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.

Today being Sunday, I collected our Sunday newspaper from the newsagent and then Meg and I watch the Andrew Marr show on the TV, all routine stuff for a Sunday morning. On consulting my phone, my daughter-in-law (following last night’s blog) had sent me a text informing me that the current series of rugby matches can be seen on Amazon, not the normal channels. However, we met our University of Birmingham friend in the park  and I said I would bring along a copy of the Ladybird reading scheme books which we have retained since the days when we were teaching our son to read (approximately 49 years ago) This book was written in the mid-1960’s when Ladybird had been criticised for outdated and probably middle class images of young children and their interactions with other. So the principal characters, Peter and Jane, had been modernised somewhat, Peter having longish hair and Jane now wearing jeans rather than a skirt. Ladybird tried to bring their work up-to-date but there are still massive ‘tell-tales’ in the book. For a start Peter plays with his football (which he subsequently retrieves from the highest branches of a tree) and chooses a toy tractor in the toy shop whereas Jane still chooses to have a doll (but is pointing, with a degree of political correctness, to a ‘black’ rather than a white doll, trains the dog  which she is taking for a walk and encourages Peter to retrieve the lost football but does not climb into the tree herself.  In another Ladybird book of the era, Jane helps her mother to bake a cake whilst Peter helps his father to paint the fence. Just to make everything worse, the book shows an illustration of Peter and Jane on the beach and is entitled ‘Play with us’ (a title that must rank alongside Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts movement, whose book was entitled ‘Scouting for Boys’) One has to say that in these sad times of 2021, neither of these books could have been entitled thus.

I also amused our University of Birmingham friend with a letter than had been written by Boris Johnson’s house master and classics teacher to Boris Johnson’s father. The letter indicates with a startling clarity with what we know now that ‘Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies…Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failureof responsibility (and surprised at the same time he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half) I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligations which binds everyone else…‘  I must point out that this letter was written in April 1982 and here we  are nearly 40 years later and it must be said ‘plus ça change’ ( or ‘what has changed?’)

This afternoon, Meg and I watched a most enjoyable game of women’s rugby in which the  English team (the ‘Red Roses‘) surpasssed their win of last week over the New Zealand (the ‘Black Ferns‘) by winning 56-15 (a larget margin of victory than last week’s 46-12) At half time,the New Zealand team had no points on the board at all and the commentators were speculating whether they might end the match without scoring at all. Next week, though, they play France so that might be an interesting game as well.

Soupmaking experiments are continuing later on this evening. I am going to try a combination of celery, swede, carrot, potato and perhaps a little parsnip to see how all of that pans out – it is, after all, a classic root vegetables type of soup but how the flavours will combine or not we will have to wait and see. It actually turned out to be a lot better than I predicted that it might – so I am pleased that I saved half of the raw ingredients so I can quickly make another batch if the weather turns particularly cold in the next week.

The next week is going to be a crucial one for Boris Johnson. Not only is COP26 Climate Change coming to an end (with what result?) but the sequelae of the Owen Paterson debacle are rumbling on. Even John Major the ex-Tory PM was driven to declare that the present government was corrupt – a very powerful word in politics. Basically, the Tory party collectively put its foot down and the newer intake basically said to the Brexiteers and the ‘old guard’ that they could not be rolled over. Does this make the present Tory party almost unwhippable?  Also the position of the Leader of the House (Rees-Mogg) and the Chief Whip must now by in doubt – in any event, they have lost all credibility and will they ever be believed again after last week? Watch this space!

I suppose we ought to celebrate the 600th edition of this blog but I am not sure how – so we shall just progress as normal. Today, we woke up to the fact that the high pressure weather system we have known for the last few days is gradually giving way to a low pressure system, characterised by some scudding clouds (but no actual rain) and quite a sharp wind that brought a degree of wind chill with it. On our way down the hill, we bumped into our Irish friends and exchanged some gossip about what is happening in our local church as well as our normal chit-chat. Naturally, we had a chat about the ‘goings on’ in Parliament and how long ‘King Boris’ could survive all of the scandals which appear to engulf him. Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi seemed to thrive on lurid sex lives which didn’t appear to do them any harm so we concluded that in our working lives, we must have been in the wrong job. In the park, we met up with our intrepid octogenarian hiker which is nearly a daily occurrence by now. We wished him well, ate up our comestibles  and set off for home in a little pale sunshine but no wind.

After lunch, I needed to make a lightning visit into town to get some money out of an ATM and to do my rounds of shops selling toiletries and cleaning materials not to mention Poundland for other bits and bobs. The whole of this took an hour of the afternoon and then it was a case of a quiet cup of tea before we started to get venture for our weekly visit to church. In place of a sermon, we had information from our stand-in priest that although he had been scheduled to leave us shortly, he had been ‘persuaded’ to  stay with us until immediately after Christmas after which time he would return to his parish of origin. Whether a replacement priest can be found to take over our parish from 2nd January onwards is an open question (and I am not particularly hopeful as the number of priests in the UK as a whole has been dropping like a stone)

Tonight, our University of Birmingham friend who was off spectating at a rugby match today had texted me the channel numbers upon which, in theory, I might be able to see highlights of the England vs. Tonga rugby match, played earlier on today. I somehow feel that I am not going to be successful finding this channel as I am sure I will have run across it by now but we can but see.

Sir John Major, the ex Conservative Prime Minister, has made a most vituperative attack upon Boris Johnson and his government. Sir John had his own problems of Tory sleaze with ‘cash for questions’ during the period of his premiership but he reminded us that he set up the Committee on Standards of Public Life – the Nolan Committee – to cope with the aftermath of Tory sleaze. Sir John Major said parliament’s reputation had also been damaged by the affair, adding: ‘Many Conservative MPs – who are clearly in their own minds unhappy about what they’ve been asked to do – were forced and in some cases put under real bullying pressure to vote for the amendment and to vote not to proceed with the suspension of Owen Paterson. So people are bound to wonder: can we trust them or can they be put under pressure to do things that they know are wrong?‘ Of course, what. is always interesting about these type of scandals is the reaction of the (generally Conservative supporting) Sunday newspapers. It looks as though the reaction of the daily newspapers in the last week, including the normally loyal Daily Mail might have had quite an impact. One former minister told the Daily Mail that Mr Spencer had not done his job properly.  ‘If the PM was told about the extent of dissatisfaction then he wouldn’t have pushed it,’ they said. ‘You could tell there was a problem because the whips were literally running around the Commons.‘ Another Conservative MP said Mr Spencer is a ‘very nice guy’ but ‘out of his depth …The Cabinet is full of nodding yes men. I had two marginal male MPs from Red Wall seats in tears looking at their social media feed, looking at their emails coming in after the vote, going ‘what the hell have we done?‘

There have been massive street protests today (Saturday) in Glasgow as the demonstrators are tring to impress upon the conference organisers the strength of feeling felt by many young people. The organisers claim that 100,000 demonstrators were out on the streets today – but the police (untypical) did not put their own estimate on the size of the crowd.  Typically, organisers ‘talk up’ the number of demonstrators whereas the police have their own motives in underestimating the actual crowd size. It is somewhat difficult to ascetain where the truth lies in these circcumstances.

Today started bright and cold and it was truly one of those days when one needed to reach inside the store cupboard and have a steaming bowl of porridge (complete with syrup, of course) Today we shared out breakfast with our son who was hard at work in his little ‘office’ upstairs and for whom the porridge was especially welcome. Our domestic help was a little delayed this morning but eventually we got off into town and picked up our newspaper before making for the park. There we were delighted to be joined by our University of Birmingham friend  who we had not seen for several days as, very conscientiously, he was nursing a heavy cold so had kept hmself out of our vicinity lest he inadvertently infect us. Fortunately, his cold is not of the extremely ‘heavy’ kind that seems to be sweeping the country and laying people low. As we sat together (or relatively near to each other) on adjacent park benches, we commented to each how beautiful the park looked in its autumn colours, how fine and almost warm the day had turned out to be and how few people there were in the park today to enjoy it all. I think, though, that the high pressure system giving us this fine weather is going to slide away so we have to enjoy the last days of summer (or autumn) whilst we can.

Lunchtime today had been desgnated as ‘risotto’ day, which we were going to share with our domestic help as a special treat (and she was supplying some white wine to perfectly complemnt the meal) I used to make risotto regularly each Friday but I have rather got out of the habit since I tried to cut down on carbs as part of a weight reduction programme (but I thought once in a while would not hurt) I had made sure that I had bought some ‘arborio’ rice for the risotto and, from Waitrose, I had purchased some smoked trout. Although thrown together, the meal turned out fine and I was pleased that I not lost the knack. I knew, however, that we could not tarry long over lunch because I had designated this afternoon as the final lawn-cut of the season. For this to be successful (i.e. possible) one needs a fine afternoon and hopefully  the absence of rain for a few days so that the grass-cutting is not incredibly soggy. The grass-cutting itself was uneventful but in the last cut of the season, I need to run the petrol down to absolutely zero so that no ‘gunk’ is left in the tank. So I engaged in the by now traditional rite at the end of the grass-cutting of keeping the mower running whilst I walk up and down with it muttering under my breath ‘Die! Die!’ until, as the daylight fades to  practically nothing, the petrol tank runs dry. Then the final task, difficult to perform to perform at the best of times but more difficult in the practical darkness, is to get the old oil drained out (whilst it is still hot) into a tin saved for the purpose. So I was particularly pleased to get this done on the traditional day I designate for the last cut of the season (November 5th) whilst the first is my son’s birthday on March 25th. Several years ago, I heard a tip from Alan Titchmarsh (the gardening guru’ but now with a new career on Classic FM and several other TV shows) His tip is always to mow the lawn at the end of the season even though there is no grass long enough to cut but assuming there has been a leaf fall. The mower will shred the leaves into smaller pieces making it easier for the worms to drag them down into the soil  and hence contributing to its overall fertility.

The fallout from the Government ‘U’-turn continues as Tory MP’s turn on each other (particularly the recently elected, recent generation of MPs compared with the old school veterans) Personally, I think Boris Johnson should have sacked the Chief Whip, Mark Spencer. The conversation could have gone like this, assuming that Boris Johnson might have been the ultimate author of the policy -‘Even though you were carrying out my instructions, you should have warned me of the possibility of masses of abstentions or even members of our own party voting against us. The fact you didn’t warn me of this means that you were not in touch with back bench opinion and mis-read the mood of the House. This has led to one of greatest debacles in modern parliamentary history for which I hold you responsible. I will give you two minutes to consider your position…‘ Of course, none of this is going to happen (is it?) but I suspect that there may be all kinds of fallout from the recent debacle. Not least, is that fact that the younger generation of Tory MP’s may be very unwilling to act as ‘lobby fodder’ and follow their Whip’s instructions without question for the rest of this Parliament.

Thursday is the day which we have decided to make our main shopping day. Accordingly, I set off in plenty of time  and arrived at the door of Waitrose in Droitwich two minutes before the doors were due to open – and third in the queue. As always, shopping is quite a pleasant experience at this time and, apart from one or two of the shelves being somewhat understocked, something to which I quite look forward. So all the shopping having been done, we treated ourselves to the first breakfast of porridge of the winter (suitable when the weather is pretty cold outside). As I wrote this, I pondered which spelling is correct: porridge or porage. What I discovered was this. The conventional spelling is porridge but Scotts, the firm behind the famous breakfast oats cereal devised a unique spelling as  a marketing trick to distinguish themselves from their rivals and they combined the spellings of porridge and potage – a French word for a thick soup – and ran with it from 1914 onwards. I think it is by now common knowledge that a bowl of porridge is very good for one first thing in the morning as it provides a source of slow-release carbohydates right throughout the morning. Furthermore, as regards the health benefits, scientists at Harvard University’s School of Public Health in 1984 have been following the dietary habits of around 100,000 people and have now come to the conclusion that those of us who regularly eat whole grains, such as porridge oats, can expect to live longer and healthier lives. Just one small bowl of porridge a day can increase life expectancy by 5 per cent, and reduce the risk of death by heart disease by 9 per cent.

Eventually after a slow unpacking of the shopping, Meg and I realised we were a little short of time. So we took the car down into town to hand deliver a form that we needed to hand in to Bromsgrove District Council. This having been done, we collected our newspaper and then popped into the park for a reduced walk and a quick burst of elevenses (although, strangely, I had made up the flask and then forgot to put it in the rucksack). We met up again with our octogenarian daily hiker as well as Seasoned World Traveller – but as the cold wind was starting to blow, despite the sun and a blue sky, we did not tarry too long but were keen to get home. I needed to strip the carcase of our chciken of little bits of chicken meat which I made into a kind of risotto with some quasi-rice I had manage to get hold off which claimed to be exceptionally low in carbohydrates. This having prepared, I gave Meg her portion but left my own to eat after the training session I was scheduled to have with medical students. 

Promptly at 2pm I receivd a FaceTime call from a young female Asian student who was going to be my contact for the day. The conversation flowed freely – and I must admit I probably was speaking too much. We started with what our GP had wanted us to act as a discussion point (how individuals via diet and exercise could reduce over-high blood sugar levels which is used as a marker for the onset of diabetes) but after that the conversation becaame quite wide ranging and wat should have been a chat for about 20 minutes became 40. I am not sure if I fulfilled the aims of the whole training exercise but I am sure that the young student at the other end of the FaceTime camera would go on to make a very good doctor).

It has been a day of great political drama today, not to say screeching government U-turns. After the government had seen the hositile reaction from all of the opposition parties and many on their own side  to their ‘rewriting of the rules’ to save Owen Paterson, the determing factor may have been the uniformly hostile press, with even the Daily Mail joining in to give them a good kicking. So William Rees-Mog, the Leader of the House of Commons was desptached to announce a government reversal of yesterday’s policy. It became evident within minutes that as the government majority on a whipped vote was only 18 last night, then an ‘unwhipped’ Conservative party would surely despatch Owen Paterson to oblivion. It was quite evident that he could not survive and, later on in the day, he resigned as an MP (he could well have been subjected to a Parliamentary recall and thrown out if he hadn’t resigned) He claimed that he was standing down as a result of his children persuading him to go – disingenuous in the extreme and to the end because having accepted emoluents of £110,000 a year and then lobbying ministers for ‘favours’ towards his paymasters, he was clearly in breach of the rules. I look forward to the completion of the evisceration which well happen in NewsNight tonight at 10.30pm (BBC2)