Today was a gloomy and overcast day with squally rain showers very much in evidence. Because we had a medical appointment in the middle of the day, we always knew we were going to have a rather truncated morning. I spent some time playimg about with a spreadsheet and then we set off for our newspaper on foot, realising that we needed to get a little bit of exercise done. The park was practically deserted this morning and the park benches were still wet after the recent rain showers. But we had been ‘wise virgins’ and had come along prepared with sponge-like cloth and an old tea towel which made the bench habitable for us. Then having left Meg in the park, I strode off quickly to collect the newspaper and upon my return, then Meg and I immediately set off for home. We knew that we had to leave the house shortly after 1.0am so we had a quick ‘put me on’ of rice cakes in lieu of lunch before setting off for the hospital in Redditch (some 14 miles away).  Meg was due to have an X-ray on her neck and this procedure worked liked clockwork, with the added bonus of not needing to pay exorbitant car-parking charages either. When we got home, we had a light lunch of soup, not really wanting to start cooking at that hour. In addition, our hairdresser was due to call and although we can rely upon her running a little late, nonetheless we had a fairly narrow window in which to get ourselves fed and the washing up done.

Today,we have a day long-trailed and filled with some important COVID announcements. The most important weapon in the armoury of the present government is to rely almost excusively upon the efficacy of the present regime of vaccines coupled with some exhortations as to how to keep ourselves safe. All schoolchildren from 12-15 are to be offered one dose of a vaccine – only one dose at the moment because in the very rare event that complications arise, this seems to be after the administration of the second dose. All 50+  in the population will also be offered a ‘booster’ jab (making it their third) together with all health workers and some other key workers. However, it remians the case that daily infections and hospital admissions are running at a rate several times that of last year –  and so, the NHS coping with the backlog of cases over the course of the pandemic, is still under severe pressure. If the pressures on the NHS becomne intense and the infection rate ‘spikes’ (or should we say ‘soars’) then the Government will move to Plan B. A little bit of disturbing news that has only just ‘trickled out’  is that is that the efficacy of the various vaccines seem to decline fairly rapidly and after 20 weeks ( a bare 4 months) the Astra Zeneca vaccine is only 50% and the Pfizer 70% effective. The implication of this is that people vaccinated several months ago might think of themselves are being quite ‘safe’ buit they may be much less protected than they thought. It is true to say, though. that fully vaccinated individuals make up just 1% of coronavirus deaths.

Plan B basically is concerned with powers that the government already has but has now decided that they should bring back into use if absolutely necessary. These include complusory use of face masks, vaccine passports and ‘last resort’ lockdowns.

Various virologists and public health experts are interviewed quite regularly on the media and I think it is fair comment to conclude that there is a degree of worry ‘out there’ in the informed scientific community. In the words of one of them, it really looks as though the politics is driving the government decision making and certainly not the science. Hence Scotland, for example, is going to keep vaccine passports for nightclubs and similar large crowds of people.  I think that one of the sources of concern is that if the infection rate is high, you are always opening the door to a variant that will prove to ‘escape’ all of the current vaccines. Should this occur, no doubt a new vaccine can be formulated but if we lose several months getting production ramped out then new variants might have got a headstart on us and we might be back to the ‘bad old days’ of a year ago. I feel that the whole of the government decision making seems to be dominated by fear of the right wing of the Conservative party – if they are not placated, then Boris might be de-throned and somebody more compliant to their politics might be installed. We seem, not for the first time, to be very much behind the vaccination of our young people compared with the rest of Europe. For example, France has been moving quickly with 66% of those aged 12 to 17 now single jabbed, and 52% fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, we are just starting to rollout our vaccination programme for these youngsters next week.

The start of another week and the weather is starting to feel a tad autumnal. Meg and I have commitments both today and tomorrow but we are looking to a little spell of fine weather on Wednesday (and no storms before then) so I can have a chance to pick this year’s crop of damsons before a storm comes along and shakes them all of  the branches. After we had got showered and some morning jobs done, Meg and I were wondering whether to  go down to town by car to save some time because we knew that we would have to have a pretty early lunch so that we could set off for our afternoon trip in plenty of time. One of the little jobs I engaged in this morning was a bit of spreadsheet work to get my finances (or rather my record keeping) shipshape. As I was doing this, a thought occurred to me which is hardly original. That is, whenever you are working with a spreadsheet, perhaps you are working with TWO spreadsheets – one on the computer in front of you and the other which is actually in your head. Then when you examine the physical spreadsheet and you see something which is not quite right, unexpected or anomalous you automatically cross check with the spreadsheet ‘in your head’  to reconcile the two. I suspect that accountants (or good ones) always work this way – you don’t just look at a spreadsheet full of figures and say ‘x must be the answer’ but have a fair idea what a value (or a spreadsheet cell) ‘ought’ to say. When I discussed this with my son, he argued that a combination of check sums and pivot tables always made the answer a ‘correct’ one  so it could just be my own ideosyncratic way of working. As we were going into town by car, we spotted our friends whose wedding anniversary it was today just on their way home from a funeral. Anyway, it was good to stop by and give them our congratulations ‘in the flesh’ as it were – in my card to them, I pointed out that the generally speaking, the first fifty years of married life were the worst and all was plain sailing after that.  So we picked up our ‘Times‘ and had quite a pleasant coffee and comestibles in the park before setting off for home and then an early lunch.

Then, at 2.00pm we set off for Solihull where we had an appointment at the building society where we have several savings accounts. All that we intended to do was to make our accounts into joint accounts – I suspect that we hadn’t done this in the first place as it always a bit of ‘pfaff’ having to gets two lots of ID and what have you and, in general, it is easier to set up an account in single rather than in joint names. We needed to fill a four page form for each one of our accounts (serving a different ‘savings pot’) and then in the building society, these had to be checked over and then our four lots of ID neded to be physically examined. It took two of the clerical staff the best part of half an hour to do all of this and we waited patiently. However, the staff did not appear to mind – one wonders if they did not have much work to do if people like us had not turned up  with our demands. They were very gracious and accommodating about all of this but once it had been done, we wandered along the High Street and treated ourselves to a cappucino and ‘tarte de pommes’ in a recently opened and refitted coffee bar cum cocktail bar. Then, as we had not visited this high street for a couple of years, courtesy of the pandemic, we took the opportunity to pop into the Cancer Research charity shop where we bought a Bill Bryson book and an anniversary card, noting that they had a magnificent range of Christmas cards of the type we like (both religious and secular) We made a mental note to come back before Christmas so that we could get a good supply – we always used to get our Christmad cards from  the Oxfam shop in Bromsgrove but this has unforunately closed down.  

Tonight it has been announced that a single shot of vaccine is to be ‘offered’ to all schoolchildren beteen the ages of 12-15. The science and politics behind all of of this is that whilst the risk of infection is low, the  disproportionate effects of school disruption should be minimised if possible. It is also well known that most of the public health scientific community know that schools transmit virus rapidly and the summer holidays acted as a type of firebreak – now that the schools have gone back, it might only be a week or so before rates start to rocket. So are we vaccinating school chidren far too late – most of Europe and the States have been doing it for weeks now and we really ought to have started this in mid-August!

Another Sunday and the weather dawns as one of those grey and indeterminate days. I get up early-ish and walk down for my copy of ‘The Sunday Times‘ (the pleasure of The Observer now being foregone). On my way down, I left a bottle of wine outside a bush which graces the front of one of our friend’s houses (a present for their wedding anniversary) and, on the accompanying card, reminded them to look behind the bush for their bottle. On the way home, I noticed that the bottle had disappeared which either means that they have taken it safely inside the house or there are a lot of opportunistic thieves roaming the streets of Bromsgove first thing on a Sunday morning. On the Andrew Marr show, we had the Health Secretary Sajid Javid (our local MP) announcing the fact that a health passport, under consideration by the governnment, had now been ruled out. What is significant about this, is that one hour earlier on a rival show, he had intimated that this policy was still under consideration so there was a rapid and dramatic change in public policy in the space of one hour without any evident consultation with colleagues. Strange! But we are unfortunately having to get used to bizarre modes of government and contradictory announcements from this government – as the opposition and the press do not seem able to ‘lay a glove’ on them.

We knew that in the late morning, we were both due to go along and have our routine ‘flu jabs which is part of our normal autumn routine. We texted our University of Birmingham friend to say that we would have to leave him at a precise time – but we chatted with some of our other regulars before we had to announce our departure. As we have come to expect, the whole surgery and vaccination process was like a military operation. We walked in before our annointed slot, booked in, followed the arrows, bared our left arm, received the jab and were then outside of the building by another entrance all within about two minutes or so. I managed a brief chat with the health service professional giving me my dose saying how difficult it was for the vaccine makers to call the correct ‘strain’ of ‘flu which they feel might be prevalent in the autumn as they have to make a judgement call in February and a few years back they didn’t get it quite right. My vaccinator explained to me that to try and minimise the risk of this happening, what was actually administered was a cocktail of about four variants to maximise the chance of success. I must say that today, for about the first time, the injection site in my left arm is a little on the tender side and I can feel that I have been ‘jabbed’. This will settle down in a day or but in the past I have had the vaccine with no ill effects whatsoever so I wonder if COVID-10 antibodies are putting up a fight? Anyway, we returned home to a chicken dinner hoping that one of those whole chickens that you get these days (on its own tray, complete with cooking bag) had not exploded and wrecked the entire oven. I am pleased to say it had not but an awful lot of fluid seemed to come of this partticular fowl which formed the basis of our gravy.

The media today is full of the success of the 18-year old Emma Raducanu who was the first ‘qualifier’ to ever win the American Open. I hadn’t realised that Channel 4 had broadcast the match live last night becase we were busy watching Last Night of the Proms and then went promptly to bed. She seems to be a very level headed young women and, after Wimbledon, has coped with the pressure well – let us hope that she continues to do so and does not ‘crash and burn’ as can happen if success comes too early. I did just wonder by what criteria her parents (father from Romania,her mother fom China) had gained access to the UK but as they were evidently not short of money, perhaps they fulfilled the criteria of ‘high net worth’ individuals when her parents emigrated from Canada when she was two years old.  Their loss is our gain, though.

The Sunday Times is running a story today to the effect that Boris Johnson has surrounded himself by incompetents within his cabinet and hopes that he can remain PM for about 10 years, hoping to rival Margaret Thatcher. Much as I thoroughly disliked  Margaret Thatcher and she had her favourites amongst the ‘Drys’ rather than the ‘Wets’, I think she did not overlook talent. One does get the impression that with the possible exception of the Chancellor, Boris Johnson has surrounded himself with people who cannot challenge his authority. Although the vast majority of the Tory party hate the provisions they have just voted through in the Health and Social Care Bill, if Boris Johnson keeps on winning elections with 80 seat majorities, then do they care? As one prominent politician said (I must look up the source) ‘Look if you don’t like my principles, I have lots of others‘ which sounds like Broris Johnson to a tee.

Today was a typical Saturday morning – we seemed a little delayed as we did not have rush too much as we were not due to meet anyone in particular in the park. I left Meg on our usual bench chatting with a couple of our park regulars whilst I went off into the town to gather our newspapers and collect one or two bits and pieces. At the newsagents, I received a pleasant  and unexpected surprise. Yesterday, I had dropped off a card and a bottle of bubbly to help the newsagent and his wife to properly celebrate their 45 years of successful marriage. Today, Meg and I were the recipients of a very interesting looking bottle of rosė bubbly and card as well (as it was our 54th last Thursday) so we have both helped each other to celebrate our respective good fortunes. En route, I also passed a hardware stall where I bought as a speculative purchase a large adjustable spanner. This was bought as much for the fact that being a tool of not-recent manufacturer, it is quite heavy as it is made from drop-forged steel and consequently is reasonably heavy (and so useful for weighing things down as occasion demands)

When we got home, it was pretty late so we had to ‘make do’ with an instant meal. On occasions like this we tend to make use of a tin of corned beef which can be made into an instant mince when added to some fried onions and a bit of instant gravy. To this we added a baked potato and some petit pois – well, I have tasted better and tasted worse, but at least we rustled a meal together in just over 10 minutes. We treated ourselves, though, to a specially concocted  ‘sweet’ which starts off with a banana and after some ice-cream, yogurt and a Waitrose special choc-ice special topped off with a drizzle of honey. It sounds (and is!) indulgent but has to be tasted to be believed.

This afternoon, we were more than happy to have a lazy afternoon because we knew that we were going to go to church leaving the house at 5.30. When we got to the church car park we ran into one of the friends whose wife is in hospital. We were delighted to get some good news that our friend’s angiogram proved negative and we are hoping to see her home fighting fit as soon as she can be discharged – they are waiting for the artery into which the angiogram is inserted to heal somewhat before she can come home again, hopefully before new Thursday which just happens to be her wedding anniversary. 

Tonight, as I blog, I am half-listening to the ‘Last Night at the Proms‘ as it is that time of year again. I feel deeply ambiguous about this programme now that we are living in a post-Brexit era. I used to enjoy (if that word is not far too strong) the eccentricities of the English letting their hair down once a year in order to be straight-laced for the rest of it. But now in these post-Brexit, English-nationalist type days, I feel deeply unhappy about the rampant xenophobia, flag waving and generally denigration of foreigners (‘Britons never, never will be slaves‘ etc.) I think it would be more appropriate now  to sing not ‘Britain rules the waves’ but rather ‘Britain waives the rules’) I always suspected that all of the xenophobes and English nationalists used ‘Last Night‘ as an excuse  for their posturing  but now it seems to have received official endorsement from the establishment. Incidentally, I think the BBC does a magnificent job not allowing too much attention given to the extremes of flag raising and the hunting  out of spots of rampant xenophobia and they do try hard to focus on a few non-UK type flags being waved to try and present some ‘balance’  The traditional medley of songs etc I shall avoid but I do enjoy listening to how witty the conductor chosen for the last night can prove to be.

Last night, we did listen to the whole of Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion‘  and really enjoyed every minute of it (broadcast from 7.00pm until 10.00pm. I first heard it when I was about 14 and in the school music room in Thornleigh College, Bolton, getting prepared to travel home by train for the Easter vacation. The very last cantata (‘In tears of grief, we leave thee Lord‘) in English translation, held me absolutely transfixed, as it does to this day – if you listen careful to the cadences of the music and it is skilfully interpreted you can almost hear the sobbing of grief played out in long cadences. Incidentally, to any musicologists out there, does the very, very last chord of the cantata end in a deliberate mis-chord (like an ‘E’ and an ‘F’ played next to each other) – written by Bach (who was a deeply religious man but although a Protestant, his music and I think much of his religious work was performed in catholic cathedrals such as Leipzig), I think he may have been a very subtle point in writing the discord right here (but of course, I could be wrong)

After all of the excitement generated by yesterdays’s celebrations of 54 years of married bliss, today rather had the feeling of ‘the morning after the night before‘ about it. After we had got ourselves dragged into bed and seen a little of the late night news, then I got up to write yesterday’s blog which might explain its slightly ‘offbeat’ character. So this morning, we were a little slow in getting up and getting going – and of course our domestic help calls around on a Friday so we always seem to have masses to talk about.  Eventually, though we did get going and had previously arranged to meet with our University of Birmingham friend in the park – as it turned out, we were only half an hour late. There wasn’t time to pick up our newspaper (now confined to ‘The Times‘) and we spent about an hour and a half chatting about all kinds of things. One matter which was absorbing our attention, though, was a problem manifest over practically the whole of the UK. This is how to have an adequate consultation with a GP when it is so difficult to have any face-to-face contact with a GP these days when the default method of consultation is via a telephone appointment. We were reminiscing with each other that an old-fashioned GP in the former pre-COVID days could have gathered all kinds of impressionistic data from the moment you entered the room until you were beckoned to sit down in a chair adjacent to the doctor’s work station. Now, I think it is true to say, that a GP is likely to be staring at his computer screen and wave you towards a chair before entering the opening gambit of ‘what can we do for you today?‘  Just by chance, there is an article in today’s ‘Times‘ which is detailing how the senior coroner for Manchester is highlighting in ‘Prevention of future deaths‘ reports in which five cases of death over the last few months could have been avoided if face-to-face consultation had taken place rather than a telephone consultation. One of these cases involved the case of  a 99-year old resident of a residential home who had a telephone consultation with a doctor who did not diagnose a broken femur from which the patient could well not have died. These cases are no doubt the prominent tip of a vary large iceberg but when you consider that for the past year and half a huge amount of ‘normal’ doctoring has been squeezed out by the impact of the pandemic, it not surprising that mistakes will occur and diagnoses not be made on time.

When we go home (late) it was time for me to prepare what is now fast becoming a Friday lunchtime special i.e. fresh sea-bass bought from Waitrose only the day before. Now that I know exactly how to cook these correctly so that the skin is nicely crispy and, once turned over, the flesh is nicely cooked without being over-cooked, we are really enjoying our mid-day on Friday treat. I serve it with some capers (previously bought in a jar), some fresh lemon juice, garlic butter and purple sprouting broccoli. This is a dish which is both extreme delicious as well as healthy so I am more than happy, having just established a Friday tradition, to carry on with it. To be honest, I used to make a big fish pie about once a month with 4-5 different kinds of fish and then, having cooked it, save several portions for future meals but it does take quite a lot of preparation and I have rather got out of the habit of doing it in the last few months.

Today, after lunch, I went down on my own by car in order to pick up my copy of ‘The Times’ which I now intend to read rather more assiduously now that I am bereft of The Guardian. I did take the opportunity to pop into Waitrose where I bought a bottle of Cava and a card for my friendly Asian newspaper whose shop is just around the corner. When we were discussing our own forthcoming 54th wedding anniversary celebrations,  it emerged that he was due to celebrate 45 years of marriage on that most memorable of dates i.e. 9/11 (as the Americans would put it, 11th September for us in the UK). In the past week, I did watch a documentary of how 9/11 unfolded hour by hour as captured in air traffic control messages (still quite laconic) and a lot of footage shot on people’s cellphones (mobiles to us Europeans) that had never been broadcast before. I have no doubt tomorrow, twenty years after the events of two airliners crashing into the Work Trade Centre in New York, one into the Pentagon and one brought down in a field in Pennsylvania, our airwaves will be filled with all kinds of footage of the attack. One fact that I have just heard on tonight’s news that I did not know was that some 10,000 New Yorkers were directly impacted by the collapse of the twin towers mainly though the release of toxic materials and a number of these developed cancers from which they subsequently died. I have seen one source that indicates that nearly 3,000 people died directly but that over 4,000 survivors and first-aiders may have died since 9/11 itself.

So the day has finally dawned to which I had been looking forward for some time now. It is the day of our 54th wedding anniversary and the day seemed very similar in temperament to the way it was in 1967. One thing I particularly remember about that particular day is the fact that one of Meg’s cousins and the parents of Meg’s bridesmaid were both coming from afar to Manchester – one from South Wales and the other from Solihull. These two sets of guests both had particular and distinctive sports cars. From my memory (which may well be faulty) one of these was a Daimler Dart and the other may well have been one of the more distinctive Triumphs. Anyway, the owners of these cars had each taken note of the other whilst they were proceeding along the motorway (the M6) into Manchester and were regularly overtaking each other turn and turn about (as sometimes cars do, travelling at about the same speed). Imagine the astonishment when one followed the other through the suburbs of Manchester and they eventually landed up outside the same church (i.e. Church of the Holy Name, opposite the main entrance to the University of Manchester) when they discovered that they were each coming to the same event i.e. our wedding, Naturally, there was mutual amazement when they finally met having chased each other for miles. We have a series of the original wedding photos on my iPhone, scanned from the original photos at the time of our 50th 4 years ago and the photos, with the passage of time, are quite revealing (black and white, of course) In one photo, six male friends of Mike’s are shown all in the prime of their lives. Who would have thought that over 50 years later, three of these would be dead (one of them my own best man), a fourth suffering from prostate cancer and a fifth with dementia. There appears to be one member of the six apparently unscathed but it does tend to show dramatically the frailty of the male members of the species. Another fact revealed in the photos is Meg’s wedding dress, which is actually a Mary Quant copy. (Mary Quant was said by some to be the inventor of the miniskirt and was was certainly an icon of women’s fashions in the 1960’s) If Meg’s wedding dress had been a May Quant original it would have cost £1,000’s but what happened is that Meg sketched out some of the designs she liked which epitomised the Mary Quant ‘look’ and Meg’s mother, whom was an excellent couturier, bought the materials and made the dress, When, in occasions like this, we show the wedding photographs to people that we meet, practically ever female of the older generation will have heard of Mary Quant and can therefore relate to the design.  As well as being above the knee (just), the outfit also sported a wonderful lace bonnet which was very much ‘a la mode‘ in 1967.  We have one more fairly remarkable fact about our wedding photos. When I was getting them out of their retaining album for our 50th, a piece of lined paper fell out which was actually the organist’s original notes of everything that we had played at out wedding. From this list, I have managed to scour the internet and get practically identical facsimiles so we now have the facility to run a slide show and play the wedding tracts which is almost as good as a video might have been (or a cine film, I suppose, in 1967). This all comes to mind because Meg and I went went to Waitrose by car, discovering some champagne and cards left by a friend when we were on our way out. Once we go into Waitrose, we showed the photos on my phone to a few of the regular staff who know us very well and were rewarded by a bunch of flowers as well.

Knowing that we were going out in the evening, we had a light lunch and I spent one time getting my building society accounts all made accessible through an app I have installed on my phone. Then we got our ‘glad rags’ on and went out for a meal to our favourite hotel/restaurant, starting at 6.30 and carrying on until 10.00pm. We had a really marvellous dinner with lots of good food and scintillating conversation with laughter and merriment very much in evidence. Our friends had also bought us some birthday wine and cards to help us make our day really memorable. As another sort of coincidence, my local friendly newsagent is going to celebrate 45 years of marriage in two days time – his wedding anniversary can never be forgotten as it is the by now ‘infamous’ 9/11 (i.e. 11th September) in which the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were attacked and destroyed some 20 years ago now.

Today may well have been the hottest day of the year so far. It looked as though temperatures around the whole of the UK were about 30° which is in the mid 80’s. However, the weather forecasters had warned us that this was going to be a short-lived heatwave as the whole weather system is due to break down tomorrow and it looks as though cooler and stormier weather will spread over the whole of the country spreading from the south west. First thing this morning, I spent some time getting my accounts up to date and then I texted one of my friends to get the telephone details of another – Meg and I were anxious to know how our friend who had been hospitalised after heart problems was doing. I managed to make contact and got some up-to-date news (and quite by accident ran into him in the paper shop as well) They are transferring his wife to a more specialised coronary care unit in Worcester and to be in the hands of specialists and with better equipment must be a good thing. They have diagnosed some problems with her heart valves  and I just hope that with some modern treatments and drugs our friend will be able to get a new lease on life. She is a really avid gardener and organised a lot of the flower decorations within our local church so she is bound to be missed for a little while now. When I bumped into her husband, I told him to forget about the normal clothing things that you take into hospital but just take along some perfume to wear. In the park, we had quite a long conversation with one of regular park regulars. Knowing that we meet several times a week, he had asked me to get a specialised product from Amazon which I was happy to oblige. The package arrived yesterday so it got handed over (and I was repaid) so that worked out well. We were joined by Gloria, our wheelchair friend, and spent some time chatting but to be honest, whilst there was a pleasant breeze, the temperature was steadily arising as the day wore on. We walked home fairly slowly as we did not want to ‘push it’ in the extreme heat. Once we got home, our house was delightfully cool after the heat of the midday sun outside and we adapted the quiche we were due to eat to make it into  a salad-type meal.

This afternoon, Meg and I spent a certain amount of time watching some of the debates in the House of Commons over the Health and Social Care proposals. The Labour Party MP’s were generally arguing that the government proposals to spend over £12 billion supporting the NHS and finally addressing the funding problems was little better than a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. Also, there was very much a feeling that ‘ordinary workers’ would bear the brunt of the cost through National Insurance contribution increases but the very wealthy (and their houses) would emerge almost unscathed. The reaction of many Tory MPs was fascinating. They absolutely loathed the concept of spending a lot more money on the NHS (needed to address the backlog after the treatments cancelled to cope with the COVID crisis). Also, as one or two them argued with a degree of passion that once you had a temporary ‘NHS’ tax it would become permanent as to go to the electorate saying ‘let’s get rid of the NHS tax‘ would be electoral suicide. So they felt that they were being asked to support and to vote for the kind of proposals that might well have been advocated by a Labour government – if there was no difference between themselves and a socialist government, why would any one vote Tory ever again particularly in view of the manifesto pledges (at least two that had been broken) But despite all of the ‘chuntering’ and grumbling, the Tory MP’s voted en masse for this huge extension of the role of the state and the highest taxation levels seen for 70 years whilst the Labour Party actually voted against. I have a feeling that there may well be quite a cleavage in the Tory party which is difficult to resolve. It is being said, though, that these spending increases sets the tone and the terms for the next general election and signals what type of prime minister Johnson he wants to be. The wager is clear as  he believes voters will grudgingly forgive him for breaking not one, but two manifesto commitments if it means a huge increase in spending on the NHS and social care.

In the middle of the night (when else?) I was reading my emails and got some rather disturbing news from our closest friends in Spain. We had not heard from them for a week or so which is quite unusual and we hoped that nothing was amiss. Their daughter was due to come to the University of Gloucester as an ERASMUS student – the acronym ERASMUS stands for European Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students. Our close friend had been one of our earliest Erasmus students at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University, Leicester) and now about thirty years later, it was the turn of her daughter (who we know very well, having watched her grow up since she was a baby) to undertake a year’s Erasmus experience in an English university. Naturally, I was distraught to discover that the daughter would not now be coming to England as we were expecting her shortly. So what to do? I sent off an email in the middle of the night to the University of Worcester, one of our nearest universities, to see if there was anything that could be done. Then I got onto the international pages of the university in Madrid where the daughter is studying and sent these pages off to our friends in La Coruña, suggesting that they might contact the international office of the university themselves to see if they had any other contacts with UK universities which could take over the contract reneged upon by the University of Gloucester. Then I did some internet searches  and discovered that whilst Boris Johnson and his Brexit mates had withdrawn the UK from the Erasmus scheme (on the grounds that ‘they could not afford it’), this did not apply in Northern Ireland. Apparently, the universities in the Republic of Ireland (Eire) had stretched out a hand to their ‘cousins’ in the north and whilst the UK universities were withdrawing from the Erasmus scheme, the Irish had extended a massive hand of friendship to their colleagues in Northern Ireland offering them the opportunity to continue participating in the Brexit scheme. So this is a bit of a lifeline – but it all depends whether the university in Madrid has any contracts with any universities in Northern Ireland which might not be the case. Anyway, I must communicate all of this to our friends in la Coruña but I haven’t had the opportunity yet. Then, of course, the evident idea occurred to me (a little late) that I could contact the international department of De Montfort University to at least speak to an informed academic from within the UK system – this is a prime task for tomorrow. 

I am just in the process of transferring my fuel accounts from my old supplier to me new one. My new supplier sent me some helpful emails (and a very clear website) which just says ‘Enter your existing Gas and Electricity meter readings‘ So I went outside to my external meters which I have not at looked at for a long, time long time and was faced with a blank screen on the gas meter and a blank screen with three buttons to activate the blank screen on the electricity meter (which gave unhelpful options such ‘Consult’ ‘Engineer’ which was not particularly helpful) I then pressed several buttons several times on the ‘gizmo’ which we have in our kitchen and, fortunately, the meter reading numbers of the gizmo and on the meters seems to agree. Now to enter them into the system – easier said then done. The Gas reading went in fine but the Electricity one needed the correct number of zeros before the digits before it would enter correctly but at least the deed was done.

This task having completed, we got some very bad news by phone. We had planned to go out with our two closest friends whose wedding anniversaries are very similar to ours for a joint meal on Thursday next. But the phone call revealed that the wife of one of our friends had had a heart attack yesterday (and perhaps two smaller ones) but at least she had been got into hospital within an hour or so of it happening. Evidently, she would have had some clot-busting drugs or similar but we know she is more comfortable than she was and had a good night in hospital last night. We have no more news than that but, evidently, we are very anxious that one of our closest and dearest friends makes her a speedy recovery. We bought a card from Waitrose which we popped through the door on the way to Pilates.  To save a bit of  time, we had  earlier gone down to town by car and picked up our newspapers (and much needed ice-cream for this hot weather) It looks as though tomorrow we should have a really hot day (28° to 30°) before the weather breaks down completely on Thursday. Of course, we may have spectacular thunderstorms and/or rain but I hope our damsons remain undamaged (as I due to pick them this weekend)

According to the newspapers, we are due to have a mini heatwave over the next day or so and today the weather was certainly even warmer than yesterday. Tomorrow is going to be a really hot day with a temperature of 28º which is 82ºF in the ‘old’ system. Then, on Wednesday, the weather is due to break probably with thunderstorms and some much needed rain. Meg and I were a little delayed because we were in telephone conversation with our building society getting  some details of our accounts regularised. As you might expect, this is still a complicated business as it involves going through a series of apps to get at your accounts online, then we have to send them a secure message (presumably to prove who we are), then they are going to send us some forms  which we have to fill in and finally we have to go in person, together with two kinds of ID to see them in person (which we will do next Monday) to get the account details altered to our satisfaction. I suppose one can see the point of all this to overcome potential fraud but you still have the feeling that a genuine fraudster might be able to circumvent the system a little more easily. Eventually, and a little later than planned, Meg and I wandered down to the park which, as you might expect, was particularly quiet as it was both Monday morning and also  it was the day when all of the schools returned after their long summer break. One did wonder, though, why the occasional young adolescent was to be seen on the skateboard board and even on the swings for the younger children.  We had an enjoyable time and I left Meg to enjoy the late summer sunshine whilst I went to pick up the newspapers.

When we returned home, it was fairly easy to prepare our lunch as we had cooked our ‘main’ joint yesterday. Today, we had pork, Cavolo Nero (kale) and a smidgeon of baked potato and it was delicious. After we had our post-prandial nap, we decided not to avail ourselves of one of the rolling news programmes that we generally watch at about this time of day but throughout we take the feed live from Parliament to see what Boris Johnson had to say for himself. The session started at 3.30 and carried on until 4.45 so the Commons organised itself in such a way that a greater number of MPs then usual could question the PM about Afghanistan. Boris Johnson put on a fairly typical performance for him. Most of questions from MPs (on both sides of the house) put fairly direct and pointed question, mainly entering upon the plight of those still trapped in Afghanistan or their relatives. Boris Johnson’s replies were a typical mixture of bluster, political point scoring, evading the question and often avoiding the main point of the question altogether. Of course, all politicians do this particularly on the media – to the frustration of many, including myself, the interviewers often do not pursue the point that the question has not been answered and move onto the next question in their schedule. The politicians know this and often fill up the available space by always starting an answer with a preamble that is only generally loosely related to the question and then going on to answer half the question or quoting a statistic in their favour that does not really answer the question that was asked. Because all politicians do this (I make an exception for Nigel Farage whose politics I detest but who generally did answer the question that he was actually asked) I wonder whether they engage in this evasive mode almost by force of habit. So I found the questions asked by the MP’s generally hit the point but the answers do not. So, for example, many MP’s asked why so many emails remained unanswered in the Foreign Office system. The response was that all emails would be ‘attended to’ by the end of this evening – which in practice meant that they might have been opened and then immediately ‘filed’ in a kind of pending folder without the substantive point ever being addressed. Another case in point was a very intelligent question asked why there was no coordination or cross-referencing between the various schemes of headings under which people could apply for admission to the UK – the reply from Boris Johnson just stressed how many people had been aided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the last few days which, of course does not answer the question.

In the late afternoon, I undertook a task I had been meant to do for days. I had an old adjustable spanner  soaking in a tub of white vinegar for several days to loosen/get rid of the rust. Then it had a good hard scrubbing with a wire brush, several rinses with cold water and finally a drying off and a good treatment of WD-40 before it will get put carefully away.

Today being a  Sunday, I got up earlier than normal and set off for my Sunday morning walk to the newsagents, wearing my trusty old iPhone which I use on these occasions as an MP3 player. The first track I played was actually the ‘Hallelujah‘ chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Whenever, I hear this chorus, it always sets me in mind of the Huddersfield Chorus Society whose rendition of the Messiah is well known.  This reminded me of our neighbour whose funeral we attended the other day as she came from Huddersfield – as I was born and bred in Yorkshire and there was only a sixteen month gap between our birthdates we felt very mcuh part of the same generation. Indeed, we seem to have many values and attitudes towards life from having been reared in similar ‘soil’  so to speak. Our neighbour and I used to chat about all kinds of things when we went down to our Pilates class each week, and so I had one of those strange feelings that you sometimes have when someone ‘s death has been recent that you cannot believe that they have actually ‘gone’ and may not suddenly reappear. In the case of ‘the Messiah‘ it used to be the case that if you were reasonably musically competent and could read a score you could go down to the Town Hall Qquare in front of Leeds Town Hall and you could actually sing in the chorus of the society (tenor, bass etc.) I think that this tradition is actually carried on in other northern and midland towns and cities but I haven’t heard of any performances recently. After this track, there was a track from Mozart’s opera ‘Don Giovanni’ entitled ‘Il mio Tesoro‘ which our son played on his clarinet for one of his music exams when he was aged about 10 – certainly at primary school. He carried on playing the clarinet and actually won the school music prize for playing the second movement (slow) of the Mozart clarinet concerto when he was about 13. Shortly afterwards, a combination of locomotives , photography and young women became his abiding life interest and the clarinet was abandoned. In fact, to this day, I am not even sure what happened to it. Anyway, we were extraordinarily proud of our son having won the music competition when he did but then he musical tastes changed to Marillion and the like (late 1970’s and early 1980’s)

We had a lunch of pork which had been cooking in the slow cooker all morning whilst we had been out in the park. Then it was a typical lazy Sunday afternoon whilst we slowly digested the newspapers. Then we treated ourselves to watching the progress of the English cricket team in ‘Today at the Test‘ where the Indian batsmen built up quite an impressive lead, leaving England a total of over 350 to reach in their final innings which has hardly ever been done before. However, the English batsmen managed to make a  score of about 70 without loss, setting the scene for an incredibly exciting run chase tomorrow. We will resist the temptation to listen to it on the radio but will wait until we know the best (or the worst) when we tune in tomorrow.

In the early evening, I gave my sister a FaceTime call to see if there was any more news about her husband (my brother-in-law) who is currently in hospital. We know that they are going to try a shot of radiotherapy to alleviate some of his symptoms but this might take several days  to organise.   The only bright spot about all of this is that he is hospital in Harrogate, Yorkshire which was a very good reputation. We were FaceTiming for quite a long time with my sister because she is alone in the house and I felt that she needs as much moral support as we can give her – particularly as the immediate future is somewhat uncertain. When I get some time, I thought I would write my brother-in-law a long letter to give him some diversion. My sister informed me that they have taken away all of the TV’s normally over each patient’s bed as an infection risk. One of his sons has managed to get his a little radio upon which he may be able to follow the Test Match (as an ardent cricket fan) but he of the generation that finds even using a mobile phone phone problematic, let alone an iPad so he can FaceTime. I imagine the next few days in hospital are going to be rather a miserable time for him (particularly as he quite deaf so communication with hospital staff may be problematic).

The newspapers are full of the dilemma facing the government as they intend to make a long-delayed announcement about the funding of long term social care – a ball which had been ‘kicked into the long grass’ for about a decade now but decisions do have to be made. I gather the preferred option seems to be a rise in National Insurance contributions but  large part of the Tory Party are up in arms about that (as the burden falls upon those who are younger and in work but most of the recipients are the older generation who have been quite well provided for over the years) This autumn is going to see quite a lot of fireworks politically – watch this space!