair. Various worthies in our parish community turn their attention to producing jams, sweets, christmassy decorations and a whole variety of knick-knacks. We did our best to support the local efforts by buying a selection of foodstuffs and Christmas decorations – if I had thought about it, I could have donated some bottles of damson gin to help the proceedings along. We met with two of our close friends who had made some of the things on display and were manning a stall – but of course it was a little cold and dark and not the best time to loiter outside the church.

When we got home, we decided that we would have the other half of the spiced vegetable soup that I made with such success the other day. We had parboiled the vegetables and upon our return from church, all we had to do was to make up some stock and get the SoupMaker started. The results, though, were an abject failure – and the worst soup I have made to date. I think the problem was that ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’ – I was trying to improve on my previous efforts by avoiding the calorie rich Korma sauce and tried putting in a level teasponful of the recently acquired spice ‘Beharat’ (which just the Arabic for ‘spices’) The result was a soup which was incredibly hot so that it almost burnt our throats and the whole eating experience was terrible. We had to abandon our soups, even though we put in extra dollops of yogurt to compensate and consoled ourselves with some choc-ice bars (which were not only delicious but cooled our mouths down). I do not know if I got the quantities all wrong (or may have got a bad batch) but next time, I will try about a quarter or a third of the level teaspoon to see if I can get the amount of seasoning about right.

Today was the day when our domestic help calls around and – as always- we have a good old natter over the obligatory cup of tea (which has become additional upon her arrival) As it happened, there was something that I wanted to have a word with our domestic help because I always trust her on all things culinary. I had put a little bit of last night’s homemade soup in one of those special, microwaveable beakers because I wanted the experience of her tastebuds to act as check on my own. As she is a great soup lover, we were exchanging recipes about the types of things that I might try out in the fullness of time.

The weather was competely indeterminate insofar as we could not work out whether it was raining hard enough to go down into town by car or not raining hard enough so that we could venture forth with a walk. Anyway, the question was determined for us by our University of Birmingham friend who wondered what our intentions were for the morning. We all quickly decided to rendez-vous in Waitrose where we had a cappucino and some teacakes – good on a wet and windy morning. There is an Asian member of staff who I know well and whose opinion I sought as to the most suitable type of curry/curry paste to tart up my root winter vegetables soup if I wanted to avoid the extra calories associated with a ‘korma’ cooking sauce. My Asian friend went on a quick tour of the shelves which are groaning under the weight of specialised spices and eventually chose one for me to try which is called ‘Baharat‘ which occording to the blurb on the tin was an ‘aromatic and peppery spice blend used in Middle Eastern inspired cooking’ which sounds as though it was going to be suitable. Moreover, you get a beautifil little tin in which the spice is held within a little plastic bag but I am sure I can find a use for the little tin afterwards. When I get home, I compared the ingredients wth by Bart’s version of ‘Curry Powder’ where there is about a 60%-70% overlap in the spices deployed in the mixture. So now I can try both and work out which gives me the flavour I want without the calories. Lunchtime is the by now traditional sea-bass which is incredibly fast both to cook and to serve. Basically, it is three minutes on the skin side, two minutes on the fleshy side, cooled with some capers and served on a bed of young sweet lettuce leaves. I am sure you would pay a fortune for this type of meal in a restaurant but we now enjoy it every single Friday. A bonus is that the entire meal only takes 5-6 minutes both to cook and to serve and we treated ourself to some Vinho Verde (Portuguese white wine from Aldi) whch seems the perfect accompaniment.

We decided to utilise some of our eating apples to have with our custard for an evening meal. They were delicious and I threw a few sultanas in to add a little extra spice to the overall mixture. This is another experiment which is well worth repeating and we also have some left over for another day.

In the early evening, we had a FaceTime call from one of our Hampshire friends who is in Florida visiting some of his wife’s relatives (his wife had died a few months ago but he is still contact with friends and family over there) We were regaling ourselves with the various problems we were having with banks on both sides of the Atlantic. In our friend’s case, of course, it becomes difficult to open an account if you are not an American citizen and basically, all such procedures require a form, signed by a notary, followed by more forms. Like us, he had been stuck in a bank trying to get a relatively simple procedure underatken but this required authoriation with code numbers and goodness knows what else. Like us, he had entered the bank at a particular time and left about 2½ hours later. We agreed to carry on discussions via FaceTime next week and there does seem to be difference in transmission speeds between Hampshire UK and Florida. By way of comparison, I am reminded when our son spent an academic year in a university in Mexico before he went to his university course in this country. Basically a letter took three weeks to get from the UK to Puebla in Mexico (the third largest city)and then a reply, even if written on the same day, took another three weeks to get back. This was the period in history when emails, although known about by the cognoscenti, were not in general use by the rest of the population. When modern technology delivers results like this across continents one can still only marvel.

Today was one of those days when, as you wake up, you basically contemplate the day ahead and wonder how everything is going to work out. Having said that,Thursday is always an early-to-get- going day because I jump into my clothes and off in the car to get to the Waitrose store in Droitwich as near to opening time as possible. To be truthful, I was about about five minutes late this morning but there were only about four or five us in the store so basically, a peaceful saunter around the shop lay ahead of me. I used to take a list with me but now I wander around every  aisle very slowly but trying to keep myself disciplined to only buy the things I absolutely need. At the end of the day, I think I only missed out on one item which I can always get from the Waitrose down the road from us. The major project that I had lined up for myself was to go and argue with the bank with whom our residents’ association has a community bank account but which has been unilaterally discontinued – much to our discomfiture. So I took some time getting ready this morning and was getting some of my accounts in order before I set off for town. Because I knew I could be stuck in the bank for hours (and this proved to be correct) I decided that I would walk into town avoiding the car park, as otherwise I wouldn’t know for how long I needed to pay a carparking charge. Having picked up my newspaper, I made my way to the bank and explained my dilemma to the counter staff (they only have two on duty in the whole of the branch) I was directed towards a workstation where I could phone the bank’s HQ using the branch’s own phone (and telephone bill for that matter) I was kept on hold for 48 minutes altogether with the speaker phone blasting forth’Your call is important to us but all of our agents are busy at the moment…’ which could be heard all over the store. In fact one well-meaning lady popped over to offer her commiserations at having to wait for so long. Eventually, when I got through to the Safeguarding centre, I received some sort of good news. Our community account was going to be reinstated for a period of 30 days in which the direct debits would be honoured. In the meanwhile, I would be sent an email with specialised instructions how to complete the whole of the rest of the safeguarding procedures online after which normality should be restored. It was explained to me by the branch staff before i embarked upon my marathon telephone call that the safeguarding Unit’s word was law but basically, they were under the strictest of supervision by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) to investigate thoroughly every account that was held on behalf of a group (such as a church, voluntary organisaion or residents’ association like ourselves) The argument is, apparently, that fraud is potentially much more likely when more than one signature is involved. (You could argue that as every signiicant cheque reuired two or more signatures then the accounts should be more rather than less secure but I was not in the mood to second guess the FCA). So eventually I got home having spent 1½ hours in the bank, feeling quite pleased with myself. The pleasure was reinforced by the fact that our Treasurer had gone to the branch in the High Street the day before and had ‘argued his case vociferously’ i.e. got angry with the staff member which got himself nowhere. However a more patient approach on my part weilded dividends so when I got home I emailed our Treasurer to give him the good news that we would not have to tramp the High Street in search of a new home for our little bit of money. This afternoon was deliberately kept lazy – not least beacuse I had to whizz around to make a lightning quick lunch.

For tea this evening, as I had been shopping and had got all of the ingredients I decided to make another batch of what I think I shojuld call a spicy winter root veg soup.Basically I dice and then parboil some celery, swede, carrot, parsnip and potato to which I then add some softened (i.e. translucent onions) I then add some vegetable stock (made with zero-salt stock cube), a third of a can of cocnut milk and half a jar of Sharwood’s Korma cooking sauce. Once cooked, this is served with a good dollop of yogurt, some freshly prepared croutons and a sprig of mint. Voilá – total success again.

We have a dripping kitchen tap which has been driving us mad but today, to round off a good day, we got a definite appointment for our local plumber to call round – but we have to be patient until next Tuesday.

The day started off today at about 2.00am in the morning when I was awoken by loud screeches coming from the garden. I assumed it was a fox-emitted noise and after a quick search on the internet, I managed to ascertain that the sound I heard was indeed a fox. Apparently, these sounds are likely to be heard in the dead of night in the middle of winter because it is the fox’s mating season and the sounds travel much further when there is an absence of trees on the leaves. So having got out of bed I read a few emails and consulted a few websites before making off to bed again. Today was one of those intermittently showery types of days so after a little deliberation, Meg and I decided to make the best of a bad job and we went into our ‘bad weather’ routine. We went in the car to collect the newspaper and then proceeded to the park where we  parked up and made a little trip to the bandstand – our refuge when the weather is poor. We drank our coffee and ate our biscuits in complete isolation as the park was practically deserted. We knew that we were to have a fairly busy afternoon and no sooner had we sat down and were enjoying a cup of tea, then our hairdresser turned up. We knew from our ‘planning board’ that our hairdresser was due today but were a little unsure of the time. So we had a delayed lunch after Meg had had per perm and I was shorn of my usual locks. No sooner had we despatched our hairdresser then our chiropodist arrived – again by appointment but it is still unusual for us to have two appointments like this on the same day. After the chiropodist had departed we were paid a visit by the Treasurer of our residents association who had brought us some unwelcome news. The bank that looks after our accounts had decided to close our account, afer some thirteen years.Even though we have been in a relationship with our bank for thast thirteen years, the bank is saying that we cannot prove who we say we are and despite several telephone calls from both the Treasurer and myself to the head office (but nothing can be handled in branch these days) the bank had decided that we did not meet their safeguarding procedures (or what-have-you) and premptively closed our account without notice. So tomorrow morning, I will need to go and argue with our original bank (which may prove fruitless) and after that, we may need to go and hassle with another bank for a ‘community’ account which will no doubt take a tremendous amount of bureaucracy to set up. Our chiropodist sympthathised  with us and told us that the same bank (which I shall not name) had done something similar to her and was generally ‘bad news’ The trouble is that the number of staff in the branch can be numbered as one or two individuals and then they are not empowered to take any decisions on their own. Then one has to hang onto a telephone for about 3/4 hour to be able to talk to a ‘real person’ who then has to refer you to a colleagues with a similar wait of hours. I look forward to tomorrow with a certain amount of dread, having been through their validation procedures once before and thinking that everything had been sorted out.

Tonight is the night when we have to drag our bins out from our individual driveways and put them into an accessible position at the kerbside, ready for the refuse delivery vehicles will call very early on Thursday morning. This is somewhat more than a trivial task as have to drag the bin for about 200 yards – and then I do the same for my two neighbours (one deceased, but the family visits the house occasionally to dispose of rubbish) and the other for our next daoor neighbour who can sometimes forget if he has been out at work all day long. This task always seems to be so much more irksome when you do it in the hours of darkness and one is manipulating a torch alongside two bins (one in each hand).

The latest sleaze crisis rumbles on and on.  It has since emerged that former Attorney General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, earned more than £800,000 while working as a barrister for law firm Withers, which is representing the British Virgin Islands (BVI) government in a corruption case brought by the BVI government. The particular offence seems to be that he was doing this from his Westminster office (i.e. within the Houses of Parliament) which would be a clear breach of the rules. In the meanwhile, No. 10 Downing Street seems to be losing patience particularly as Geoffrey Cox may have earned £800,000 working as a barrister on behalf of the government of the British Veirgin islands (in what may be, paradoxically, a corruption case!) Boris Johnson has said MPs who break parliamentary rules on second jobs ‘must be investigated and should be punished’. We shall see… but we have been here before and do not hold your breath.

Every day has its own character and Tuesday is no exception. As it is the day in which I attend my Pilates class, we have decided as a matter of policy to forego a walk in the park but to replace it with a trip to Waitrose (by car). This means that as well as a little treat for ourselves, I have enough time to get home, change into my track-suit bottoms and then walk down for my Pilates class. In Waitrose, we had a delicious (and hot) cup of cappucino and I did some shopping for some things that were needed. Although I have some curry powder at home, I wanted to buy something that would add a little bit of ‘spice’ to our root vegetables soup which I intend to cook this afternoon. I finished up impulse buying a couple of Sharwoods cooking sauces, one of which was a Korma and I thought would give us just the kind of spices that I needed.  Having got home, we did our normal mid-day Tuesday turn around and as I walked down into the town, I bumped into some of our church friends who were just returning home by car. In my brief chat, I told our friends about our soupmaking activities and was given a recipe for pea and mint soup (which I confirmed a little later on when I got home by consulting one of my recipe books). Then I had my Pilates class  in which there are five regulars after which,  I was back from my class a few minutes before 3.00 pm which is the norm. Then we had our lunch of cod fishcakes and some special Waitrose vegetables that microwave in about 2 minutes.

After lunch and a rest, I got out the other half of the root vegetables which I had prepared (diced) a couple of days before and got them simmering so that could be parboiled. Then I FaceTimed my sister in Yorkshire to get news from their particular home front – but nothing all that much had altered in the last week or so. Then it was time for us to FaceTime our old Waitrose friends which we do every Tuesday in the late afternoon. In the middle of our chat, I popped oout and got the soupmaker running so that we could have our evening repast as soon as we had finished our weekly chat. Now for the soup which I think was probably one of my best yet. The root vegetable mixture comprised a couple of sticks of celery, a large carrot, some swede, one parsnip and some fried-off onions. My stock was a vegetable stock made by dissolving a zero-salt vegetable stock cube (just recently on the market) and some Bouillon stock mixture. This went into the soupmaker together with about a third of a tin of coconut milk and half of jar of Sharwood’s Korma sauce mix. The end result was – stupendous (even, though I say it myself) I served it with some croutons and a large dollop of yogurt (which aids the creaminess and helps to cool it down from its boiling point).  I am going to make the whole mixture again in a couple of day’s time and leave some over to leave a little ‘taster’ for my daughter-in-law (the soup making expert in our house) and our domestic help who will come round on Friday and whose judgement I trust on these kinds of preparations.

Although I have been sort of following the COP26 proceedings, I must say I do not have much of a handle as to what kind of progress is being made. I had not realised that Amber Rudd, the Conservative politician, had been one of our lead negotiators at the last conference in Paris. She was arguing that in Paris all came good at the very last moment after days and days of wrangling. This time around, a more sober assessment must be that there is no way that we are even going to get near the limit 1.5% which is the overall goal of many. An influential report has suggested tonight that the pledges to cut methane, coal and protect forests made at COP26 will reduce global warming by just a few tenths of a degree – with temperatures on course to be at least 2.4C higher by 2100, according to the first major assessment of commitments at the summit. When you see the massive contribution that China makes to global warming, one thought might be  to try and persuade the Chinese to cut their emissions by just 1%-2% a year – whilst small in the context of the Chinese economy it might in quantitative terms be almost as much as many of the poorest African societies combined. Of course, it is possible that the Chinese are playing their cards close to their chest and might pull something out of the bag at the very last moment but I am not particularly hopeful about this.

Today was one of those nondescript days which, I suppose, is typical of November. The sky was overcast but it was not actually raining so we ventured forth and picked up our newspaper before our sojourn in the local park. We were half way through our coffee and comestibles when our good Italian friend hove into view and we exchanged pleasanteries and observations about the weather. Just then, our intrepid octogenerian walker came by on the first of his two laps of the park. He had been out with his family for Sunday lunch the day before and I made a mental note of the carvery which he had frequented so we might go there one weekend if we are entertaining. After a while our friend departed and it was time for us to make our way home and prepare lunch.

This afternoon was the day scheduled to a three hour debate called by the Liberal Democrats on the Owen Paterson ‘sleaze’ debate: Meg and I decided to sit through all of the three hour debate and ir proved riveting (to us, at least) Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House, sat on the government front bench  and was the epitome of misery throughout. After all, it is a rare event for a Tory to have to sit and have abuse hurled at you from all sides but as Rees Mogg was not going to speak in the debate, he just had to sit there and endure it.   MPs as a whole launched a blistering attack on an absent Boris Johnson during the emergency debate. Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the prime minister  of ‘giving the green light to corruption’ after his government tried to overturn the suspension of shamed former cabinet minister Paterson, before trying to shut down parliament’s standards committee entirely. The Tory benches were almost entirely empty (no doubt the Paterson ‘friends’ stayed away) and in the course of three hours, Paterson only had about two defenders in the whole of the three hour debate. The main Tory line of defence was that the verdict on Paterson by the Committee of Priveliges was flawed in the extreme because there was no appeal process with independent questionning of witnesses. The counter to this was that there was a quasi-appeal process built into the process because after the committee had concluded the outline of  its report, the MP before the committee had the right to appear in person and to submit more evidence in writing. However, as Chris Bryant the (Labour) chair of the committee pointed out, there was hardly a need for an appeal process because Owen Paterson had denied any of the facts of the case and, indeed, said he would do the same again. The overwhelming view of the House of Commons in the debate was that Peterson was ‘guilty as charged‘, that natural justice had been done, and the government’s attempt to subvert the whole process by issuing a three-line whip to Tory MPs to reject the guilty verdict as evidence of corruption. To get the overall verdict on this, it will be interesting to see what ‘NewsNight‘ on BBC2  makes of all of this at 10.30 and ‘What the papers say‘ on Sky News at 11.30

One does get the impression that the government is starting to panic with the COVID situation as it is. For a start, there are still 4.5 million people who have not received even their first doses of the vaccine and only 10 million (out of 50 million?) have received the booster vaccine. A fact not much appreciated is that as the immunity offered by the vaccine wanes over time, then those who received their first jabs in September may have precious little immunity left six months later. People are being urged to book their second jabs as quickly as possible and already there are accounts that some hospitals are under extreme pressure, not least because they are understaffed and there is quite an absenteeism rate with COVID anyway. Laying bare the toll of the past 19 months on the profession, an investigation has showed nursing staff are needing more time off for mental health problems, respiratory illness and migraines than they did prior to Covid-19 and absenteeism rates are up a fifth on pre-pandemic times. Those absent with mental health or stress-related conditions has increased by about 40% over the last year. So the government is actually pretty worried that they are caught in the vicious pincer movement between an understafed NHS on the hand hand and a mixture of winter-related seasonal illnesses with COVID on top on the other hand. 

I am hopeful that tomorrow might continue to quite a fine day. Before the fine weather disappears almost completely, I want to get little bits of ‘routine’ gardening done at the rate of about 20 minutes or so a day. I know from bitter experience that if you start off the spring with a generally weed-free garden, you get off to a flying start – and vice versa.