The night before last, I got myself to bed by just about 10.00pm and then watched the news in bed which has become quite a common pattern over the years. Then I started to watch ‘Question Time’ broadcast on Thursday evenings and which I have watched sporadically. I stopped watching this programme for quite a long time as during the Brexit and other election campaigns, it became a showcase for raucous and generally uninformed opinions on the right of politics which always seemed to deny voice and space to alternative views (the producer of the programme may have had a hand in this) But last night’s programme was completely different although I slept through the first half of it. It came from Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire which is similar in size to Bromsgrove but may be 15% larger. But then they had a discussion on whether AI (Artificial Intelligence) would transform the UK economy and the topic was very well argued out by the panel members The came a discussion on the local building that was going around Bishop’s Stortford and at this point, I pricked up my ears and became wide awake. A question from the audience was whether the extraordinary amount of building going on around Bishop’s Stortford without a corresponding increase in transport infrastructure, schools, doctors’ surgeries and the like was sustainable. Now it could have been that Bromsgrove was being described at this point as the problems seemed identical and one audience member expressed the view that the town might be the first in the country to become gridlocked as the inevitable consequences of building new houses without the transport and concomitant social infrastructure – a view I have often stated myself about Bromsgrove. What was remarkable was that that the views of the Labour and the Conservative panel members were practically identical with each and they burbled on about developments elsewhere in the UK where transport and other infrastructure had been provided (eventually) but this did not address the local situation at all. The programme chair Fiona Bruce said that they heard similar arguments wherever they went in the country and the same argument could be replicated many times over. The root of the problem is that political machine is geared towards the building of ‘houses’ rather than ‘communities’ because greater population brings increased population and spending power (as well as rateable value) within an area. But spending on transport and local infrastructure has to be provided by the public sector which has been starved of funds for decades and struggles to provide the local services for which is has a statutory obligation with most local funds swallowed up with support for children, the homeless and the elderly. I intend to watch the full repeated programme on the BBC’s iPlayer and pay it my full attention because what I thought was a very local problem is evidently a national one and governments of every political complexion find they cannot fund the required social infrastructure as ‘the money is not available’ In our travels around Spain, my wife and I used to find the opposite of this problem – in their efforts to build ‘comunidades’ (local communities) the local authorities had laid down the infrastructure in the form of roads and ‘locales’ (small, local shops) but the builders building the houses had gone bust leaving half built houses and unfinished developments in many places.

This morning, I got a text from my University of Birmingham friend who I sometimes meet on Sunday mornings but cannot make it this weekend. So, we decided to meet today in my favourite ‘Friday morning’ cafe where I was happy to hand over the wheelie bin numbers I had managed to buy on his behalf. After he had left us,  I got into conversation with the cafe proprietor who also runs a therapy business on the side. I think she has some contacts ‘in the trade’ as it were who I think may be very useful people to me and friends to patronise in the future so she was going to send some text messages on my behalf. These days, I always prefer to go on personal recommendation of this is possible. I then made a couple of purchases on the High Street before I returned home and regaled myself with half a can of soup. I knew that I still had the weekly shop to do because this was rather knocked out of place by the funeral I attended yesterday This week there were one or two items  knew I could get in Aldi but not in Lidl so I reverted back to my previous shopping store for one week. By the time I got home and unpacked the shopping, it was getting pretty late so I made myself a ‘fish on bread’ type meal which I do when it is getting late and/or I am running short of time. 

The night tonight looks pretty dire on the TV so I shall carry on reading my book on ‘The Grieving Brain’ which arrived the other day but I am only up to chapter 2 so far. Then I shall probably do some catchup on good BBC programmes (including Question Time some of which I may have missed) I have looked at the international news and today Trump and the Ukrainian leader are due to have their 3rd meeting -in the Oval office. The first was in February and was a disaster for Zelenskyy as first J D Vance, the American Vice President and then Trump himself tried to tear him to shreds and to humiliate him. But the second meeting after the meeting of the European leaders made Trump appear much more conciliatory but no one knows how this third 3rd meeting will pan out. Zelenskyy is trying to persuade Trump to allow him to have some Tomahawk cruise missiles to use (or threaten to use) against Putin but whether Trump will go this far is a very open question. If Ukraine is allowed use of the Tomahawk missile system, then bases deep within Russia (eg those that manufacture thousands of drones) could be attacked directly as the range of the Tomahawk is much more substantial. Modern conventional variants have a range of 995 miles (1,600km) and they fly low to the ground at a speed of 550 miles an hour. If the American president does allow Ukraine to have these more modern weapons, then certainly the balance of the war will change but the calculation must be that rather than brining Russia to heel, as it were, that the war actually escalates in intensity.

Yesterday, when I woke up in the morning, my back was giving me a twinge that I could have well done without. I could not think of anything that I had especially done except for the fact that I had stayed rather a long time in one position on the chair in my study whilst I had been writing an email and browsing the web. So took some Ibuprofin which I rarely take and had an early night in a bed well-warmed with the electric blanket and these little therapies seem to have done the trick. Nonetheless, I don’t want this to reoccur so I am hunting round inside the house for some cushions or back supports to try to ensure that this problem does not persist in the future. Getting the car washed yesterday was probably a little bit of therapeutic movement as well but I am noting that things like car washing activities and other outdoor jobs have to be done earlier and earlier as the nights are creeping in on us. I try and line up some interesting TV viewing between the hours of 7.00pm-9.00pm after which time I thinking about getting ready for bed. Last night, I saw a program on the origins of modern archaeology which was interesting enough and this was followed at 9.00pm on the successes of Margaret Thatcher in her early years.  But the hagiography (which means an undue and uncritical biography) of Thatcher eventually overwhelmed me and I turned the TV off and drifted off to sleep to the strains of ClassicFM which was infinitely more relaxing. My Droitwich friend is due to return from holiday in South Africa next week after an extended holiday with family and relatives. We are exchanging texts and mutually wondering about how we can get through the dark days of autumn and winter until the days to start to lengthen again.  The clocks go back in about ten days’ time when so called ‘Summer Time’ or ‘Daylight Saving Time’ comes to an end.

The peace process in Gaza is on a bit of a knife-edge. Hamas has handed over 9 of the promised 28 bodies but is saying that the remainder are buried under mountains of rubble and is asking for specialist equipment to attempt to ascertain the whereabouts of the bodies and then to retrieve them. Given that about 90% of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged if not completely flattened then hundreds and possible even thousands of bodies will be buried in the rubble. Then, of course, the Palestinians have to work out whether the body belonged to one of their own number or a Jewish hostage. There appears to about 19 more bodies to locate and I would be amazed if there was a successful search for half of this number – and the recovery attempts might take months to complete in any case. The Israelis are accusing Hamas of breaking the peace agreement and have responded by cutting the number of aid trucks coming to Gaza by about a half but then ceasefires during conflicts rarely go completely smoothly. I think the world is generally quite shocked about the scale of destruction in Gaza where the reconstruction costs may run into $70bn and will take years.
 
My son called around this morning and it is always good to touch base with him, as they say. I left for town fairly equally to attend my Tai Chi class where the nice and gentle class was taken by the daughter of our usual teacher. Then I had a quick coffee and piece of cake with my newly found ex-Bank manager friend before we both had to dash off for other engagements. In my case, it was to attend a funeral and ensured that I got there three quarters of an hour before the service started in order to secure a parking place for myself. The service was a traditional Catholic Mass and the church was practically full, as we expected that it would be. I personally found the service had several emotional moments in it as I was constantly and vividly reminded of Meg’s funeral which was about four months ago now. Then we repaired to a rather superior old mansion house which is now a restaurant centre but had plenty of space to to cater for weddings, funerals and other celebrations of the ‘rites de passage’ of life.  I sat and ate my refreshments with several parishioners that I knew well by sight and our table was joined both by my Irish friends and also by the elder brother of our parishioner brother whose funeral it was. All in all, I had chats with people that I knew or to whom I was introduced by friendly fellow parishioners, nearly all of whom knew each other of course. There was a strong Irish contingent as part of the parish community and we exchanged stories of how ‘the Troubles’ as they are known in Ireland, both North and South, made its impact on the Irish community which was often the subject of intense surveillance on the part of the English security forces. Altogether, these activities took up much of the afternoon and the funeral party did not start to break away and drift away for home until 5.00am in the afternoon. Now, by an accident of timing, we are going to have a very similar social occasion in exactly one week’s time. We are going to have a formal parish induction of our new priest to be followed by a social event in a meeting room supplied by the local pub which is just across the way from the church. We had a similar function about four years ago on the occasion of the induction of our previous priest. But on this occasion, it will prove to a more satisfying event as I imagine that the age profile will so much younger than that encountered in a funeral setting.  There other opportunities to meet with fellow parishioners and this is to attend the coffee morning event held after the services on a Sunday but I am a little reluctant to break up the pattern of attending on a Saturday evening which I have done over the years. Several years ago, I would never have anticipate that I would find myself part of a church community like this but in the months after Meg’s death, I have found the support of other members of the community both heartwarming and comforting.

I awoke yesterday to weather that was dark and apparently gloomy whilst the economic forecasts facing the country appear to mirror the weather. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, is expected to have to find up to £30bn at the budget to balance the books, after a U-turn on winter fuel and welfare reforms and a big productivity downgrade by the OBR, which means Britain is expected to earn less in future than previously predicted. Yesterday, the IMF upgraded UK growth projections by 0.1 percentage points to 1.3% of GDP this year – but also trimmed its forecast by 0.1% next year, also putting it at 1.3%. The UK growth prospects are 0.4 percentage points worse off than the IMF’s projects last autumn. The 1.3% GDP growth would be the second-fastest in the G7, behind the US. It looks as though we are in for a regime of both tax rises and also spending cuts as how else is the $30bn to be bridged? All chancellors are desperate for economic growth not only in the UK but across the European continent where projected growth rates seem anaemic. I heard a commentator pose the question that if the USA could achieve much higher growth rates, why should this prove to be so difficult on this side of the pond? But here we are comparing chalk and cheese as the American economy is one large internal market, has a much more dominant ‘hire and fire’ culture in the absence of a strongly unionised workforce and all the big generators of future growth, mostly AI grounded, are based in the United States. The media and the internet is filled with people explaining that they would do if they had the Rachel Reeves dilemma of raising money whilst not breaking manifesto promises. One account that took my eye is what might well emerge and it ran as follows. It is possible that taxes on unearned income will rise, loopholes allowing tax avoidance will be closed and duties on Tobacco, alcohol and fossil fuels (petrol and Diesel in particular) will rise. There are likely to be windfall taxes on the excessive profits of petrol companies. There may be a new duty on Vapes – as they are becoming a health problem. It is rumoured that the proportion of a pensions pot that can be taken as a tax-free lump sum will be reduced from the current 25%. It is also rumoured that National Insurance Contributions by employers (not employees) may rise. Probably the income tax threshold will not rise – particularly the upper threshold. Now all of this sounds very plausible but we shall have to wait until late November to find out. But many eyes are fixed on the inflation rate in September to be published in a week’s time as this will determine the amount by which pensions and benefits may have to rise next April when the new fiscal year commences. The inflation rate may approach 3.9% and is predicted to be the highest in the advanced economies. But I suspect that the Chancellor will announce the end of the ‘triple lock’ by which pensions rise by the highest of the average rise in wages, the inflation rate or 2.5% and from which pensioners have undoubtedly benefitted even during the years of austerity.

After I had exercised, showered and breakfasted, I set out for the Methodist Centre where there is always some company as well as very reasonably priced tea or coffee and cake. I located myself on a table where was a married couple and a widow (as it turned out) and we quite an entertaining discussion. In fact, the experience this morning was as pleasant as my experience in the same venue a week ago was disappointing. One of the ladies had been brought up in a Catholic school and associated church so we swapped tales of the repressive nature of 1950’s Catholicism. One story that I recounted and my fellow coffee drinker swore happened in the school she attended was the following. The teenage girls were expressly forbidden to wear black patent leather shoes as it was it felt that young adolescent males would be driven wild with lust at the reflection of the girl’s knickers in their shoes and this had to be avoided at all costs. Actually, this story is widely told, and believed, but I think that the true story comes from a book written in 1950’s America which was subsequently made into a Broadway production. Another imprecation was never to enter the church of another denomination as it was felt that that you might be consumed by the fires of hell should this occur. Of course, we all giggle about this nowadays but for some, the influence of their teachers, particularly if they happened to be nuns, stayed with them for decades. After I left the centre, I decided to visit a local hardware store with the principal intention of buying some plastic ‘wheelie bin’  numbers for which the whole town is going mad as all of our old bins, complete with their house numbers, are being exchanged for new ones of a different design. Now at this point, Sod’s law comes into effect which is that if things can go wrong, they will. I was looking for four items in the hardware store and each of the items was either out of stock or not sold anymore. But then I had a chance meeting with my Irish friend who told me that Poundland had a stock of numbers and she had seen them the day before. So I made haste to the local store where, of course, the very number that wished to purchase was out of stock. A fellow customer, searching for the same number as myself and I went to see an assistant managing one of the tills to enquire when the stock would be replenished and the lady dived into a box behind the counter and produced what we wanted for each of us. I finished off buying eleven numbers altogether, 3 x. 2 for my University of Birmingham friend, two for my next-door neighbour and finally three for myself. After I had cooked a lunch of ham, beans and potatoes, I made myself wash the car although I felt a little disinclined to do it. One of the factors impelling me on was the funeral I am due to attend tomorrow and I always have the feeling, irrational though it may be, that it is only a mark of respect to turn up in a clean car.

Now that the hostages have been released in the Gaza conflict, many analysts are scratching their heads and are saying to themselves ‘What now?’ Normally when similar conflicts have been resolved in the past, all kinds of background diplomacy work has taken place to find a workable solution after which the major political players have stepped in to ‘seal the deal’ Bt Trump and his regime have entirely rewritten this diplomatic rulebook as they have argued that previous attempts at conflict resolution had not worked so let s try the ‘Trump’ way. So now we have a situation in which the desired ‘end result’ ((release of prisoners, operation of a ceasefire) have taken place but nothing else is in place at all. Trump has grabbed lots of headlines which is all he really wanted to do but fundamental questions have been ignored. One such question is, of course, how to give Gaza a functioning government now that the Israeli forces have withdrawn. What is to be done about the marauding gangs of militia upon which Hamas as a ‘de facto’ government kept the lid but are now free to roam, loot and pillage. How is the reconstruction of Gaza to be organised and is Hamas to be disarmed leaving the ground clear for other armed groups in the area. Now we have good experience of what happens when a government is decapitated as the Americans have discovered with Iran, Syria and Afghanistan and that is a period of literal anarchy. Political analysts are saying that what is needed in Gaza are months of long, sustained and intelligent institution building but will Trump be remotely interested in doing any of this?  For this reason, there is quite a lot of pessimism about the immediate future. Sky News reports that Donald Trump told world leaders the hardest part is over – but key parts of his 20-point peace plan remain unsettled. Not least, Hamas and Israel have not agreed on the details of Gaza’s postwar governance, the territory’s reconstruction and Israel’s demand that Hamas disarm. Negotiations over those issues could break down, and Israel has hinted it may resume military operations if its demands are not met. As Palestinians returned to the rubble where their homes once stood, Trump declared yesterday: ‘Rebuilding is maybe going to be the easiest part. I think we have done a lot of the hardest part because the rest comes together.’ Others were more tentative about the intricacies that lie ahead.’ Unfortunately, I think there are several potential points of failure going forward,’ said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The evening before yesterday I received an email from our closest Spanish friend enquiring how things were shaping up in the months following Meg’s death. She has had a certain amount of turmoil in her own life as well as she has had to organise care packages for her own mother but over a huge distance. Whilst she is reading this blog, this only gives a partial picture so she wanted to know a bit more from the inside, as it were. I replied with a fairly lengthy email and some photos that might be of some interest but I think I need to organise a period when we can have a good videochat with each other so that we can have a good heart-to-heart as they say. 

Yesterday was the normal day for our domestic help to call around and we always have a lot to chat about as we share personal and domestic news with each other. Our domestic help has been excellent in gradually disposing of Meg’s clothing bit by bit and we are ging to allocate some time next week when we can look at some hats, scarves and gloves together that we keep in a cupboard in our hall, ready for when we step out. I went down into town and hunted out the coffee bar where two of my friends were partaking of their ‘Tuesday normal’ and we have transferred our allegiance temporarily because it is generally quieter and more pleasant than Wetherspoons, despite the price difference. I had gone down into town by car as I was running a bit short of time and, in any case, today is my Pilates day so I needed to get myself turned around to get down for that session. On my return, I made myself a quick lunch of mackerel on a bed of salad made tastier by a sprinkling of both 1000 Island dressing and also  a touch of a piquant sweet chilli sauce which makes the whole dish incredibly quick and easy to prepare and helps me to recoup a little bit of last time. I was near the end of my dinner when the hair dresser called around but I had completely forgotten about this by not looking at my panning board. Nonetheless, I am always pleased to see and as it happens we have both suffered bereavements in the last year and my hairdresser has actually had to cope with the loss of two brothers and then had to clear out their effects single handed which must be quite a strain. So, we commiserate and try to share practical help with each other as we have known each other for years now. Now that the nights are drawing in and the it is getting dark sooner and sooner, I am thinking of ways in which I can help to alleviate any autumn or winer depressions. There is a condition known as SAD or ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’ to which we ar are all subject a little during these winter months although some suffer more than others. I would not say that I personally het depressed but I am always pleased when the critical date of December 21st has come and gone as this marks the turning point when the days start to lengthen again. One solution is to buy a ‘light box’ and give yourself a dose of simulated bright sunshine for 30-60 minutes a day . Now I do not know whether this a complete fad or whether it is really useful piece of kit to buy – in any case, the result is bound to vary from one individual to another. I have looked on Amazon and can buy one for just over £20 so I am considering this.

Yesterday, the Pavarotti commemorations continued apace with a Masterclass shown on BBC4 but as I was catching up with reading the Sunday newspapers, I only passively watched parts of this programme. During the preceding afternoon I had engaged in discussions with family giving my account of my experiences in the Methodist centre during the last week where I found myself the lone male in the company of 15 other attendees, who were all female of course and many of them widowed. So I decided to do a modicum of research and discovered that at my age, there are 4.25 as many widows as there are widowers (i.e. bereaved wives rather than husbands). I did expect an imbalance but has not expected that it would be quite so marked as this. Wondering if there was any particular support available to widowers (i.e. males) I entered ‘widowers’ as a search term into Google and was grimly amused to discover that Google and other search engines took the ‘widows’ art of the word ‘widowers’ and so the vast majority of the entries were discussions of the problems faced by widows rather than widowers (mainly having to take charge of financial and other household tasks previously undertaken by their now deceased husbands) But I did find the occasional entry addressed the problems faced by widowers and one imprecation that came out loud and clear was ‘Do not make any major decisions for at least one year after losing your wife’ As you might imagine there were several horror stories of widowers who had parted with houses, possessions and cash before they were in an emotional state to make an informed decision. Also, it was quite common for men to rush into a search for new partners which often turned out to be a bad idea, particularly if turned out to be a relationship that they had tried to form after the death of a spouse. I have to say that none of this really told me anything that I did not know but hearing the advice and cautionary tales of others can always be a salutary experience and I am taking due note of both what is being said to me and also that which I read about the subject matter. But I think I will conclude by observing that the problems faced by widowers is relatively under-discussed and unhighlighted and many men (but not myself!) sink into an isolated depression. For my own part, I am trying to engage in some sort of social discourse at least once every day and hence I already have some routines involving both keeping myself fit (Pilates, Tai Chi) as well as meeting for coffee on 3-4 days of the week. That having been said, relying upon chance alone to meet people means that one can have ‘bad’ days as well as ‘good’ days and social contacts have to be arranged beforehand with texts and/or telephone messages. But, as I keep telling myself, other people have their own families and grandchildren who often feature prominently in their thoughts and their life space. This week, though, I have a large funeral to attend to which I am actually looking forward as I can probably meet many of my fellow church parishioners in a social rather than a liturgical venue with the possibility of more extended discussions rather than a few words on the steps of a windy church after the weekly service.

The countdown is continuing apace for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and it is thought that only about 20 of the original 200 may still be alive. The horrible and gruesome truth but nobody has yet, to my knowledge put a figure upon it, is he number of hostages who were killed by the Israelis themselves when they made so many strikes against Gaza reducing practically the whole of it to rubble. There will be considerable attention to the starved and emaciated condition of the hostages once they are released  but I wonder of the point will be made that the rest of the Palestinian society has been subject to a policy of starvation given the massive restriction on food supplied allowed by the Israelis into Gaza. It is perhaps a source of great regret, but not surprising,that so many hostages will be in a starved state when their own captors are themselves starving and deaths from starvation amongst Palestinian children is already well documented.
 
In the morning, my son called round to pick up a bag he had inadvertently left in the house the previous afternoon. We took the opportunity to discuss a finance course that my son had decided to take out of pure interest but our conversations ranged far and wide after that. Then de departed to go and get a ‘flu vaccination whilst I walked down into town. I had a chat with some of our church friends at the bottom of the road who were busy tidying up bits in the garden (very praiseworthy!) I then went into Waitrose picking up my newspaper and having a coffee available free to members who bring their own cup. Then I bumped into my Italian friend and, as it was a nice morning, we sat on one of the outside benches for a few minutes to carry on our conversation. Then it was a case of walking slowly back up the hill and thinking about lunch where I used up some mince, small potatoes which were parboiled and finished off in oil and green beans.

I had a bit of a doze in the afternoon after sorting out the newspapers before they get thrown away. The news media was dominated as we knew it would be by the return of the twenty Israelis held hostage by Hamas but only four bodies were repatriated. The reason for the shortfall of bodies is that some of them are under the rubble of destroyed buildings and tunnels and he whereabouts of others is unknown as those guarding them or knowing their whereabouts have themselves been killed. Incidentally, I note that in passing that the Israelis held by Hamas are called ‘hostages’ (as they are being used as a bargaining counter) whereas the vastly greatly number of Palestinians taken off the streets and held in ‘administrative detention’ are called ‘detainees’. The difference is terminology is interesting but appears to derive from a legal principle that is a person is captured and then as a bargaining counter, this is a ‘hostage’ but a person just captured and not used as a bargaining counter is a ‘detainee’ But whatever the precise legal and semantic nuances offered by each side of the conflict, the net result is practically the same.

In the words of the poem which many of us read whilst still at school, I arose this morning and on drawing back the curtains saw that it was indeed the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ which is the opening line of ‘To Autumn’ by John Keats. It was the first real morning mist of the autumn and it was hard not be reminded of the poem – do they still teach poetry in school, I ask myself? The evening before last, I attended church as I always do each Saturday evening. I always get there 20 minutes before the service starts, not least to secure an unproblematic parking space and this affords the possibility of one or little chats. I was approached by one of the regular parishioners (who I know quite well as we probably served together on the Parish parochial council) and she mentioned how beautifully I had read the lessons the preceding Thursday when I was called upon to do these on the occasion of the celebratory Mass for Cardinal John Henry Newman, whose feast day it was. I am sure a little flattery was in place here because I believe that my rendition was nothing out of the ordinary. But the really interesting thing is that I was approached by at least three parishioners, if not more, who enquired how I was coping after the death of Meg which was exactly five months ago now. I must say it is quite heart-warming to receive these solicitations of concern and more may follow next Thursday. There is going to be a huge funeral when one of the stalwarts of the church who often read the lessons in a delightful Irish brogue is to have his funeral and I expect the church will be packed to the rafters. As a parishioner, he was one of the mainstays of the church and keep himself going for months long after the predictions of his doctors who gave him about three months to live some fifteen months ago. Afterwards we are all invited to a funeral afternoon tea in a nearby very classy hotel so I am actually quite looking forward to having some more extended conversations with some of my fellow parishioners on that occasion. The evening before last was devoted to the work of Luciano Pavarotti on what would have been his 90th birthday. I lay on the bed from just after 9.00pm until practically midnight both dozing and letting the incredible renditions of Pavarotti just wash over me and was actually quite an enjoyable way to spend the evening. In the earlier part of the evening, though, I did spend some time transmitting a few texts including one to one of my former Pilates class mates with whom I would like to catch up and have a coffee. But I am finding that most of the people with whom I am in contact are leading quite full and busy lives so things have to be arranged perhaps a week or so in advance. Sundays can be quite ‘dead’ days as people are evidently seeing their own families at the weekends but my son said he would pop round which is always welcome.

As I was finishing my breakfast, my University of Birmingham friend replied to a text message and we decided to have coffee together in our usual haunt. The number pf places which is open on a Sunday to have a coffee are quite limited but we visit a sort of water sports centre not too far distant constructed out of grave and salt pits worked out in the 1050’s. Here there is a simple cafe where, when the weather is better, we can look out over the expanses of water. Here we had a really good chat about things social, occupational, political and intellectual before my friend dropped me back at home. It was then I realised that I had lost my trusty black leather bush hat which is my trusty companion so I raced back in order to see if I had left it behind. Fortunately, this had proved to be the case and so I managed to retrieve it, vowing to myself to be more careful in the future. When I arrived back at the cafe, I engaged in a conversation with a lady who had noticed that I had forgotten my hat so she and her son had an interesting chat about holidays, particularly as the son was about to visit Thailand for the nth time.  I was urged to go and was supplied with lurid details of the services offered by Thai girls to foreign visitors to which I replied that my only travel ambitions were to visit Spain in the few months ahead. After I returned home, I was not very hungry so made myself a quick ‘fish on bread’ type meal which I do if I requite a quick repast rather than a full-scale meal. Then my son and daughter-in-law called round and we had an afternoon filled with interesting conversations about the social events that we had both experienced in the last week.  We also had quite a deep conversation about the ways in which an aged widower such as myself could engage in engage in meaningful social activities which sounds deceptively easy in theory but which is actually more difficult to achieve in practice. 

Drones have been a common sight in Gaza for a long time, but they have always been military. The whine of a drone is enough to trigger fear in many within the enclave. But now, drones are delivering something different – long, lingering footage of the devastation that has been wreaked on Gaza. And the images are quite staggering, as whole city blocks have been reduced to rubble, streets are destroyed and towns where the landscape has been wholly redesigned.  The footage is of decapitated tower blocks and whole areas turned into black and white photographs, where there is no colour but only a palette of greys – from the dark hues of scorched walls to the lightest grey of the dust that floats through the air. And everywhere, the indistinct dull grey of rubble – the debris of things that are no longer there. Meanwhile, there is a terrible waiting game to be played out as the Israelis await the return of the hostages and the Palestinians are preparing to welcome those by those held in Israeli gaols as well as many other detainees.

I awoke at just about 6.00am yesterday morning, turned on the radio and then immediately fell asleep for another hour. This is all too easy to do when the mornings are as dark as they are and I know that there are no pressing commitments for the morning ahead. If the weather holds, I may give the car a much-needed wash today as the nearby building work blows a fine dust over all of our vehicles but fortunately the builders do not work at the weekend giving us all a little respite. As the temperatures are just dropping a little day by day,  I started to prepare one of those little sachets of breakfast porridge where all you have to do is to heat them up for a couple of minutes in the microwave. But as I did this for the first time in months, I did have a few waves of sadness sweep over me because I always used to prepare porridge for Meg every morning and managed to get this inside her so that she started off the day with some good slow release carbohydrates inside her. The ceasefire appears to be holding in Gaza but the next few days are going to be both critical and also massively emotion filled. The few remaining hostages that Gaza holds will be handed back including some just in their coffins whilst hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and others who are detainees (but the world’s press do not call these hostages?) are due to be returned. Tens of thousands of Palestinians continue to head back to their homes in the heavily bombed northern part of Gaza. The fighting has displaced around 90% of the two-million-strong Gaza population. Many of them will find fields of rubble where their homes once stood – even greater destruction than when they returned in a January ceasefire, after Israel waged a new offensive in Gaza City. So, we see images of thousands of Palestinians walking home along a makeshift road constructed by the side of the sea (and the Israelis have indicated that they should not deviate from this route if they value their life). Of course, they are returning ‘home’ but where their homes used to stand is reduced to rubble. One clip of film showed a young Palestinian woman who used to live in a tower block but such is the scale of the destruction that she cannot even find the footprint of where the tower block used to stand. One can only presume that once they have returned ‘home’ some tens will be made available to them but even were these might be pitched is problematic. The Israelis have never allowed reporters to enter Gaza, even now, so the clips of film that we must be shot on cameras and transmitted out of the country. A lot of attention is focused on ‘Hostage Square’ in Jerusalem where the worlds media is assembled and the families of the hostages are gathering even though it is a couple of days yet before the release day and hour which is scheduled to be 12.00pm next Monday.

The morning turned out to be quite a full one. I eventually met two of my Saturday friends but in a different coffee bar but parking was a nightmare. After I left them, I went in search of these large plastic numbers that you put on the side of dustbins. The local council have updated their refuse disposal vehicles which necessitates a new design of wheelie bin. Consequently, all of our bins have been replaced but when they are all placed together one needs to distinguish one’s own bin from that of a neighbour. Naturally, all of our previous bins had their house numbers affixed to them but these have now all been taken away and destroyed. Eventually, I found my way to a local hardware stall and hunted in vain for bin numbers until an assistant directed me to a carousel where the numbers were sold. But as every bin if the area has been replaced, there has been a real run on the numbers even though my own bin was only replaced this morning. Most of the numbers were already sold out including the one that I wanted/needed but another assistant informed me that the stock was replaced daily so I will try again on Monday morning. After I had eaten the remains of a curry I prepared a couple of days ago, I was fortunate enough to be at the absolute start of the film ‘Miss Potter’ which was a biopic of the life of Beatrix Potter, the celebrated children’s author and eventually, landowner and sheep breeder of distinction (Herdwicks) in the Lake district that she loved so much. Although I had seen the film before it was well worth a second watch and quite heart rending to watch as the man to whom she was engaged died suddenly at his home in London (he was a partner in the small publishing firm of Warne’s which published all of Beatrix Potter’s books) In our day, we had collected most of the Beatrix Potter books in which she span stories around local farmyard animals of which the most famous is Peter Rabbit. But Beatrix Potter was an artist of some distinction and each of her books are illustrated with her own drawings which were then painted in water colours. I think we gave the complete set away to a local primary school once our son had grown up and was beyond the stage in which he was interested in them.

I received a couple of texts, one from my Droitwich friend who is on holiday with her family in South Africa and the other from my Winchester friend with whom I spent the day yesterday in Worcester. Later on in the evening, I shall attend the Saturday evening church service which is now part of my routine and then later on, as it would have Pavarotti’s 90th birthday had he lived, celebratory concerts are to be held both on ClassicFM and also BBC2. The weekend supplement in ‘The Times‘ is often filled with advice on healthy living and in today’s edition there is an extended article on ’15 ways to live longer’ Most of these I am doing already but perhaps the most surprising items to floss one’s teeth regularly to prevent the buildup of bacteria that can eventually lead to heart disease. Other advice is easy to follow (e.g. a little bit of dark chocolate as well as two cups of tea – but only if drunk in the morning)

It looks as though the peace deal, or at least the first stage of it, is proceeding in the midst of some cautious optimism. Both sides have a vested interest in letting the deal go ahead – the Palestinians evidently want a ceasefire and for the aid trucks to increase rapidly in quantity whilst the Israelis are desperate to get their hostages back, now that Gaza has been bombed to the ground and Hamas practically obliterated as a fighting force. Donald Trump is reported is preparing to fly to the Middle East as the hostages may well be returned to Israel on Monday in three days’ time and Trump is desperate that the worlds press has him centre stage taking the credit for the release of the hostages. Once the hostages have been returned, the Palestinian prisoners released and the Israeli army withdrawn somewhat in Gaza, the really hard part of the peace process will start. The most important tasks will be the reconstruction of Gaza society, both in terms of a government and also the infrastructure. But it looks as though the plans to create a government of sorts will include a committee with Donald Trump at its head and including Tony Blair (who is reviled in the region for his support of the invasion of Iraq) It seems inconceivable that we have a government that does not include any Palestinians but that is the situation as of today. In ongoing ceasefire negotiations, Hamas has demanded the release of key Palestinian leaders held in Israeli prisons. Among them is Marwan Barghouti, a prominent figure seen by many Palestinians as a symbol of unity and resistance. Hamas says freeing these leaders is essential for any lasting peace deal, while Israel remains cautious over releasing high-profile detainees. So we have an evident ‘leader in waiting’ who is kept in gaol. The British, though, have quite a good history or keeping in gaol individuals who went on to become outstanding international leaders. Both Gandhi and Kenyatta were imprisoned multiple times during their leadership roles against colonial powers. Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned in both South Africa and India for his activism in leading the independence movements, while Kenyatta was imprisoned by the British from 1954 to 1961 for his involvement in Kenyan independence efforts. And the outstanding example is, of course, Nelson Mandela, who was kept in gaol for some 27 years by the South Africans.

Returning our attention to the UK., figures have just been released showing the average costs of residential care for the infirm and elderly. In the West Midlands, the costs have risen to £1200 a week whereas in the prosperous South East, the figure rises to £1450 and approximately half of the residents are paying for themselves by using the capital ‘locked up’ in their homes which are having to be sold to pay for their care. This has happened four times in the case of my own family and families connected by marriage and in practically every case, the old person in question has lived just long enough for the entire worth of the house to be spent before their own demise. The West Germans have an incredibly sensible system to cope with the increasing costs of old age. Using a German-style 2.5% levy on income for over-40s, split between employer and employee contributions ring-fenced for social care, would raise £15bn annually but we seem reluctant, as a society, to adopt this or a similar solution. I always find it both amazing, and also depressing, that the UK does not utilise research teams to study other European societies to see ‘what works’.  Insofar as we import social models, these sometimes seems to take America as their model (and the British Tory party seems as though it wishes to emulate the much derided American model of ‘ICE’, ICE refers to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a government agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws within the United States by locating, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants and targeting criminal activities that support these organisations. The agency was created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But in practice, this is often subcontracted out to the private sector in which masked men with no ID visible (as would be the case for a police officer in the UK) are seizing people almost at random off the streets of large cities in the USA. 

Mid-morning, I made a journey to Worcester by train to meet up with an old near-neighbour from my Winchester days.  We discovered by accident that we were both living in different parts of Worcestershire so we chose a coffee bar near to the station which was equidistant for us both and where we could catch up on old times. Then we popped around the corner to a little square that served light mid-day meals and carried on our long conversation there. So, this made for an interesting day out for both of us and made for a very different Friday. After I had returned home, I received a text from one my Saturday morning friends that we meet in a  slightly different coffee bar for our coffee tomorrow to make the journey a little easier for one of our number – there are now so many coffee bars along the High Street from which we can choose so we thought we try out a different one.

We all know that Donald Trump has been openly lobbying to be awarded the Nobel peace prize for his ‘role’ in the resolution of the Gaza crisis. But Venezuelan opposition leader and pro-democracy campaigner Maria Corina Machado has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee praised her for her ‘tireless work promoting democratic rights… and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy’. It said she had resisted death threats and been forced into hiding in her fight against President Nicolas Maduro – widely considered a dictator.’ When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,’ Nobel added. The committee said Ms Machado had stayed in Venezuela despite personal risk, calling it a ‘choice that has inspired millions of people Democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent, who dare to step forward despite grave risk,’ it said. Apart from the sheer logistics of awarding a prize to Donald Trump when we are only a day or so into the process and all could still unravel, one wonders whether the Nobel prize Committee were indirectly making a point to Donald Trump and the rest of the MAGA movement about the sort of people who are deserving of the Peace prize?

Late in the afternoon before yesterday, I took the bull by the horns and cut the lawns at the back of the house even though the weather was pretty dull and overcast. The grass had grown quite long and luscious but fortunately succumbed to the mower pretty easily and I was glad to get this task done. By my reckoning, I have another cut to do in a fortnight’s time and then the last cut of the year on or about 5th November which is the way I remember the last cut. And on this last cut, the mower has to be drained of petrol and oil to keep it in reasonable condition during the winter months. The news in the evening before yesterday was dominated by a growing anticipation that a deal to end the Gaza conflict was now very nigh and the actual announcement was made but Trump just before midnight. Whilst there are still a lot of unanswered questions, it looks as though in the first phase we shall see the release of all of the Israeli hostages (or their bodies) and there will be an immediate cessation of strikes against Gaza. The feeling in the air is that once these two important events have taken place, it will be much easier to negotiate other things such as the exact shape and composition of the body that will govern Gaza post-conflict and what will happen to the existing members of Hamas who may still be armed? There is a technical and somewhat macabre problem with handing over the dead bodies of the hostages and that is that Hamas is not sure exactly where some of them are. Some may have been in tunnels which have been destroyed by Israeli tunnel-busting munitions, some may have been in hospital morgues ut these have been bombed practically flat in the conflict and finally, some of the Hamas officials who had the known the pf the location of the bodies have been killed and thus the knowledge of the location of the bodies has died with them. So although the Israelis have a number in their records of hostages still alive or of corpses held by Hamas, it is possible that we shall see some heart-rending scenes in Israel when some of the relatives expecting the release of the bodies of their loved ones in order to gain a sense of closure may have this denied to them as literally, Hamas do not know where the bodies are located and at least some of them will be in the rubble of what remains in Gaza. In the next few days, all of this will be played out before our eyes and the news media will be dominated by it. It increasingly looks as though the bombing of Qatar and the attempted assassination of the Hamas negotiators was the final straw that led Trump to lose patience with Netanyahu and force him into a deal. It looks as though the ceasefire will come into effect from mid-day and I wonder what else there is for the Israels to bomb. Nearly all homes have been destroyed or damaged. Entire neighbourhoods have been wiped out, leaving millions of Palestinians displaced and without shelter. Satellite analysis by the UN’s UNOSAT programme found that as of July 2025, nearly 78 percent of all structures across the enclave have been destroyed and the situation will have deteriorated since then as the Israeli army have swept through the whole of Gaza city in recent months. In the final reckoning, it looks as though the 1200 Israeli deaths two years ago is now matched by about 67,000 deaths of Gaza inhabitants which is a kill ratio of about 50:1.

This morning was rather out of the ordinary. Today was the feast day of John Henry Newman, a noted theologian who transferred his allegiance from the Anglican to the Catholic Church. The Pope has recently decreed that he was to be declared a ‘Doctor’ of the church and Newman is the first Englishman in 1,000 years to be so honoured. As he is practically a local saint and could well have visited my local church whilst he was active in the Birmingham area, I thought that he should be commemorated and suggest as such to the Church committee of which I was once a member. To cut a long story short, as I had made the original suggestion for some type commemoration, I was asked if I would undertake some of the readings or the special service to be held on his Feast Day. So, I turned up to the church and the congregation was quite small by Sunday standards. I approached undertaking the readings with some trepidation but all went and I was relieved not to make any fluffs. I also learned that the funeral of the dedicated parishioner who died last week is to be in a week’s time and his widow invited me along to the funeral tea afterwards (and he had come to Meg’s in any case) Afterwards, I came home for some quick elevenses and then shopping to Lidl, calling in at an ATM on the way. As with many other supermarkets these days, Lidl offers personalised offers direct to your smartphone and today the offers amounted to £6.00 which was more than 10% of the entire bill so this particular way of inspiring loyalty has worked in my case. I made myself a meal of curried vegetables with a few bits of ham thrown in an, as usual, I have made far too much so I have saved one half of it but labelled it with today’s date to ensure that it gets eaten up quite rapidly. Tonight, I shall probably watch ‘Question Time‘ but make sure that I am tucked up in bed so that I can fall asleep as soon as the the programme has finished. Beforehand, there is a friendly football of England v. Wales and I might watch that for a little, although these days I much prefer to watch rugby. I find the shirt-pulling and practical arm-wrestling to get or retain possession of the ball in football to be very off-putting and a long way for the traditional shoulder charge which we were taught when I started playing football in the 1950’s. But I acknowledge that the game and society have moved on a lot since then.

In recent days, I have been asked to reapply for my postal vote as the legislation has now changed and I needed to register for the next three years ahead.  I made my application and was subsequently informed that it had been accepted about which I was naturally grateful. But the procedure involved me writing my signature on a piece of paper, then getting a photo of this on my phone and then using this image to accompany one’s application. For me, the process was fairly straight forward but I used the facility in my iPhone to email a photo to my own own account and then in my main computer I was able to transfer the signature image file into a folder from whence it could be retrieved to complete the application. But I did wonder how many seniors and particularly those without the so-called smart phones would be able to complete this exercise unaided? Then a further question occurred to me which is whether council officials would be manually verifying the signature on my voting form when this occurs against the signature held on file but I found the answer online. As you might expect, this process is now completed automatically and the Electoral Commission has produced extraordinarily detailed guidance for the benefit of returning officers. But I ask myself the question whether if there was a mismatch, the voter would be informed? The guidance I have managed to seek on this point is silent on this point but apart from the vote being rejected and/or the police being informed, the answer appears to be a ‘No’ So I wonder how many of the votes of the elderly are actually discounted in elections in the future with the postal vote unaware that their vote had not been counted? I remember quite vividly the case of my own mother when she was in a residential home requesting that she be included on the electoral register only to be informed that they ‘did not do that’ for residents. My mother was passionately concerned that women having had to fight so hard for the vote should always use it and, to her credit, due to her doggedness and her insistence was eventually registered to vote but it was not an easy matter. I doubt any research has been done on the process but given the much greater numbers of the population now in residential homes, I wonder how many of them actually have their votes registered and counted? The rapid advance in technology has meant that the checking of legitimate votes is now much easier but the extent of electoral fraud is officially reported as being extraordinarily low with about 50 convictions in any one year. But there is much more evidence that the numbers of people deterred from voting because of the complexity of the procedures vastly exceeds the amount of recorded fraud and in the United States, this is known as ‘voter suppression’ and is a weapon utilised extensively by the Republicans to gain an electoral advantage. So, we are left in the UK with the distinct impression that the tightening of rules concerning the conduct of elections was less to do with the elimination of fraud than it was to convey an electoral advantage.

In the morning, I decided to go down and visit the Methodist Centre in the middle pf the town to which I used to convey Meg in her wheelchair in the days when I could still get her into and out of the car. The centre contains what is called a ‘chatty’ table where one can usually converse in some pleasant conversation. But today did not turn out as planned and, in fact,  was disappointing to me. After the comings and goings associated with the ‘Strength and Balance’ classes which are a regular staple of Wednesday mornings and eventually  when I surveyed the room I was the only male in a room of about fifteen elderly females. As they were all locals, the topic of conversation revolved around the local schools they had attended in their youth, and the local schools that both their children and then their grandchildren attended. Evidently, I had not heard of any of them and some had even not survived after which the conversation turned to the cancer diagnoses of either themselves or their friends. So I found myself sitting alone,  with the fifteen ladies sitting around the chatty table discussing schools and ailments so having consumed my coffee and cake there was nothing else much to do but to get up and leave. I recognised some of the people by sight but of course they had known each other for decades whilst I was the newcomer. So I returned home not in the best of moods and consoled myself by burying myself deep in a ‘Super Fiendish Sudoku’ which I did manage to solve. Although I had scheduled myself to cut the back lawn, it is very cloudy and overcast at the moment but according to the app on my phone, the weather should improve with some sunshine in the late afternoon so I may delay my gardening activities until then.

Domestic politics continues apace with the Conservatives promising to abolish stamp duty and with the cost of several billions coming from denying sickness benefits to those mental illness adjudged not to be particularly severe. Of course, this hits two Tory targets at once (tax cuts plus benefits reduction). Sky News is reporting as the Tory party conference ends that the brutal findings of the YouGov poll suggesting Conservative members want leader Kemi Badenoch out and a pact with Nigel Farage confirm what the party’s gloomy MPs are telling Sky News here in Manchester. One MP, whose majority slumped from nearly 18,000 to less than 1,500 last year, said a deal with Reform UK was essential to prevent Labour clinging to power at the next general election with support of the Liberal Democrats, nationalists and Greens. Another veteran MP predicted that in the former Conservative stronghold of Essex, where Reform UK won two seats last year, the Tories could lose every seat in the county – including Ms Badenoch’s North West Essex – because of a surge in support for Mr Farage’s party. Of course, the next general election is some years off but there are local elections in May which will be a massive test of the popularity (or lack of it) of the Tories under the leadership of Kemi Badenock.