Meg and I have no real commitments today so we decided to have a more lazy type of day. Consequently, we did not rush to get ready too rapidly this morning and made our way into town at a fairly leisurely pace. It was one of those gloomy, overcast days that is always a little oppressive but we strolled on to the newspaper shop to pick up our newspapers and then onto the park. In the park we met one of our regulars who was busy looking after a child in her charge whose thirteenth birthday it was today so we wished him well and occupied our traditional park bench before we struck off for home. Meg and I consulted the TV schedules imagining that the paralympics would be on all day but it was not to be. Although the more conventional Olympics were shown in repeated bits during the way, the Paralympics is shown live in the morning and then there is only a half-hour résumé of the highlights later on in the day. As we tend not to watch things in the morning, it looks as though we shall have to rely upon this summary program to keep up with the games.

We were somewhat late for lunch but nonetheless I busied myself preparing a roux to act as the basis for a cheese sauce to baste over the half cauliflower head I have left over. I must say that the roux I made on this occasion was somewhat better than on the last occasion but I have some way to go to perfect my technique. I made far too much sauce but I have kept some back just in case I can use it up in the next day or so. At least the result was very tasty even though I had probably made a lunch that was far too big for the two of us. Late on this afternoon, I knew that our lawns badly needed a cut and so I started on this task fairly late on in the after noon. However, I had the task completed by 6.00pm which is a kind of ‘shut-off’ point for gardening activities at this time of year. The grass seemed to have grown enormously thick since it was last cut – that must be the combination of masses of rainfall and some quite warm days. 

The COVID news continues to be a source of concern. The number of new infections is about 36,000 and the number of deaths just reaching 150 per day. The available data seems to show that it the young, unvaccinated who are increasingly likely now to end up in hospital and the government, for its part, is trying to get all children from the age of 16 upwards to get the jab. A little disturbingly, some of the evidence is pointing to the fact that the various vaccines are effective for about 6 months and then their potency seems to decline somewhat so this point to the fact that as some of the older sections of the population received their jabs about six months ago then there is a strong case for a ‘booster’ jab. Whilst on the subject of jabs, we received a message on our mobiles today inviting us for a mass flue vaccination event on Sunday, 12th September. The last time our surgery ran an event like this, it was run like a military operation and with military precision. We queued outside and were then invited in about 30 second intervals into one of several vaccination ‘lines’ Every member of staff I.e. the entire complement of doctors and the nursing staff were all on duty – I was amazed that by a coincidence I actually got vaccinated by own preferred ‘family’doctor ( the sort that it would normally take three weeks to see if we lived in normal times) I suspect that they are trying to get as many as 1,000 vaccinated with the ‘flu jab in one day which is very sensible when you come to think about it. The thing that I am unsure about is whether this mass vaccination event is just the initiative of our own surgery or whether it is part of a huge NHS drive and in practice, most surgeries throughout the country are being encouraged by the Department of Health/ NHS England to vaccinate in this particular way.  

I had an interesting discussion with members of my family regarding the prevalence of iron in one’s diet. It may well be that in my desire to cut down on red meat over the last year or so, I might have gone too far in the opposite direction. Therefore I may try and ‘rebalance’ my diet to include more iron-rich foods (such as liver, some seafoods) so I will have an early opportunity when I go shopping first thing in the morning to start my ‘diet re-balancing’ activities straight away.

Today is my Pilates day so we have to organise things a little differently to ensure that we do have a very rushed late morning. We were helped in this respect because we had an appointment for a joint GP appointment for both Meg and myself – the telephone consultation was due to start some time between 8.40 and 8.50 and we did get a telephone call in the middle of this time slot. Meg and I had quite a lot to discuss – in Mike’s case it was a more formal advice session after the investigations that were performed on me about three weeks ago whilst in Meg’s case, she has not had any ‘routine’ doctoring for about a year and a half now and almost inevitably for people in their 70’s there are some issues that need discussion with a doctor. We felt that we had a pretty good discussion with the GP and we are both having some extra blood tests ordered for us. However, the news was generally good, or at least reassuring from the GP, so we were left with the feeling that we had both had  quite a satisfactory consultation. 

We started walking down to town about half-an-hour earlier than we had thought and ran across our Italian friend who lives down the road. She had just finished mowing her lawn but had had the misfortune that has happened to all of us at one time or another of severing the electric cable. Armed with a knife, a pair of scissors and some white tape, I managed to splice the two ends together to effect a repair. As a teenager, I seemed to be forever splicing together sections of cable if only to extend a length of flex in the days before extension flexes were readily available.We checked that the repair was working OK and then resolved that we would have a nice Italian meal together as soon as circumstances allow. Then we progressed on our way but I left Meg in the park whilst I went off to collect our newspapers. In the shop, I was waiting to be served and, perhaps for the first time started to observe the kinds of comestibles that the shop sold. In a display rack in front of me, there were some different kinds of biscuits and as we had run out of chocolate digestives, I went ahead and bought a packet. This reminded me of the period when Meg and I were university students and in the long vacation in 1966 we were working in adjacent factories. Mike was working in a cardboard box factory with the most casual of recruitment policies – I just presented myself to their personnel department and said ‘I am a mate of Jimmy _____’ and that was enough to land me the job. In the meanwhile, Meg was working in the McVities biscuit factory as part of an ‘industrial’ placement that all social administration students at that stage were obliged to undertake. Meg worked on the line that produced ‘home wheat’ and also ‘chocolate covered digestives’ . On that line, there was also a bevy of youngish female workers who had their eyes set upon one object of desire, who they would have dearly loved to have married, namely a ‘chocolate man’  The task of handling large vats of steaming hot chocolate was judged to be work only suitable for a male worker and hence a ‘chocolate man’ The girls on the production line often indicated what they would do if one of the objects of their desire actually cast an eye in their direction and they would chatter what they would do if they got their hands on one. The crowing epithet belonged to the girl who exclaimed ‘if I got myself a chocolate man, I  would lick him all over until there was none of him left‘ to which I think any riposte has got to be superfluous.

So I joined Meg and in the park and then we made our way home and I prepared most of the lunch so that I could quickly get it heated and served once I got home. Meg was able to look at the opening ceremony which was being broadcast for the Paralympics whilst I was at Pilates – once home, we did a quick turn around before we had a Skype session which had been arranged for one of our Hampshire friends. These calls are always very interesting and entertaining – our friend was faced with the problems of an incipient planning enquiry which we also experienced when we lived in Hampshire and were faced with a firm who wanted to drill for oil underneath our local primary school.  After this call had ended, we had a five minute break for a tea break before we FaceTimed some of our oldest Waitrose friends. Although we FaceTime at the same time each week, we always seem to have a lot to say to each other, particularly as there seems to be an intensification of social life as the summer progresses and the pandemic is slowly unwinding. 

Today has turned out to be one of the ‘chattiest’ of days. It started with a near neighbour of ours – as we were commiserating about the lack of a pavement on the stretch of road between us and the main Kidderminster Road, we were complaining to each other about the ways in which the local traffic often reaches the speed of 40-50 mph despite a 30 mph speed limit being in place. There is a sort of explanation for this. If one to examine the road which acts as a distributor road to us, it is a ‘de facto’ inner ring road but in practice had not been widened or upgraded in decades whereas the traffic has increased exponentially. Also, there are a great variety of speed limits along the road with very frequent changes (variously 30mph, 40mph and 50mph) but absolutely  no speed cameras in place, so when the local populace reaches this stretch of road, they tend to let rip (particularly as the first bit is downhill). Further on down the road, we were particularly pleased to make contact again with some of our close (church) friends who live down the road but who we have not seen for a week or so whilst they have been off on their jolly holidays (in England) We confirmed the fact that their wedding anniversary is within about a week of ours so that that makes three of us couples (the two near neighbours, plus Meg and I) who have decided to ‘push the boat out’ and have a celebratory wedding anniversary meal two weeks on Thursday. I still have to organise this with the hotel but that will happen later on this afternoon – as indeed it did (after, frustratingly, it seemed to be difficult for them to answer my call). So we had a good old natter in the sunshine and then struck off, very late, to collect our newspapers. Meg felt she would appreciate a stop off at the Waitrose coffee shop so I left her there munching away whilst I went to collect our newspapers. Then I needed to collect a few things that unfortunately made my rucksack extraordinary heavy – I needed to buy just a few baking potatoes but finished off with 2kg of King Edwards plus 2 times 2 litres of milk so the resulting load was so heavy that Meg couldn’t even lift it off the floor. Nonetheless, we trudged home even though we were incredibly late by now but half up the hill we were stopped by someone we know well by sight who had only just heard that the Honda Civic  was no longer to be manufactured in Swindon but either in Japan or in Turkey for the UK market. As our neighbour was an absolute fan of all vehicles made by Honda, he was a bit dismayed to learn they are no longer to be manufactured in Swindon. But is in the nature of modern manufacturing that vehicle production can be switched from location to location as often the same model is manufactured in more than one plant.

We had a very, very delayed lunch. I improvised by trying out a tin of chili beans into which I stirred some cubes of beed that were to be eaten up, petit pois, a stirring of chinese curry and topped with some plain yogurt. If this sounds absolutely foul, then it really wasn’t too bad – and I did get the meal prepared in just about 5 minutes flat. We did treat ourselves to a smidgeon of ice-cream to help to compensate for the earlier culinary ventures. In the late afternoon, I had set myself the task of putting a restraining ‘tie’ on one of our plum trees which is fairly heavily laden with fruit but which could snap or shear away from the main tree if not supported. For tasks like this, I always implore the women of their household not to throw away their old tights but to donate them (having been washed) to my ‘ties’ bag. Because of the material of which they are made, nylons make an excellent tying up agent as they are strong and rot-proof but with a tiny bit of ‘give’ in them which is just what is required. To put this in place, I had to balance on two of my home made devices – one is an old (heavy duty) plastic milk crate which I must say is well prized by those in the know as they can easily bear one’s weight. The other is a stool arrangement which I use to balance on the milk crate.In case, this sounds precarious, it was but at least I didn’t fall off and I managed to get the job done in about 5 minutes.

The Afghanistan pull-out is proving to be incredibly problematic. The Taliban say they are going to allow no extensions but the USA are saying that it will take 3 days (70 hours) just to pull their own troops and equipment out, only leaving four days as from this moment to pull out civilians. I have potential solution to this: why do the British and Americans not pull out (complying with undertakings given to the Taliban) but leave it to the UN to organise whatever evacuations need to take place over their own timescale?

Today has been a wonderful day in many senses of the word. Firstly, the weather was set fair and I enjoyed ny Sunday morning walk early for the newspapers, together with my (by now) traditional music concert on my ancient iPhone (Bach in the the main). I time my journey for the Sunday newspapers so that I can get back in time for the Andrew Marr show but, of course, I had forgotten that  in the middle of August all of the political elite are on holiday (even when countries like Afghanistan are falling to the Taliban) We sent a quick text to our University of Birmingham friend because we were having our customary weekend meeting with him half an hour earlier than planned because we were seeing our other lots of friends after 11.0am. We were very pleased to have a long chat with our friends over coffee and cakes because they had just returned from Ireland and we had a lot to catch up. The first thing wa to coordinate our plans for possibly ‘resurrecting’ our planned little holiday to Rome. Having conferred with out friends, we have decided to go for a date in March if the flights are still available and the UK/Italiam governments have lifted their quarantine regulations by then. Of course, it is also possible that we are in the middle of yet another wave of the pandemic by then but we shall have to wait and see. A second pleasurable task lay before us and that is to see if we can coordinate plans for a joint wedding anniversary meal for 9th September which is, of course, only just over a fortnight away. Our friends were going to contact some other mutual friends whose wedding anniversary is incredibly close to ours. So to cut a long story, we are going to hold a 6-strong wedding anniversary meal in just over two weeks time. This is the first time that we have ever participated in a joint wedding anniversary celebration of this type but it makes a lot of sense and is really something to which to look forward.

We have some more good news of a family nature – we have now firmed up completely that we are going to journey up to Bolton on October 3rd which just happens to be a Sunday on which Meg’s birthday falls. So this means we can have a great reunion plus birthday celebration rolled into one and, again, that is a family occasion to which we can look forward. Even more family news came through to us as we were blogging this evening. Meg’s very aged uncle who we used to try and see as regularly as we could (in North Wales) has moved into a care home in Alsager, Cheshire, in which his sister is already resident and his nephew lives quite near by. One of Meg’s uncle’s relatives phoned up this evening and we have all of the news about the care home that he is in (which sounds absolutely marvellous by the way) Knowing how frail a 94 year old can be, Meg and I feel quite relieved because as he was getting so much more frail, he was only a fall away from some kind of tragedy so we are relieved that he is a much safer place than his own home and with staff (in theory) available at the touch of a button. 

In the later part of the afternoon, I finally got my accounts up-to-date. What I mean when I say this is that I like to copy each of my transactions into a large day book and so  I have a permanent record going back over the months and the years. Then I have a few spreadsheet pages going back over the months for about a year – once my system is up-to-date, I record current balances and regular payments on the spreadsheet so that I should be able to see what my available balance is but also what commitments are likely to turn up one during the month. I have most of my regular payments organised around the date when my pensions flow in but there are one or two in the latest stages of the month and these can be a nuisance if you don’t have an accurate spreadsheet page with commitments detailed on it as you might think you have more money than is actually the case.

A little household ‘system’ that we have is a largeish whiteboard in which the various comings and goings of family members are detailed with a dry marker and updated every month. Then we can see, ‘at a glance’ what is coming up in the forthcoming week, fortnight or month. Looking at next week, for example, Meg and I have only thing which we must not forget which is Meg’s appointment with the opticians on Thursday next

Today was a really gloomy day and it was one of those days when it never really seems to get light all day long and there was a constant drizzle to dampen the spirits. In view of all this, we decided to go down into town by car and in Waitrose, we met our good friend from the University of Birmingham who we have not seen for a week. We seemed to have quite a lot of news to catch up (as well as stories to tell) so we spent a good hour, I should imagine, chatting in Waitrose until it was time to get ourselves home and prepare for lunch. On our way home, we loitered in the car outside the house of our Irish friends who have just returned from their fortnight’s holiday in Ireland until our friend spotted us and came out for a chat. We have agreed to pop into their house mid-way through the morning tomorrow as we have quite a lot of catch up on. We had both received the news by email that the Rome trip was ‘off’ and, it was on that basis, that we went ahead and booked our little stay in the Brecon Beacons. However, we have received another email from our bespoke travel agent who was organising the Rome trip for us and it could be if were to agree this collectively that our Rome trip might be ‘rescuable’ if were to choose other available dates such as late December to January or February. Meg and I quite fancy a January holiday (to help to draw the sting of the winter) but we need to have a collective natter with our friends to see if we are all of like mind. Another thing that we need to discuss is our wedding anniversaries. On September 9th, Meg and I ought to be celebrating 54 years being married to the wrong partner and our friends’ wedding anniversary is very proximate to that date so we are trying to see I we can organise a collective meal for ourselves to help ourselves to celebrate (or is commiserate?) Roll on tomorrow and our plans might clarify somewhat.

This afternoon and this evening we have been watching the finals of ‘The Hundred‘ which is a cricket format designed to appeal to the young- each side has only 100 balls and the batting team attempts no cricket finesse apart from the fact that they try to hit every ball for 6 (or at least a 4). As a lifelong ticket fan, I feel somewhat ambiguous about this form of the game. One the one hand it is entertaining (and the teams are dressed in colours and with names to reflect the new form of the game such as ‘Birmingham Patriots‘) The young seem to love this form of game and it has certainly attracted an enthusiastic fan base from those who have never played or watched a game of cricket in their lives. It is true that cricket needed to do something to attract the younger age groups and this certainly fits the bill. On the other hand, to purists this form of the game is doing nothing to enhance the traditional cricket skills. In particular, the patience involved in constructing a long innings is entirely lacking in this form of the game – instead we are seeing incredibly beefy individuals who have the power to hit a ball for six have to display a degree of athleticism on the pitch where typically they have to run around a boundary (to save it) or to catch a ball out in the deep.  So cricket as we know it is not – but I am trying (hard) to appreciate it on its own terms.

The scenes from Kabul airport (or rather the approaches to it) that we are witnessing today are horrendous. The pressure of the crowds if proving so intense that fairly young British soldiers are forced into a front line where individuals are dying before their very eyes from a combination of heat-stroke, dehydration and crush injuries. The British soldiers and associated medics are rushing from casualty to casualty covering those who are too far gone (and have died) with white sheets whilst trying to save others from the crush injuries which almost inevitably occurred when a large crowd panics and attempts to rush an entrance. The Americans have decided to actually close the airport for a full 48 hours so that the some of the existing crowds, many without any documents, can be processed. One thing that seems to be happening is that even those with a fully documented right to leave Afghanistan cannot get past the ring of Taliban controls outside the airport – and those who are undocumented are actually blocking the safe exit from those who do have the documentation. This sounds (and is) an absolute nightmare. The BBC website puts it cogently:

‘Looking back, putting the processing centre in place at the end of a long narrow street, publishing a press release saying the UK would take 20,000 Afghans without explicitly explaining it would be over the next five years, and then deploying a small group of soldiers given the job of processing people in the first instance while also maintaining military security – is morphing into a planning catastrophe’

Friday has come around again and it is the day that our domestic help ‘does’ for us so we always have a chat which takes up little longer in the morning than I suppose is good for us. We did have one domestic help, sadly departed from us for at least two decades, whose name was ‘Pep’ Smith. The ‘Pep’ bit came from her initials and she was known as Pep to everyone, including even her husband. Anyway on this particular morning I was taking a shower in the downstairs shower room that we had recently had constructed and I pranced gaily up the stairs in my birthday suit, totally obvious to the face that Pep Smith was hoovering away downstairs. Anyway, so as to not seem impolite, I called out ‘Morning, Mrs Smith’ as I bounded up the stairs. I did not dare to look down the stairs to see if Mrs Smith was gazing after my departed form and I do not even know to this day whether Mrs Smith actually looked up from her hoovering but neither of us mentioned it to the other. It cannot be the first (or the last time) that a similar thing has happened. 

Meg and I decided as it was late in the day to go down to Waitrose by car to save a bit of time. When we got home, we just had a very light lunch of soup because we knew that later on in he evening we were going to have a family meal of fish and chips where we were going to discuss some joint financial thongs that we needed to discuss (quite amicably) round the dinner table. Halfway through the afternoon, we got the email that we had been half expecting. The travel agent who had been organising our little trip to Rome had written to say that the budget airline we  were using had decided to cancel the flights both from Bristol and also from Birmingham and therefore the whole  of the planned holiday vacation was ‘off’.  We always knew that there was a 50:50 chance of this happening anyway so the news did not come as a great surprise. Anyway, at this point ‘Plan B’ swung into action. I immediately got onto the web to see what accommodation was available in the Brecon Beacons  which has scenery similar to the Lake District but we have never actually visited before. After a few minutes of research, I was lucky to secure accommodation in a farmhouse only three miles out of the centre of Brecon which offered us five nights for what seemed to be a very good price. On the basis of good reviews from ‘Booking.com’ (an average score of 9.2) and some very good reviews, it now looks as though we have secured ourselves a holiday even if not of the type we had at first thought. To be honest, even if it rains all the time (which it probably will) we can do our bit toddling around the sights and sounds of the Brecon Beacons before hunting out somewhere for a good lunch after which we will have our normal ‘siesta’ and crash out in the B&B which is equipped with a good TV and a kettle for late afternoon snacks. So at least we now having a holiday to which to look forward. In the last day or so, I have also made a more than tentative arrangement to shoot up the M6 to make a long delayed visit to Meg’s recently widowed cousin who is living in Bolton, Lancs. We are in contact with her daughter and will meet in her garden (if fine) or house (if not) and the date we have chosen is Sunday, October 3rd which just happens to be Meg’s 75th birthday. So if all goes well on this occasion, we can have a family reunion and a birthday celebration at the same time – hopefully the traffic will not be too bad at that time on a Sunday.

The COVID news does not look too good this weekend as the infection rate (and deaths) are up at about a rate of 11-12% over last weekend. I think the powers-that-be are worried that if the infection rate accelerates up during the autumn, then we will not be in a good position when COVID meets the ‘flu infection rates and we start another period of time when yet another lockdown may well be on the cards. So far, I think we are living in a more or less fool’s paradise where I suspect that things might start to get a lot worse than might be imagined. Of course, a crucial vector might be the rate of infection in the school based population who might go and infect the older generations. What I learnt during the week was that even the doubly vaccinated might still harbour enough of the virus particles to act as an infecting (and transmissibility) agent without their knowledge.

This week we thought we would try a new pattern of shopping. We have got used over the last year and a bit to getting our provisions delivered for us by Waitrose – this evidently means that we had to get our online shopping organised and we needed to get used to the system of online shopping. This has, though, worked very well over the past few months. We have to make sure that we have a slot booked and this generally has to be done 2-3 weeks in advance to get the day and the time slot that you want. The Waitrose system works (and I suppose all of the others are the same) by ‘reserving’ a slot and then you have to have a basket full of goods which you go through the process of paying for and which would be delivered at the appointed time. But then, not later than the day before, you have to go though the order and order what you actually want and so this has become part of my weekly routine – revising the list on a Wednesday and having it delivered the following day, on a Thursday. Occasionally, you forget to take things off the list and you add to your supply of  biscuits or what-have-you. Conversely, occasionally things get left off the list which is no great disaster – and it is always possible that you didn’t read the number of grams correctly and you tend to get a much smaller item than you were expecting. However, Waitrose has given me excellent quality and  good service over the past year and a bit and I am grateful to them for it. Now though I thought I would experiment, now that the worst of the pandemic is over. So as soon as I got up I threw some clothes on so that I could go shopping in person at the Waitrose store in Droitwich the minute it opened at 8.00 am in the morning. Shopping was almost like heaven – there can only have been 2-3 people in the store and the only people you encountered were the shop staff as they were restocking the shelves. A few days ago I made a very comprehensive ‘master list’ of everything that we might normally buy – then, last night I made a sub-list of only those items that I definitely knew that we needed. As I shopped, I stuck to this rigidly, not allowing myself to be tempted by other items that caught my fancy. What was so amazing was when I cane to the checkout where the bill was about £30.00 less than I was spending online. There must be a logical explanation for this – perhaps some of it is that I am better able to judge quantities e.g. of fruit. But I must say I am delighted by the result. As a result, I may adapt my habits again slightly and shop once a fortnight in the large store at Droitwich and in the intervening weeks ‘make do’ with the quite adequate little Waitrose at the end of Kidderminster Road. 

Every week, we see if we can have a little venture out somewhere to help break the normal routine. Our favourite little venture out is to the neighbouring town of Droitwich and although I had been there already this morning, we decided to undertake our Droitwich day out routine. First we frequent a rather little cafe which is a little Wetherspoon-ish in appliance but does the magnificent toasted teacakes. From here we progressed on to our favourite hardware store – Wilko. Meg was despatched to buy cosmetic type things whilst I indulged myself getting round the gardening and hardware sections where I bought a few useful things like wire brushes. Then we made way to our favourite cafe-bar restaurant where we had already reserved a table. I had a salad type meal (trying to avoid too much carbohydrate) whilst Meg had a wonderful dish of chicken, leek and penne pasta in a creamy sauce. We exchanged halves of each other’s dishes so that we could both enjoy what the other had ordered. 

The news story is still dominated by the plight of the Americans, British and particularly Afghanis who are desperate to escape the clutches of the Taliban – at one point even handing over a toddler to am American marine so that the child would be saved and have a better life even if the parents cannot escape. With a bit of careful planning and imaginative thinking on the part of the British amabassador,I am sure this could have been handled much better. First get one’s own military to put a ring of steel around the embassy. Then encourage those who can to get to the embassy by what ever transport you can. Then ‘process’ the applicants within the embassy grounds. Finally organise helicopter journeys to straight inside the perimeter fence of the airport. Simple, innit?

Today was one of those days when even the weather forecasters were given to explain ‘The only word we can use for the whole of the country today is ‘cloudy‘) and so it proved to be. Meg and I walked straight on down to the newspaper shop and then retraced our steps as far as the park. On our way down, we encountered the French lady who we had round for tea in the garden about a couple of weeks ago. We were commiserating with other that the one Arts Centre that we had in Bromsgrove called ‘The Artrix’ was initially ‘dark’ at the start of the pandemic when all public places of entertainment were closed. It was then ‘repurposed’ as a vaccination centre which I think was quite an inspired choice of building. Given that it couldn’t be used as an Arts Centre until the end of the lockdown, I think a vaccination centre was a brilliant idea. It could process up to 2,000 vaccinations a day, there ws plenty of car-parking and ‘The Artrix‘ was on signposts all over the district and just off the arterial A38 road. Although we are getting to the end of  vaccinating most of the adult population, it now looks as thought the vaccination regime will extend into the secondary schools  and the the more elderly sections of the population, there is talk of combining the normal autumn ‘flu vaccine with an updated COVID-19 booster in the autumn. Perhaps, eventually, we might get our Arts Centre back but in the meantime, I think there will be plenty of work for the repurposed building for the foreseeable future.

Halfway through the afternoon, the daughter of our recently deceased neighbour called by.  She gave us the date when the funeral was going to be, now that then post-mortem had been conducted. The daughter was explaining that whilst her mother had had a stroke followed by a second one that we to prove fatal,mshe had no predispositions that one can think of such as high blood pressure. She also led an abstemious lifestyle with no alcohol and an avoidance of ‘junk food’ so we commiserated with each other that there was no justice in the world. As our neighbour’s daughter is in the final stages of completing her PhD, I tried to proffer what I hoped might be some useful advice , namely to choose one’s external examiner with care. I say this because in the course of my academic life I have seen 2-3 rampant injustices where deserving candidates  were denied their just desserts because an external examiner had a hidden agenda or a point to prove by turning down the applicant. 

In the late afternoon, I finally got round to planting out the nice rose that our French friend brought round with her the other day. I rescued some topsoil from a bag I scarcely knew I had, laced it liberally with chicken pellet manure and then planted out a rose and also a companion stone container which is awaiting a nice plant to go in it. I am also minded to take the small collection of hazels I have put in a temporary location in the front garden to start to form a little hazel hedge along the front of the raised wooden beds I painfully constructed down the side of the house some years ago now. If this comes off, we shall have effected our ambition to have a good ‘green screen’ between ourselves and the newly developed housing estate (now some three years old built on the site of an orchard down by the side of our house)

Today the House of Commons was recalled for an eight hour emergency debate on the situation in Afghanistan. The Commons was in a sombre mood and the government were peppered with questions, many from their own side, about Britain’s lack of preparedness for the scenario unfolding before us. The mood in the House of Commons was almost non-partisan – in some of the   contributions it was not easy to discern whether the MP who was speaking was a Tory or not. In fact, Teresa May, the previous Prime Minister, was particularly scathing. The fact our Foreign Secretary was on a beach when Kabul was falling speaks volumes. Boris Johnson himself reinforced his reputation for being unprepared, if not asleep on the job. I think the House of Commons is at its best on occasions like this – the previous debate of a similar nature I remember was when the Commons was recalled for a Saturday debate  after the invasion of the Falklands (the Malvinas to the rest of the world). I have been considering whether to not to pen a one line letter to the Times posing the following question -‘In view of the long historical association of the UK with Afghanistan and in view of the commitment to promote the education of women, why does the government not suggest that it should build and fund a university in Afghanistion solely for the education of Afghani women?‘ Were the Taliban to refuse such an offer, this itself would speak volumes about their real intentions.

Today being my Pilates day, Meg and I knew that we had to keep a careful watch upon our timings. We walked down into the park and I left Meg with one of regular park acquaintances discussing geopolitics whilst I went off to collect our newspapers. I also took the opportunity to race into Poundland and grab another couple of storage boxes (for topsoil) before they disappeared from view. Poundland can be great if you shop very selectively and these particular lidded boxes at £2 each will be excellent for storing some of my supplies of topsoil. As they contain 14 litres each, the three stacked on top of each other will occupy less space than even my mini-dustbin but each box will be excellent for one load of topsoil per plant. Tomorrow, I need to plant out the nice little rose that our French friend bought for us and where I already have a nice space (and container) waiting for it as soon as I have a little bit of time and a smidgeon of fine weather. After we got home, I started off some ‘boil in the bag‘ fish wedges which will mainly cook before I go but can be quickly completed when I return from my Pilates class and we have a ‘quick turn around’ style of lunch.

When I went to my Pilates class, it fell to me to announce the sad news of the death of my neighbour and long term member of our Pilates class. The news was evidently a shock for the teacher and the other class members because although we are used to the occasional member coming and going, the death of a member of the group had a kind of finality about it. Needless to say, a certain black humour soon took over and we pleaded with our Pilates teacher not to push us too hard as it could have dire consequences. But my neighbour’s loss will be quite keenly felt as she introduced me to the Pilates class some 9-10 years ago and we have regularly walked up and down the Kidderminster Road  to attend the class each Tuesday (sometimes in pouring rain, sleet and snow as well as blazing sunshine)

When I did get home, the plumber was already here installing some new kitchen taps in our utility room and I must say that he produced a beautiful job for us with new taps which absolutely fitted the design of the existing sink. We now employ a central heating firm who are only about half a kilometre away from us. This has got all kinds of advantages for both of us as they can pop into our abode at the end of another job  for an investigation and also fit us in if we have a small job that needs doing. Having ensured a week or so of misery with a dripping tap, we are mightily relieved to get it sorted once and for all.

We had the bizarre sight this afternoon of the very first Taliban press conference when they had only taken over the reigns of power last Sunday and not had even formed a government yet. There seemed to be extremely long winded answers and discourse followed by what seems to be only a sentence or so the English translation. The Taliban were asked more than once about their attitudes to women and they replied with emollient type phrases as follows: ‘Of course… we are committed to women’s rights, to education, to work and to freedom of speech, in the light of our Islamic rules.’ Of course the sting in the tail here is the expression ‘in the light of Islamic rules’ and this can be used to justify almost anything they choose. Many with long memories remember when girls were denied  any school type education, were sent home from their places of work to have their work taken over by men and in the more extreme cases were subject to forced abduction which could rule in a forced marriage or even rape. Naturally, there was a great deal of cynicism amongst the assembled reporters  whether we were actually seeing a Taliban Mark II or not. As evidence that there may be some change in the air, we saw some clips of film in which male Taliban members were being interviewed by female interviewers which would have been unheard of in the 1990’s. 

Whilst waiting for another program to commence, I tuned into the rolling news channel ‘Russia Today‘ where I heard the following news item. Russia’s embassy in Kabul said on Monday that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash and had to leave some money behind as it would not all fit in. It is interesting that this news item does not seem to have been reported on the BBC News nor is the word ‘corruption’ mentioned. After all, it wouldn’t do, would it, if members of the population with sons and daughters who had been killed or severely wounded  in Afghanistan had offered the supreme sacrifice in favour of a leader who only seemed to be hell-bent on enriching himself?

Today was quite a dull, cloudy and not particularly warm Monday morning so it was not a day for too much lingering in the park or anywhere for that matter. Meg and I decided to go down into town by car because we needed to make an optician’s appointment with the optician who has been testing Meg and I for years now. We got the appointment made without fuss and then I made a favourite foray into Poundland where I bought some cleaning products and one or two items for Mog’s Den. We had rather a hurried lunch because we knew that our chiropodist was due to call at 2.00 pm in the afternoon. I had bought a huge cauliflower over the weekend and didn’t want to cook it over the weekend lest it smelled the house out (a potential problem with cauliflower) I overcame this to some extent by adding a layer of brown sugar on top of the cauliflower before I steamed it and had the kitchen window wide open. I made a cheese roux to go over the cauliflower and I am not sure that I made it correctly as I haven’t made a roux for a year or so. I started off with some melted butter and then added the grated cheese and some full-cream milk but I substituted some white gravy thickening granules instead of flour which I think now was a culinary mistake. However, it tasted OK and used it together with some carrot-and-peas mixture accompany the chicken breasts of which I cooked half yesterday. All of this was quite tasty and everything would have been OK but our chiropodist, uncharacteristically, arrived at our house about ten minutes earlier than anticipated and this really messed up our luncheon timetable. Meg had her dinner after she had received her treatment and I ate mine far too quickly than is good for me, trying to get it eaten on time.

This morning, I put into effect something I have been meaning to do and today was the day. After about 56 years of reading The Guardian, I have finally decided to cancel my subscription. I get the  Times and the Guardian every day and I tend to read the Times quite carefully but the Guardian only in a more cursory fashion. I am rationalising some of my expenditures to fit in better with my anticipated saving and spending plans and I reckon the £54.00 I spend each month can go to a much more worthy cause. I often read the Guardian’s News headlines and Comment section but I am pretty sure these can be accessed via the internet so I am not really losing out. What was interesting was the fact that the sales team at the Guardian subscription department  tried to keep me within their scheme by offering me a half price deal for three months but I was not to be tempted. I have a term (time limited) assurance that is due to run its course by the start of December so that is a bit more money that can find a better home. I did feel a slight pang of regret after ending an association that had lasted so many decades but now is not the time for undue sentimentality.

This afternoon was not devoted to anything very much apart from a doze and a read. Naturally, the news media is still full of the news of the fall of Kabul which is so redolent of the images that we remember of the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. On the occasion, though, there were scenes of hundreds of desperate citizens trying to escape the clutches of the Taliban and trying to get into the plane by whatever means they could. There were some rumours that some desperate people hung onto whatever they could from the plane’s fuselage and fell to their deaths once the plane had taken off. The scenes from Saigon were of people trying desperately to climb into helicopters whereas this time it was transport planes but the motivation was the same. Everybody is speaking of the speed of the collapse of the existing Afghanistan regime and, according to reports, even then Taliban themselves were somewhat amazed  at the pace of events. Of course, the interesting question is whether ‘the leopard has actually changed its spots‘ and whether there will be reprisals galore for having collaborated with the Americans or whether the Taliban are going to offer a different public face to their reputation since the 1990’s.

In the late afternoon, I popped into Mog’s Den to do a frenetic 15 minutes of weeding. I reasoned that if I removed the largest and more persistent of them, I would solve the problem getting worse. For the more minute weeds, I am going to use a combination of vinegar (acetic acid) and washing up liquid (just a splash) This is an incredibly effective low-cost and ecologically friendly weedkiller. The acetic acid in the vinegar dries up and desiccates the plant whilst the bit of washing up liquid helps to reduce the surface tension and therefore makes the whole solution that bit ‘wetter’  A bit of hot sun an hour or so after spraying is ideal for this system to work completely effectively.