We knew that a band of rain was due to sweep across the country and so it proved. The rain was not particularly intense but enough to stop a normal sit down in the park. So Meg and I went together to pick up our daily newspaper and then swung back towards the park where we headed, as might be anticipated, for the bandstand. We imagined that this would be full of joggers and dog walkers but in the event, we had the whole bandstand to ourselves. Meg was seated in the middle of this on our three legged stool (which we take to act as. small improvided table as it is so light) and I juggled with the comestibles trusting that Meg would not make a sudden lurch to the left or right which, on a three-legged stool, might deposit her on the floor. Then we made for home so I could get on with a range of domestic jobs – principally getting on the phone to organise or reorganise various payments. Firstly, I mamaged to get the car booked in for a servivce and that was very easy. The next client along was the online delivery firm Ocado which I had used  about a year early in the early stages of the pandemic but not recently. I managed to  cancel my subscription to their services – incidentally, isn’t it interesting that to sign up for things takes only a few ‘clicks’ and is all too easy – whereas to cancel a service takes a phone call and is certainly not a prominent option on the organisation’s website. But this experience ended OK as well because I did get through to a friendly person who accepted my cancellation and even said they would return the small payment that had somehow crept onto their system (despite an out-of—date card) which was fine by now. After lunch, I was due to tackle ‘the big one’ because I have had a feeling that I am paying too much for my landline and feel the need to reduce the costs to an acceptable minimum. When I did get onto BT, I asked to be put through to their ‘retentions department’ and threaten to cancel my account altogether. My bills were higher than usual because I was on an unlimited tariff (which I didn’t realise) so I got this put right by getting put on to a minimal tariff. Then I was transferred to a different department to explain why my bills seemed to be doubling compared with last March but for no apparent reason. The explanation seemed rational but irrational at the same time – my bills last year might appear low because I had built up some credit which lowered the quarterly bill but as the quarters rolled by so the credit expired and the bills increased. Then I asked where the credit had come from and how it got built up and the explanation seemed arcane. However, I have now simplified my payment system to a single, direct debit system which avoids the problem of BT estimating my bills, charging me against that estimate and other weird and wonderful accounting methods which do not appear to be particularly transparent. However, by the end of the afternoon I got myself in the situation where I wanted to be which was lower bills for the same service and a more transparent insight into how my bills get calculated. In the fullness of time, I may try and get my broadband and fixed line systems aligned when they are each up for renewal provided always that I can keep my landline number which is on countless lists by now.

Later on this evening, it was my chance to put my newly acquired SoupMaker into use, now tht I have found out how to actually use it. The recipe I had downloaded from the net indicated that I should use four parsnips but did not specify their weight. I had bought some enormous parsnips from Waitrose the other day so I decided to peel 1½ of them and parboilded this as I suspected that it might be left a bit too chunky of I put them in absolutely raw. The recipe called for some sautéd onion as well as some Granny Smith apples – the apples were no problem as I now have plenty of those. And so I started on my first soupmaking venture – after some huffing, puffing and blending my first results were ready in about 25 minutes. The results were even better than I had anticipated as the result was very ‘creamy’  and piping hot and we really enjoyed our very first meal. I had prepared too much parsnip and apple as initially I looked as though I was going to exceed the ‘maximum’ limits so I swiftly divided my prepared veg into two tranches. No doubt tomorrow (carrot and coriander?) I will be able to make much faster progress than even today.  

So another Sunday dawns  which is always a mark of how the weeks are rolling by. This morning, having got up early, a tremendous rainstorm passed over the Midlands but it had done its worst by the time I came to walk down, on my own, to collect the Sunday newspaper. After the Andrew Marr show,  I prepared the elevenses and we walked slowly down to the park in weather that was damp but not actually raining. We found our University of Birmingham friend chatting with a dog owner (of a labradoodle, which are obviously quite popular). Not being a particularly ‘doggy’ person, I thought I would just put the word Labradoodle into Google to see what transpired. I was amazed at the wealth of information that the website provided on several headings of adaptability, all around friendliness, health and grooming needs, trainability, physical needs, vital statistics to be followed by extensive  additional information on coat types, general temperament and I know not what else besides. I must acknowledge that the days are long gone when you saw a puppy sitting in the corner of a per shop window and you paid about 7s6d for it – or was it even more? Anyway, we were soon deep into a conversation whether hypocrisy (engaging in activity despite one’s declared politics) was much more rampant on the left than on the right. I argued that hypocrisy is always less on the right because they ‘own’ the system, benefit from it, and therefore have less need to iron out inconsistencies whereas the claim on the left is that they can manage capitalism better than the capitalists (which is occasionally correct but the general electorate remain to be convinced) Our political dicussions are like that – but they are always a little inconclusive. There is another line that we might pursue in the days ahead i.e. that voters are more influenced by sheer emotion (and those who manipulate symbols better, generally true of the right) than rationality, facts, figures  and pure reason. 

Now for the biggest disappointment of the day. Before we went for our walk, I unpacked our brand-ndw Tefal SoupMaker and followed the instructions to give it a preliminary clean. All you had to do was to fill it with hot water and press a button. What actually happened was that each of the control LED lights lit up in a sequence and nothing else happened. This was repeated several times with the same result – so it could well be a case of not DOA (Dead on Arrival) but Malfunctioning on Arrival. So I consulted the website and submitted a form to TEFAL asking whether this was a fault and should the unit be returned? The form was accepted but with a message to say that because of COVID restrictions on staff, it might be some time before a response would be forthcoming. There is also a Customer Service telephone number so this might have be tried in the morning. I suspect that it is a case of returning the whole thing (fairly easy with Amazon but a nuisance all the same) and hope that I do not get another from the same batch with the same fault occurring on the next one. Just to rub salt into the wound, my book on  Making Soups in your SoupMaker arrived also from Amazon but this will have to wait until I get a unit that works. I tried a quick Google search to see how common faults might be on brand new machines but this information does not seem to be readily available (I wonder why?)

Sky news have produced a report called COVID crisis – The pandemic year. Their trailer for their report indicates: ‘You can look behind the scenes to discover what the government knew (and didn’t know) about the new coronavirus as the number of deaths began to rise. Make your own mind  up as to what the UK got right, and where lessons can be learnt.’

This looks as though it might be incredibly informative – it is interesting that SKY are producing a report like this but the BBC which seems to me to have been totally emasculated in recent years would not do anything that appeared so critical of the government. Anyway, I need to give this a good read to see if it fulfills the promise.

The week ahead looks as though we shall enjoy (?) a mild but wettish few days and then a really cold blast is going to hit us from the Arctic with zero and sub-zero temeperatures to which to look forward. If it is going to cold and dry then this is one thing but cold with an icy wind is something else altogether.  One is tempted to use the phrase ‘Winter drawers on‘ but people might realise that this phrase (or rather jokes)  was banned by the BBC in their ‘Green Book’ published in 1949 along with any references to ladies underwear, honeymoon couples or fig leaves. One can only say that times have changed!

For a whole variety of reasons, and now that the winter nights are drawing on, I have started to wonder whether a soup maker might be a worthwhile investment for the kitchen – particularly as after some rearrangement and rationalisation, I have now space for it. Our daughter-in-law is a great soup maker and consumer, as is our domestic help. So under these dual influences, I decided to take the plunge and order one. Although it was only ordered very late at night last night, nonetheless delivery was extraordinarily prompt and it was delivered before our morning walk this morning. During the night and having ordered the soup maker, I took the precaution of finding and then ordering a book full of  soupmaker recipes and I also ran off two or three that I discovered on the internet.  All of this was just as well because the Tefal soupmaker booklet which arrived with the machine which appeared voluminous was less so when you took into account that the booklet was written in 10 languages and included not only soups but also smoothies and purees. One of the recipes that rather took my fancy was a parsnip with apple soup and as I already had plenty of apples as of yesterday, all I needed to buy was some parsnips. I left Meg on her customary park bench and an earnest discussion soon ensured beween Our University of Birmingham friend, the ‘NHS Queen’, the ‘World Traveller’ and myself before I was despatched to run my errands. Just before I went, though, we knew that the towns local football team (Bromsgrove Sporting) were in a crucial FA preliminary match against Grimsby Town. By halftime, we discovered that Bromsgrove were 3-0 down and by the end of the match, they had been defeated 5–0 which is about as comprehensive a defeat as is possible. Having then picked up the newspaper, I then popped into Waitrose and noticed some huge parsnips, which I bought together wih a supply of carrots, the last remaining coriander plants and some biscuits of which we were running short. Now I have enough root vegetables to make soup until it is running out of my ears so tomorrow I will devote to a bit of experimentation with my new toy/kitchen gadget. When we got home, we feasted on a special ‘Steak and Ale’ pie which we had bought from the market when we had our little stay in the Brecon Beacons. I decided to give the pie a bit of an extra twist by painting its surface with a raw egg which worked fine. We used up some red cabbage supplemented by a bit of our own apple and finally augmented the ‘jus’ I made yesterday so we could have some more gravy with the pie. Altogether a success.

This afternoon, we had a quiet afternoon, as we always do when we we know we are going to church later on the evening. The church was rather a subdued affair – the church heating sysem had broken down, beeen repaired with a new part and had then broken down again.

The reverberations from the killing of Sir David Amess continue to dominate the media. As a very well respected local MP with no ministerial ambitions, there is now a lot of concern how we can protect a vital part of our constitution i.e. the link that an MP must have wih its constituents by face-to-face contact. The political elite have come together in the face of the tragic events. Both Boris Johnson and David Cameron went jointly to lay wreaths at the murder site today. Also, there is a report that in the ensuing by-election, the Conservative candidate when chosen will have no opposition as other political parties will not field candidates (Even if they did, they woiuld have lost massively anyway.)  The whole incident has been declared a terrorist incident  even though the attacker seems to have been a lone-wolf attacker of Somali origins. No count, this is so that the secret organs of the security services can trawl all kinds of data sets not available to the ‘normal’ police so that they can ascertain if the assassin is part of a wider social network or not. Great parallels are being drawn with the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour MP, during the referendum campaign some five years ago. Two MPs murdered within a space of five years is a bit of a frightening statistic and  one hopes does not lead to the situation, increasingly common in the US where elected populations feel the need to wear body armour and/or stab proof vests. As is often the case, one looks to the Sunday newspapers for a bit more in depth analysis of the background to a story like this. Normally NewsNight would fulful this function but not on a Saturday or a Sunday night.

Looking at today’s date, it makes one realise that the month of October is nearly half gone and, I suppose, it is a sign of advancing years that the weeks and months seem to fly by with increasing rapidity. The only problem with this is that October will soon give rise to November and November is one of my least favourite months of the year.  I think the reason for this is any last vestige of summer has gone and, apart from November 5th which doesn’t hold any real attractions for me, the month of November always seems to me to be a bit of a ‘non’-month i.e. halfway sandwiched in between the months of October when we had Meg’s birthday and other liaisons to which to look forward and the month of December which, of course, has Christmas at the end of it. Also after December 21st/22nd the nights are actually getting shorter by a smidgeon each day. So all in all November is just a month to be lived through. This morning was quite a fine day so although it was a little cooler than days in the past, Meg and I enjoyed our perambulation as far as the park. We had our coffee and I left Meg on the park bench knowing that some of our other park regulars would soon be on their way, which indeed they were. We were discussing, inter alia, how far such terms as are increasingly bandied about (bi-polar, schizophrenic, autistic spring to mind) refer to real and immutable phenomena or whether they are only just society’s ways of attributing a label to behaviours that are defined as some as problematic.  At other times and in other place e.g. Joan of Arc hearing ‘voices’ that led to the downfall of the English armies, what we now term as schizophrenia night have been interepreted as a ‘hotline to God’

After lunch, it was time to gather in this year’s apple crop. We have about 4 trees spread over two locations in the garden some of which are very productive and some of which have yielded practically nothing. The first tree was so laden with small, rosy eating  apples that some of the slender branches bearing them had actually split but I gathered about 12lb of fruit althogether from  this one tree. Its companion, though, bore practically nothing  but I am just concerned with the total yield. Thee young trees themselves were bought from that well known horticultal vendor, Messrs. Aldi and were about £1.99 each as far as I can remember.  I then moved on the fruit trees in Mog’s Den and these  were undoubedly cookers as they were much larger and much greener. At a guess, I would say that I harvested about 15lb of cookers from these trees – all in all,it was three bucket full of fruit. Then, of course, I had to prepare the fruit. I decided that it woiuld be a bad idea to actually wash the fruit as this might leave the fruit slightly damp from which infections might follow. What I actually did was to wipe each apple well with a barely damp cellulose cloth and the fruit was further divided in Grade A (capable of longer term storage) and Grade B (little imperfections such as a bird strike which meant that the fruit neded to be eaten almost immediately) Now that I have my boxes of fruit all prepared (courtesy of Asda whose fruit boxes are invaluable) I am keeping them in our ‘outer’ kitchen-cum-utility room where I can keep my eye on them and remove any immediately in case a mould or rot steps in. In the past, I have fed some of the local mice with some munchy morsels so I am determined not to let this mistake occur again.

The news headlines have been dominated by the stabbing to death of a Tory MP, Sir David Amess. Of course, this is a second killing of an MP in recent years, the other being Jo Cox the Labour MP for Batley and Spen who was killed by a far right fanatic during the refendum campaign. Sir David Amess seems to have been a very different kind of MP. He was not at all interested in climbing the ministerial ladder but, by all accounts, was very committed to actually improving the lives of his constituents. For him helping improve the lives of constituents not only meant understanding the inner working of the Commons – he sat on multiple committees doing the often grinding work of approving legislation – but it was also about understanding that politics involves convincing people to join forces, something he did not only through argument but through charm, wit, showmanship and kindness. What is so interesting is that this type of MP is in fact, quite rare, and so he was very well respected on both sides of the House of Commons. No doubt, we will hear a lot more in the days to come how MP’s can be protected adequately whilst maintaining contact with members of the public.

As today is Thursday, it is the day when I get up early and get myself off to Waitrose in Droitwich, hopefully as the store is just on the point of opening (today we were about four minutes late but that hardly matters) The nice thing about shopping at this hour is that you are absolutely free to browse without bumping into other shoppers. I tried shopping without a list today which is never a good idea and almost inevitably one discovers over the course of the next day or so what you have forgotten. One of the unexpected bonuses of shopping at this hour is that you can always go straight through a checkout with no waiting. Also, the checkout operators always seem incredibly chatty and so I learned this morning that it looks as Waitrose are going to charge for their home delivery service (so another reason to shop in store) After our normal, cooked breakfast, Meg and  I wandered down to the park but the weather was somewhat cooler and decidedly overcast so it was no surprise that we met none of our park regulars this morning. As has happened for the last two days, we had commitments in the early part of the afternoon so we had to have a rapid ‘put-me-on’ instead of a conventional lunch.

Meg and I had an appointment to have blood samples taken from us. This should have happened about a month ago but there was a scare over the shortage of blood sample phials and the appointment never took place. However, better late than never so Meg and I got seen in the middle of a clutch of patients arriving at the surgery to get their COVID-booster jabs. So we both had our blood samples taken and have to wait a week or so to see what the consequences will be.  As we were both in the car together, we decided to see if we could sneak into a parking place at the back of our local Asda and we were lucky. Whilst Meg stayed in the car listening to music, I went and got a few kitchen utensil type things which are always good value and of reasonable quaity if you avoid the bottom end of the range. As we have been in this house some fourteen years now, there are are always some items where you think they really need replacing or updating. I am amazed, for example, how long tin openers last given their heavy usage. Whilst I was in Asda, an all too rare occurrence these days, I made a tour of the fruit and vegetable sections and managed to liberate a couple of those long, low boxes which have contained fruit and is often used to display it. These boxes can be quite hard to find because Asda seem to make it a policy to never let an empty box stay in its place before it is whisked away for recycling, I presume. This type of box is excellent for the storage of my apple crop so presuming that it not raining cats and dogs, I intend to make this a priority job for tomorrow. 

This evening, Meg and I thought we would treat ourselves to a meal of venison which I bought from Waitrose last week. As we now have a really super new pan in which to cook things like this and fish, I am more than happy to refine my culinary skills. I had some baked potato and broccoli for accompanying veg which were being microwaved up before I started cooking, The venison was cut into quite (but not very thin) slices which I then seared for a minute or so on each side.  I then let it simmer for about 5 minutes but put a sprinkling of black paper and a splosh of red wine over it to keep it moist. I felt the need for a just a little sauce of some description so I made what I think might be called a ‘jus’ rather than a gravy. In a dinky little jug I had, I utillised a little onion gravy powder which I made a bit more exotic with a good dollop of brown sauce and a good old splosh of wine. When stirred and microwaved up, this exactly did the job I intended for it i.e. it gave us a little bit of a rich sauce to complement the venison without swamping the whole lot in gravy. It might be noted, at this point, that I am not really into precise measurements of ingredients but prefer to adopt a more intuitive approach.  Sometimes, this ends in failure but often it can be surprising successful, as indeed it was this evening. I shall go ahead and repeat this little experiment next week as Meg and I felt we had a really enjoyable meal this evening (and the wine which was now well ‘chambréd’) helped as well.

Today opened up as a dull and dreary day with a fair amount of rain ‘hanging around in the air’ That having been said, it was not actually raining and according to th BBC weather app, there was only a 10% of actual rain later on in the day. So we adopted our ‘normal’ routine for the day. When we arrive at our favourite  park bench, fortunately  I was able to bring into use the cellulose sponge and the old kithen towel that I always carry with me in the front compartment of my rucksack do give the park bench a good drying off. The park was practically deserted when we arrived, which is not unusual when we have rain during the night. Meg and I drank our coffee and ate our ‘snap’ before I set off on my my own to collect the newspaper. I popped into Waitrose on the way back because it seems to be traditional for us to run out of milk on a Wednesday (the day before our weekly shop). In my absence, Meg had been chatting with our friendly octogenarian who walks about 7-8 km each day, whatever the weather. Then we had to strike for home but en route, we bumped into Irish friends who, as the most conscientious of grandparents, were walking their (sleeping) granddaughter out in her buggy. We were a little short of time today, as yesterday, because our hairdresser was calling around at 12.30 (in theory!) and we both get done at home. Our hairdresser had previously made contact with us as she has a very heavy cold and she wondered whether to come or not. However, as she arrived suitably masked up, everything was fine and we were pleased to get our locks shorn. There does seem to ba a particularly vicious bad cold/chest infection sweeping the country – nothing to do with COVID as such. Various accounts in the social media are indicating that it might be the ‘worst cold ever’ and people are being badly effected by it, sometimes affected  a couple of weeks at a time .

Straight after we had our lunch, I had completed a form which required our doctor’s signature and practice official stamp. I imagined that I would drop the form in and after I had been signed, I could then collect it in a couple of days. In practice though, it was much more complicated. After waiting in a queue at the practice receptionists, I then explained what I required. I was required, though, to fill in a form completing the details of the form tht I required to be signed and informed that it would take anything up to three weeks for this to happen – they would communicate with me and not the other around. I suppose the minor good thing to come out of all of this was to be told that I would not require a fee to be paid to the doctor. There was a bonus because I managed to re-arrange the blood tests that Meg and I both required, postponed from the time about a month ago when we seem to have run of of blood sample phials all over the country.

At the end of the morning, we received the unfortunate news that our daughter-in-law had suffered an accident whilst in  school. We don’t have the full details yet but it seems that our daughter-in-law had missed a step and then badly twisted her ankle. She had attended our local community hospital which has a small accident and emergency department and after an X-ray determined that she had severe bruising. Presumably, after applications of bandages and the traditional remedy of bags of cold peas, things might settle down but I think we all have personal experience of how troublesome a sprained ankle can be. As a teenager, I attended the Leeds Branch College of Engineering Science and after a day release (three hours of Chmistry in the morning, three hours of Maths in the afternoon and three hours of Physics in the evening), we ran down the many flights of stairs, eager to be ‘let out’ after nine hours of study.  I used to jump a  flight of stairs (two flights to a floor) in two jumps – one half way down and the other jump to the floor. On one occasion, I jumped an entire flight of stairs and went over on my ankle and it swelled up to the size of a football. Fortunately, I got myself home using my scooter which I could just about ride home but it took a week or so for my ankle to return to normal.

We now have the highest number of new COVID infections since mid-July at narly 43,000 cases today. But the German infection seems considerably lower than ours as the the Germans have not abandoned their face masks and social distancing anything like the UK rate. One German study argued that the contunied use of facemasks lowered the daily infection rate by 47%. This makes you think!

Today turned out to be one of ‘non’-park days. Meg and I had been invited down to our Irish friends for a mid-morning coffee and more. As it happened, yesterday as I was cutting the grass I noticed that our clump of delphiniums seemed to be in full bloom again. Whether they have bloomed once, died away and come back again or whether they just stay throughout the summer I cannot say. I made a mental note to cut some tomorrow morning to take to our friends down the road. We also had a few apples that I had gathered as ‘tasters’ to see if the rest of the apple crop is worth harvesting and these I took down together with a little ‘something’ courtesy of our local Waitrose. Our friend had put quite a little spread for us and we really enjoyed both the natter and the food before we had to have for Mike’s Pilates class, which is a regular fixture on every Tuesday. We were running a little late so I cheated a little and went down in the car, parking some way from the centre but saving myself a vital 10 minutes or so.

After lunch, I needed to get my printer working again which I did by tweaking a printer driver.  I think that when the Mac operating system updates itself, it seems to knock out my printer driver on the grounds that it is not the current 64-bit ( or is 32-bit version?) Anyway, I know how to tweak the printer so that it now works which is a relief. Then I set to scanning a document of which I needed a permanent copy as a pdf. I use a piece of free software called VueScan which has an interesting providence. A computer expert in the US had worked that literally thousands of quite serviceable scanners all over the world were being thrown away beuase there were no  drivers available for them. So they started a company which distributed a programme that would work with any scanner and I am the happy recipient of this. Hover, I do not scan very often and scanning a single page is child’s play. Scanning a multi-part document seem a bit more problematic and eventually I found how to do it and got a .pdf of the document I wanted prepared. 

This evening, we decided to do something we have not done for a very long time. We have abandoned the TV as there seemed to be absolutely nothing that took our fancy. Instead, we raided our collection of CD’s and discovered one that is ‘Carreras, Domingo and Paravarotti in concert‘ (they being, of course, the Three Tenors in the classic concert that everybody remembers.) The trio began their collaboration with a performance at the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy, on 7 July 1990, the eve of the 1990 FIFA World Cup Final, watched by a global television audience of around 800 million. When our son and daughter-in-law were away one Christmas, we played this incredibly loudly on the kitchen stereo system as though it was a live performance in the house and had a wonderful time. There is something about performances recorded ‘live’ complete with audience applause because I do not mind the slight musical imperfection compared with the sense of participation you get by listening to a live recording. One of the sad features of our high streets is that the ‘good’ charity shops have been replaced by lower quality charity shops. In Bromsgrove, we used to have an Oxfam charity shop which I frequented frequently for a variety of things, principally classical CD’s sold off for about £1 each,  a wonderful supply of books (to which I used to contribute as well as occasionally buy from) and a collection of little knick knacks such as high quality porcelain dishes that I used as coasters for drinks and cups of tea. Unforunately, this went ‘belly up’ at the start of the pandemic and although there is more than the usual assortment of charity shops, one needs to be very discerning. I have noticed that really good little pieces do get snapped up by the cognoscenti very quickly though.

The interesting political story tonight is the report from two (combined) select committees of the House of Commons into the whole of the COVID pandemic. The report is very frank about some of the terrible mistakes that the UK government made particularly in the early days of the pandemic when lockdowns were being ruled out (even as other countries were introducing them) and relying upon a theory of ‘herd immunity’ The scientists do not come out of completely unscathed either. The net result is that the dithering cost the UK thousands of lives. A government minister (Stephen Barclay) was pressed very hard on the media but refused on eleven separate occasions to issue the word ‘sorry‘ – which is illuminating.

Today was one of those ‘chasing your own tail’ days, if you know what I mean. Meg and I had a limited amount of time in the park (although the weather was absolutely wonderful) and, as well as picking up the newspaper, I needed to pop into Waitrose to pick up one or two supplies. Then we needed a fairly brisk walk home because our chiropodist was due to call at 12.45 – and we made it only being 10 seconds late. Quite unusually, she was a few minutes late as well so no harm done at all. After we had our feet done, we had our lunch (quite easy to prepare as the beef joint was cooked yesterday) and decided to ‘gird our loins’ to get the lawnmowing done. This is not a particularly big job these days (40-45 minutes at the front, cut ‘both ways’ and about 20-25 minutes at the back) but it so much more pleasant to do when the weather is fine. You can tell it is ‘that’ time of the year because we have mushroomy type growths appearing on our back lawn. We used to have a lot of ‘shaggy inkcaps’ and Google informs us that they were ‘edible when young’ but I would never trust any fungus growing in the garden in case I had mis-identified it. Anyway the lawns got cut whilst the sun was still shining (and even Miggles the cat, showed up for his customary treat)

In the lst few days, I have received a couple of emails from my flatmate when I was first a student at the University of Manchester in 1965. There were four of us lads altogether and one of our number hailed from what was then called Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) although he had spent his last few years in a boarding school in Bournmouth. We all get on well with each other and as my Sri Lankan friend and I were about the same size, he let me borrow his jacket for the one night a week when I went out with Meg (we used to frequent a Folk singing club each Sunday evening on the ‘J’ floor of the large Victorian building that was occupied by the Faculty of Technology – later to become a university in its own right as UMIST -University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) There are many tales I could tell of our experiences. At the end of our first year, our landlady had bought another house so three of the original flatmates plus Meg occupied the original house as a series of flats. In our final year, we all moved into a modern maisonette built on top of a row of shops, bu that is another story. The one incident that sticks in my mind is when we four lads were in our first year and were eating our evening meal round the communal table. Just then, the tearaway young son of our landlady burst into our room with a plastic tommy gun that made a loud rattling noise when fired. So he it was fired at all of us and we decided to play the part and play ‘dead’ as we all leant forward over the table. ‘Mummy, mummy‘ the youngster cried out –  ‘I have just shot all of the students dead!‘  At this stage, our landlady came rushing through and shouted ‘Willy! Willy! What have you done!‘ At this point, we were all trying so hard to suppress our giggles that it was quite evident that we were not all dead and our landlady left us, indicating she was not a little bit amused by our antics.

Meg and I were married at the start of our third year in university (we didn’t believe in messing about in those days) but our Sri Lankan friend had returned home to see his family and missed our actual wedding. However, his family were extraordinarly generous to us and we were showered with wedding gifts. One of these was a bolt of cloth, shot through with silver thread, to be deployed as a sari (our friend had to teach Meg how to wear this) We also got a square tin of the kind that Jackson’s teas used to be sold whichh are about 5″ wide, 5″ deep and 5″ high filled completely with saffron.  We used this very liberally in our cooking for the whole of the next year and when asked for a pound of saffron, the delicatessen owner had to explain that would cost us about £65.00 (about £2,000 in today’s money) Finally a tea-chest arrived (the old fashioned tea chests which were about 30″ wide, deep and high) stuffed full with Broken Orange Pekoe tea. I should explain that our friend’s mother now ran an elite cookery school in Colombo and hence the nature of the gifts, no doubt.  But the generosity of our friend’s mother who did not even know us evidently knew no bounds.

Today being Sunday, I walk down on my own to collect our Sunday Times and be back in time for the Andrew Marr show – both of these are fixed points in the week. When I was with the newsagent we chatted for a little about cars and he told me that several decades ago he owned a Jaguar XJ6 and used to journey from Birmingham to Manchester in one. I indicated that I did have a secret yearning for one but all you have to is to mention ‘supermarket carpark’ followed by ‘automatic’ to put one off for life. I did mention in my conversation that I used to live in the Rusholme area of Manchester (about 1-2 miles along from the University along the Wilmslow Road) and when we lived there in the mid 1960’s it was about 90% Irish – now with the ecological processes of invasion and succession (terms learnt from my urban sociology course, also in the 1960’s) it was 90% Asian and had become the curry capital of the region. This is so much the case that one occasion a filmcrew was taking street shots of the area and our flat (a modern flat built on top of some shops – quite a common pattern in the 1960’s) was caught in the camera panning shot. After Meg and I got ready slowly, we walked down to the park where a lively session of the Bromsgrove Literary and Philosophical Society ensued. Our discussions ranged over the success of the local football and rugby teams (both doing quite well) to the exact location of Beijing on a map (which for some reason had recently taxed the minds of some of us) Before we set off for our walk, I ventured onto our communal green area to see how our apple trees are faring. Several years, I planted some young trees from Aldi (bought for about £1.50) and these are now bearing fruit in abundance. One of the trees was so laden with fruit that the branch bearing the fruit had actually split under the weight. To the best of my memory, the variety of apple if ‘Jonathan’ which is a classic American variety, apparently. I picked about three or four of these so that I could taste one and give the others away to friends in the park (although I didn’t get many takers, bar one) The apples are small,very crisp (not like your mushy Golden Delicious) and with quite a sharp, semi-sweet flavour. Now that I know that they are in good condition for picking, I am going to leave it literally for a day or so and then avail myself of some ‘fruit trays’ in which I can store them. I generally try to ‘acquire’ some of these from my local Asda and ensure that the apples are not washed but are polished and stored so that they do not touch each other. Then if they are inspected reguarly I choose the best of the bunch for the task in hand (eating apples, making into apple sauce, apple puree or what have you) and any that are going ‘off’can be quickly thrown away without infecting the rest. Mind you, I do have to be careful where they are stored because in the past the local mice  have sometimes said ‘Thank you very much‘ and taken random nibbles, so I learn from experience. I have some cookers in Mog’s Den which are much larger but undoubtedly cookers and not eaters but I think these can be left on the tree for a week or so longer yet. One wants to get the crop picked before an autumn gale sends them all crashing to the ground.

Meg and I had a rare treat today which was a little piece of sirloin complemented by a glass of red wine. We have started to eat again in our kitchen instead of on our knees which was a COVID  inspired measure but which is no longer necessary. We have enjoyed a good old read of the Sunday newspapers today after our lunch and are settling down to an evening of TV programmes very much to our taste.

The latest COVID news warning today is that COVID-19 and flu are co-circulating this year for the first time and those who catch both are twice as likely to die, early evidence suggests, amid fears of a ‘twindemic’. I must admit I am pleased to have got the booster jab behind me last week – I took a photo of the cards issued to Meg and myself so that I have a record of it on my iPhone. When I was younger, I seemed to get ‘flu every year and assumed it was just part of the normal ‘winter’ cycle but as things stand at the moment, I cannot remember the last time I was afflicted. Of course it could be that last year all of the precautions that we took against COVID protected us again ‘flu viruses as well but now we have all got a bit too complacent, then we might have to learn to be streetwise (and carry on wearing our masks – which we do every time we encounter a crowd e.g. inside any of the local shops)

The spell of fine weather is mercifully continuing and is what used to be called an ‘Indian summer’. The origins of this expression seem to be lost in obscurity but I believe that the ‘Indian’ refers to native North Americans and a harking back to the conditions that they used to remember. Anyway, any spell of fine and dry weather is appreciated at this time of year. Personally, I like to get December 21st out of the way as after that date, it ought to be getting that little bit lighter (rather than darker as is the case at the moment). After our walk in the park and the collection of our newspaper, we had only the briefest of stops and chats as I had to get back by about 12.30 so that I could set off for my hospital appointment in the afternoon. I knew where the treatment centre was in Kidderminster and gave myself about 40 minutes to go the 12-13 miles. All is well until I was approaching the centre of Kidderminster to joing a large ring road that would eventuallytake me to my destination. The blocked off road pointed left and said ‘Diversion’ and that was that. If you no idea about the topography of Kidderminster, you would have utterly been thrown because you were sent all round the houses with no indication as how to get to where your ultimate destination might be. I figured out that I probably had to go round three sides of a square in order to try to access the ring road and, fortunately, this turned out to be correct because eventually I found the ring road, sailed past the blocked off access road to Bromsgrove and found the Treatment Centre and its scanners located in the carpark. I did arrive with two minutes before my appointment time at which I was pleased. Then I had to approach 2-3 large mobile units where the scanners are located in the carpark. This is actually quite a sensible arrangement because it means you should not come into contact with any other patients or staff beyond that which is strictly necessary. I approached the door of the mobile unit up a ramp and was greeted with a sign not to force the door but to knock – this I did but to no effect. I descended the ramp and was searching for an alternative entrance before one of the unit staff, sitting in his car, asked if he could be of help. I informed him I was there for a scan and was told ”Oh, we are having our lunch at the moment – go away for 7 minutes and then come back when we might be ready for you’  I decided that it might be a useful and strategic use of my time to pay a visit to the loo before the procedure, which I did in the main hospital. Upon my return to the unit, one other patient was waiting whose appointment was five minutes after mine. Eventually, the door was opened and the person in the queue in front of me was seen first as ‘he was first inthe queue. So I waited for about five minutes and then it came to my turn. I have had these procedures before so I know what to expect. Having divested myself of anything metallic and having had a canula inserted for the contrast agent to be administered, I was ready for the off and the whole thing took about 2-3 minutes. Putting all my gear back on, I then had to circumnavigate the traffic system in order to get home. This time, I followed the signs to the Severn Valley preserved railway station and line – this, I know would get me back into the right track, which indeed it did. Evidently, to the people who know the system this is all a ‘piece of cake’ but if you have ever been to that treatment centre before, I can imagine that the whole logistics of getting there must have a nightmare. I was very pleased, though, to get home and to have a quiche lunch which had been warming at a low heat in the oven and was easy to prepare once I got home.

This afternoon is our attendance at church day so we were pleased to be back in the swing of things again. We had quite a long chat with our Irish friends from down the road and we have accepted (gratefully!) an invitation to go round for coffee on Tuesday morning. As we happens we have other things to do on Monday and Wednesday, so we shall look forward to this. As I write at the moment, I am listening to a performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto on Radio 3. I am trying to remember the plot as I write whilst also listening to the music – but Rigoletto is full of sparkling and hummable tunes anyway (‘La donna è mobile‘) for example.