Today, the spell of fine weather continues and so we were delighted  to start our walk, after our customary chat and exchange of news with our domestic help who has been ‘doing’ for us for at least the last ten years. Then we made our way into town but did it in a series of ‘three hops’ so that Meg could manage the various stages in the heat without undue distress. First we popped down to our loca and Meg sat outside on some benches whilst I popped around the corner to pick up the newspapers. Then we both ventured forth into town and bought some toiletries from a local ‘Health and Beauty’ type shop – having completed the second leg of our venture we could not wait until we continued to the park and consumed our coffee and comestibles (the only slight problem being that any of the local dogs who have been let off the lead bound towards us in the inspection that they might get fed). After that, it was home for a fairly quick lunch before we settled down to our Friday afternoon activities. The principal activity was to get the lawns cut which includes the communal green area which is in front of the house (and which I have affectionately in the past nicknamed as ‘Meg’s Meadow’) and then our own private lawn towards the rear. The lawns look so much better once they have been transformed from their wispy appearance once the dandelions have done their worst to a much tidier condition which looks great in the afternoon sunshine.  Then I needed to get some heavy stone pots which I had recently acquired into the positions I had chosen for them. My daughter-in-law helped me with some of the heavy lifting involved and then we scoured the garden for some plants with which to populate them. Our daughter-in-law had already been busy with her dahlias which she had uncovered ready for the new season and she had sown and planted some sunflowers (in variety) in various parts of the garden so we just have to give them a bit of TLC now in order for them to thrive.

In the early evening, one of my ex-colleagues from Hampshire FaceTimed me (we generally do each Friday evening and he always seems to have such a busy life with organising this, that and the other) We are still vaguely wondering whether it would be possible to book ourselves away for a few nights in North Wales and, as things stand, we should be seeing Meg’s cousin in about three weeks time. Last night, I made some tentative attempts to make a booking at the Holiday Inn we have used several times before but did not get anywhere. So this morning, I telephoned them only to be informed that they are not contemplating opening again until July at the earliest. (I am not quite sure whether this is because they come under the Welsh lockdown rules which differ a little from the English, in any case).

I am finding it interesting that a lot of political heat is being generated today by the Government’s decision to move Portugal from the ‘green’ category (no quarantines) to the ‘amber’ category (which implies a fortnight’s quarantine plus a couple of tests upon your return) It seems that one of the factors behind the government’s decision is an understandable nervousness about exposing British holiday makers to the ‘Nepalese’ variant (which seems to be a variant upon the Indian variant) It might be the the UK government are being over-cautious at this point, but I don’t think so. They were rightly criticised for delaying putting ‘India’ in the ‘red’ zone thereby exposing the great British public to potentially hundreds or even thousands of people flying in from India perhaps carrying the new mutant strain of the virus with them.Now without wishing to sound ethnocentric, it must be of concern when a variant itself mutates because the so-called ‘Nepalese’ variant could evade all of our current vaccines and our subsequent defences. 

The COVID news tonight sounds genuinely scary to me as coronavirus cases in the community rocketed by 76.5% in just one week, official data for England indicates. Waves of infection have got to start off from very small beginnings and this looks incredibly like the start of another wave to me. Also, the R rate has moved up too a figure in the rate 1.0-1.2 which probably means about 1.1 This means that every 10 infected people will generate a further eleven infections and so on. The date for the end of all lockdowns (21st June, only 17 days away) is now looking very uncertain at this stage. If we were to completely unlock down then, we might be releasing the whirlwind!

Tonight, Donald Trump has been banned from FaceBook for the next year and a half at least.The timing means Mr Trump will not be able to use his accounts ahead of the November 2022 national midterm elections, when his Republican party will be competing for congressional seats. But tens of millions of Republican voters are still providing Trump with their support (at least nominally)

Today has been an interesting day for us. We were a little delayed in our normal walk because the Waitrose shopping was delivered (back onto our normal schedule from 9-10 on a Thursday morning) and, of course, all of this needs putting away. It was a day for our gardener who calls on us about once a month and for whom we rely to do some of the heavier shrub and bush trimming. Once we had a chat with him we set on our way and I dropped Meg on our normal bench whilst I went off to collect the newspapers. This sort of routine may only carry on for less than two weeks because the famous Waitrose cafe is scheduled to reopen on Wednesday, June 17th. When it does, we will call in there for our morning coffee and it will be fascinating to see how long it will take for the old networks, current about 17 months ago, to manage to recreate themselves. Beyond a doubt, some of the regulars will have go themselves in new routines, watering holes, friendship groups and the like so will have to wait and see. I have asked the Waitrose staff that I see when I pop into the store for a quick forgotten item (as I did this morning as we were in danger of running out of coffee) to remind the manager that the old regulars should be rewarded with a bottle of champagne or similar on their reopening day. Although Waitrose do sell newspapers, I shall continue to patronise the little newsagents around the corner in order to keep the more personal relationship going. My newspapers are always put on one side for me which means that they get delivered to me from where they have been put aside in the back room of the shop and I know that they will always be there for me.

I knew that after lunch, I needed to walk down into town for one or two urgent things. In particular, I needed to get into the local branch of Santander because my debit card cannot be introduced into any of the ATM machines. Within the store, it was indicated to me that I could have a replacement card with the same number on it about which I am mightily relieved. What I feared was that Santander would give me a whole new card with a new number on it and this would mean contacting quite a lot of online payment services where my card. details are ‘lodged’ in order to update the details. I know that from post experience, this can be quite troublesome not to mention time-consuming, so if I can get an exact replacement, so much the better. Whilst in town, I availed myself of some of the local charity shops that I have not frequented for months now. I acquired an incredibly well-illustrated guide to Spain for £2.00, beautifully illustrated with some excellent high quality photos. I thought I was buying myself yet another travel guide to Spain but in practice this is more like a mini-encyclopaedia on the history, art literature etc. of Spain. As such, I think it will give Meg and I lots of pleasure but no doubt it will fill us full of longing to get back there again but I suspect that next Spring may be the earliest date that we can realistically expect. I could not resist the temptation to go into my local ‘The Works‘ (which sells remaindered books and a variety of stationery) and as I was completing my purchases, the shop manager plonked a ‘long’ 2021 calendar which appears to have a psalm for every month of the year. The complete package, which I haven’t had chance to open or examine yet, also contains a small 2021 diary again replete with psalms. The shop manager practically threw this item at me (marked down from £10 to£2.50 to 50p) saying to the assistant ‘This is for the gentleman‘ so I suppose I must have looked badly in need redemption or something. Now an interesting question arises whether I keep this little package or not because I happen to know one of my friends would quite like a ‘long ‘ calendar but she probably won’t thank me for suppling her with one with religious motives on every page!

The COVID-19 news this evening looks particularly grim this evening. The UK has reported 5,274 new coronavirus cases and 18 further deaths and this is the highest daily jump since 26th March (two months ago). Also, this news comes as Public Health England (PHE) revealed the number of cases of the Indian (Delta) variant have almost doubled in the past week – rising by 5,472 to 12,431. This is surely sounding the death knell for any immediate release from the lockdown restrictions. As it happens, Boris is pictured receiving his second jab today but in the race between ‘second jabs’ and increase in the Indian (Delta) variant of the virus, it looks as though victory is going to the latter.

Wednesday morning is always quite a busy morning before we have a chance to think about our daily walk. The first and most important thing was to write a reference for a close friend of ours- although I only got the request about a day ago, the accompanying letter indicated that no employment would be forthcoming without a completed reference so I was anxious to get this completed and despatched. It used to be said that in the ‘bad old days’ (and I am going back about thirty years now) that employers in both the private and the public sector used to give terrible references on the people that they wished to retain and absolutely glowing references on the people with whose services they wanted to dispense i.e. hoping that they would get another job and leave. I am sure that things are much more professional nowadays  but it is quite a long time since I have actually written a reference for anyone. After this had been completed, I refined my Waitrose order, ready for delivery tomorrow morning and finally prepare our elevenses ready for the park. We had a most delightful walk down the hill with beautiful sunshine and a very gentle breeze. When we finally got the park we encountered two of our regular park friends and enjoyed both the weather and the good conversation. Meg is teaching one of our friends some Spanish (or at least Spanish phrases) and whilst I shoot off and get the newspapers, Meg is busy teaching all she knows. The point about languages, I suppose, is that when you are in the country itself you hear little phrases repeated over and over again and this seeps into your consciousness, as it were – the grammar books evidently aim to be comprehensive and ‘correct’ but of course people actually talk in all kinds of unconventional ways.

Later on this afternoon, I Skyped one of my Hampshire friends and we rather went down memory lane, talking about the early computers which we had either owned or upon which we cut our computing teeth, as it were. I remember quite well my early Commodore-64 days which I learned how to program in 6502 machine code. Where to put one’s code ? Actually, there was a bit of space in what was called the ‘second cassette buffer’ which nobody actually used and this space ran from 828-1022 i.e. 192 bytes of space which is less than one fifth of 1k.  So anything you wanted to do (e.g. sorting programs, graphics programs) had to be fitted into this space. It used to be said by one of my favourite authors that the machine code ‘fitted together like polished mahogany’ and there was certainly no room for viruses or the like. Talking about things that have to be adapted, on my Thinkpad there is no  Windows logo key (IBM refused to pay the royalties to Microsoft which the latter were demanding  as the price to be paid for putting this key on your keyboards) So I found out how to alter the registry entry so that the Caps Lock key (which hardly anyone actually uses) is remapped so that it now functions as a Windows logo key. My friend and I were using Skype for over an hour and a half as we had a lot to catch up but we always exchange tips, hints, things in which we know the other will be interested) These chats are always so enjoyable so we will catch up with each other again in about a fortnight’s time.

The political rhetoric is getting quite interesting at the moment. I notice that the right wing of the Tory Party (e.g. Ian Duncan Smith) always seem to be willing and able to be interviewed on any contemporary political issue. This time, of course, it is the ‘finally balanced’ decision as to other to lift the lockdown completely on June 21st or whether to retain some residual restrictions. The rhetoric being used currently is that the scientific community are ‘bullying’ Boris Johnson into an incomplete release of the lockdown. Now the use of this term is really very interesting as scientists are only in a position to advise and their collective advice can be accepted or rejected by the government. On the other hand, the right wing of the Tory Party knows a thing or two about bullying as they can dispose of Johnson in a moment should they decide to withdraw their support from him. As it was, there was a massive rebellion when we had ‘Tiers’ and it looks as though Kent (yes, Kent!) was going to be placed in Tier 3 as it was then. This revolt on the Tory benches were right-wingers to a man and I find it fascinating that they would collectively use a term like ‘bullying’ to describe legitimate pressure on the government coming from the scientific community. It does look, by the way, that several scientists are now calling for Step 4 to be delayed by several weeks as the Indian variant of the virus looks threatening.

The spell of fine weather is continuing and after one of the wettest Mays on record, we are now facing a spell of warm weather in which the temperatures here are said to exceed those in the island of Ibiza – one of the Balearic Islands off the eastern coast of Spain. So we made our usual trip to the park and there met with a couple of our usual companions and as we normally do enjoyed half-an-hour of banter and amusing conversation. We were joined briefly by someone we know who quite regularly walks 8-10 km per day (as his daughter-in-law checks on him with an Apple Watch) and we find this amazing for someone in their mid 80’s. He doesn’t stay and chat for too long in case his muscles get cold! The other day when I was in the park I remember watching a father playing with his daughter who looked about 8-10 years old. They were throwing and catching a kind of spaceship shaped object to each other and I noted how, even over the space of 15 minutes, the young girl’s ability to throw and also to catch the aforementioned object improved considerably. It did make me wonder how important it was for hand-eye-brain to be stimulated in order to develop and how children, deprived of such stimulation, might exhibit a failure to thrive. One thing we have noticed in our daily visits to the park are the kinds of bikes that the very young children are riding. The very simplest for the 3 year old seats have no pedals but are just propelled by their feet – this, I suppose, helps the child to develop the feels of balance and coordination required. After that they may graduate to a two-wheeler bike with stabilisers – the rather old fashioned three wheeler bike seems to have had its day. The point about stabilisers is that they can be removed once a child has acquired the necessary confidence and presumably fixed back again when the bike gets handed on to a younger sibling. Then, of course, there are a variety of scooters not to mention skateboards and the adolescent (males, usually) can whizz along the paths at a fantastic speed upon these on their way to the skateboard part of the park which is always very popular. Eventually, Meg and I collected our newspapers and then progressed to home where we enjoyed a nice meal of lamb, delayed from the weekend.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I enjoy messing about on my newly acquired IBM ThinkPad running Windows 7. As I have so little memory (about 1.25GB) and a 1.4GHz CPU it is one of my aims in life to find the least resource hungry applications I can find – to fit the specifications of a machine probably first specified about 15 years ago. Now I want you you to imagine the following scenario – on your Windows computer screen you have nothing else displayed apart from two icons – one indicating the Microsoft ‘Word‘ program and the other representing the Microsoft ‘Outlook‘ program. How would you use each one? The answer is evident, of course – if you had to compose a document for work or other purposes you would use Word to compose a ‘Word’ document. Turning your attention to the Outlook icon, you could dah off a quick email to a friend and even use Outlook to send the document you had just created to wherever. Then, as I was staring at the formatting toolbar in the Outlook clone I have just acquired (actually, OE Classic which stands for Outlook Express Classic) and noticed the formatting toolbar (which, in essence, we have noticed in the various versions of Word going back probably for 25 years). Then, as they say, something has been hiding ‘in plain sight’ over the years (I have used Outlook on and off for probably 25 years). I thought to myself ‘Why don’t I use Outlook as though it were only a word processor‘ – after all, via the formatting toolbar I can choose the font, size, colour, background, bold, italic, strikethrough, margin indents, link insertion, bullets, numbers etc) So I started a series of experiments in which I used Outlook as though it were only a word processor and using a bit of native cunning managed to produce a document complete with header, miniature table with coloured cells to remind me of the various formatting options) and variety of formatted text (bold, italics and so on) To which the question is : why on earth bother? And the answer is that I can produce a document (in html format which I tend to want anyway so it would display on a webpage if necessary) with a program which loads in about 5 seconds and occupies about 12,000k in memory rather than the official Word program which takes about 60-70 seconds and occupies 27,000k in memory and then you have my answer!

And so the ‘Spring Bank Holiday’ dawns i.e. that which used to be called Whitsuntide decades ago but which got secularised some time ago now. This was the week (and actually the day) when in Manchester and the Lancashire mill towns one used to have the ‘Whit walks‘. On Whit Monday (or it might have been Whit Friday) all the local Catholic institutions used to get dressed up in their finery and would then walk beneath a banner and to the sound of a local brass band. Actually the school I attended in Bolton, Lancashire in the mid-1950’s has one of the finest brass bands in the area (but I was in the school orchestra, not the Brass band) The type of organisations that would march would be the Legion of Mary, the Boy Scouts, Cubs and Girl Guides, the local Catholic nurses with rather specialised capes and finally all of the various ethnicities in the area (usually Ukranians, Poles and other Eastern Europeans who had come to work in the mines and the textile industries). For all I know there were probably several other local urban collectivities who used to take part in the Whit walks as well. This was illustrated in one of L S Lowry’s famous paintings and, as it happens, I have a copy of this particular Lowry on my study wall to provide me with an occasional reminder of my Lancashire/Manchester days. If all of this sounds excessively sectarian, then the Anglicans and Non-Conformists had their own march the following week but without sounding unduly partisan, I think these were often a pale imitation of the Catholic versions. For those interested,  a Google search with the terms ‘Whit Walks in/around Manchester‘ will reveal a lot of interesting history, complete with photographs. I was consulting Google to attempt to find out if the Whit Walks still took place but COVID-19 over the last year or so are certainly hastening the death throes of this once thriving cultural highlight.

And so to return to Bromsgrove on what has turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far. The thin layer of mild white cloud very quickly burned off and Meg and I had a delightful walk down into town, accompanied by a slight breeze which made the walk very pleasant. We noticed on our walk down the hill that all the local poppies seem to have sprung up in the last day or so – I suppose it was the combination of quite a dampish soil followed by two days of blazing sunshine. On our way down the hill, we noticed a mature tree which looked very maple-like in its appearance, at least judging by the shape of the leaf. But what was so extraordinary was that there must have been masses of seedlings, or at least seeds, which had fallen into/onto some loose gravel.Consequently, the seedlings had gone mad – out of interest, I pulled one out and it seemed to have grown some good roots. Tomorrow, I will take down a plastic bag and rescue some of these seedlings – the person who was living in the house next door thought his neighbour would be done a good turn if I ‘liberated’ him of some of these seedlings tomorrow so I will do this with an easy conscience. When we eventually got to the park, we met with two of our regular friends and discussed some of the findings (in a Daily Mail poll, of all places) indicating the Daily Mail readers were reacting to the Dominic Cummings/Boris Johnson contretemps. Some of the findings were quite interesting – for example, if I remember it correctly, there is quite a division of opinion whether the lockdown should end in three weeks time. Several prominent scientists are already arguing that the next wave of the virus might already have begun and we should be extra cautious. Even sources inside No. 10 are saying that there this a 50:50 chance that the forthcoming end to the lockdown in three weeks time may have to be delayed or softened somewhat. The next week or so will be critical whilst the data on new infections, their transmissibility and likely impact on the NHS and risk of spreading to the rest of the UK is very carefully assessed. Eventually, though, our conversations drew to a natural conclusion and so we made for home and prepared a very late salad type meal for ourselves.

As the past few days have been quite warm, I remembered in time that the plants that had been bought for me for my birthday needed to be dead-headed and then receive a good supply of water. This having been done, we were delighted to get a phone call from our good friends in Oxfordshire who have now decided to make a journey up North (probably to Scotland) for a mini-break. They are calling in to see us next Monday (and of course we will be delighted to see them) so we will probably prepare a nice hearty soup for them so they cay be sustained and get on their way as soon as they are sufficiently rested.

Today started off (and continued) as the most glorious of days. The sky was completely cloudless and an azure blue from almost first light. In fact the weather forecasters were predicting that today temperatures in Britain may well exceed those in Ibiza (Spain).  I walked down early as is customary on a Sunday morning in order to collect our Sunday newspapers. Then after indulging in our weekly Andrew Marr Show, I walked down to the park (on my own) where I hoped to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend, but when I got there I had received a text from him telling us that he was going out for the day with a friend and we would meet up again some time during the week. After I got home, I had a quick change of shirts (having walked to town twice on a very hot day) in preparation for our neighbour’s garden party which was due to start at 12.00 noon. We arrived fairly promptly and handed over our present (a large picture of an owl) which was much appreciated and then started to mingle and drink with the guests (mainly family). We discovered that one of the guests was a friend of our neighbours who knew southern Spain quite well and so we exchanged reminiscences of some of the towns we knew in Andalucia such as Antequera and Ronda.  Just as soon as some delicious food was being served, Meg started to feel quite unwell – we had to get her back home (only next door) and then she lay down and had a good sleep after which she felt a lot better. We are not quite sure what happened but we are surmising that a couple of glasses of red wine on an empty stomach in a very hot midday sun was probably a bit too much for her constitution to bear, particularly as she was feeling a bit wobbly in any case. Our neighbours were absolutely wonderful and, given that we missed out on some of the party, promised us that we can have a nice little party as a foursome when the weather and time permits. Meanwhile, our neighbour is actually starting a new job on Tuesday morning which is quite enviable for someone who has had their 73rd birthday. In some ways it appears to be a continuation of the job he had before retirement but this one calls for someone who has a lot of experience within the industry so our neighbour is well suited.

After the Dominic Cummings outpourings last week, the news media are still feeling some of the consequences. In particular, a spotlight has been well and truly focused on the UK’s preparedness (or lack of it) to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Lord Kerslake, a former head of the civil service, is of the option that nothing short of a revolution is required in the way that our civil service and other British institutions are run. Probably Dominic Cummings would agree. Although we thought of ourselves as being well prepared by for a conventional influenza epidemic, this was certainly not the case when combatting the coronovirus. By contrast, some of the South East Asian economies had had experience in the past of SARS, MERS and other similar pandemics and they fully appreciated the necessity to lock down hard and early. If we were to look at Vietnam, for example, we discover that in total they experienced 1347 cases and 33 deaths (compared UK with 4.4 million cases and 128,000 deaths). Lord Kerslake also attacks what he calls ‘British exceptionalism’ by which I think he means ‘it could never happen here’ Although UK TV screens were filled with the most horrendous images of hospitals in Bergamo, Northern Italy there seemed to a feeling that it alll might stop at the Channel Tunnel. The UK’s lack of preparedness for the epidemic will no doubt be chewed over at length in any future investigation. It is also becoming crystal clear that in an absolute panic to clear hospital beds, there was a huge decanting of patients (untested for the virus) back into residential homes. Instead of ‘throwing a ring of steel’ around the care home sector, it is now fairly clear to most journalists and informed members of the public that the influx of hospital patients would only serve to ‘seed’ the virus inside residential establishments but the figures for those who died of COVID (as opposed to other things from which they might have died sooner or later) will be difficult to ascertain. One would have thought that there would be a huge popular revulsion over the fact that this happened but the great British public  seems not to care (as the Tories are so far ahead in the opinion polls, even putting another 3% last week) It seems that a combination of the vaccines being successful rolled out and the fact that Brexit is sort of delivered is persuading people that Boris has done quite a good under the circumstances!

Today could best be described as a ‘glowering’ kind of day- although the weather is meant to be set fair for a few days, it was one of those days today when there seemed to covering of low white cloud and a generally muggy feeling. Despite this less than promising start, we nonetheless made it to the park where I deposited Meg on a bench before I set off to collect the newspapers. Then we soon acquired our regular cohort of park friends (well, at least two of them) and discussed the affairs of the day. Then it was home to have a fairly swift lunch because there was a job that needed doing in the afternoon. Basically, this was to get our communal lawns cut and this for a particular reason. The lawns were only cut a week ago but the combination of rain and sun has made the dandelions proliferate – and basically they look a mess. But tomorrow is the day when our next door neighbour is due to hold a birthday party on the occasion of his wife’s birthday. The whole Hart household is invited so we are looking forward to that and there may be up to 30 guests all in all, I must admit I didn’t want people turning up while the lawns looked an absolute mess so I was determined to get them cut and looking in good shape for the benefit of visitors. We got this done and then had to have a fairly quick turn around before we off to our Saturday evening church service where we leave the house at 5.30. Once we got the church car park we were greeted by one of the regulars (a vivacious Liverpudlian) who used to sit by us when we last had regular church attendances. She is now attending Harvington Hall where they have a regular Sunday morning service outdoors and therefore it is easier to comply with the COVID-19 regulations but one has a short car ride to get there (about 8 mikes away)

The COVID-19 news seems to be quite worrying this evening. Sir Tim Gowers – whose argument against herd immunity helped trigger England’s first lockdown last year – told Sky News that the recent increase in coronavirus cases ‘worries me’.“They seem to be multiplying by a certain fraction each day – in other words, growing exponentially,” he said. Yesterday, he warned that the UK’s fight to contain coronavirus could turn bad ‘very, very quickly’ unless the government acts cautiously on easing lockdown further. How many other epidemiologists share his concerns in uncertain at this point. Certainly, if you wanted to grasp a smidgeon of comfort, it is that whilst yesterday’s infection figure was 4,182, todays is 3,398 i.e. nearly 20% less than the previous day. But evidently, as has been said before, we are racing between the vaccination rate creeping up day by day and the virus trying to reproduce exponentially. I think the June 21st deadline is still incredibly tendentious – Boris Johnson and the right wing of the Tory Party are incredibly anxious to maintain the original timetable but it all remains a huge gamble. As always on a Saturday night, it will be interesting to see what the Sunday newspapers have to say on this topic.

On my IBM Thinkpad, I have recently started using a very secure German mail system which goes by the obscure name of ‘Posteo’  As they are a subscription only service (adverts are evidently anathema) the rate is only 12 euros a year. This program contains within it a feature called ‘Notes’ which means that whatever scribbles you might have made, it is automatically saved for you under whatever ‘Notes’ title you have chosen and in a folder called ‘Notes‘ (This can be made to share data with the Apple app of the same bane if you really want to) This little Notes feature seems incredibly useful but it I designed just to get text onto the screen (as if you were using a scrap  of paper) and therefore has no formatting capacities of any kind. In fact the only ‘controls’ are ‘New Note’ (which is self-evident) and ‘Send to email’ (self-evident again) I wondered if it would be at all possible to get any degree of formatting into the text (e.g. bold,italics) and experimentation revealed that if using an external email client (such as Outlook) one could copy a say an emboldened character into the Clipboard and thence into Notes. So I have made a sort of toolbar for myself with one emboldened characters on it. To  get, say, an emboldened heading, I copy the emboldened character (which is a ‘B’ for bold) into my Notes file, carry on typing immediately after it and the subsequent text incorporates the preceding formatting. I then delete the ‘B’ at the start of the heading and there I am with an emboldened heading. This might sound incredibly ‘kludgy’ as the Americans say but it works fine for me – and makes mo Notes files more readable. I tend to put in them little computing ‘tips and hints’ on how a particulate program works and whatever I write is automatically saved whenever I leave to the program.

Today was the day when our domestic help calls round to do her weekly stuff for us and we always have a lot of family news and gossip to catch up on. As it happens, her part-time job in the retail sector went ‘belly up’ but she has acquired a new one in the care sector where her many skills and talents will no doubt be put to excellent use – so we exchanged a lot of news about this as she has just had her induction day and it looks as though she and her new employers are going to get along very well together. Meg and I engaged in our normal routine and installed ourself on one of our regular benches in the park (fortunately there are three adjacent to each other so it is a rare day indeed when all of them are occupied by the time we got there) We were soon joined by one of our regular park friends who has taken a very keen interest in what you might call the ‘politics’ of the pandemic. So we spent some time this morning, speculating in the light of Dominic Cummings revelations, what it must have been like in the febrile and chaotic atmosphere in 10 Downing Street at the height of the epidemic (going back to March, 2020) when the virus was out of control, the hospital beds were filling upon rapidly, a vaccine might well months away and so on. We were trying hard to think what decisions we ourselves might have made at that time – although it is not an enviable thought. The one metaphor that Dominic Cummings has helped imprint upon the popular consciousness is Boris Johnson as a shopping trolley i.e. uncontrollable, liable to lurch from one side to the other, capable of banging into one wall and then another in an uncontrolled and random way… need I say more? It is certainly a powerful image – I wonder if the cartoonists will manage to pick upon that?

In the late afternoon, I espied my next door neighbour in his garden and wandered over to have a chat. This is  because on Sunday, he is organising a special birthday ‘bash’ for his wife’s birthday and as the weather forecast is set fair, then hopefully all of the proceedings can take place outdoors in the fine weather. I popped round to see if there was anything that he might run out of at the last moment (outdoor chairs, paper plates and so on) but everything seemed well in control. We admired our neighbour’s garden which he has radically turned around and improved since the days when I used to roughly maintain it for the previous occupants for whom it was all a bit too much. After that, we turned to politics (fortunately, we tend to share the same political outlook on the world) so the antics of Dominic Cummings and his revelations about the chaotic days in the early days of the pandemic were quite a source of fascination for both of us. On Sunday then, as it is a happy birthday occasion, all discussion of politics will be strictly out of the question but we are looking forward for a chance to mingle and converse with our fellow men.

In the early evening, I FaceTimed one of my ex-colleagues from the University of Winchester – we normally have a chat each Friday evening. As my colleague used to work for IBM, he is a mine of information about all computing matters in which IBM is, of course, a major player. We then turned our attention to gardening implements and the kinds of implements we used when keeping deep holes for fences and so on.

The virus news this evening is not particularly reassuring – in fact, quite the reverse. It seems as though the Indian variant of the virus now accounts for 60%-75% of the total new cases. Also, the number of cases is now rising and the number of new infections has now exceeded 4,000 – this figure represents a doubling in the last week. As the Indian variant is making an impact across various parts of the county (i.e. not just in the North West) and nowhere seems to be going down, it does appear, as some of the politicians have been saying, that we are in for a real race between the virus on the one hand and the vaccinated population on the other.

Glancing sideways at American politics for a change, it looks as though the Senate Republicans have organised a filibuster to ensure that there will be no Congressional investigation into the invasion of the Congress building after the last presidential elections.  This means that one of the greatest attacks on American democracy will never be fully investigated by the Congress itself. It is said that most Republican voters still overwhelmingly support Trump and his policies despite what happened on Jan. 6 2021 and most believe he did nothing wrong. One has the feeling that if the attack had come from the far left rather than the far right, the result would have been a vote for an instant Congressional investigation.

As predicted by the weather forecasters, today was a beautiful fine day – and not before time as we have to endure so much rainy weather over most of the month of May. So we collected our newspapers and then made our way to the park where we enjoyed the sunshine. We were joined by one of our park ‘regulars’ in the seat which has a commanding view of the parkland and chatted over matters political, cultural and cosmological (as is our wont) Then we progressed gently home, not meeting any more of our regulars on the way home. We made ourselves a meal which finished off the chicken which we have enjoyed over the past few days.

There is quite a big political story, following the attacks by Dominic Cummings on the Health Secretary in yesterday’s committee hearings. We know that a year ago last March when the first wave of the virus was really hitting our society, the hospital authorities were desperate to clear beds – so any elderly resident of a hospital bed who could be was immediately discharged back to the care home from whence they came in order to release the bed. The nub of the political argument is this – apparently, Matt Hancock had promised the PM that anybody discharged from a hospital to a residential home would be tested for the virus before discharge – but did this actually happen? There were lots of anecdotal  stories at the time that actually hospital patients were being discharged but without being tested as Hancock promised the PM they would be. But when questioned in the House of Commons today and, even more so, at the Downing Street press conference held at 5.0pm onwards, journalist after journalist quizzed Hancock as to whether hospital patients had actually been tested before discharge. No clear answer to a very clear and specific question was at all forthcoming and indeed, to quote Sky News:  ‘In his responses he suggested testing could only be introduced for people being discharged to care homes once testing capacity had been built. He said his “recollection” was that he had committed to building up testing so it could be in place in the future, but avoided an explicit denial of Mr Cumming’s accusation, saying ‘there’ll be a time we can go through all of this in greater detail’….One of the key claims made by Mr Cummings was that Mr Hancock lied about COVID-testing people before they returned to care homes from hospitals in the early part of the pandemic.   Mr Cummings told MPs on Wednesday that the Prime Minister was furious to discover in April 2020 that untested hospital patients had been discharged to care homes, adding Mr Hancock had told the PM a month earlier they would be tested.

The importance of all of this is hard to overestimate as it does look as though the elderly residents discharged back to  residential homes might have been a massive source of infection which spread like wildfire through the residential homes sector. One estimate of this tangled statistical story by the Nuffield Trust indicates that perhaps as many as 35,000 excess deaths may have been due to COVID-19. So the results of a panicked government response, desperate to clear hospital beds but in effect transferring the problem to an under-resourced residential home sector led to deaths in the tens of thousands. In the face of all of this, one can see why the politicians are being evasive the whole of the time – imagine Matt Hancock saying ‘Yes we made a massive mistake as a result of which over 30,000 deaths have occurred’ One can only hope that some journalists will not let this one rest but will pursue the politicians relentlessly – I think that Newsnight on BBC2 might be quite incisive in tonight’s edition but we shall have to wait and see.

If we are going to have a spell of fine weather, then I really do not have excuse not to get out into the garden and do some tidying up which is badly needed. Of course, when we had so much rain recently, there was plenty of excuse not to get out out and about but now after a lot of rain followed by bursts of sunshine, the weeds might be going mad in various areas. I have an area of the garden which I call ‘Mog’s Den‘ down into which one has to descend via some steps where the land slopes away sharply at the end of our plot of land. I have some fruit trees in this area and on the slopes under the trees I am trying to grow the kind of shade loving plants like Skimmia and periwinkle. These plans have generally worked out but there are some areas that badly need an hour or so of hard gardening to get things back into shape. I know from hard experience that if a garden ‘gets away’ from you in May, then you have a struggle for the rest of the year – and vice versa. 

So another Wednesday rolls by and, as usual, I had to update my Waitrose order ready for delivery tomorrow. Fortunately, I remembered to book my slot for about three weeks time which I did whilst waiting for a few minutes after midnight on Tuesday at which time they tend to release new time slots for the weeks ahead. So after all of this was done we walked down to town, picked up our newspapers and then popped into Waitrose where we picked up some milk and a birthday card for our next door neighbour for next Sunday. Whilst we were there, we bumped into one of our ex-Waitrose friends that we used to see quite regularly in the park during the wintertime when she was involved in undertaking long walks around Bromsgrove. But we haven’t seen her for some time because she is quite busy off playing golf – she has a good and supportive circle of good friends in the golfing community (which is great, as she lost her husband just before the pandemic really got underway). Whilst we were in Waitrose, we noticed a sign to say that the cafe – the hub of many social activities – was due to reopen again on Wednesday, June 17th which is some three weeks away. We reminded the staff to reward their first few customers with a free bottle of champagne when we walk through the doors in three weeks time and the staff promised to send the message onto the manager. On our way down to the park this morning, we were delighted to have a few words with our Irish friends who live down the road. They were looking after their grand-daughter for the day (which they do for a day or so in the middle of the week) and were delighted to be going off to spend a few days in Llandudno next week now that the restrictions are being lifted and the weather is set as a high pressure system sets in for the next few days.

Today was the day when Dominic Cummings (ex principal adviser to the Prime Minister) gave evidence to a Parliamentary select committee. The word used most often by the media today is ‘excoriating’ and one has to say, that at least superficially, his evidence seems compelling in the extreme. Cummings has argued that Boris Johnson is completely unfit for office and that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, should have been sacked for lying on multiple occasions. A picture is painted of a complete lack of preparedness at the start of the pandemic, a reluctance to lockdown (initially and on subsequent occasions) and a dysfunctional, ‘rabbits in the headlamps‘ approach to  government (i.e. paralysed into inactivity) Cummings himself is apologetic for not having pressed the ‘panic’ button and added new information to ‘explain’ his flight to Barnard Castle at the height of the pandemic.  What I think is often forgotten is that a long way before Boris become leader of the Tory Party and therefore before Brexit, there was a large group often Tory MP’s who were arguing for a ‘Anybody but Boris‘  candidate. I think it was well anticipated that Boris Johnson might have great skills with his rhetorical or journalistic flourish but as a practical decision maker he would prove to be a disaster. Privately, many of the current crop of Tory MPs would agree but they do not really care so long as Boris Johnson managed to secure 80 strong majorities for the Tory party. As I blog, Channel 4 news is attempting to interview a Tory MP (Tobias Ellwood) and asked who he would believe when Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings completely contradict each other. Of course, no answer was forthcoming, despite repeated questioning  and all we got was the the typical politician’s evasiveness. The particular question to which everyone would like an answer is that Dominic Cummings says he heard Boris Johnson say he would rather ‘let the bodies pile high‘ than hit the economy again with a third lockdown and this is the oft-repeated quote which Boris Johnson denied in the House of Commons (was he lying to the House of Commons?) and which Dominic Cummings claims he overheard (was he lying as well?)

Apart from the raw politics involved, what has been fascinating about today’s proceedings has been the spotlight that has been thrown onto the machinery of government. It is well known that ‘scientists advise, politicians decide‘ but even so it sobering to realise that our whole machinery of government were not very good – and the South East Asian economies of Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and so on dealt with COVID-19 so very much better than we did. Also, the Prime Minister comes out as a person who does not seek advice or even consult with cabinet colleagues (e.g. Michael Gove seems to be almost completely lacking from today’s accounts). As the days roll by, we can expect to hear rebuttals of what Cummings has to say, not least from Matt Hancock who Cummings felt should have been sacked for multiple transgressions.