The spell of fine weather continues, so it is a case of enjoying the spring sunshine whilst we can. Although Great Britain generally enjoys a ‘north atlantic’ style of weather system in which storms and weather systems sweep across the country, we seem to be enjoying a high pressure system over most of continental Europe. As we know, high pressure systems tend to persist as other low pressure areas ‘bounce’ off them, so that it seems that we will enjoy this good weather for a good few days yet. This plays into our personal plans quite well as tomorrow we intend to make a trip out to another small market town in Worcestershire (Pershore) to see what delights it has to offer. The big day in my personal calendar is this Friday, March 25th, This is for two reasons, the most important being that it my son’s birthday. We shall see some of him this Friday because he is working a little from his ‘office’ which he has in our house and then from mid-day onwards, I am going to run him to the station so that he can go down to London, staying with a friend overnight, whilst the two of them join another party of ‘rail enthusiasts’ starting from Paddington, I believe, and going off to Paignton. I have another reason to have Friday marked in my personal calendar because it is the date when I traditionally start the grass mowing. As experienced gardeners will know, once one starts the season of grass cutting, a hormone is released from the cut grass which stimulates further growth. I tend to delay this first cut as long as I can because I know  that once I start, I am then on a weekly regime. The first cut of the season is always quite an arduous one because one has to have the blades set as high as possible and the overall effect always looks a little untidy. This is because I do not have a conventional grass collecting mower but a ‘mulching’ mower in which the grass is cut, thrown upwards and then cut a second time on the way down. When the grass is a normal length, the cut pieces are mulched into the surface of the grass. I have to ensure that I start off with a gallon of freshly drawn, high quality petrol (hopefully low in ethanol) whih will see me through for the first half of the season.

This morning was always going to be a slightly ‘chewy’ morning as we have two appointments in the middle of the day and we had to hold ourselves in readiness for a telecommunications engineer who was coming to check our internet connections/router/ASDL box and he was due any time between 8.00am and 1.00pm. Meg and I made a lightning visit by car  to get out our newspapers collected on time and the engineer called us, when we were on the way home (and fortunately could pull in at the side of the road to receive the call) and we were to expect him in 10-15 minutes time. When he arrived he gave our system a good check over and fortunately it was in the best of heart even though router is a little ‘old’ by today’s standards. As our internet provider, PlusNet,  had ordered the inspection they were going to pick up the bill. We received some good advice as to whether or not we could convert our existing landline to an add-on with our existing PlusNet package- but this is a duscussion for another day. We started to watch the Chancellors ‘Spring Statement’ in which there is particular interest this year as inflation is rapidly rising and the OBR is forecasting the greatest reduction in living standards since modern records began. More of this later, no doubt  At about 1.15 I took the car into town as I had a routine optician’s appointment. We always greet each other in the same way which is ‘I cannot believe that it a whole year since our last appointment‘ and then spent a certain amount of time, before we got down to the serious business of an optician’s appointment of discussing our university experiences. I was pleased to learn that my eyes have shown no signficant changes in the last year so as my mother had a history of glaucoma at my age, this is good news. As I was in town already, I popped into the Asda supermarket to buy a few things that I know I can only get in that store so this was a good opportunity. By the time I got home, I was in no mood to cook a conventional lunch so we treated ourselves to a hefty cheese and pickle sandwich as by this time, it was late in the afternoon.

A senior Putin advisor has reportedly resigned from his post and fled Russia. Whether this is an isolated event or the start of a steady stream of ‘rats leaving the sinking ship’ we shall just have to be patient and see.

Well, today was the not best of days  as we shall discover. At various times last night, I was testing our computer systems to see if internet access had been restored- at my sons suggestion, I turned the router off and then back on again but all of this was to no avail. Via 4-G on our phones, we got onto PlusNet to see what could be done. This included a HELP! call to PlusNet who informed us that the connection down as far as our socket seemed to be OK. My son nd I started work on this lot at 6.15 this morning and we managed to ascertain (lthough my son is much technical than I) that the problem lay in our router. As a complicating factor, as I am taking over this account I ha out in a new email contact and password so we were wondering whether some kind of conflict had been set up and hence we kept on getting ‘failure to authorise’ messages. My son got onto PlusNet and they tried to guide him through what we could possibly do – we had to resort to a bent paper clip and a reset back to factory settings on a number of occasions. At the other end, they thought that we would have to gave recourse to a BT engineer to sort us out. Then between us, my son and I (more him than me) decided to access the router diretly though its own IP address which is a set of four numbers. Eventually, after quite a long wait  we had to go through the procedure of an admin password and then my son remembered (or had got written down somewhere) the routers own password that we had used when we set up the sysem about 8 years ago. After a wait of about a minute or so we found that our internet access had been restored. In the meanwhile, we still have an engineer booked between 8.00am and 1.00pm tomorrow so we decided not to cancel this particular call.This is becaise we think that we can probably port our landline number across to PlusNet which, if it works OK, will save us about £25.00 a month. The person at the other end of the phone (the PlusNet employee)  thought we could ‘probably’ port our number over but we thought it would still be worthwhole to talk with an actual telecoms engineer before we take a decision. So all of these shenanigans took us the best part of four hours but we felt a little exhausted, but relieved, one we had got things fixed. Last night’s blog had already been written ain a text editor so it was a simple job to cut a cut-and-paste  followed by a ‘publish’ button.

Meg and I decided decided that we should still have some to get into the park so we went and occupied our normal bench. Then we met up with out University of Birmingham friend as well as Seasoned World Travellor but we had a little chat before all going on our various ways, as we all had other things to do this morning. I then walked down to my weekly Plates session but we were a little light today with only three of us. The after an hours stretches, it was a stroll up the hill and a lunch of fish cakes. This afternoon, I felt pretty exhausted what wih the potential after-effects of vaccination jab No. 4 and all of the turmoils of this morning. It was a pretty warm day when I walked down for my Pilates, so in retrospect I could have dispensed wit a jumper.

Some news coming out of Kyiv, which is probably just propaganda, is that some 220 Russian troops are refusing to take part in the invasion (presumably, further pushes into the cities which may involve fighting almost hand-to-hand and street by street.)  We know that the morale of the Russian conscript forces is quite low in various places. Another argument that is being used to buttress the first argument is that the Ukranians are putting it about that the  whole invasion can almost be over in some 2-3 weeks. Evidently, there are some major towns such Mariupol that may be considered a lost cause. But In Kyiv and Lviv which are incredibly stoutly defended, the amount of resistance is inspiring. There have been one or two video clips of the population coming out ‘en masse’ to confront the invading tanks which rather than advancing just retreat. An American tank commander has expressed the view “That’s a lack of training. You’ve got to get off the roads to maneuver. The roads are death traps, particularly for armored vehicles, particularly when you’re fighting people that have good anti-tank systems, and the Ukrainians do have good anti-tank systems.” Moreover, I suspect that the British and others have been piling in shoulder-held anti-tank missiles into the Ukraine in in great volumes and this has helped to even up the score somewhat.

This blog may be delayed for several hours as my Internet Provider is having multiple problems right across the country so I wonder if the network hs been subject to a massive cyber attack – one always fears the worst but in the meantime, I am working off-line and may be able to resume a normal post later on. It has been announced in several places that the 2nd booster (4th jab in total) will be available for the 75+ age cohort and I got a text to that effect asking me to make an appointment at my local surgery. But rather than doing that, Meg and I took ourselves off to the huge walk-in centre where we have received our previous jabs. This is a fairly large theatre-cum-Arts centre which was re-purposed to be a vaccination centre at the start of the pandemic and has remained so ever since. When Meg and I got there, we were greeted by one of our neighbours who had been volunteering there as a steward for ages. The centre was practically deserted so Meg and I did not have to queue but were vaccinated (by the Pfizer vaccine, like last time) so we should be well and truly topped up. We had to wait for an obligatory 15 minutes to make sure that we did not keel over after the jab and then went to a local supermarket primarly to access their ATM (as parking is available straight outside). This having been done, we went off to collect our newspaper. The newsagent had been so taken with the story that the Russian cosmonauts going to the International Space Station had somehow got their spacesuits to be decorated in the colours of the Ukranian national flag (blue and yellow) that he had taken a photo of this from one of the newspapers and posted it in his window! I wonder if the Russian TV authorities dare show their valiant cosmonauts getting to the space station dressed in the Ukrainian national colours or whether they will substitute some ‘still’ photographs from their archives and swiftly move on. One way or another, I have a suspicion that the Russian public will find out. As we were parked near the newsagent’s shop, we wondered w]hether to try out a new sort of cafe which is almost adjacent. Actually, it is not a cafe as such but is the base of a sandwich operation which they distribute to local workspaces and of course some people pop in to buy them fresh. We discovered they got to the shop at 4.30 in the morning to start preparing their ingredients. They had a couple of tables in there so we thought as we had had a fairly full morning that we would call in and sample it. The actual shop turned out to be a little cold as people came in off the street the whole time and the door was left open but we spent several happy minutes chatting with the proprietor and establishing some connections. It turned out that they may have distantly related to or least long term friends with our our newish next door neighbours so it was a case of, as they say, ‘wheels within wheels’. In about ten days time, we shall to frequent the reopened café in our local Waitrose where we are liable to bump into more friends. This afternoon, Meg and I thought we would have a quiet afternoon reading, just in case either of us started to feel a little worse for wear after our jabs this morning, but apart from the faintest suspicion of a soreish left arm, so far so good.

The news from the Ukraine continues to depress. Practically every report that we see from the Ukraine contains the proviso at the beginning that ‘the following report contains material that you may find distressing’ Every war has its own particular catalogue of horrors but it is now recognised that the battle for Mariupol, crucuial for the Russians to link up the Crimea with their eastern heartland such as Donetz, is practically being razed to the ground. The Russians had apparently transported several of the surviving inhabitants to ‘safety’ in Russia where they going to be dispersed to far-flung Russian towns and probably the equivalent of gulags or concentration like camps. I find it amazing, and appalling, that the rockets fired by the Russians have such destructive power – for example, it appears from the video images that it does not take too much rocketry to completely wreck a whole block of flats or even flatten a shopping centre. It is said that the Russians have targeted not only an Art Gallery but also a school and a residential home for the aged in which the combined casualty toll has got to be huge. The Russians had offered the surviving inhbitants of Mariupol a surrender and transport to places outside the city – but the offer was promptly rejected as the Ukranians argued the Russins could not ever be believed. However, the city is effectivly encircled and tonight it looks, literally, like a fight to the death for the remaining Ukrainan military forces. So by the morning, the most heart-rending decisions have to be taken either to surrender to the Russians or die.

Being Sunday, it was my day to get up a little bit earlier and go down to collect our Sunday newspaper. On occasions such as this, when I need to leave the house early, I treat myself to one of those ‘2-minute’ porridge sachets that are prepared very quickly. The variety that I am using actually encourages you to first empty the sachet into a microwavable dish and then to fill up the packet according to the guidance line with milk. As you might imagine, you have to do this with a certain degree of care but saves having to get another measuring vessel to measure out the milk. As usual, I got down into town and then back again in order to watch the 9.00am politics show on BBC1 with Sophie Raworth. After Meg and I had both breakfasted and got out ourselves ready, we popped down into town by car and then frequented our usual bench – but a bit of a cold wind sprung up for somewhere making us a little uncomfortable. Then I did something I have only managed to do twice (including this morning) in the last two years which is to knock my coffee cup over and deprive myself of a drink. After this minor calamity, we strolled down the hill where we made contact with Seasoned World Traveller who often has his coffee on on an outside table – but he, like us, doesn’t like it if the terrace is teeming with people. I popped inside to order ourselves some cappuchino and a treat which was a slice of cheese on toast which we both enjoy (warm and filling). Inside the café, a father was buying an icecream for his daughter and having a splash of raspberry sauce drizzled over it. I informed him that we were young, we used to call this ‘monkey blood’ so whether this priceless bit of information was passed onto the grateful recipient, who can say. As we were in the car, we stopped outside the house of our Irish friends and this proved to be very fruitful for us as they spotted us from inside the house and popped out for a chat. If the weather bodes fair and we can find a mutually acceptable time, we will look forward to inviting them around for a spot of afternoon tea. When we actually got home, we had a phone call which was a really pleasant surprise. It was our French friend from down the road and I think she had heard from somewhere that Meg and I were going to go to the concert being held in the parish church at the bottom of the hill (with no entrance charge but collections being taken for the Ukrainian relief fund). After the concert was over, our friend who is very ‘communautaire’ as the French put it, is going to have a little soirée in her house to which we were invited, together with some of her neigbours with whom we are already friendly but we have not seen for a week or so and some other friends, one of whom is a Spanish speaker (so, perhaps, quite interesting for Meg) It is always nice to get an invitation like this and we are looking forward to it enormously.

When we look at our planning board  in the kitchen which details all of our forthcoming commitments for the week(s) ahead, we see that we have quite a heavy week this week with appointments for haircutting, footcare and a routine eye appointment. Also, I do not like to give the grass its first ‘cut of the season’ until on or about 25th March as once you start, it will be a weekly cut from now on. I need to ensure that I have supplies of freshly drawn, high quality petrol as well as some petrol stabiliser which prevents the ethanol which is ofen as much as 10% of petrol these days absorbing water from the atmosphere and not being friendly to the petrol engines you have in lawn mowers. So I have the whole of the week to get these ingredients in place. Tomorrow morning, Meg and I may well pop off to the vaccination centre to see if we can get Booster No. 2 (I qualify for this, but Meg is on the cusp so that may/may not accept her tomorrow).

There is a report that had surfaced today whose import is that Russia has committed nearly all of the war crimes that humanity has ever seen. Also, for the second day in a row, Russia says it has launched a hypersonic missile, which is capable of striking targets 1,250 miles away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound. One wonders whether in the years ahead, the western powers will try and keep Russia in such an economic stranglehold that attacks like that on the Ukraine will no longer be possible. But to be pessimistic, once nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons have been invented, they cannot be disinvented.  

Another fine day beckons, so Meg and I are resolved to make the most of it. Today was always going to be quite a full day what with one thing or another. Whilst Meg was occupied showering, I went through some bathroom cabinets to rescue what duplicates we have of shower requisites and diverse other cosmetic type things to donate to an Ukraine appeal. As the bag was so heavy, we felt we had better go down to the insurance company organising the appeal and parked, semi-illegally, for the minute or so that it took to drop off our goodies (and they were teeming with material) The newsagent’s wife tells me that she herself had donated two carrier bags full, one of groceries and the other of toiletries in the last day or so. Apparently, the ‘cake sale’ raised £750 which the insurance company were going to match, thus doubling the total. All of the donated goods are going to go to the premises of the ‘Worcester warriers’ rugby club where they are going to be sorted and appropriately parcelled up. From there, they are going to be transported to the Poland-Ukraine border for distribution where they are needed – presumably in Poland itself. as they have 1.1 million refugees. I imagine and hope that there is a massive collective effort going across Europe to assist those who the Russians accuse of being ‘Nazis’ and ‘Fascists’ There is a terrible appropriation of terminoloty here as Vladimir Putin is himself a fascist autocrat, one who imprisons democratic opposition leaders and critics. He is the acknowledged leader of the global far right, which looks increasingly like a global fascist movement. Ukraine does have a far-right movement, and its armed defenders include the Azov battalion, a far-right nationalist militia group. But no democratic country is free of far-right nationalist groups, including the United States. In the 2019 election, the Ukrainian far right was humiliated, receiving only 2% of the vote. This is far less support than far-right parties receive across western Europe, including inarguably democratic countries such as France and Germany. Meanwhile, back at home, there was a prayer service for Ukraine organised by the borough council and a local baptist church (in the bandstand, which we often occupy when we are being rained upon). Next week, in our local Anglican church (the biggest in the town, complete with a clock and steeple) there is going to be a concert at 7.00pm next Saturday evening with attendance ‘free’ but donations sought to go the Ukranian relief effort. I presume that local musicians and choristers are giving their services free and I do not know what the programme will be. It must be the things that the musicians know well and do not need to rehearse and, under the circumstances, one would be very forgiving of an under-rehearsed performance.

Our friends in the park were explaining to us recently how Russia possesses, and had deployed, a new type of missile known as a hypersonic missile. Cutting the technicalities to a minimum, these missles are fired into space and then drop to earth, presumably with a satelite guidance system onto their target at speeds which are Mach 4 i.e. four times the speed of sound. By way of comparison, a bullet from a high velocity rifle might travel at twice the speed of sound. Because of their speed, these weapons are almost impossible to guard against as no missile tracking system can track them or lock onto them. When they hit the target, they have enormous destructive power (imagine a small meteorite hitting the earth) before we even start to consider their explosive charge. Russia has claimed it used a hypersonic missile to strike a large weapons depot in western Ukraine. It marks the first time a Kinzhal – or ‘Dagger’ – missile has been deployed since Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency. So this help to explain why the cities of the Ukraine are being pulverised as it were.

As a follower of ‘Six Nations’ rugby, one of the biggest upset in the history of the competition took place this afternoon. Italy has participated in the competition and played 36 matches without a victory until now. But in their match against Wales  at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff this afternoon, the Italians were actually leading the Welsh until 12 minutes before the end. Then the Welsh scored and it looked as though the match was all over. Then in the last few minutes of the game, the Italians scored an incredible ‘break away’ try which was easily converted  to give the Italians a one point victory. It is fair to say that the Italians have been steadily improving game by game but they have never even come close to beating an opponent until this year. The Welsh gave away a lot of needless penalties  and one can only be extremely glad for the Italians to have gained a victory against anyone at last. The competition as a whole can only benefit from this, of course, even though Italy still occupies the bottom slot in the table.

It was another fine day today and Meg and were looking forward to our walk into town. First, though, as is customary on a Friday we had to catch up on the week’s news by chatting with our domestic help, whose day it is on a Friday. In particular, after our day out to Alcester yesterday, we were pleased to show her Meg’s super new three-quarter length coat which we bought from a charity outlet yesterday. Meg’s new coat is made of a material which will certainly make it windproof and we suspect it is showerproof as well. The label inside says ‘Betsey Johnson’ who is a  quite a famous American designer of high quality and fashionable clothing and I must say that with a slightly flared line from the waist, it certainly does seem to be a cut above the ordinary.  We had a slightly fuller morning than is customary. We decided to inhabit our normal higher seat in the park  and saw one of our ex-Waitrose friends who had just returned from a few days holiday in Wales. The next time we see her will probably be in the Waitrose café when it reopens a week on Wednesday. Having had our coffee, we walked down the hill and saw our friend ‘Seasoned World Traveller’ who was entertaining as ever. Then we left him and went to collect our newspaper, after which we called in at Waitrose to collect some more cordial which only Waitrose seems to stock. Then we thought we would make our way to a large insurance company that occupies a large and prominent site in Bromsgrove. We knew from a poster in our newsagent’s window that a ‘Bake a cake’ sale was being organised, with all of the proceeds donated to assist people in need in the Ukraine. We picked up a couple of cakes (we are not big cake eaters, but that is not the point) and then made a donation to the appeal funds. The system was wonerfully unbureaucratic in that you took whatever cake you wanted and donated whatever money you could afford to the appeal fund. There was also an appeal for non-food donations (in the main cosmetics, nappies, blankets) and this afternoon we will load up some carrier bags with some surplus stuff we are bound to have in our bathroom cabinets and this we can add to the pile of donations in the morning.

This afternoon we had been looking forward to a bit of a rest but it proved not to be. As our domestic help was leaving, she informed us that the toilet in the family bathroom was not draining as it should and evidently needed some attention. My son was working in what had been his office in the house today and between us we tried to investigate and cure whatever was the blockage. First we had a go with a really super plunger which I had bought last time we had a loo problem but initially this only seemed to make the problem worse. Then my son tackled it with a tiny little sink plunger which seemed to be effective, particularly with an arm half way round the S-bend. We went to investigate the rodding eye outside and nothing seemed afoot. But after our latest plunge we heard the most enormous gurgling sound from outside (this is the polite way of expressing it) and this seemed to cure the problem. We put a load of bleach down the toilet and we are going to leave everything until tomorrow morning to see if the loo is still free running.

The big news from yesterday with a lot of repercussions today was the shocking news that the P&O shipping line (itself the subsidiary of a company based in Dubai) had dismissed 800 employees on the spot and immediately replaced them all, all the way from captains down to booking clerks, with cheaper labour force supplied by a ‘third party’. There were some accounts that security staff in balaclavas were putting existing staff in handcuffs and escorting them off vessels before the new (and considerably cheaper) labour force could take over. There is a huge debate going on whether all of this is legal or not, including whether the necessary statutory notices and consultations had been undertaken. This does not appear to be a case of using Brexit-related absence of regulation as British employment law is still largely within the remit of EU legislation. The wider point is that P&O ferries is a subsidiary of DP World P&O Ferries and is losing money – £105m in 2020, according to the accounts for the relevant local holding company However, DP World itself is one of the world’s biggest logistics firms and recorded top-line earnings of $3.8bn (£2.9bn) last year. It ought to be able to handle a £100m crisis in a minor subsidiary in a calm manner and without resorting to such extreme tactics.

As yesterday was dull, rainy and blustery so today was almost the exact reverse. We awoke today to a frosty scene in which cars had to have a certain amount of the ‘hot water poured from a watering can’ regime to make sure that we could unfreeze the car locks (and retractable mirrors) before we could set off for our weekly food shopping. Today I went to the smaller of the two Aldi stores that we have here in Bromsgrove and was queuing outside the door at one minute to eight before the store opened its doors at 8.00am promptly. I must say that I felt quite pleased with my shopping experience here today as I managed to get every item that I felt that we needed and with no omissions. Doing things in this particular fashion means that I am somewhat faster overall and I think the cost for the six bags of shopping was probably only purchased for about two thirds of the cost of their equivalent at Waitrose. Once we had got the shopping all put away, it was time to get ourselves ready for our little trip out today. We had decided to visit a little market town of Alcester which has a population of about 7,000 and is reputed to have a pretty High Street and some excellent charity shops. Meg and I got there some time before 12.00pm amd immediately set about finding ourselves a coffee shop where we could have some cappuchino and, hopefully, some toasted tea cakes. This is when the fun and games started as the shop had invested in a new microwave oven which was evidently hypersensitive and at the touch of a hat the residual cicuit breaker would trip plunging us all into darkness. Actually, a long time ago, Meg had and I had a microwave that kept doing this and it was particularly frustrating if you happened to have the computer running as your work was liable to be lost (at best) or files corrupted (at worst). In the event, after a couple of such blackouts, our toasted teacake duly arrived but we had no idea we were going to spread so much mayhem in our wake. Well, our friend who told us that Alcester was full of good quality charity shops was certainly not wrong. I bought a glass ovenware dish that I think will complement our range of other ovenware cookware. But then in another shop I espied what I thought would be an excellent and stylish three-quarter length coat for Meg which I think be excellent for our daily trips down into town, particularly as the weather is now improving. We did a quick ‘try on’ in the shops to make sure that all of the crucial zips were still in working order and then completed our purchase. We then had a quick flash around other shops, including one of those hardware shops that seems to stock everything and you suddenly realise that you might utilise a thingamabob which the store stocks. In our peregrination up and down the High Street, we had espied a place where we might lunch and this was an old coaching inn that were offering two course meals at special prices for pensioners. Meg and I are not proud in this respect so we ordered a meal of roasted vegetables lasagne (for Mike) and a spinach and ricotta pasta (for Meg), both served with a very good salad and some coleslaw. These meals were absolutely delicious and we asked our waitress if she could also let us have a serving spoon so that when we were a certain way through our meals we could do share each other’s meal. Then we treated ouselved to some baked sponges (typical nursery food) served with either with cream, ice-cream or custard. A couple of these two course meals cost us £20 so I do wonder whether at this price, considering the costs of food preparation and service, whether we are getting to meals at practically a cost price. Feeling replate by now, we decided to return home which was just as well because the weather had darkened and we had certainly had the best of the day.

Yesterday, at the end of a press conference, President Jo Biden  promised an extra $800 million in military aid which brings the total delivered or promised this week to $1 billion. As he was leaving the press conference and in an apparently ‘off the cuff’ remark, Jo Biden called Putin a ‘war criminal’. What had prompted Biden’ s remark was the fact that a theatre in Mariupol housing more than 1,000 women and children and with the words ‘Children’ (in Russian) clearly marked outside had just been flattened by Russian rockets. Although there are some survivors, it is hard to know at this stage the even approximate numbers of survivors.  Now whether this is objectively a ‘war crime’ or not, it is interesting to speculate whether it is politicaly useful or inept, to decribe Putin as a war criminal. Putin has reacted with absolute fury – which may not be helpful if the final negotiations between Russia and the Ukraine are at a particularly delicate stage.

Today turned out to be wet and windy – just as the weather forecasters had predicted but unpleasant enough to be sure. We did have plans to go out to one of the small neighbouring towns but it was not the kind of weather for strolling up and down a place you do not really know so we quickly bandoned those plans. Instead, we decided to go back to our usual haunts of a trip to Droitwich and then we got there, we made for our usual coffee shop and treated ourselves to coffee and scones – scones are not really my thing when I am trying to count the carbs but their teacakes had failed to arrive this morning. Then we went round Wilko which is always a pleasure. I managed to buy a replacement for an ‘Anglepoise’ style lamp which bit the dust the other day. Its replacement is a small but beautifully designed little spot light in a dove grey which completely lights up the dull corner of my deak and cost me the princely sum of £6.50 (which is about half the price of its nearest competitors such as Asda and even Argos) Other purchasers seem to have given it glowing reviews (if these are to be believed) but so far, it absolutely needs my needs  and according to the blurb on the side of the led bulb box, the bulbs should last for an average of 25,000 hours (11-12 years of use if I have it on for 6 hours a day).

The news today has been dominated by news other than from the Ukraine. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a British-Iranian woman who has been in jail in Iran for six years. Her husband has campaigned tirelessly for her release but the Iranians have been hanging onto her for years on a variety of trumped up charges in an attempt to get the UK to pay a long-standing debt. This is a historic £400m debt for tanks bought by the Iranians but not delivered (in the days of the Shah of Iran) For years, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) claimed the two issues (of the unpaid debt and the gaol sentence handed out to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe) were not connected. But in practice, the Iranians made them one and the same issue.  Some in the FCDO had wanted to pay the debt but were prevented initially by reluctance within the Treasury and the United States, fearing it would reward hostage-taking and even fund terrorism. So this good news has largely crowded even the Ukraine war.

There are some indications this evening that the Russians and Ukrainians may be having ‘serious’ peace talks with each other. With Moscow’s ground advance on the Ukrainian capital stalled, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said a neutral military status for Ukraine was being ‘seriously discussed’ by the two sides. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s demands for ending the war were becoming ‘more realistic’. According to the Financial Times, a 15-point plan to end the fighting has been drawn up. This includes a ceasefire and a Russian withdrawal, with Kyiv having to accept neutrality and curbs on its armed forces. Citing three sources involved in the negotiations, the FT said Ukraine would have to give up its bid to join NATO – something Mr Zelenskyy has already hinted at. Of course, it would not be the first time that negotiations have started, appear to be progressing and then break down. There was also the reaction broadcast on Radio 4 this morning  that sometimes both sides, even in a severe conflict, may find it in their interests to ‘pause’ or having a temporary ceasefire if only to resupply and this despite the negotiations going on above their heads.There seems to be a tacit acknowledgment that the Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO is now ‘off the table’ and I am sure that the degree of autonomy to be given to the two Russian speaking areas will be contentious in the extreme.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that the number of today’s blog is 730 i.e. exactly twice 365 or a complete two years of blog. So this blog started when as a society we were just about to start on the very first lockdown and one has to reflect that we have had quite a significant couple of years. In fact, the everyday news of the pandemic seemed to end on one day and the war in Ukraine started on the next. I do get the feeling that like those kaleidoscope puzzles that you shake and then all of the pieces end up in a different configuration, one has almost the same feelings about the current world order. For example. Germany has made an immense shift in its own foreign policy and is now going to sepnd a much higher proportion of its GDP on armaments – no doubt reasoning that with Russia in its present leadership this is no time for pacific sentiments.

Well, today has been quite an interesting day what with one thing or another.  Again, like yesterday, it was a beautiful day and Meg and I walked to the paper shop, calling in at Waitrose en route to collect some supplies. Then we made our way to the park where we were pleased  to have a sit down and to enjoy a little more spring sunshine. We knew that we did not have to tarry too long as Tuesday is my day for my weekly Pilates session so we set off for home in plenty of time. On the way home, though, we bumped into our Italian friend and we had quite a long chat, mainly discussing the practicalities of hosting a Ulrainian refugee family. I told our Italian friend about the ‘Cake Sale’ being organised on Friday by one of the large insurance companies in the town and Meg and I will no doubt go down there (even though cake is not really ‘our thing’) and I wonder who else we will bump into when we get there. The chat with our friend made me a little late for my Pilates class so I really had to put my skates on to get myself turned out and ready for the class. On my way down, there was some surveying work going on along the pavements along the Kidderminster Road and I suspected that the firm was using ground penetrating radar or other types of instrumentation to determine the cables buried beneath the surface. But what was so remarkable was the variety of colours of both spray paint and chalk there were being used to indicate the type of cables and their location. I counted six different colours of paint that were being utilised (white, yellow, blue, green, orange and red) and the pavement rather looked as though a gaggle of primary school children had been let loose to do their best. In fact, when the work started yesterday, I asked one of the operatives whether they had been deprived of coloured crayons when they were a child and hence they had now got themselves into a job where they could spray away to their heart’s content.

On the way down to my Pilates class, I called in at an ATM in the wall of the Asda supermarket which is on the way to the location where my class is held. I requested that the ATM dispense £200 and my card was accepted and then returned to me. Then a message came up which indicated that my cash was being counted and after an indeterminable time grinding some sort of mechanism, I waited for my cash in vain. After what seemed to be an eternity, a message came out to say the machine could not comply with my request but had I just lost my £200? Either the ATM had run out of cash or it was malfunctioning but there was no way of knowing which of these possiblities it was. The supermarket actually has two ATMs adjacent to each other and I managed to get the cash that I needed from the neighbouring machine. Then it was off to Pilates and my class before I walked home – but evidently whether or not I had just been deprived of £200 was preying on my mind. So when I got home, I immediately got onto my internet banking to discover that the first machine had indeed debited my account – but then another system had reinstated the money when it failed to dispense the cash. I suppose that this is the system working as it should but I have to say that having used ATMs for about 25 yers or so now, I have never had the experience such as I have experenced today. It really is one’s worst nightmare when the cash fails to appear but I suppose they have to run out of cash every so often and perhaps many people have this type of experience before – but not me.

There was an incredible happening on Channel One of the Russian state broadcaster. During a live broadcast on Monday evening, Marina Ovsyannikova, who is thought to have worked for the company for years, walked on to the set behind the presenter with a placard denouncing the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Following a court hearing, she was fined 30,000 roubles (£213), state media reported. It is not clear if she will face other, more serious charges over the protest because, in theory, she could spend the next 15 years of her life in gaol.

There is a hint tonight that the Ukrainian negotiating team may be prepared to buy peace by abandoning Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO. But, when the war ends, if Ukraine as an independent nation gets itself armed to the teeth and acquires a superb air defence system, perhaps it doesn’t need to join NATO at all. The Russians are not going to invade a well armed and prepared Ukraine on a second occasion, after all, if they eventually withdraw with a bloodied nose.

Today was the most beautiful fine day and we looked forward very much to a pleasant stroll in the sunshine.  On our way down, we were pleased to run into our Irish friend from down the road and we chatted for a bit about church matters and a tooth her husband was going to have extracted, which occasioned him having to undertake a COVID test. This involves going to Worcester Royal some 14 miles away which is always a bit of a pain. But to alleviate the absolutely horrendous carparking provision in the hospital, one has to drive up to a special COVID pod and all of the procedures are done through the open car window which makes a lot of sense to every one concerned. We went on our way and called in at the newsagents where there was a notice in the window displaying the fact that a large insurance company that occupies a very prominent position in the town was going to organise a ‘cake sale’ with the proceeds going to the Ukrainian relief fund. The newsagent and I chatted about this and we were delighted that a communal effort was going in in the town. Meg chatted to his wife who was just leaving the shop and she was explaining that her daughter, who she had not seen for two years, had just completed a flying visit from Los Angeles and had just returned to the States. We go to the park and the fine weather seemed to bring out lots of our park acquaintances. In particular, we had quite a long chat with a lady who had an incredibly friendly ‘working collie’.  I have subsequently discovered that a ‘working collie’ is a dog bred not to be a pet as such but to a ‘working sheep dog’.  I now know that to become a fully accredited working sheep dog is quite a long and arduous process where the dog in question has to exhibit various skill levels. The dog that we met in the park was insistent that we throw the ball as far away as we could so that the ball could be retrieved and dropped at our feet waiting for the next throw – you could spent all morning doing this. As we sitting in the pleasant spring sunshine, we were passed by a goodly number of our regular park acquaintances – we evidently all appreciated the beautiful weather. In the park, the flowering cherry trees are in almost full bloom ad the weeping willows next to them are coming into their greenery so the two types of trees complement each other well. Then we progressed home and had a lunch consisting of the ham cooked yesterday and a mélange of vegetables cooked today.

In the afternoon, I needed to devote a certain amount of time to get my accounts into order. This is because at this time of the month I have some payments flowing in and several more designed to flow out again so I need to ensure that my various records and spreadsheets are duly updated. This seemed to go fairly effortlessly and I was pleased to get it done for another month.

The latest news from the Ukraine, despite the tightening of the Russian noose around the Ukrainian neck, is showing some slight signs of hope. There is another round of Ukraine-Russia negotiations underway today, via a video conference and the Ukrainians were presssing for a cease fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and some security guarantees for Kyiv. On a somewhat more positive note, a total of 10 humanitarian corridors have opened in the Ukraine today. It is hoped that an aid convoy could relieve the stricken, shelled city of Mariupol after days of failed attempts.It is understood, though, that some 2,5000 have died in Mariupol since the Russian invasion and the whole city seems to be without power, water and food in the middle of a Ukranian winter. People are so desparate for water that there are reports that frantic inhabitants are opening up their radiator systems to get access to the fluid circulating inside (which, if you have ever seen it, is black and iron oxides contaminated) The latest reports tonight have indicated that a relief convoy into Mariupol has failed yet again but a convoy of about 160 cards managed to leave the stricken city during a two-hour break in the hostilities. The news from around Kviv is that the Russians have laid waste to a string of small towns to the north of the Ukrainian capital. Their tactics may be to ‘clear’ these areas before starting a final sweep into the Ukrainian capital.

At home, Michael Gove has announced a scheme, already trailed in the media yesterday, that there will be a scheme offering £350 a month to anyone offering accommodation to Ukranian refugees. Government sources later said, as of 6.30pm on Monday, 20,000 people had already signed up to offer their homes to Ukrainians. This included 1,500 people registering to offer support within the first hour of the website going live on Monday afternoon.