We knew that today everything would run a little later than normal. For a start, we had our Waitrose delivery which all had to be put away. Then we received a fairly long telephone call which we were not really expecting and this all conspired to delay us. So Meg and I decided to take our car down into town today. I must say that I had an ulterior motive because having picked up our newspapers, I was keen to visit a store called Broad Street DIY (formerly Broad Street Hardware) This is the kind of store to which all the local plumbers, decorators and jobbing builders will make their first port of call because it will nearly always have the specialised ‘thingamobobs‘ that they need in their day-to-day work. The particular attraction for me is that they always have a collection of wood offcuts outside the door.  In particular, they typically have several staves which are 4cm square by 80cm long and with a goodly point put on them. As such they are can be used to secure large shrubs, small trees and goodness knows what else. I can only speculate what other people use them for but apart from their gardening uses, with a notch in the side to accommodate a rope they could no doubt be used as a guy rope to tie down a tarpaulin. The next time I go to Broad Street DIY I must ask them what other people typically use them for. Whilst I was there, I bought some coriander and mint seeds (about which more later) and some of those nice hefty rubble sacks much beloved of builders – but why are they always bright blue and never green I ask myself? We then went to the park and bumped into our amazingly energetic 87-year old who regularly walks at least 7km a day at a fair old pace as well. We exchanged tips (well observations, really) how to keep on going and going into one’s advanced years. One can’t always say that exercise is the elixir of life as one of my mathematics colleagues at De Montfort University in Leicester dropped dead of a heart attack whilst jogging – and he was only in his 30’s as well.

After lunch and a customary doze, I knew that I had  to complete the project that I had set myself for the afternoon which was to finally despatch the remains of the chopped-down-but-decaying vegetation to our brown bin. Everything had to be chopped into about 8″ pieces first and the bottom of the heap was rather a slimy (and slug-infested) mess to which I was not looking forward. However, Miggles the cat came along to receive her mid-afternoon treat, have a drink of water, jump on my lap for a stroke and a fondle and finally jump pff my lap to supervise the rest of my afternoon’s activities. I had intended to start on a job to put a brick edging down the side of my curving path in Mog’s Den but time rather ran away with me and I got diverted into ‘doing something’ about a scrubby piece of sloping land. I have a sort of plan for this will come to fruition tomorrow. At the very top, I have put some of my ‘push in’ plastic fencing to stop detritus rolling down the hill after a heavy rainfall. Then I have cut a narrow trench into which I am going to ‘peg’ a piece of board purchased from the hardware store this morning and just about the length I need. Then I am going to put in a little bit of willow fencing (courtesy of ‘Poundland’) and in the reclaimed area I am going to put two vegetable troughs with basil in one and coriander in the other. Finally, I have a bit off bare earth without any evident use but I suddenly decided  to try and transplant some mint from elsewhere in the garden. But when I went to explore where I knew I had some mint growing, the mint plants have been rather overrun by a holly hedge and not helped by an absence of rain water, nutrients and sunshine. But there are some individual little mint plants so I think by the time they are rescued, transplanted and get more some light, fertiliser, watering and a bit of TLC, I may have another mint bed in operation. They say that mint spreads like wildfire but I must say I have never been so successful with it. However, what has emerged in Mog’s Den, in a type of unplanned way, is a miniature herb and veg garden and I am hopeful that in the fullness of time, I will manage to dash out of the kitchen and cut a handful of mint, basic or coriander whenever I need them. I also intend to eat the beet leaves this year as well as the globe roots themselves which are, of course, incredibly good for you.

As the day dawned, there was not a cloud in the sky and we knew that we in at the start of a period of high pressure which is going to remain stationery over the British Isles for the next few days. As we had nothing particularly pressing this morning apart from updating our Waitrose order and the weather was so fine, we allowed ourselves the luxury of lingering in the back garden (and Mog’s Den of course) to assess which flowers and plants are doing particularly well this year. After some rain but also some warm days then the garden is at its finest so we took a lot of enjoyment lingering over various plants. For example, there is a beautiful little shrub with a host of ruby-red flowers called ‘Penstemmon‘. A small plant was sold to us  by a friendly trader down in Bromsgrove some years ago. The ‘Penstemmon‘ has now spread to about a yard wide and a year deep so I may be able to detach part of it and start off a new clump elsewhere. Eventually, Meg and I started on our walk – I left Meg on one of the ‘top’ benches which overlooks the rest of the park whilst I went off to collect our newspapers. But Meg was soon joined by a mutual friend and I was pleased that Meg had that little bit of company and then we struck off for home.We had a salad type lunch which was easy to prepare – just as well as I needed to leave the house just after 2.00 for a doctor’s appointment (rare these days)

After I had been to the doctor’s for a series of checkovers (generally OK) I popped into our local Asda primarily to see if they had a gardening section and specifically if they had any seeds. I had in mind to buy some Swiss or Ruby Chard as they look colourful and grow well in the shade (of Mog’s Den) but  Asda had hardly any seeds at all. But I did pick up a couple of rectangular vegetable troughs which were being sold off at a discounted price of £2.00 and then got home and treated myself to a low alcohol lager. Then I started a major task that I had set myself for the day which was to attack the mountain of weeds (brambles, nettles and other lovelies) which I needed to chop up into 8″ size portions and then bag them. As our  brown (i.e. garden waste bins) are being emptied tomorrow morning, then today was an ideal opportunity to attempt to attack the pile of weeds and get them disposed of tomorrow morning. In the event, I managed to fill about five sacks and then these got disposed of via our own and neighbour’s bins – this has got most of the job done but there is still about one quarter of the total to be finished off in the morning. I must admit that the combination of thick and long brambles on the one hand and the slimy branches on the lower layers makes this a most unpleasant task but thankfully it will soon be over. In the middle of the afternoon, my plant arrived – a heavily discounted pussy willow which is about a metre and a half tall and which will not get any taller but should get bushier and eventually give us a display of lots of pussy willow catkins. Once the old vegetation had been removed, I shall be moving into the more pleasant phases of finishing off Mog’s Den. Basically,I need to put my planters in place (hardly an arduous task), fill them with a mixture of compost and topsoil (again, not a difficult job) and then sit back and wait for a few more of my ordered plants to arrive to populate the planters. I am of a mind to make the smallest of vegetable gardens near the beets and I thought I might transplant a bit of mint from another section of the garden and then sow some coriander seeds (or even get a complete coriander plant from a local supermarket)

Earlier today, I had called in to see how my two neighbours were doing health wise. My immediate next door neighbour is recovering from a  heart procedure undertaken last Monday and my other neighbour is recovering somewhat, from the stroke she suffered last week. The family has been given precious little information and, in truth, the MRI scan was only done yesterday – a positive sign is that our neighbour can walk with some physiotherapists’ assistance. Then it looks as though she might go to a specialist unit which helps both to rehabilitate stroke sufferers and also gives the opportunity for longer term assessments to be made.

The government’s ‘mask’ policy seems to be in some disarray tonight. Although, in theory, all legal constraints will disappear on Monday next, ins practice many organisations (Transport for London for one) are insisting on their use.Tonight, more than 1,000 scientists sign letter urging 19 July to be postponed as they accuse government of pursuing ‘herd immunity by mass infection’

Today was a ‘chewy’ kind of day but not without its compensations. I had been phoned up yesterday by our GP practice who indicated that one of their GPs needed to have a telephone consultation with me concerning some of the results from the recent array of blood tests I had taken. I sat by my phone at the appointed time but was eventually contacted some 40 minutes later and had an inconclusive consultation in which it was indicated that they wanted to see me ‘in the flesh’ either later on this morning (which I couldn’t manage) or some time tomorrow. I refuse to be worried excessively by such things but evidently some alarm bells are being rung somewhere and we shall see what transpires. The upshot of all of this was that Meg and I couldn’t get our ‘normal’ walk in down to the park so we decided to take the car into town, pick up our newspapers and then make our way to the park for a bit if a walk and our elevenses (Waitrose being out of action for about a fortnight, so we were told yesterday). When we got to the park we were dismayed that parking was incredibly difficult. Anticipating the end of lockdown, no doubt, and with the school holidays imminent, a fair-ground was setting up its machinery for its big rides and so on. Are hoop-la stalls only a distant memory, I ask myself? Evidently, we had not exposed to anything like this since the 484 days that this blog has been written and the fairground suppliers must have been chomping at the bit to get their act up and running as soon as possible. So we had roadways blocked off, other ones being resurfaced and general mayhem but we managed to locate a parking place and eventually made our way to our normal watering hole. There we met a husband-and-wife pair who are one of the park regulars but they had been on holiday to Cornwall so we had not seen them for about a fortnight or so. We had a pleasant chat and then proceeded off home, having to rely upon the good nature of another car-owner without whose assistance we would have been blocked in by fairground vehicles before making it home for a quick turnaround ready for Pilates. The Pilates went ahead with the normal four of us (one in each corner of the room) and we had our normal jolly banter before it was home for a delayed lunch.

This afternoon, I had a little border-laying project in mind to get done. I have a little curving path in Mog’s Den but it needs a border of some kind so that the forest bark does not constantly impinge. I had previously bought a log-roll (little pine staves attached to each other by wire) and this has the advantage of being able to be shaped around curves. However, it needs some ‘legs’ to get the whole thing sunk into the ground. So I prepared four ‘legs’ (which involved sawing a couple of 80cm staves so that I finished off with 4 x 40cm staves) each with a point on. I then screwed the log-roll onto the legs which fortunately went very smoothly as the pilot screws were easy to make in the fairly soft pine of the log-roll and I happened to have some very high quality 60mm ‘Spax’ screws which screwed in quite easily and then made a perfect fix. After that, it was a fairly simple job to make some guide holes (of almost exactly the same shape using another of my 80 cm staves, of which I always have some ready for use) and a progressive hammering down with a small lump hammer until all was finally in position – and looking good as well. I am not a natural wood-worker (not having had male relatives to guide me who young or the benefits of woodworking in my boy’s grammar school) but over the years I have learned the importance of both pilot holes and also the highest quality of screws (which, if they are well designed, have a thread making them easy to screw in but with excellent fixing power)

I heard in the background that every single one of the nine water and sewerage companies in the UK had failed to meet the environmental standards set for them by the regulator and discharge of sewerage into our rivers was now rife. Channel 4 news to which I had been listening in the backkgound approached representatives of the water companies, and the regulator (OfWat) and finally the Environment Agency for a comment on this situation but in every single case there was ‘no-one’ available to give a comment on this situation. One has to ask what is the point of regulators and agencies if they are so much in league with the people they are meant to be policing that they refuse to be interviewed – or to be democratically accountable. Tonight, as well, the Tories have passed the legislation allowing them to cut the overseas aid budget which will will result in a large loss of life and lack of opportunities for women. Theresa May lead the ‘rebellion’ but the rebels were outvoted.

Last night was the Euro cup finals (after yesterday’s blog was written) in which England were eventually beaten by Italy. England scored within 2 minutes which is almost a record in itself and had the better of the first half. Then the Italians came out to play and had about two=thirds of the possession (perhaps even more in the second half) and inevitably scored an equaliser after masses of sustained pressure. Then it was extra time where honours were just about even and so it came to the ‘curse of penalties’  Italy scored from three of their five penalties but the young English team missed three of theirs (cruelly, all of the young black players)  and so Italy won 3-2 on penalties. If the truth be known, Italy were probably the better team and deserved to win – if England had got through on penalties then perhaps ‘ the wrong team might have won‘ as happened in the Italy-Spain match. What is particularly disappointing is the undercurrent of vile racist abuse thrown in the direction of our younger black players via social media. Actually, what I remember of the Brexit campaign is that in last few days, Europe was hardly mentioned but there was much talk of potential immigration from Turkey which happens to be Muslim and to be a neighbour of Syria (home of Middle East terrorists). The wider point here is whether there is a deep underbelly of racism within British society which manifests itself in all kinds of ways whoever there is an opportunity. Our chiropodist called today to do our feet and she showed us some of the vile racist tweets that a friend of her’s had forwarded on to her – and I must say, I was shocked beyond all measure at the vituperative and crude messaging doing the rounds.  Can social media deal with this problem, I ask myself?

Meg and I were a little late going down into town today and we thought we would pop into Waitrose to have our normal coffee. These plans were put into disarray when some of the friendly Waitrose staff informed us that the cafe was closed and likely to remain so for about a fortnight (‘staff shortages’ was the official reason but it makes you wonder whether because the pick-up of trade was so low that it might never re-open as it used to be). We bumped into one of our park friends who often scoots around in her wheelchair and asked for her recommendation as to which coffee bar to frequent in the absence of Waitrose. We were directed to one which evidently put post-pandemic precautions in place because there were perplex screens permanently screwed into place between each table appear to be in its own carousel as it were. So we treated ourself to (expensive) coffee and cakes after which I shot off into town to get a cheque entered into the system at Santander and to pick up some plastic decorative plot dividers from Poundland (quaintly called ‘Georgian’) but a bit less naff than this description indicates.  They are actually very effective at demarcating one area of a plot from another and I have used them to stop the rhubarb from drooping over onto or lawn.

After lunch our chiropodist called and we always enjoy having a chat (mainly about football as you might imagine but also about family matters that we share with each other).  Immediately my feet were done and received their MOT, I popped into our local Asda superstore because they were still selling three bags of blue slate clippings for £9 and three bags of compost for £10. I had intended to ask Asda to supply a lusty young man to help to carry things into the boot of the car but I was fortunate enough to get one of those ‘high loading ‘ trolleys into which I could load the clippings quite easily, get them into the car and then load up with compost. I managed to do within the time allocation (umpublicised) whereby you can exit the car park without charge. I think it is about 10 minutes ‘loading time’ that is allowed but nobody seems to know what the exact limit is. When I got home, I dumped this lot outside the back gate and then after we had our tea, used a set of wheels I had to take take my purchases to the top of Mog’s Den. From here, there was a certain degree of humping to get them down the slope and ready for use.

Today Boris Johnson announced the ‘end’ of lockdown from next Monday, July 19th. All ‘optimistic’ talk of ‘Liberation day’ has been quietly forgotten and we are now being urged by the government  to use use facemasks ‘when the situation demands and at our own discretion’. All legal sanctions have been withdrawn (to the delight of the Tory right wing, I imagine), although The Observer poll published yesterday showed that over one half of the UK public feels unhappy about the threats posed to us by too rapid a loosening of the lockdown.

My day started in the middle of the night, really, when I had a little sleepless patch and had wondered what to do with my little patch of 3′ x. 2.5′ when I decided to sow some beet seeds in it as beet is one of the few vegetables that you can sow as late as mid-July and still have time to get a crop by October/November. I really needed to acquire a packet of beet seeds but in the meantime, I reached for my hardback notebook in which I record all my gardening and planting activities. Too my surprise, a packet of more-or-less in date beet seeds dropped out of the notebook (and what it was doing in there for the first place?) so I set about an old gardening trick that I know. Beet seed are actually a cluster of seeds with an incredibly hard husk so they can take some time to germinate.  The trick is to ‘scarify’ the seeds – this means rubbing them in between sheets of sandpaper to make the seeds a little more porous. You then soak them in warm water for a period of 8-10 hours (too little and the water has not had time to do the softening, too much and  the seed starts to degrade) Then  I discovered another packet of beet seeds in the location in the garage where we keep our spare seeds and I scarified them as well and calculated that the needed to be sown at about 3.00pm this afternoon. Whilst I was at it, I know of a location where there is an overhanging laburnum tree and I have it in mind to ‘liberate’ some of the seeds when I am by myself (probably first thing on a Sunday morning). I had in mind to take a little pair of scissors with me to  snip off some of the seeds I can see forming but when I did a bit of further reading, it seems that the best time to sow laburnum seeds is September/October. So I think I will wait a month or so before I start on the particular venture. I did happen to have a jam jar with some of our own acorns in it (from an oak tree bought with us from Hampshire when we lived there and from an acorn actual collected in the New Forest) As you might have gathered by now, I quite like the concept of  growing a tree from seed (or, at least, an incredibly young cutting) and although they will not come to fruition until the point of time when I am pushing up daisies, I quite like the sight of them developing from a seed to a viable plant. As it was a Sunday morning, I walk down on my own to collect the newspapers and treated myself to a fragment of J.S.Bach’s B-minor Mass and a later excerpt was a cantata from Matthew Passion so, as always, I enjoyed myself. Them we watched the Andrew Marr show but I must confess to dozing through some of it.

In the park, we met with our University of Birmingham friend and were soon joined by another regular with whom we have quite philosophical discussions. I had to make a confession that in the past few days when I referred to Fermi’s last theorem, I was actually in error – it should have bee Fermat’s last theorem (and Fermat is not to be confused with Fermi, the Italian physicist). We evidently turned to a discussion of football and the various ways in which England might either win or lose the game, the role of the referee, of the VAR system and so on. Then we left for lunch as I knew I was going to have a fairly busy afternoon.

My jobs this afternoon were essentially quite simple. The first was to get my beet seeds sown in the 8′-9′ of space that I had allocated to them. This task seemed to go OK – I had previously spread ‘Fish Blood and Bone’ organic fertiliser and worked it into the tilth so now, we shall just have to see how many days it will take for my own seeds to germinate. If I am lucky, I might some evidence of germination within about 3-4 days – if, of course, I am unlucky I might get a complete plot of failures (it happens sometimes in gardening) Then I needed to take all of the clutter out of the mini greenhouse which was lying in tatters. I got the various contents and associated garden implements and utilities spread out on the lawn, deconstructed the old greenhouse and got it disposed off (apart from some metal bits) and constructed the new one which is just a tad deeper than the previous one (which may or not be critical by the time I start to put some germinating seeds with in it) Then my luck changed and it started gentle raining. So I had to race around, doing a rapid ‘keep it or junk it’ before I came home to prepare for tea, write this blog and get ready for the Euro Cup final this evening. 

Today turned out to be quite a busy day.The day started off fine but cloudy but with the threat of rain until about midday, after which the temperature rose and the clammy feeling alongside it. We had quite a few chats in the course of our peregrinations this morning. First we bumped into one of our oldest friends who was busy gardening until we interrupted him. We exchange some gossip about church matters because we will both be attending the 6.00pm service this evening. Then Meg and I made for one of our favourite benches and were relieved to find that one was  unoccupied – and no sooner had we started to fall upon our flask of coffee when our old estanblished University of Birmingham friend hove into view. As we had not seen each other for the best part of a week, we had quite a lot to catch up on, not least the sporting news from Wimbledon (currently) and Wembley (tomorrow night) We chatted for a few minutes when one of our wheelchair friends sped into view – she comes to the park most days and patronises the little refreshment kiosk near the main entrance to the park. She was telling us that the little cafe for whatever reason has run out of bread and several other day-to-essentials. As our friend likes her slice of toast she shot off to Waitrose which is probably ¼ mile away, got the cafe the supplies that she needed and then returned to provision them. Our friend is no slouch in her wheelchair – I think that the top speed may be approaching 20mph but she certainly whizzes along at the tremendous pace whoever she has a mind. I then left Meg and our friend in the park whilst I walked to pick uo our supply of newspapers. I know I could get the same newspapers from the Waitrose store but I prefer to patronise the little Asian-owned newsagent around the corner not least because, as a daily and regular customer, they keep my supply of newspapers apart from the main supply in the back office. This means that whoever I turn up, I can be assured of my supply and I want to keep this relationship going as long as possible. We were then joined by another of our park regulars who we have not seen for several days and then I went off to collect the newspapers. Upon my return, seeing the there of them together, I wondered if they had time yet to solve Fermat’s last theorem. Fermat himself claimed to have a proof but it was too big to fit on the margins of his notebook (a claim which is since disputed) Eventually, after 358 years of effort by mathematicians, the first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles ( a British mathematician), and formally published in 1995. As it happened the three of them had not solved the problem so we decided to leave that for another day.

When we did get home (eventually), we had a light cheese-and-biscuits type of lunch because I knew that whilst the weather was fine, the garden beckoned. I would dearly liked to be getting one with the finishing touches to Mog’s Den – instead I told myself that getting the lawns cut was undoubtedly a greater priority. This went fine and half-way through I bunped into the wife of my immediate next-door neighbour.  We both had important bits of news to impart to each other. My neighbour informed me that her husband was going into hospital on Monday  to have the last of  a series of heart operations. Some of the others had provided some technical challenges to the heart surgeons so this was to be their last attempt to get things working as well as they could. At the same time, I needed to inform our next-door neighbour about what had open to our neighbour ‘across the green’ who had suffered a stroke recently but about whom we have received no more news from the relatives. After all of this, Meg and I attended the evening service which was quite quiet and contemplative – for whoever reason we had no music (as the person who operated the ‘BlueTooth’ was away on holiday and I suppose the same might have been true of the regular organist).

The whole of the day today has been the country poised in anticipation of the Euro Cup Finals between England and Italy tomorrow night. Why the commentators are frothing with excitement is that this is the first finals in which England is a finalist since the World Cup in 1966 (55 years ago) So any commentator (practically each one of them, plus all of the array of football pundits) has never experienced England in a final before and are therefore as much carried away by excitement as the rest of us. I think that Italy is far the better team but funny things happen in finals- a deflected ‘own goal’ gifting 1-0 to the opposition followed by ‘do-or-die’ defence for the rest of the match could actually mean that the weaker team eventually wins. In just over a day, it will all be over and the post-mortems will begin!

Today turned out to be quite a fine day, once we actually got onto our walk. We spent a certain amount of time chatting with our domestic help which is quite usual for a Friday. We had got up a little bit earlier than normal because I had spent a certain amount of time sorting out some financial things during a sleepless period in the middle of the night. Specifically, one particular account had matured and then it got whizzed from account to another until I located where the money had eventually lodged itself. This is because I prefer to budget using lots of little individualised accounts whereas my son prefers the approach in which he uses one account but a spreadsheet to organise between one heading and another. I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both ways of doing things but good and up-to-date record keeping is always the recipe for an easy life. I had a routine health monitoring appointment this morning with one of the nurse practitioner team. This was not particularly stressful as certain routine measures were taken (blood pressure, blood samples for a variety of assays) but a more crunch moment will come in a couple of weeks when I have a telephone appointment to discuss some of the results that will have been returned by then. Passing past my local Asda, I noticed that they had quite a range of hydrangea plants for sale for £10.  I noticed when I was showing the practice nurse the laminated cards on which I keep the NHS numbers for both my wife and I that I tucked a spare £10 note into one of my mobile phone case slots so I decided to treat myself to a plant to help to populate Mog’s Den. I have a few more cut-price plants arriving from a web source so hopefully if the weather holds out, I will manage to bring my plan to fruition to install  several tubs of flowering and/or colourful shrubs. One in particular I thought to be quite interesting as it was a buddleia in which three different colours of flower are grafted onto one root stock and the various colours are meant to intertwine and to complement each other. We shall have to wait and see if the promise of the advertising actually gets fulfilled. Having walked home from the medical appointment, Meg and I went down into town by car but, once again, having picked up our newspapers we discovered that the Waitrose cafe was closed for a second day.  So we did what we did yesterday which was to buy an iced tea drink, couple it with a sandwich and make for a set in the park here e consumed our snack in glorious sunshine. Then we made off for home, knowing that we had an afternoon appointment to see our friends at 3.00pm in the afternoon.

Our ex-Waitrose friends had long since wanted us to view their apartment and its surroundings and it was truly impressive, once we had a little guided tour. The building itself had been built especially to provide good quality apartments for members of the Bromsgrove business community. We had to acknowledge the fact that the quality of the internal layout and fixtures were superb – also, the accommodation had some well maintained gardens in which the residents could entertain visitors as well as some communal areas which of course were utilised to the full when there not COVID regulations in place. We spent a very pleasant afternoon, drinking tea and eating some delicious cake, especially prepared for yesterday’s ‘Birthday Boy‘ in the gardens overlooking a pond sporting a variety of vegetation and even wildlife (although we didn’t see any frogs today). When we got home, I carried out a little outside activity in which I am making a series of drain holes in the planters I have recently purchased. This involves making a pilot hole and then gradually enlarging it with a variety of implements until each hole is about 1cm in diameter which I feel is just about right to make sure the whole planter does not get waterlogged.

An estimated 400,000 tested positive for the virus last week which sounds scarily high to me. Although the link between incidences of the virus, hospitalisation and eventually deaths is now a lot more tenuous than it was, it is still there. Also, as the numerate of incidents continues to rise, so too does the possibility of new variants which might be immune to existing vaccines – then we would be in a mess. There are signs that the rate of increase is moderating a little  but the R-rate is between 1.2-1.5. I do feel that the government is running the most dangerous game of ‘chicken’ at this point – and of course the huge crowds of football fans jumping up and down and exhaling vociferously is just what the virus really likes.

Today has been a day with a bit of drama thrown in at the start of the day. My son and daughter-in-law were pretty sure that they heard an ambulance enter our Close late last night but it could just have been turning round and did not linger. This morning, we were just putting away the deliveries from our weekly Waitrose order when the relatives of our neighbour from across the communal green area called round us to see us. They gave us the grim news that their mother seemed to have had quite a major stroke – it looked as though she had fallen and perhaps banged her head but certainly been on the floor for hours. Her daughter had evidently tried to make contact throughout the day with no success and had called round to find her mother on the floor. At the moment, she is in a specialist unit in Worcester Royal but we have no more news until her relatives have themselves been briefed by the hospital. The stroke appears to have been quite a major one and therefore we have to speculate that our neighbour’s capacity for self care is severely compromised and she may not have the capacity for independent living any more. The gardener who looks after our garden every few weeks also looks after our neighbour and he happened to be working there this morning. So I popped across to brief him on the news of the morning and also took some cash with me  so that the gardener could get paid and I could settle up later. But the relatives and the gardener did coincide this morning so they managed to fund his bill. I asked the gardener to keep on coming on a regular basis as he knows what is to be done – and I promised to keep the front lawn mown with my own petrol mower at the same time as we do our own. As time was now passing, we decided to go into town by car but were a bit dismayed to find that the Waitrose cafe was closed for the day – although the staff indicated to us that it should be open again tomorrow. So we bought ourselves a tin of peach tea (which was actually much nicer than it sounds) and a sandwich and then made our way to our normal bench where we munched and drank and  contemplated what might happen in our little ‘coin‘. Then it was home for lunch – but as it was so hot and humid we decided to forego a cooked meal and indulged ourselves with our special mixture of peaches (tinned), ice cream, yogurt and a drizzle of honey.

I had an outdoor task detailed in my mind, assuming that the weather held up. Down in Mog’s Den, I have a little mini-greenhouse with only an improvised cover as the original got ripped and blew away some time in the past. Consequently, I have treated it as a little store of plants pots, gardening tools and requisites but I thought this afternoon I would turn out all of the contents. Then I would clean up and store (in another place) that which I wanted to keep and junk the rest. But the weather turned a little threatening, so I started another job which needed doing which was to clear off the mud and generally tidy up the steps leading down into Mog’s Den.  This is a little job best done regularly but needs doing when the weather is fine and the soil is baked dry. I had just about finished this task when the raindrops started falling and I judged it best to beat a hasty retreat. But by the time I got my tools cleaned up and inside, the rain seemed to stop. So I started a major task I know I have to do which is to start to attack the 4′-5′ high stack of weeds that the gardener and I had cleared off and ‘process’ them. Basically, the thick stems of the brambles might take years to rot down so I find it better to strip off the small branches, chop them up with my secateurs and get them into my compost bin. The major bits of stem get put into the brown bin system where they eventually be collected by the refuse disposal team (once per fortnight).

Did I mention that England are through into the European Cup final? For the record, England won 2-1 after a rather dubious penalty decision – it looked particularly clear cut to almost everybody, including the referee, but the video replay system indicated minimal contact – whether deserving of a penalty is the moot point. But if England had not been awarded the penalty given their domination of play in the latter stages of the match and the Danes had got through on penalty kicks, then perhaps the best team might not have won. So at at the end of the day, I think that England deserved a little piece of luck given the amount of attacking football played in this semi-final. The country is going mad – until we get beaten by the Italians (which is a near certainty) on Sunday next.

I consulted my wife’s iPhone this morning (whilst my own was being charged up) to reassure myself that we were going to get some fine weather so that I could get some outside jobs completed. Specifically, I really wanted it tit to be a fine day so that some of the clutter in ‘Mog’s Den‘ could be either cleaned and stored or thrown away before the reuse disposal men pay us a visit early on tomorrow morning. The app on Meg’s phone assured me that we were gong to have a cloudy but rainless day all day today until about 4.0pm. We did some of our ‘normal’ Wednesday morning jobs and determined that we would go down to Waitrose in the car having collected the newspapers and I would leave Meg with a coffee and a bun whilst I want to shoot off to Poundland to buy a few gardening requisites (putting the finishing touches to Mog’s Den) But whilst we were in Waitrose, the heavens opened and we had a really intense downpour – nonetheless, I waited until the worst of it was over and then did make a trip to Poundland where the things that I really wanted were ‘out of stock – try again on Friday‘ Nonetheless  I bought  some cleaning materials (don’t you just love washing out muddy old plant pots!) but the gardening books tell you that these really do need to be clean so that you don’t transfer virus from old stock to new. I even bought myself a ‘dog grooming brush’ which has wires on one side and a brush on the other which I believe (thinking laterally) may be exceptionally good at removing crusted mud from old plant pots and renovating them. This morning I allowed myself to be swayed by an advert in my Inbox offering me an end-of-season sale of a Large Standard Weeping Pussy Willow Tree (on a 80-100cm stem) theoretically marked down from £30 to £8. The blurb tells me that it will not now taller than this but is an idea ‘patio’ tree which will only get thicker and bushier over the years (with lots of catkins) but not necessarily taller. I can always find space for this in Meg’s Den where it can joon my other section of small but growing trees which I am busy populating as I write but it might even grace our patio at the back of the house.

This afternoon proved to be on of those frustrating afternoons when one was dying to get into into the garden to get one’s jobs done. Although we had several showers I was counting on the fact that in the late afternoon – about 5.00-ish the clouds tend to roll away and you have the start of a fine evening. I took the opportunity to get the little patch of garden dug over and now its awaiting something colourful to get planted into it. Next I started to tackle the area around my old little mini-greenhouse (soon to be replaced as the original cover ripped and got blown away – quite a common fate I should imagine) In my pottering days, I had evidently filled several pots with some sieved soil and then topped off with gravel but whatever the original intention was, they now looked a mess. So a lot of them got thrown away as I have a couple of empty Forest Bark bags which are quite strong and can take a lot of junk. So a lot of that is now thrown away but I have discovered that evidently  I had a penchant for buying plastic buckerts of which I now have about half a dozen. The next job along is to clean out a matching set of plastic pots which is a job which I actually hate doing. But the upside of all of this is that I can plant out the hazel plants I have rescued from my clearing of the border in the front of the house and that means that if they grow well enough, I might end up with a row of hedging plants to make an instant hedge were I to need one as a border.

As I write, the build up to the England-Denmark semifinal is reaching a crescendo. I must admit that I have very mixed emotions about all of this. On the one hand, like most of the rest of the country, I want the England team to do well and to progress, on merit, to the finals if they deserve to win and play the better football. On the other hand, I do not really like the rampant nationalism that surrounds all of this – nor do I wish that Boris Johnson should take any credit for any English success that may ensue. It is not axiomatic that the better team wins as we saw with the Spanish last night – rather it is the team which seizes the moment (and doesn’t make any crass mistakes in the meantime)

Tuesdays are always quite busy days because it is the day when I have my Pilates class in the middle of the day. So to save time more than anything else, I took the car down to the Waitrose carpark where I installed Meg partaking of her elevenses whilst I popped off around the corner to collect our newspapers. I had quite a lengthy discussion with the Asian shopkeeper on the psychology of tennis players – we both agreed that probably some of the young players may not have been adequately coached on how to cope with failure rather than with success. Once we got ourselves logged into the system at Waitrose we were delighted to bump some of our ex-Waitrose friends from about a year and half ago. The husband had been diagnosed with dementia but we were recognised straight way and we were delighted to see that he still seemed to be quite alert and in touch with the world. We imagined that COVID-19 and the experience of lockdown might have resulted in a deterioration of his mental condition but this did not appear to have happened – so we were very pleased on his behalf. We have agreed that we might be able to coincide with each other next Tuesday when we can no doubt catch up on the last year’s news. Whilst we were in Waitrose we got a ‘Get well soon!’ card for the neighbour of one of friends from down the hill and this can be posted through the door when I traverse this route again on the way to my Pilates class. This proceeded with only three of us regulars (the fourth being on holiday) and it was one of those weeks (which happens in both Week 3 and also Week 6) of our block of classes when our Pilates tutor gives us the opportunity for 10 minutes of ‘relaxation’.  It is a standing joke amongst my fellow members that I will always fall fast asleep in these precious 10 minutes. However, to be fair, I am never absolutely asleep because I am always just about conscious that instructions are being given to us to gradually come around from our relaxation session – however, I try not to disappoint these days and it is very much the case that I can (and do) fall asleep very quickly.

This afternoon, I knew that after lunch and a brief rest, I could go into the garden and complete a fast 20-30 minute job in ‘Mog’s Den’ However things did not quite turn out that way because although the weather was fine when I was walking home, there was a very intense rain shower just after I arrived home and was preparing lunch. Then we discovered that our 2-metre tall Lavatera (English name – mallow) which we have growing in a pot immediately outside our kitchen window had been caught by the wind and had immediately blown over. I tried a few little ‘feet’ under the pot but this was not enough to stabilise it – so I resorted to a length of fencing pole (I just happened to have one spare) and this was secured in the ground by some hefty blows from my sledge hammer (or do you call it a lump hammer?) Anyway, it’s worth its weight in gold on occasions like this and the Lavatera in its pot is now rock solid secure. We FaceTimed our friends as we always do at 5.00pm on a Tuesday evening (I made it before our iPad with 3 seconds to spare!) and as well as chatting for an hour, we made arrangements to go round and see them on Friday next, celebrating our friend’s birthday the preceding day. As soon as we had finished our FaceTime call and had some fruit-and-icecream for tea, I went outside to Mog’s Den to finish off the job I intended to do earlier.This involves laying a small portion of weed-control fabric and getting the forest bark evenly distributed over it (the easy part), whilst tomorrow, I just have. small section to dig over and some clipping back, tidying up to do to keep myself on schedule.

Tonight we watched the Italy vs. Spain semi-final which Italy eventually won 4-2 after extra time and in a penalty shootout. Both Meg and I thought this was one of the finest football matches we had ever seen – Spain perhaps deserved to win playing a much more attacking game whilst I felt that the Italians actually played a little below themselves. We are steeling ourselves for the England-Denmark semi-final which will be played tomorrow night and I, for one, am not completely filled with confidence. I suspect that the game will be decided on incredibly fine margins.

A final thought on COVID news. Is not wearing a mask (soon to be made ‘legal’ again after July 19th) the equivalent of blowing smoke into someone’s face (which is technically illegal) And is an infection rate of up to 100,000 a day a ‘price worth paying’?