It was one of those bright, cool but clear autumn days which are an absolute delight. Meg and I were a little delayed getting ready this morning but, nonetheless, after we had got ourselves going and breakfasted we decided to make a trip out to our favourite watering hole in Droitwich. We picked up a copy of the newspaper and then made our way to Droitwich where we were really fortunate to find a parking spot just about where we wanted to be. I trundled Meg into the wheelchair which I am now getting off to a fine art and is not particularly heavy if you handle it in the right way. When a wheelchair user (or its ‘driver’) you learn to spot at a great distance exactly which kerbs have been lowered sufficiently to give one an easy passage, which cambers are best avoided and so on. In a strange way, it reminded me that years ago we were climbing Helvellyn in the Lake District together with a crowd of university students. There was quite a breeze which was making some of the snow glisten and harden and your eye learnt quite quickly to distinguish those types of snow that were good to walk upon and which were perilous and could occasion a slip. At the time, I was pretty sure that we were all walking in cagoules and the thing about these garments is that once you start sliding down a long slope, you reach a certain velocity where it is impossible to stop a long and perhaps fatal descent. We often used to go the Lakes at Easter time and one Easter time there was a married couple climbing Blencathra (aka Saddleback) who slipped and fell off the mountain. It was estimated that their bodies reached a velicity of 80 mph before they reached the bottom and their son, aged about 8 or 9, who evidently survived, had to walk his way down the mountain to summon assistance. The point of this long and rambling story is that we all tend to take things for granted until our circumstances change and then we look at things through a different set of eyes as it were. Once we arrived at the cafe, the Catholic lady who knows us well made us comfortable and then we ordered a pot of tea (and who does tea always taste better out of china cups?) and we treated ourselves also to one bacon butty on brown bread between us. This was particurlarly delicious and was a bit of treat for us. Then we made our way into the Worcestershire Association of Carers charity shop who always seem to have pretty high quality items for sale and from whom we have bought before. We bought couple of cushions, one of them a stunning autumnal scene and a ready made crib which we are going to put away until nearer Christmas time. This latter item was less than a cup of coffee purchase price and it may be a little ‘naff’. But we have kept it in its rather battered box and a week or so before Christmas, we will take out each of the wrapped up figures, give them a bit of a wipe and some TLC before we find a suitable oblong tray upon which to display it. The last time we were at the cafe, we decided to avail ourselves of an offer of a full scale Christmas meal for £15 a head so in about three and a half week’s time, we shall pop along and start to engage in some pre-Chrismas time festivies. Personally, I feel that Christmas tends to get pre-celebrated earlier and earlier so in my mind I do not want to even think about things like that until only about a week or so before hand. Christmas Day is on a Monday this year which always seems a bit out of kilter with one’s normal timescales (and I prefer Christmas Day to be on a Thursday or a Friday)

This afternoon, as we often do, Meg and I tuned in to a YouTube concert and saw the most amazing aria that I thought must be a joke. The soprano came on in a bouffant black dress, some of the most enormous and clunkiest silver high heels that it was possible to imagine and then proceeded to ‘sing’ (actually screech) her way through an aria by Offenbach accompanied by much arm and leg waving not to mention eye rolling. This I thought must have been a joke and I did not know the meaning of the French ‘charmille’ until reading a synopsis of the aria, I discover that the singer is meant to represent a mechanical doll and her aria (in translation is ‘the birds in the arbour’) Well,it takes all sorts.

The latest political debates are concerned with whether demonstrations held supporting the Palestinians should be banned or at least carefully controlled next weekend lest they clash with the Cenotaph Remembrance Day events to be held next Sunday. Discussions are taking place with the Metropolitan police and it may well be that sensible compromises and arrangements are put into place. But the politicians are always keen to take a stance that they feel to be populist. One of the interesting comments tht I heard about our present Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is that she can never see a bonfire without rushing to pour a can of petrol onto it

So Sunday morning has dawned with a beautiful bright day which is very welcome after the storms that have swept the country over the last few days. Also, it would not be a matter of great surprise if the conveyor belt of storms brought more to sweep over the country in the next few days. This morning after we had breakfasted and not having any particular assignations of people to meet, we decided to set forth to both buy our Sunday newspaper and also to do a ‘mini’ supermarket shop-up. Last Thursday we missed out on our normal shopping because we had the visit of the two specialist nurses first thing in the morning but thought we ought to replenish some of the things that we know we are running out of. We decided to visit the large Aldi store in the centre of town and it seemed incredibly busy. Nonetheless, we managed to get parked (just!) and then there were about half a dozen items that I knew we really needed but almost inevitably as we went round the store we discovered more things that it would be useful to have.

I spent a certain amount of time last night trying to achieve the following, which sounds simple. I have a little website devoted to my finds/purchases of both pottery and furniture and what I wanted to do was to show side by side both an example of a Captain’s chair which I found on the web at three times the price that I paid, togther with a photo of my newly restored chair longside it by way of comparison. In theory, it should not have been too difficult to display two images next to each other using standard HTML but in practice it proved more tricky than I might imagine. Fortunately, I discovered some code on the web that achieved exactly the result that I wanted to achieve but I must say that I would never have worked it out for myself. As always with these coding poblems, other people have faced the similar issue before, have asked for advice on the web and some more skilful people have provided the answer. So I now have the answer that I wanted. The interesting thing is that the more ‘expensive’ item on the web seems to be identical with the chair I have just restored – either they both came from the same ‘stable’ or workshop as it were or else there is a very strict design protocol to which all makers adhere. In my restoration, I took off the outer layers of dust/dirt with baby wipes assuming these could create no damage, put on one application of orange oil (although some purists I have subsequently discoevered rather ‘pull a face’ at this), followed by two applications of a polish reviving cream. Finally, yesterday there was an application of a high quality beeswax polish followed by a buffing and that is a good as it is every going to be. Of course one wants to restore what you might call the ‘original’ finish but exactly how things looked, and were treated, when they were first constructed 120-130 years ago is a matter of conjecture.

After lunch today, Meg and I finished off watching the ‘Testament of Youth‘ which is the biopic of Vera Brittain, an early feminist and pacifist. Towards the very end of the film, a character pops up in Oxford to say to to Vera ‘I am Winifred Holtby’ at which my ears really pricked up. Winifred Holtby is best known for her novel ‘South Riding’ but, of course Yorkshire only has three Ridings (Norman French for thirds) of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and East Yorkshire. When my mother was alive, I am convinced that she often spoke of Winifred Holtby and they hailed from the same part of the world (Hull and East Yorkshire) What I do not know if whether my mother ever met or knew Winifred Holtby or, more likely, was just in awe of a local well-known literary figure. The person who may well know is my niece who whilst training to be a teacher lodgd with my mother (her grandmother) and they often had chats of a literary nature with each other. I think a long text to my niece is in order to try to throw some light upon the matter.

Tonight Meg and I are following our normal routine of a little bit of culture, a bit of comedy in another episode of ‘Outnumbered‘ finished off by a YouTube concert at the very end of the afternoon before we look forward to our tea. In the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Jordanians are trying to broker some kind of peace, if that is possible. Without overtly getting involved in controversy, I would have thought that many would have agreed with the Jordanian Foreign Minister who has opined that ‘Nobody is benefiting, on the contrary everybody is losing. Palestinians are losing their lives, people in the region are losing faith and Israel is losing its humanity in this war. A ceasefire was important because it would stop the killing of the innocent. A ceasefire is a must because with every minute that goes without a ceasefire, the pictures that are shown on TV show the human cost that is being paid’ Just to reinforce this point, an Israeli minister has been suspended after he said dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was ‘one of the possibilities’. One can only drop one’s jaw in amazement that such a sentiment could be expressed in a western style democracy.

Today has been quite an emotionally compelling day for a variety of unconnected reasons. We know that we were going to see our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria but before this, we popped by the newsagent to collect out newspaper as we do every day. I knew that our newsagent had been ill with a lung complaint but when I asked his wife how he was this morning, she burst into tears and cried ‘All I want is my husband well again’ I did what I could to comfort her which was not very much and I just hope that the hospital to which that they are trying to get referred in Leicester (which specialises in heart and lung complaints) can give him some timely and expert treatment. We then progressed on to see our friends and met up two of them – the third had possibly cried off because of the bad weather as it was generally raining cats and dogs. We knew that we might have a visitor just after 11.00 so we beat a fairly hasty retreat to get home in time. The person who was due to visit us was a Eucharistic Minister from our local church and as Meg is so frail and unsteady on her feet these days, the minister has offered to visit us about once a week when this is possible. It turned out that the eucharistic minister was a professional musician and played the cello when occasion demanded for the Birmingham Philharmonic so she was quite intrigued that I had started off my orchestral career as a violinist but all of this had to go when I changed to schools to one with no musical tradition at all (which was quite a culture shock at the time) We exchanged some musical stories and, as befits the occasion, I played the first bars of ‘Lead, kindly light’ – the Cardinal Newman hymn and Cardinal Newman is one of the nearest that we have to have to a saint absolutely local to the area. We had a little table upon which devotional objects were placed as well as some candlesticks which I just happen to notice in a charity shop a few weeks ago and had bought for an occasion such as this. We had a small and intimate little service which I must admit I found quite emotionally compelling and more so than if we had actually attended a church service. We exchanged some reminisciences of a generally liturgical and theological nature and found that our stance on many issues was pretty closely aligned. For example, we were both of the mind that the prohibition on Catholic priets marrying was just a twelfth century ordinance designed to stop a dynastic succession in the monasteries of the time which could have formed a countervailing power in the land. So we had a wonderful morning and, all being well, we can repeat the experioence at weekly or fortnightly intervals. So the morning absolutely flew by and then it was time for lunch of a bought-in chicken and vegetable pie with an accompaniment of broccoli and some baked tomatoes.

After lunch, I busied myself with putting a coating of beeswax polish on our captains chair. Given the ‘fiddly’ bits (technically, turned legs), this took about 20 minutes to apply, followed by about 10 minutes of resting time and then followed by twenty minutes of buffing. The chair is now as good as it is ever going to be and I will only occasionally need to replenish the beeswax polish but now that the job is completed, I took a definitive photograph of it for the record. I have also managed to locate a practically identical chair that was being offered on eBay so I have managed to download the .jpg file illustrating this and now have the two images sitting side by side on my phone. I must say that the comparison is illuminating in the extreme. The chair I purchased was a tad over £50 whereas the one still offered for sale on eBay was £150 + a further £50 postage. It is very gratifying to be able to be able to say, hand on heart, that I believe that the restoration work that I have performed makes our acquisition seem to the the superior of the two chairs but I will leave it to other people to judge the two photos side by side and see if they come to the same conclusion.

Th third emotional moment of he day came when Meg and I decided to watch on BBC iPlayer the biopic of Vera Brittain, the mother of the Labour and then SDLP MP, Shirley Williams (The Testament of Youth) This is really all about the horrors of the first World War and one of he most emotional moments in the film is when Vera has promised to marry Roland on his next spell of leave from the fighting in France. But on her wedding day, about half an hour before the ceremony is due to take place, she receives a phone call telling her that Roland has been killed. She subsequently finds her injured brother, Edward, who she nurses back to health. Some of the nursing scenes from the battle front were harrowing – Meg and I decided to pause the film at that point and to come back later to view the story of Vera Brittain’s conversion to the pacifist cause. It is not that Meg and I are particularly squeamish but we needed a break for tea in the late afternoon and will look forward to the completion of the story tomorrow.

Today, as is customary on a Friday, our domestic help called around but she was a little earlier this morning as she has to get home to attend to her aged and ailing Jack Russell before starting her next shift at the residential home which is her main employment. I was delighted to show her our latest acquisition and, with an eagle eye, she spotted an extraneous spot of glue that had escaped my attention earlier. It is interesteing that under the fingers this extraneous glue seemed quite a blob but once I attacked it at just the right angle with a sharp bladed screwdriver, the whole extraneous glue was soon detached. Our domestic help made one or two suggestions about positioning of the furniture and we have decided between us to locate the two captain’s chairs on either side of our monk’s bench (inherited from Meg’s parents) so that the threesome make a more natural unity. We also acted on the suggestion to angle the chairs somewhat so that they form a more natural sitting area and do not resemble a doctor’s waiting room with chairs lined up against the wall. Actually, I am pretty happy about the new arrangement because the morning sunlight catches and reflects off the patina of the two pieces of woodwork. We have decided to complete the ensemble by looking for one of those large Victorian style wooden plant pot holders to sit in the corner, preferably with tiers so that it can incorporate both a corner light and a plant display as well. Thee items are occasionally found in second hand furniture establishments but my guess is that they get snapped up fairly quickly. After a natter with our domestic help, we were wondering where to go for coffee but we had our mind made up for us by a phone call fom our University of Birmingham friend and we settled on Waitrose as a quick and easy venue. Our friend had to shoot off just after 12.00pm as he had to be at home to take delivery of a parcel and as it was a beautiful sunny day, I decided to tke Meg in her wheelchair for a push along the High Street. I needed to make one or two purchases in any case as well as access an ATM so we set off along the High Street ending up in the AgeUK furniture shop to see if they had anything that took our fancy. As it happened, they had not, although I was a little tempted by an occasional table with a bad water stain on it that I am pretty sure I could restore but I resisted the temptation today. Whilst in the store, we bumped into two of our ‘park’ frinds with whom we have been out for a meal and chatted whilst we both browsed to see what took our interest. I did take the opportunity to get two rather good cushions from one of the local charity shops and then we had a bit of a race around to get the toiletries that we needed and to get back home before our domestic help left, complete with the money to pay her.

This afternoon, after lunch I spent a certain amount of time putting the last coat of restorative furniture cream onto our Captain’s chair. This is actually a fiddlier job that you might imagine because as well as the four ‘turned and carved’ legs evidently on the base there are also eight similar turned spindles in the upper body of the chair. So all of this takes a certain degree of diligence to get them all treated and then, of course, one has to repeat the process all over again with a soft cloth in the ‘buffing’ process to give a gleam to the patina of the wood. Tomorrow, if the spirit moves me, I may put on an application of beeswax and then that is it, for several years. In the late afternoon, we watched some of the final sections of ‘Don Giovanni‘ held over from yesterday. Then I am always desperate to encourage Meg to have a rest in the mid to late afternoon as I am always telling her that her body is crying out for rest, even if her mind is not. Fortunately, today two things worked in our favour. Firstly, with the hour going back, it is now getting dark in the late afternoon and once I have drawn the blinds, this makes the settee in our lounge conducive to a nap. Also, I now play a selection of classical music from YouTube ‘bluetoothed’ through from Meg’s mobile phone to the CD player which the manufacturers kindly replaced for me under the warranty and I am now bringing into daily use. Today, this combination of things (and some pills) seem to have done the trick in helpng Meg to have a doze.

Our University of Birmingham friend and I got into an interesting topic of conversation where neither of us quite know the answers. We know that under the Geneva convention (first established in 1864 by the way but augmented since then) there is a clear distinction between the military combatents and women/children regarded as the civilians. According to the rules of war, the military are regarded as legitimate targets to be fired upon but women and children should be exempted from this. This sounds clear enough – but what about the women in the factories making the munitions to be used against the enemy? If a munitions factory is regarded as a legitimate target, is it or is not a war crirme to also ‘take out’ (in modern parlance) the civilian workers manufacturing the ammunition? No doubt, there are some lawyers who could answer this question for us.

Meg and I have been looking forward today for some time as quite early in the morning, the two nurses who are are helping to manage Meg’s illness are going to pay a joint visit to us. Normally, I would go shopping on a Thursday morning but when I did a quick scout around of our pantry, I knew that we did not need a full shop-up this week apart from some milk of which we had completely run out. So I made a very quick trip to our local Waitrose to secure enough supplies for the week but first, called around to pick up my daily newspaper. I knew something was dreadfully amiss by the look on the face of the newsagent’s wife. Yesterday, they has both received the results of a diagnosis of the ailment afflicting her husband which is mesothelioma (the disease most often associated with long term exposure to asbestos) When I made a further enquiry, his wife burst into tears in front of me – normally you would want to give somebody a hug to comfort them in their hour of grief but all I could do, rather pathetically, was to hold her hand across the shop counter. On getting home, I have checked the statistics and it looks in round terms that only 50% of people survive mesothelioma for over a year. This is really most upsetting and all I can think of doing is to invite them both round for a meal if they can face it and the husband is not too poorly. This news comes on top of news that we received about Meg’s one remaining cousin who is now living in Derby near to one of her daughters. She recently had a fall outside her home and was in a bit of a sorry state with cracked ribs, a chipped coccyx and a chip of her hip. After a full scan, though, the medics have discovered multiple lymphomas in her bone marrow which is probably inoperable. In the face of this dire news, I have suggested to the daughter who gave us the news that we should make a trip over to Derby to have a family meal – once again, only if Meg’s cousin is up to it after her stay in hospital. So these two bits of bad news came within about 14 hours of each.

Today’s visit was interesting – whilst I and one of the nurses were discussing care packages and strategies in one room, Meg was chatting with the other nurse in another room. I eventually caught up with them both drinking tea together in the kitchen – I suspect the nurse had suggested this to assess Meg’s capacities in this respect. I think the two nurses will compare notes and then make a joint approach to the social worker allocated to us. What happens then, I am not sure but we have received a communication from the financial contribution team who have come up with a figure of how much we are expected to pay for whatever package of support is eventually put together for us. Perhaps it will be some days yet before things get clarified. However, we are delighted with the efforts that the two nurses are making on our behalf and it looks likely that they may be in a position to make a further visit in about a month’s time to us. So things are gradually moving ahead, albeit very, very slowly

After the nurses had left this morning, some of the more specialist furniture restore cream had arrived via Amazon so I was in a position to give our recently acquired Captain’s Chair treatment No 2. I think this is has been quite successful so I am going to give one more treatment to finish off although I may be tempted to put a quick polish of beeswax on top of everything as a sort of ‘overcoat’. I have now found a more permanent final resting place for the chair in our hall where I think it will complement and not clash with the other pieces of furniture we have there. Later on this afternoon, Meg and I thought it would be quite nice to listen to an opera so we settled on Mozart’s Don Giovanni which we have not seen for quite some time. The singing was of a tremendously high order, plus the acting to go with it, so this made for a pleasant afternoon whilst the rain was lashing overhead. We took out a subscription to YouTube and this is giving us a lot of pleasure. Also, when we exit whatever program we happen to be watching (as we have done this afternoon as Don Giovanni is such a long opera) then we can always pick up again at the point here we left off the next time we access YouTube.

In the case of Israel/Hamas war, there is news that Israeli tanks and troops have met fierce resistance from Hamas militants as they attempt to press towards Gaza City. Hamas claims to have 300 miles of tunnels in Gaza, a subterranean complex that effectively serves as an all-purpose military compound. According to Israel, the underground space includes military headquarters, sleeping quarters, as well as workshops to make and store rockets. It looks as though both sides are getting dug in for quite a long conflict – of course, within recent memory the conflict in 1967 which was Israel verses an alliance of Arab neighbours lasted for only 6 days (and is popularly known as the ‘6 Day War’)

Today was the start of what was going to be two busy days for us. We had an appointment for Meg’s eyes at the Kidderminster Treatment Centre some fourteen miles distant. We picked up our newspaper, enquired after the health of the newsagent and made our way to Kidderminster. We set off in plenty of time but by the time we got parked (just) and registered into the system we were about three minutes in advance of our allotted appointment time. Today I was unsure whether Meg was due to have a laser procdure on one of her eyes but it turned out to be a three stage ‘normal’ appointment. In the first stage, Meg’s vision is tested much like as in an opticians and the nurse could not have been more friendly and helpful. I took particular pains to thank her and she confided in me that her father had suffered from the same ailment as Meg and that probably helps to explain why she was so helpful. After this initial examination, there is a visit to another unit which takes photographs of the back of the eye and this was slightly more complicated as Meg had to helped from her wheelchair to use the specialisd equipment. Finally, we had a fairly long wait to see the consultant but fortunately I had taken with us with a flask of coffee and some Jaffa cakes so this helped to sustain us mid morning. When I saw the consultant, I eplained that we very sorry but we had to break the last appointment for a laser treatment because of a family funeral. He was very understanding about this and accompanied us to the reception desk to add a little more weight to a re-appointment for the laser treatment. This is now going to be in a month’s time in Bromsgrove so it is nice to have this booked into the calendar, as it were, and the travelling time to the local community hospital is so much less. We got home at just a shade after 1.00pm and made a lightning fast cooking of the lunch so that we would not feel too faint after a morning’s hospital visit.

After lunch, I was rather torn to two directions. Firstly, the evidence to the COVID enquiry by the Deputy Chief of Staff at Downing Street looked both interesting and compelling. Secondly, I was anxious to get started on the treatment of my newly acquired Captain’s Chair whilst the daylight lasted – I now understand more fully why my mother was always complaining about the fading of the light when we had the benefit of electric lighting. This I started wih some trepidation but ensured that I had some latex gloves on as the Orange oil I was using has no ‘nasty’ added ingredients but should nonetheless not be splashed onto raw skin. Ealier in the day, I had filled up one or two little screw/nail holes with some filler so I was all ready to go. I started on the legs first as these seemed to be the most denuded of oil i.e. the wood looked anaemic and dry. The chair took some doing as there were a lot of what you might call ‘twirly’ bits in the design – there must be a techical term for this but I not been able to discover it. Finally I worked my way to the top which has its fair share of eight vertical twirly spokes but which are easier to oil. I must say that at the end of the day, I was more than pleased with my labours. After a first treatment, the results were very pleasing and after the initial treatment, the buffing up process was quite easy and straightforward. I used only about 5-10% of my bottle of oil so have a lot left over for futher treatments and renovations. I think I will give it two more treatments (Thursday and Friday) and then have an assessment whether to add the ‘coup de grace’ by adding some beeswax polish over the top of it all. I have tried to ascertain from a variety of websites whether orange oil is superior to linseed oil for furniture restoration but have not got a definitive comparison or explanation. However, there were a slew of sources that sang the praises of orange oil which seems to be able to remove surface dirt and dust as well as replenishing oils which had dried out from the wood. I wish, though, that I had taken a photograph of the chair in its ‘before’ state so that I could make a more exact comparison of the effects of the treatment. I might be able to get this if I hunt through the original eBay listing of it and take a screen grab of it.

Tomorrow we are expecting the visit of two nurses who between them are concerned with Meg’s condition. I suspect that they have a plan so that Meg is interviewed in one room and myself in another. Last night, during the night, I sent a long letter to our closest friend in Spain explaining in detail how I was managing/not managing to cope with Meg’s condition. Their family dog, a red setter, had died in the last week, so the family are still in the course of a grieving process for a much loved member of their family life. I commiserated with them and hope that they are managing the grieving process for practically a family member.

It is true to say that Meg and I always look forward to Tuesdays as it the day when several of us meetup in the Waitrose cafeteria for a chat and general support. We picked up our newspaper and commiserated with our newsagent whose health is going through a bad patch at the moment as his wife was telling me that she had make an visit to the doctor to get him some emergency pain relief tablets – he was going to be seen this afternoon in one of the local hospitals so I again gave him my best wishes. When we turned up to the cafeteria, we all seemed to turn up at about the same time and went into our norml routine of pushing tables together to make a large composite table for the six of us (in total) Sitting on one of the benches was a lady who whilst having her coffee was engaged in a little craft activity which was making a sort of joker’s head-dress for her daughter who was in a production somewhere (to be put onto YouTube for those who couldn’t see it live) We admired her craft skills and engaged in a general chat about the skills that our parents (more accurately, our mothers) had either imparted or failed to impart to their offspring. The lady with whom we were chatting indicated that she made all of her own clothes as well as curtains and other domestic fabrics. Whilst this is an admiral skill to have, clothing (and particularly good clothing sold in the charity shops) is now so cheap that it cannot be an economic proposition to ‘sew your own’ any more. I am always a great admirer for those who have developed and maintained their skill set. I remember that when we were on a Saga holiday, there was an elderly lady that we met and every morning she knitted a little bonnet that went on the heads of premature babies and every so often, she donated these to her local maternity unit. I cannot remember how long she took to do it but the bonnets were not very large and knitting one a day I am sure that she could do it in her sleep. Meg and I turned into the Politics Live program which starts transmission at 12.15 each day. But today, they had cut straight to the evidence of Lee Cain, the Downing Street Director of Communications, who was giving his evidence live to the COVID enquiry. After lunch we tuned into Sky News to see Dominic Cummings lobbing hand grenades all over in his own testimony. Although we only saw bits and pieces of these two bits of evidence, that seem to display the same underlying narrative i.e. that whatever his qualitities, Boris Johnson was about the worst politician to have held the office of Prime Minister at a time of grave national crisis. One of the most repeatable things that Dominic Cummings said was that ‘It is only a matter of time before his babbling exposes fact he does not know what to say.’ There was reference also within Downing Street that Boris Johnson was like a supermarket trolley, lurching erratically first one way and then another, often out of control. There was also reference to what were called the ‘poppins’ which terminology was lost on the Enquiry chair. It turned out that Boris Johnson would make a decision and when this was heard about, some stff used to ‘pop in’ to express their dismay/disquiet. It is said that Boris Johnson then frequently changed his mind and this drove the senior civil servants almost mad with distraction as clear policy could not be formulated and followed with decision making that was as volatile as this.

Meg and I had our normal Tuesday lunch of fishcakes and easily microwaved vegetables that we always enjoy and find quite satisfying. After that we regaled ourself with the next episode of ‘Outnumbered’ and observed some of the Dominic Cummings evidence to the COVID enquiry. Whilst this was proceeding, I busied myself with carrying on with the restoration of the ‘Captain’s Chair’ purchased yesterday. I have now had the chance of a minute examination of this and whilst I think I paid a fair price for it (or even better) it is evident that some work has been done on it in the course of its 120 year old history. There is evidence of the odd strategic nail having been discreetly hammered here and there as well as some gluing. In places, there are dribbles of wood glue remaining and I have chipped most of these off. I am not overconcerned to get it absolutely right as a few little age-related imperfections lead to its charm. I did read on the web that if you were trying to restore an ink-stained writing desk, then the presence of old ink stains almost added to its veracity. But by today’s Amazon delivery, I have just received a little tin of woodfiller which I shall apply judiciously in one or two places. Most of the time, though, I just devoted myself to a ‘baby wipe’ cleanup of the chair as the principal ingredients of the baby wipes seem to be water and glycerine and these can do no harm, I say to myself. My main ‘cleaning and restoring’ cream should arrive on Thursday so I am quite happy to just do some preparatory work before then. I think I am making some progress but it is a slow process in which it is hard to gauge the progress to date in my restoration.

After Meg and I had got ourselves up and breakfasted, we knew that we were going to have a little trip to a suburb of Birmingham called Moseley. Late yesterday, I had entered an eBay auction for a Captain’s Chair and in this I was successful in placing a winning bid with, as it happens, only 4 seconds to spare. I did go £1.30 over the limit I had made for myself but the pleasure of winning this bid against ten other bidders made this a small price to pay. I had arranged to get to the house in Moseley at 11.00 and the whole journey worked out incredibly smoothly until about 2 miles short of my destination when the entire route was blocked off due to tree felling. After a diversion, I ran into more tree-felling inspired road closures but got to the appointed address about 5 minutes before the agreed time. The seller was a really interesting guy and I could have tarried at his house a lot longer were it not for the fact that I had rather abandoned Meg in the front seat of the car and I did want to leave her too long. I enquired about the provenance of the chair and sellers had bought it some decades ago but understood it was made by one of the many furniture makers in High Wycombe. However, it did not have a maker’s name attached to it which would have pushed up the price I paid for it about 10 times. The seller very kindly helped me to get the chair into the boot of the car (useful as it happens as my back is still playing up a little) As soon as I got home, Meg and I enjoyed our delayed elevenses and I took some pleasure in giving the chair, constructed from both elmwood and beechwood, a once over. I have ordered some very specialised furniture reviving cream as sold to the antiques trade but this will take a day or so to arrive. In the meanwhile, I had downloaded some web-based materials provided by the cream manufacturers who indicated that very often in the case of furniture that needs to be revived, one has to remove some layers of dirt. The so called dirt is really just layers of dust accumulated over the decades and once this has been removed, the restoration process proper can start. In this I still have my supply of grade 0000 wire wool and beeswax and this will eventually be brought into use. What I have bought is technically called an ‘Edwardian smokers bow or captain’s chair’ so last night, I did some researches on the net to find out why this furniture is so called. It seems that the whole design of the chair is such that when is resting in the chair, the arms are such a convenient height to facilitate the smoking of one’s pipe! The ‘Captain’s chair’ bit is derived from the fact that these were generally better pieces of furniture designed for the captain or senior officers of a ship but the stout design and somewhat splayed legs helped to keep the whole chair stable when on a pitching or rolling ship. In my eagerness to get started, I did use some wet wipes advertised as being suitable for the most delicate skin of a baby and so I reasoned it should be fine for an initial treatment of the chair. I used several of these wipes and was quite surprised at the amount of surface ‘dirt’ that I did manage to remove. But this is a job that can only be done in hours of daylight as I don’t think you can fully appreciates the efforts of one’s labours except with the benefit of the best daylight illumination. All together, I intend to complete my restoration of this over several days and already have a couple of matching emerald green cushions that will fit its shape perfectly once the restoration is complete.

Meg and I had a wonderfully quiet afternoon, spending it all in the Music Room enjoying first our daily ration of ‘Outnumbered’, then a spell of the evidence being given to the COVID enquiry shown live on Sky News, then a David Attenborough,Planet Earth program with the afternoon ending with a rendition of Handel’s Messiah which is still playing as I blog. It used to be the case that there was a tradition in various Northern towns and cities that you turn up if you could vaguely sing and then a score of the Messiah was put in one’s hand. Having been allocated to the appropriate section of the mass choir, then off you went singing the Messiah with an assembly of hundreds if not thousands. I have never actually done this but I would love to have it done it at least once to savour the experience. Tomorrow, I will ask the most musical of the ‘old ladies gang’ when we meet in Waitrose cafeteria tomorrow if she has ever done anything like this and if, indeed, there is a tradition of doing this in the Midlands as well as in the North of England. Any rendition of The Messiah always makes me think of the Huddersfield Choral Society whose reputation was made on the back of their superb rendition of the oratorio. Being the first day after the clocks have gone back, it is a bit of a shock getting used to how quickly it appears to be getting dark as 5.00pm today is what was 6.00pm a day or so ago. We shall shall shortly be November which, for me, is a month with nothing to commend it at all but is just a month to be lived through (a characteristic shared with February in my estimation)

Today has turned out to be one of the most interesting of days. We knew that we were going to see our University of Birmingham friend later in the afternoon but in the meanwhile, this meant that we were free for our own devices in the morning. This was the weekend upon which the clocks get turned back by one hour and given that I have lost some sleep over the last few nights, this was truly appreciated. This morning we decided after we had breakfasted and seen some of the Lorna Kuennsberg show that we would make a trip to the park which I must admit we have not visited in the last week or so. During the pandemic and when Meg’s mobility was so much better, we did visit the park practically every day and it was an absolute lifeline to us, as well as to regular dogwalkers who seem to be legion in Bromsgrove. Accordingly, we made up a flask of coffee and took along some nibbles, occupying our normal park bench which did require a little drying off with the requisite sponges but we always carry these in the supplies bag in any case. In the last week or so, we have not visited the park much as we tend to see groups of friends in cafeterias of various descriptions but today was a lovely bright day with interesting autumnal colours so it seemed to be a shame not to make another visit to our old favourite. We had not been sitting down for very long before Inveterate Octogenerian Hiker strode into view -or rather flopped onto an adjacent bench, which is quite understandable as he tends to walk anything between 7-9 kilometers a day, even at his advanced years. Whilst engaged in this conversation, another couple that we know quite well and who are regular park visitors stopped by for a chat. Then we were joined by a magnificent labradoodle named Alfred hove into view together with his owner so that was the third acquaintance we had met within only a few minutes. Finally, we decided to return home as Meg was getting a little chilly (I must remember to take out a little blanket for when to take the wheelchair into the park) and on the way back to the car were hailed by yet another couple with whom we have been out for meals in the past. So I must say that Meg and I felt that slightly guilty as we had neglected the park somewhat and it was enervating to meet four lots of our park friends within the space of less than half an hour. When we did get home, it was all a bit of a race around because we had some beef cooking in the slow cooker and on occasions such as this, there is always the onion gravy to prepare and the slow cooker dish itself needs a certain dgree of cleaning out. Nonetheless, the dinner turned out to be prepared relatively swiftly under the circumstances before it could be eaten and everything washed up and put away before our friend was due to call around at 2.15 in the afternoon.

The afternoon did not quite turn out as planned – but that was not necessarily a bad thing. We had intended to go along to visit the Webbs Garden Centre cafeteria thinking that it might be less busy in the afternoon rather than Sunday mornings. This turned out not to be the case and we turned up rather anticipating tht we could utilise one of the wheelchairs that they make available for the use of patrons. But when we got there, all of the wheelchairs were in use (i.e. none available) so we had to swing onto ‘Plan B’ We decided to return to our house where we entertained our friend to tea and biscuits in our Music Room. We were intrigued to learn of some new friends that our friend had made recently and who we may meet ourselves in the weeks ahead. But we spent a good time chatting about some TV programmes that we had both seen and thoroughly enjoyed – our friend was intrigued by the ‘Birth of Israel’ documentary which we had viewed recently and which was so informative. I was also explaining to our friend why we found ‘Outnumbered’ so enthralling so we played our friend a ten minute segment of this so that he could get a flavour of it. After our friend had left, we knew that we were keeping an eye on a piece of furniture that was being sold locally and which we hope to collect in the next day or so. This was a ‘captain’s chair’ and what we found so enthralling and intriguing was what the eventual selling price would turn out to be. The bidding process started out at £10.00 but in the eBay recently viewed section, there was an identical one that had evidently been professionally restored but was selling for practically £1,000. Intrigued by all of this we entered the auction with about 40 seconds to spare and did, in fact, secure the item at £1.30 more than our initial top limit but about a 20th of the antique dealers price we saw adjacent to it. I am just waiting for the seller to get back to me with details of the collection address and a convenient time for us to call around to collect said item. Once we get it home, it will require a certain amout of TLC to expended upon it to bring it into a nice looking condition but it seems basically sound and a wonderful shape which will complement our existing chair perfectly.

Dawn came as a blessed relief after a night with hardly any sleep, the reasons for which upon which I shall not elaborate. But Meg and I were buoyed up by the knowledge that we would meet up with some friends in the Waitrose cafeteria this morning so we progressed with our morning ablutions and a light breakfast. We had got ourselves geared up for our little venture out this morning when disaster appeared to strike. On attempting to start the car engine, the motor resolutely failed to start and I was left with a strange symbol of what appeared to be a cirle of gears and what may have been a representation of fuses. In some desperation, I decided to phone the specialist RAC line for help and the telephone number directed me to a website from which I had to supply details in order to receive some assistance. Fortunately, the first option was to tick a box saying ‘at home’ and then we got prepared for a wait of anything up to an hour and a half. I needed to go back into the house for something, felt in my pocket and then realised that I have left my remote car key inside the house. So it was no wonder it would not start and I now understand that the symbol I thought was a string of fuses was meant to be a keyboard. I might add that the graphics on the model of HR-V that we have has a remarkably clunky 1970’s feel to them and I am fairly hopeful that when we pick up a new car in some week’s time that the graphics and explanations will have been radically improved. I think my absence of sleep had contributed to my memory lapse this morning as it is the first time I hve ever attempted to drive the car without the keyfob and I had evidently left the car unlocked anyway to gain access to it. So we arrived to see the Saturday gang about 20 minutes late but were immediately rewarded with some little chocolate slices to accompany our coffee, this being a delayed birthday cake from one of our number who celebrated a birthday in her 80’s last Sunday. We have made an arrangement to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend tomorrow afernoon rather than tomorrow morning, and of course the places to have coffee on a Sunday are a little limited. Our friend is going to call around for us in the early afternoon tomorrow and so we shall ensure that we shall lunch a little earlier. This should not be at all problematic because this weekend the hour goes back (‘Spring forward, Fall back’) so apart from the hassle of altering all the appliances (including the ones that I sometimes struggle to rmember how the time setting mechanism works), we should be in plenty of time. We lunched today on the risotto that I would normally have prepared yesterday had we not eaten our fill of bacon butties yesterday morning.

I try to make sure that the afternoons when we are resting have a degree of predictability about them – this is particularly, because I am encouraging Meg to have a really good rest in the afternoons because I am sure that her body needs it even if her mind (apparently) does not. So after we had cleared up after lunch, we have our daily ‘fix’ of ‘Outnumbered’ after which I had got something lined up to watch in the mid afternoon. I had previously noticed on the BBC iPlayer tht there was a documentary by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, on ‘The Birth of Israel’ I had started to watch this the other night and it looked fascinating so we saved it for a viewing this afternoon. You might have thought that we would have had a surfeit of news about the Israeli-Arab conflict in Gaza but this program was fascinating in the historical archive and interviews that were deployed. The most fascinating part was the way in which during the ‘war of independence’ the Jewish settlers had been populating Palestine from the 1920’s onwards (at first, peacefully) Eventually, under Israel’s first premier, David Ben Gurion, it was documented how the Jewish settlers (not yet Israelis until 1948) had fought both their Arab neighbours and the British who held a United Nations Mandate to govern the territory. Just prior to 1948, there were groups of Jewish settlers who rampaged through some Palestinian villages bombing them and shooting man, women and children on sight (e.g. the ‘Stern’ Gang, as well as Irgun) forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee their native villages and to make for territories such as Gaza. Naturally, the British labelled these fighters for independence as ‘terrorists’ and when you come to think about it, the British have often subjugated a people and independence has been forced through the barrel of a gun (MauMu in Kenya, Eoka in Cyprus/Greece and so on) What is remarkable is that the pattern of violence exhibited by Hamas today echos that of the Jewish settlers prior independence in 1948.

Last night, I watched England secure a narrow victory to snatch the ‘Bronze’ i.e. 3rd place in the Rugby World Cup. But it was very close fought and the Argentinians would have drawn level, had they not missed a crucial penalty – and they could well have won on extra time. Tonight, of course, is the almighty class between New Zealand and the South Africans which will be a mighty tussle and decided by the finest of margins, one suspects.