The evening before yesterday was filled with a visit, with my daughter-in-law to our local arts centre (The Artrix) to view a live feed of ‘La Traviata’ direct from the Royal Opera House in London. When we booked the seats all of the balcony seats were indicated as sold so we did not have a lot of choice half way up the stalls. But when we got to the theatre, there was hardly anybody there and there must only have been 30 people at the most in a 300-seat capacity theatre. The staff explained to us that when the theatre shows tribute bands they are almost completely full but they know that opera will be nowhere near as popular) but, after all, this is Bromsgrove. So, they indicate all of the balcony as being ‘sold’ to give the impression of a much better filled theatre, but they use the profits from the full capacity tribute band audiences to cross subsidise less popular offerings such as opera. My daughter-in-law and I were really enjoying the performance but the sound levels had been set incredibly loud so at the first of  the two scheduled intervals, we had a word with the theatre manager and he moderated the sound to a more acceptable level for us. We really enjoyed the performance and in the last scene where Violetta dies (slowly) in the arms of her  lover, I was weeping copious tears but silently so that nobody would notice in the dark. During the first interval, we had a word with another couple who told me about a Bromsgrove community choir which meets about once a week at the Methodist Centre on Thursday evenings. As men are in short supply (outnumbered about 3:1 by the women) I might be tempted to join this choir, particularly if there are opportunities to socialise afterwards. However, I am not convinced that my singing voice reaches choir standards but it might be worth a try. Both of the lead singers in the opera performance were older than we might to led to expect and the singer who played Violetta had performed the role more than 300 times and this only enhanced rather than detracted a virtuoso performance. Violetta has a huge part and is singing her heart out for most of the opera, but she realises that she is destined to die (from tuberculosis) and so a vein of sadness and impending doom runs through the whole of the opera. When I got home, I texted my Droitwich friend to see if her boys would like one of my spare briefcases as they are both college students and texted over photos of the same before engaging in a little computing before bedtime. I had discovered another little program which manually, rather than automatically, flicks through a series of photos and this had a footprint which was 40% smaller than the previous one to fulfil this function for me and, again, was easy to tweak. So this adds to my little repertoire of useful programs so  need to document it in my software book so that I do not forget how to tweak the program to fit my needs.

Our domestic help called around today rather than two days ago and we had quite to discuss after we had cleared out some material which had been stored under the eaves of the house. This delayed me somewhat so that I  missed the slot for my Tai Chi class but turned up at the very end hoping to make contact with my friendly retired bank manager. He was not there this morning  but four others who I know by sight and myself inhabited the ‘chatty table’ and entertained ourselves with travellers’ tales and the like.  I needed to buy some cleaning products for our domestic help and so left once my hours of parking was due to expire but probably on account of the rain, trying to secure a parking place nearer to the centre proved impossible. At one point, one of the nearby car parks had a queue of six cars waiting to park so eventually I trusted in the faithful  Waitrose car park and walked down into town to secure some cleaning products for my domestic and an (impulse) buy pair of casual trousers for myself. Then I returned home and prepared myself a huge lunch with bits and pieces left over (onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and some greens and made into a huge Spanish omelette. After a delayed lunch, I went for our weekly shopping at Aldi and when this was concluded met up with my Droitwich friend where we discussed some of the practical arrangements for a housewarming party she is organising for a couple of day’s time. After our clearing out activities the other day, I had rather hoped that I was to be spared a long journey to the domestic refuse tip particularly as the old and empty suitcases had disappeared and I made the assumption that the crew on the disposal vehicle had taken them away. But when I collected my wheelie bin from the kerbside, I realised that the removal men had emptied the wheelie bins and then put the abandoned suitcases back inside the wheelie bin. So they are forcing me to make a long and time expensive round trip to try to eventually dispose of these items and it seems a very churlish attitude to refuse to dispose of any additional unwanted items.

There has been another high defection from the ranks of Tory ex-ministers. to the Reform Party. Robert Jenrick has joined Reform UK, Nigel Farage has today confirmed at a press conference in Westminster. The ex-shadow justice secretary was sacked by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch this morning, after she allegedly got wind of his plan to defect – and booted him out of the Conservative Party. As that news broke, Reform leader Nigel Farage played down expectations of Jenrick joining the party, confirming that he had been in talks with the top Tory – but denying that a deal was ‘signed… and sealed’. But events clearly move quickly – as Jenrick has now become the latest, and biggest, high-profile signing for Farage’s outfit. Farage describes it as the ‘latest Christmas I have ever had’. Jenrick then joins him – after a minor panic due to his late arrival. One is very tempted to use the expression ‘rats from a sinking ship’ but that is how appears to most of us. Robert Jenrick was excoriating on the attacks that he made on other Conservatives who until a day ago were fellow members of the Shadow Conservative cabinet.

The previous day and evening had been one of complete frustration as I could not manage to adapt the HTML code with which I had been working to give me my desired rolling automatic display of photos on a particular website. But then just as I was on my way to bed, I had one of those ‘Let us just see?’ moments and went on the web only to find a program that fitted my needs perfectly. This program was beautifully but simply written with some CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) elements as well as Javascript which all give the program its functionality.  Whoever had written the program had evidently done so with ‘maintainabilty’ in prospect because well written programs always have a line of comment so that users such as myself can see what each portion of code does and therefore how it can be tweaked to fit one’s needs. So  I was delighted to find this program which is just what I was looking forward to and was quickly and easily adjusted to my exact needs and served as the perfect end to a day which otherwise had been filled with a certain degree of frustration. So naturally, I will write this up in my book of ‘What have I learnt today?’ so that I can utilise this program whenever I feel the need. Although technically, I did not really need to spend time on this, I like to keep whatever coding skills in relatively good order and reminds you that in the computing world, whatever problem you have or need to fulfil, someone out there has already been there, done that and acquired a solution. But of course, one has to ask the question in the right way to get the solution that one wants.

I was reasonably surprised upon consulting my smart speaker this morning that the initial temperature was -2° because  it did not feel that cold. I think the answer to this conundrum was that in the past few days we have had a fairly icy wind which has made the temperature feel lower than it actually was. I went onto the BBC website and consulted their weather section where they had an extremely good presentation of the week ahead. This was well illustrated with appropriate maps and representations of the weather to come so that now I know that today, is going to be dry and cold, tomorrow a huge band of rain will sweep across the country so good weather clothing is indicated whereas after that the picture is one which is cloudy and showery but with the kind of regime and temperatures  which are about typical for mid January. This particular bot of forecast is so well done I may get into the habit of consulting it quite regularly. In the political news this morning, there is an announcement of a new rail line to be built connecting Birmingham with Manchester but work only to start in the next decade. However, no timescale for when it would be built has been provided – or any other details, such as how it will be funded. The Treasury says it wants a new Birmingham-Manchester rail line, but it will not be a reinstatement of HS2. Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government scrapped a planned extension of HS2 between the two cities in 2023 to save money. Land obtained for HS2 between the West Midlands and northern cities will be kept while the project is developed. A new line would ease pressure on the West Coast Main Line, the government said. This seems like one of those announcements in which the government can claim a lot of credit but any expenditure implications will be left for future governments. I imagine that having already acquired a lot of the land in anticipation of HS2, it was sensible to retain it and use it to eventually enhance the network.

In the morning my son and daughter-in-law came around to help clean out the second of ‘hobbit holes’ giving access to the eaves and used as storage space. This particular hobbit hole had a collection of old suitcases, travel and holiday associated things and a collection of old briefcases. We have evidently retained the best of the suitcases whilst disposing of the remainder and a lot of packaging material and empty boxes have now been disposed of. Contained in one of the briefcases were quite a lot of Meg’s old medical records and it was a little sad to see these scribbled over with lots of notes in her own handwriting. I resisted the temptation to look at these in detail but there was also quite a lot of correspondence from the time of Meg’s enforced retirement which records were now more than 30 years old and well disposed of.We even discovered one or two greeting cards from our wedding which was 58 years ago now. We are now left with two large storage spaces but after we have given them both a big clean out, we shall only store a few select articles there well secured inside plastic boxes and well labelled to boot so we know exactly what is retained. As this was the day when the normal domestic rubbish is put in wheelie bins at the end of the drive, I managed to dispose of several black plastic sacks only to be left with three old but large suitcases ready to be taken to the tip. I have actually placed these on the top of our wheelie bins trusting that the reuse disposal crew who come very early in the morning (at about 8.00am) will take pity on me and throw the empty cases into their vehicle as otherwise I have to make quite a long journey to the tip which takes both time and petrol money. My son and daughter in law brought along some delicious home made mushroom soup as well as home-made mackerel paté so we lunched on these items complete with sourdough bread and this was all delicious. In the afternoon, I needed to go to our local hospital for a routine appointment and, as I was there for a minute or so over the hour paid a car parking fee of £4.40 for a stay of about 65 minutes and it is always incredibly difficult to find a car parking space any time after about 8.30 in the morning.

The evening before yesterday, I finally managed to refurbish some of the skills I used to possess in getting various photo collections online in the form that I wanted. I do have a book which I call ‘What I have learnt today’ and in this book, I document any procedures that I have used in the past but some details may have been forgotten in the meanwhile. By consulting this book, I managed to ascertain that the website that I used both to resize and also to label photos is still in operation as well as another website useful for cropping photos and these websites are now safely stored in some bookmarks for when I need them next. I also succeeded in ensuring that all of the photos that had taken of the cat that used to visit me (Miggles) are all now resized in the same aspect ratio as the originals and this means that I can now give my friend with whom I was in email contact recently the link to the website that displays the photos. I must say that messing about with photograph collections can suck time out of you, particularly  if you do it irregularly and forget some of the key details. The email client that I use allows one to store photographs in the webspace that they provide and, in theory, these are available to be viewed either as a film strip or as a slideshow. Some photos I have uploaded in the past are shown in one mode and some in another so I need to do a certain amount of fiddling about and experimentation to get things the way that I actually want them. Actually, my email client webspace reveals some quite interesting historic family photos but I need to get these displaying  a slideshow mode before I can construct a website that would tie them all together into one access URL. I think that the younger generation probably just take a photo and then make it available on Facebook without all of the messing about with which I am currently engaged. But I have no desire or intention to use Facebook in this particular way, particularly as one’s security details are always potentially at risk. There is a huge row going at the moment because Elon Musk’s ‘X’ social media (formerly Twitter) is now giving users to opportunity to undress and then to publish photos using some of the latest artificial  intelligence models. The British government is pushing back quite vigorously against this development but is being accused of ‘Fascism’ and ‘denying the rights to free speech’ by Elon Musk and the ‘X’ corporation, even though these developments are evidently falling foul of the latest and still rather weak legislation in the Online Safety Act, passed in 2023 but already being overtaken by the marches of technology. In theory, the whole of ‘X’ could be banned in the UK but no government wants to take on the media giants such as Musk who now possess enormous social and political as well as economic power. I am sure that the average users of ‘X’ have no real idea of the uses to which their data will be put once they have been seduced in parting with some of their personal data which can then be manipulated or abused in all kinds of ways. Savvy parents may try and shield their adolescent offspring from these dangers but they are no match for the huge corporations that now dominate the social media scene.

My son called around this morning and he was a welcome visitor as I had not had any social contacts over the weekend, as the bad weather had put paid to some plans that we had to have a meal together over the weekend. At the end of the morning, I attended my Pilates class but it proved to be rather a sad occasion as one of our ‘old faithfuls’ is leaving us to go and live near to her daughter in Dorset, I believe. This makes a total of four of my acquaintances and near neighbours who are selling up to live nearer to their daughters, and all of this is quite understandable, of course but it is always an occasion of sadness when a long-established friend moves away. It was raining hard when I attended my Plates class but upon my return I cooked myself a lunch of quiche and readily steamed vegetables, before continuing working on getting some of my software to work to provide me with rolling displays of some of my collections of photographs. This contained some sources of frustration as some of my collections of photos give me a wonderful rolling display but others do not and I cannot work out why the same software appears to act inconsistently. I struggled it with a bit more in the evening having thought that I had discovered a ‘work around’ solution only ultimately to be thwarted.

We have seen some interesting political news domestically as the former Chancellor (for a few days), Nadhim Zahawi, has now defected to the Reform party. Normally, the defection of a big scalp like this would be seen as a source of celebration but this is not the case today and reaction has been decided mixed. This is because of the move made by Zahari is being perceived as naked political opportunism, devoid of any ideology and only reinforces the nation that firstly, Zahari is only looking after himself and that secondly Reform is becoming a resting place for ‘spent’ Tories. Reform are finding that now having a prominent place in local government is no bed of roses as they are having to manage services which  have to be provided by law but with a funding regime that has been systematically squeezed over the years. Interestingly, Reform-led councils seem to be putting up council tax at the same rate as other political parties and this calls to mind the aphorism of a prominent American  politician of the 19th century that one ‘campaigns in poetry but has to govern in prose’. On the subject of politics, there is now almost daily speculation in the liberal American media about the state of Trump’s mental acuity which seems to be declining fast. He was asked by a fairly friendly reporter when each member of the American public was going to get the $1,000 that he promised as a’bonus’  coming from the tariffs he as imposed. Trump had apparently forgotten that he had made the promise and it is quite evident that it is not going to be honoured. Trump is quite notorious in constantly changing his mind according to the last person that has spoken with him so even close allies are having to factor in that what Trump may promise today may well have been forgotten about by tomorrow.

I awoke yesterday morning to a little nightmare (Meg and I were in a cafe we didn’t know and Meg wandered off and was lost, as was I) from which it was good to wake up and discover that the dream was not true. Fortunately, when Meg was alive this never happened but it is interesting how the subconscious retains these memories and even fears. The temperature this morning was an almost unbelievable 8° and this is predicted to rise to 11° throughout the day, although a lot of rain is forecast to accompany this rise in temperature. The evening before, I was all scheduled to have an early night and to start getting to bed at about 9.30 but I did quick consultation with my emails before retiring. Then I discovered that a long lost friend had sent me a long and informative email so this evoked an equally long reply and what with one thing  or another it was nearly midnight before I finally took to my bed.  During the cold spell, I had invested in a couple of hot water bottles and these have proved very efficacious but I wondered if I could make some covers for them. In one of our kitchen drawers, I located a couple of small kitchen towels which, to be frank, we hardly ever use so I pressed these into service, putting a strip of ‘gaffer’ tape to keep the cloths in place. I expected these to unravel during the night but they did not and actually kept warmer for longer so the plan worked very well. If I can find the time later in the day, I may try to do a little  sewing job on these to make the tea towels into permanent covers but I might be able to prevail upon a friend who I know has a sewing machine to do a quick little job for me as this stitching job might take seconds on a machine or, mote likely, I might scour eBay for some bargains.

In the mornings, I tend to have a quick look at the political news and discovered this morning news that economic protests had broken out in various parts of China. These events are quickly stamped down upon by the authorities and the censors make sure that nothing ever reaches the internet. But in this era of smart phones and the ability to take instant video, then details are leaking out of workers walking out of factories to appeal against low wages which the kind of protest that you associate with the capitalist West rather than China. Perhaps this is a sign that the world economy as a whole is running in trouble and one wonders whether the Trumpian policy of tariffs everywhere is acting as a dampener upon world trade. Now that we are in 2026, I wonder if there will be any commemorations of the General Strike in Britain which started on 3rd May and lasted only for a total of 9 days. I suspect that this event will hardly receive any media coverage although plenty of archive film exists from that time. The (upper class) university students thought it was quite a jolly jape to run the buses and the trains although they probably did not have the skills to do either – after all, to be a train driver was to be a king of the working class in those days. 

Yesterday morning I devoted quite a lot of time to getting an .html program working the way I wanted to display photos of Miggles, the incredibly beautiful tortoiseshell cat who sort of adopted me/us and who I fed night and morning for the best part of seven years before he/she mysteriously disappeared just before Meg’s death. I am in email contact with an old friend who is quite a ‘cat’ person and I wanted to put some of the photos I had into some of my own webspace. I have an .html program which is about ten years old which I have used in the past to display both holiday snaps and wedding photos and it uses some very clever html way beyond my capabilities to display photos with a little index bar so that any particular one can be chosen to view. If the original photos are in a landscape mode then the images are resized to a pretty standard 3:4 aspect ratio but if they were taken in a portrait mode then adjustments have to be made. I have got the images available on the web for my friend to view but I need to go back to some of the originals, discern the original dimensions and then make some adjustments either to the images or the code that displays them (or both) This took up most of the morning so I was pretty late getting down into town for my newspaper and then cooking myself some lunch later in the afternoon  than normal. I am on Day 1 of a regime in which I am moving slowly towards a 16:8 diet regime in which I eat nothing after about 6.30pm at night and then see if I can hold out until 10.30 the following day for breakfast. I managed it this morning and it will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes – but cups of tea are allowed at any time. 

Not being a pet owner, I have no real idea of the cost of vets’ bills but I gather they are pretty enormous these days. BBC are showing a Panorama programme asking the question why these bills are so high. In the trailer for the program, the information was given that about half of the households in the UK  own a pet and that, increasingly, big business have moved in so that now we have a situation in which 60% of the market is controlled by just six large companies. Vets have told BBC Panorama they feel under increasing pressure to make money for the big companies that employ them – and worry about the costly financial impact on pet owners. Prices charged by UK vets rose by 63% between 2016 and 2023, and the government’s competition regulator has questioned whether the pet-care market – as it stands – is giving customers value for money. One anonymous vet, who works for the UK’s largest vet care provider, IVC Evidensia, said that the company has introduced a new monitoring system that could encourage vets to offer pet owners costly tests and treatment options. A spokesperson for IVC told Panorama: ‘The group’s vets and vet nurses never prioritise revenue or transaction value over and above the welfare of the animal in their care.’

I am so relieved that the intense cold spell now seems to be over – my Smart speaker which is interrogated each morning as I make my early morning cup of tea tells me that the temperature today is 2° but predicted to rise to 11° throughout the day, which is surely to be welcomed. I have started off the day in a really positive mood so that that even a little mishap with a lampshade is not going to perturb me.  Incidentally, the positive march of technology strides on. I have a flashlight which is incredibly useful in case of emergencies/peering into dark corners but I cannot find the recharging cable for it anywhere – I suppose it will turn up but a frantic search of all of my cables used for charging phones and the like has not revealed it. I think a flashlight like this is quite an essential household commodity so I ordered a new one, hoping that the new cable supplied would fit both but the old flashlight was ordered 10 years ago in any case. My newly arrived flashlight arrived yesterday and I could not be more pleased with it. It had a 2 year warranty, cost one half as much as I paid ten years ago but is three times the brightness. As a bonus (if I lose the cable again which I will not, as I am going to find a little bag to keep the requisite cable in – rechargeable like a phone). Then I can also put normal AA batteries in rather than the re-chargeables. So I am mega pleased with this purchase, as you might imagine. 

A bizarre international story has emerged this morning. We know that Donald Trump earnestly desires the Nobel Peace prize which is particularly ironic given his warlike intentions towards Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, Syria, Iran etc. etc. The organisation that oversees the Nobel Peace Prize has dismissed claims that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado could give her recent award to President Donald Trump. The Norwegian Nobel Institute said Friday that once a Peace Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, transferred, or shared.’ The decision is final and stands for all time,’ it said. The statement comes after Ms Machado said she would like to give or share the prize with Mr Trump, who oversaw a US operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

This is the time of year for New Year resolutions and these nearly always revolve around four themes which are diet (including drink), exercise, better habits to develop and finally new skills to acquire. I am certainly on board with the first three of these but I suppose I now have no excuse not to try to develop some keyboard skills, given that I have my Casio upon which to play (not to mention the organ acquired through eBay for £15.75 but hardly played) I suspect that I need to devote 30 minutes or so each and every day at about the same time to develop my musical skills but I am never going to make concert pianist standard. I have concentrated in the past upon slow and reflective pieces such as Offenbach’s ‘Barcarolle’, Shenandoah (the traditional American folk song dating from the early 19th century but actually of unknown or at least disputed origin) Even ‘Ode to Joy’ can be very simply played with just one hand and hardly anything to remember.  My son and I had some plans that he and wife would pop over for some Sunday lunch but it was not to be. The area to which he has moved which is only some five miles away is in the lee of the Lickey Hills (between Bromsgrove and Birmingham) and although not being very high, it certainly means that the area as a whole catches the snow and it had frozen on top of that as well, so digging one’s way was an impossibility. I was philosophical about this but it did make for a much longer and lonesome weekend as my other nearby friends seem to be either away on holiday or confined to the house with cold symptoms. In the evening, there was a film about the pilgrimage routes across Europe by Simon Reeve and he focused on the Camino de Santiago, and the pilgrimage site of San Giovanni Rotondo which is devoted to the Italian Saint Padre Pio in which the Italian authorities have invested enormous amounts of money in the construction of modern buildings to make this pilgrimage site a centre for internal Italian tourism. Naturally the program had to finish with a trip to Rome and to the Vatican seeing the shots of pilgrims in the square outside the Cathedral of Santiago earlier in the programme brought memories flooding back, given that Meg and I used to visit this cathedral every year that we visited in friends in La Coruna. After viewing this program, I had every intention of having a relatively early night by going to bed at about 9.30pm. But before I went to bed, I consulted my emails and discovered a very long and informative email from an old friend of whom so I felt constrained to answer at equal length so it was practically midnight when I actually limb up the wooden hills.

The liberal American media outlets that I access on a daily basis on ‘YouTube‘ are still filled with righteous indignation over the shooting dead of an an American woman who was attempting to flee in her car from the clutches of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Despite the efforts of the Trump establishment who are attempting to denigrate the woman and called her a ‘domestic terrorist’ a whole volume of video clip exists which proves pretty definitively that the American woman was shot in the head with three shots by an ICE officer who may well traumatised by a previous incident some six months earlier. The Trump regime have already announced that the ICE officer will not be charged with any offence or otherwise investigated and the FBI have announced that they will conduct their own investigation which is a bit of a farce because the ICE officer has already been declared innocent by the president, the vice-present and the head of Homeland Security. It appears to many that the ICE force, using heavy handed tactics and often with no identification marks and masked to boot, are acting as Trump’s own private army to spread fear through all of the cities which are Democrat controlled and where immigration, both legal and undocumented, is high.

I was hopeful that yesterday morning when I awoke at about 7.30am was to be the last of the ‘cold snap’ But my smart speaker informed me that the temperature outside was -1° but was predicted to rise to about 2°  in the warmest part of the day which at about midday. After that, we should  expect a period of warmer but extremely wet winds rush in from the Atlantic so any last vestiges of snow will be swept away but I imagine that some communities will be badly affected by the ensuing floods. My son and daughter-in-law ere due to come around for lunch and I indicated that  would cook them a meal which would be the first ‘meat and two vegetables’ meal I will have had for several days now.  This morning as I get up and look at the international news, sone extraordinary statements are being made about the future of Greenland, the territory whose foreign relationships are under the jurisdiction of Denmark.  Trump has indicated that he will acquire Greenland ‘one way or another’ although every analyst seems agreed that the USA already has a base there and the ability to bring back into use many other bases that are spread across the land. The Trump argument, certainly specious, is that if America does not ‘acquire’ Greenland then either China or Russia will step in and seize it but America needs Greenland for its own defence. But the real reasons are probably related to the vast store of rare earth minerals that the landmass contains if only they can be exploited (which may be difficult and expensive which is why this has not happened before) But given that Trump is governed by symbolism, I think he is dreaming of a standard map where it looks as though the USA will appear so much bigger if it incorporated Greenland. But the total U.S. Area is approximately 9.8 million sq km (3.8 million sq miles) whereas the Greenland Area is roughly 2.1 million sq km (836,000 sq miles). Thus Greenland is about one-fourth the size of the lower 48 states. but Greenland is roughly 2.5 times bigger than Alaska. The problem with our views of all of this lies in the Mercator projection in which the standard flat maps stretch areas near the poles, making Greenland look similar in size to Africa, when Africa is actually over 14 times larger. So if the USA does ‘acquire’ Greenland, no doubt the USA authorities will continue to display land masses using the Mercator projection. But an extraordinary statement came from the Danish government overnight. After detailing how Denmark had been a loyal member of NATO and friend to the United States over the decades in a whole series of international conflicts, nonetheless the standard instructions given to the Danish army that they shoot any invading forces on sight ‘with no questions asked’ So we have the prospect of heavily armed American troops invading Greenland being shot and returning fire killing whatever lays before them. In the history of colonial America, this will have happened before with the original native peoples as well as Mexico. In the case of Mexico, in the major battles in which Mexico was acquired by force of conquest the Americans lost 50 men but estimates are that the Mexicans lost 1000 which is twenty times as many. Of course such a conflict would be the death of NATO in which the MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideologues would rejoice whilst the Russians and the Chinese would not be able to contain their glee than an important alliance dissolves in front of them.

The planned midday meal with my son and daughter-in-law did not materialise as their car was snowed in and they would have to wait for a thaw to occur before it could be released. In the next 24 hours, there is predicted to be a rise in temperature by 10° and some heavy bouts of rain so this ought to wash away much of the snow and slush. I filled my day with writing some emails to people with whom I wanted be in contact and a big sort out of the newspapers where about a week’s worth of papers needed perusing for interesting articles. At the start of the year, quite a lot of newsprint is devoted to makeovers and the typical subjects at this time of year are finances, diet and exercise. But during the course of the day, I did come across a very interesting piece of video from a British physiotherapist giving some practical advice on how to exercise if one is experiencing any osteoarthritis (which may apply to one of my knees after I was run over by a car decades ago) The physiotherapist was not impressed by the response of most doctors which was ‘fair wear and tear – hare are some pills’. He argued that even cartilage could repair itself over time and all that was needed was a gentle but consistent exercise programme with one or two exercises but performed two or three times daily. This approach may save me a trip to my own doctor so I shall put the recommendations into effect almost as soon as possible.

I do not normally follow domestic football very much (internationals are another matter) but an extraordinary victory was gained by non-League Macclesfield over Crystal Palace who won the FA Cup last May. The difference if league table positions between  the two sides was 117 places which is itself a new record. Every year in the FA Cup there are the so-called ‘giant killers’ where a smaller club knocks out a much larger and more prestigious one but this particular victory seems to have rewritten the record books. What is not often appreciated is the little ‘giant killers’ will almost certainly be knocked out in the next round but they will receive a big boost in gate money and TV fees when they play more prestigious opponents in the next round and this one time boost an help to stabilise the club’s finances which,  in the lower divisions,  are often precarious. Formerly known as Macclesfield Town, the Cheshire club was wound up in 2020 with debts of more than £500,000 and reformed as Macclesfield FC the same year, playing in the North West Counties Football League (NWCFL) Premier Division. The shock scoreline has echoes of other famous upsets by non-league teams in the world-famous tournament, such as Hereford’s 2-1 win over Newcastle in 1972 and Blyth Spartans’ 3-2 victory over Stoke City six years later.

The evening before last before I went to bed, we were evidently waiting for the huge storm to do its worst. Before I went to bed at 10.00pm I looked out and saw that the car had about 1″ of snow on its windscreen which I removed with a little long handled brush which I just happen to have to hand. This morning, the snow was not as bad as was predicted and I also removed the additional 1″ of snow that had fallen overnight and I can tell from the distribution of snow on our lawns that things could have been a lot worse. I exchanged text messages with my son and with my Droitwich friend to ascertain what snow conditions were like. My Droitwich friend had hardly had any snow at all whilst her friend who lives in Bromsgrove and nearer to Birmingham had received much heavier snow falls. As it is the GCSE ‘mocks’ for the boys in their family starting today, then getting into school was quite important but my friend’s boys had managed to make it into school whilst some of their classmates (and presumably fellow examinees) had not. In the morning, I intend to get fully kitted up and will then walk into town but only if things seem relatively safe. I shall deploy a trekking pole as well to have 2-3 points of contact with the ground. In the evening before yesterday, I had received a welcome invitation which was to join a coach party organised to go around Jodrell Bank radio telescope in Cheshire in late March, organised as an outing for U3A (University of the Third Age) to which I belong. I replied as soon as I could to the email and was delighted to learn that I was into the system and so I organised the payment of the outing fee via bank transfer to endure that I had a place. After Meg and I had completed our finals at Manchester University, one of her social policy tutors organised a garden party to which our son, then still quite a new-born babe, went along and was the centre of attention. The tutor’s house was practically in the shadow of the radio telescope which obviously dominates the landscape but that is the nearest that we have been to it. Evidently if there are other trips as interesting as this one, I shall continue to sign up for them immediately and as well as the trip itself being inherently interesting, you are also in the company of like-minded people. As well as the radio telescope itself, there are lots of other things included and the outing particulars tells me that ‘we will be able to browse various interactive Science Exhibitions, take a stroll through the Arboretum and take a break and/or refreshments in the on-site café. Leaving Jodrell Bank we travel on to visit the historic market town of Nantwich which is famed for its many medieval timber-framed buildings, Roman salt production and more recently its many independent shops. The nearby canal offers the opportunity for gentle strolls along its banks.’ So all in all, this sounds a wonderful day out and as the date happens to be the date of my son’s birthday, one I am not likely to forget.

I planned to walk down into the town today and this was surprisingly easy as the pavements had been walked on and the snow turned to slush whilst the roads were absolutely clear. I picked up my newspaper and had my customary coffee but did not bump into anyone with whom to chat – I see that the house where Clive the trumpeter used to live with his family has been sold and the family moved to the other end of town. I called in on my Italian friend but she was so poorly we could only have a few snatched words through a (closed) downstairs window.  In fact, on the way back from town I was nearly run over when I was crossing a side road that runs off the Kidderminster Road. I am always particularly  careful on crossing roads and the vast majority of motorists are generally considerate when they see me half across the road but this one was not.

My attention has been absorbed and for understandable reasons about the aftermath of the 37 year old (white) mother of three shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis yesterday. One way or another, there seems to be massive amounts of footage of this incident and the New York Times as well as other media have pored over the footage frame by frame.  From this it is evident that Trump, Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have not only rushed to judgement but are evidently lying through their teeth about what happened. It is evident to the vast majority of observers that the victim was trying to escape the clutches of the ICE agents and was in no way trying to run them over as the video footage makes abundantly clear. In fact, the whole collection of video footage could be shown as a training exercise for all law enforcement officers as an example of how NOT to deal with a situation like this. One near neighbour has observed with a great deal of acumen that ‘it is more legitimate for a motorist to panic and to attempt to flee than it is legitimate  for an ICE agent to fire three shots through an open side window of a car and kill the driver’ In the fullness of time, we may see prosecutions but the polarised situation in the USA means that he FBI are solely responsible for any investigations, including of course the body-cams of the ICE agents (which I predict will ‘disappear’) One legal expert has also hypothesised  that an ICE agent who got into his car and then drove away was interfering with a crime scene and this was an offence in itself. I have a feeling that this is going to run and run.

An interesting sign of the times is reported on Sky News. Weight-loss jabs has forced Greggs to change their menu. Greggs chief Roisin Currie says the rise of weight-loss jabs has hit the baker’s bottom line. There is ‘no doubt’ that appetite-suppressing drugs mean customers are looking for smaller portions, healthier options and fibre, she says. Protein has also become the focus of a ‘broader health trend’, so smaller portions and protein-rich products will be rolled out to meet demand, the company previously said. In another sign of changing diets, Tesco’s fresh food sales rose by 6.6% in the 19 weeks to January compared with a year earlier – and the supermarket sold 250,000 bottles of alcohol-free prosecco.

I awoke pretty tired yesterday after the exertions of the day before but I am pleased to have the weekly shopping done and out of the way. But the world is waking up to the fact that Donald Trump is determined to get his hands on Greenland, if only for the self-aggrandisement of bring able to paint a map of America which is much bigger in terms of land mass than it is now. The US president knows no European nation would seriously try to stop him by force because they would lose. He is also probably gambling that Washington could get away with an Arctic land grab, as the rest of NATO needs the US more than he needs them. Of course, diplomatic charm offensives or backroom deals may yet prevail, but the uncomfortable truth when it comes to Trump’s calculations is that he has a point. Decades of over-reliance by most NATO nations on American fighting power, weapons, and technology mean the ability of the transatlantic alliance to defend itself without the US (let alone counter a threat from Washington) has become dangerously compromised. So we are living in a world that predates WWII in which military powers such as Hitler’s Germany thought they could overrun and annexe any adjacent territory at will. But the world as a whole is unwilling to confront Trump because in the last analysis there is no European force that could match the military might that Trump could bring to bear. The population of Greenland is only about 57,000 being the same size as a medium size town in the UK.

My Tai Chi classes are resuming tis week and it really was ‘touch and go’ whether I turned up to attend it. There were only five of us there this morning instead of the usual dozen and I gather that black ice had deterred  some people from attending. After a break of at least a fortnight, I found the session left me with some aching muscles but, in the. event, I forced myself to go. After our session I had a coffee with a chap who is a similar age to myself and who since his wife died  seems to open up the premises and act as a general caretaker most mornings. I was joined by a lady whose company I would not have actively sought as she seems to be one of lifer’s perpetual moaners whatever the topic of conversation turns out to be. She pointed out to be that since she had moved to Bromsgrove from elsewhere in the Midlands, she had found it very difficult to make any new friends and given her constant demeanour of always finding fault with the things and people around her, I was not particularly surprised. I paid a quick visit to Aldi to buy some more of the non-alcoholic wine I bought yesterday and given it was so cheap yesterday (and I suspect they had underpriced it by 80% according to a newspaper review I read of it) I was dismayed but not at all surprised to find that the entire stock had gone. After I returned home, I hunted out some of the risotto I made on New Year’s Day and that is my lunch for today.

The piece of video evidence that has emerged on the liberal social media channels in the US is genuinely shocking. It shows a mother, in Minneapolis aged 37 stopped in her car by agents of ICE (Immigration and Enforcement Control) who, when she reversed her car in a three point turn and tried to escape in her car, was shot three times (once through the windscreen, twice through a side window) The ICE agents refused to let a nearby doctor attend to her to see of she could be saved. The White House have immediately put out a tendentious statement, totally at variance with what the video clip displays saying that the woman had weaponised the car, was trying to injure an ICE agent and then they shot her ‘in self defence’ But the video clip shows an ICE agent attempting to open the door of a slowly moving car before the driver was shot and she had clearly panicked and was effecting a three point turn and then trying to escape. Naturally community tensions are now running very high and, in the opinion of many with a multitude of not well trained ICE agents roaming the streets of big American cities pulling in anybody who appears non-white, this was an accident waiting to happen. But what is so striking is the vicious condemnation of the shot woman and a justification for the killing which looks absolutely spurious when the video clip of the incident is played over and over again. I suppose if the residents of Minneapolis came out in their thousands, they could force the ICE agents off the streets but then a quasi-civil way would be in progress.

At the moment, we are all hunkering down and waiting for the huge storm to hit us later on this evening. According to the weather apps on our phones, we can expect the storm to start at about 8.00 in the evening and then carry on for most of the night. Storm Goretti – the first named storm of the year – hits the UK tonight and is bringing with it a ‘weather bomb’. The phenomenon, also known as explosive cyclogenesis or bomb cyclone, can result in snow and winds strong enough to bring down trees and cause structural damage. The process has been likened to when ice skaters spin faster by drawing their arms in, according to the Met Office. So no doubt we shall have to wait until the morning dawns to see what dump of snowfall we have had. I have just received through my email an invitation to join a group of U3A (University of the Third Age) members on a visit to Jodrell Bank radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in late March. I have filled in an email form for this but have to wait until I discover if I have been lucky enough to secure one of the (no doubt) coveted spaces.I joined the U3A group late last year after Meg’s passing  but this is just the sort of organised trip which it really is too good to miss – we get transported there and back by coach leaving from Bromsgrove bus station to which I can easily walk (if I am fortunate enough to secure a place)

There is an expression that one has to be ‘thankful for small mercies’ and I felt that when I got up this morning and discovered that the weather was actually above freezing at 2° which is some 6° higher than yesterday and predicted to rise by a few degrees during the day. Upon drawing back my bedroom curtain, I could discern a fairly thick blanket of cloud rather than the clear skies that have greeted us in the past few days and so even storm clouds have a gently warming effect. Having  said that, we are very much in the ‘calm before the storm’ period as the first major storm of the winter, codenamed ‘Goretti’, is due to strike Northern France on Thursday and Friday. Storm Goretti is expected to move across the south of the country on Thursday and into Friday, bringing with it rain, snow and strong winds. Heavy snow is likely to develop over higher ground in South Wales later on Thursday, before rain turns to snow more widely across parts of England and Wales overnight. Forecasters say 5 to 10 cm of snow could settle in some areas, with up to 20 cm possible on higher ground. A yellow weather warning for snow, covering large parts of Sheffield, Peterborough, Bath and Worcester, and in much of Wales, will be in place from 6pm on Thursday until midday Friday. So I was somewhat dismayed to see that Worcester is named as a town liable to receive significant snow, particularly as it is only 15 miles away from our house and one can only hope that the protective distance may save us from the worst. The whole of Wales is liable to be impacted by the storm and, as is always the case, it is not so much the actual snow but the accompanying strong winds that can cause snow to drift and certainly makes on feel colder. So this is the first morning for the best part of three weeks that I have not come down the stairs and put the Christmas tree lights on but, in a completely nerdish way, I have consulted the special calendar I have printed off that tells me that we have the whole of an extra 2 minutes of daylight today compared with yesterday. The global situation is still dominated by the news which seems almost incredible that Donald Trump seems to be intent on acquiring the mineral wealth of Greenland by hook or by crook. Sky News reports that President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland ‌is a national security priority ‌of the United States and it is vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important ‌foreign policy goal, ⁠and of course, utilising the ‌US military is always an option at the commander-in-chiefs disposal What I had not fully appreciated until the news broke recently is that the US military already have a strong presence across Greenland. The U.S. has one main military base in Greenland: Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, focused on missile warning and space surveillance under a long-standing defence agreement with Denmark. While there were numerous U.S. installations during the Cold War, most have closed, with Pituffik remaining as the primary permanent installation, supporting about 150 personnel year-round, plus seasonal visitors like the New York Air National Guard. Some analysts are saying that given the huge land mass of Greenland (mainly frozen rock making mineral extraction expensive) Trump’s real motivation is just to add Greenland to the existing maps of the United States as coloured in the ‘Stars and Stripes’ it makes the USA appear much larger than it is always is and this feeds into Trump’s paranoia. If one NATO ally invades another, then some analysts have predicted the end of NATO but a more likely scenario is for NATO to exist but much weakened and with the USA suspended from it (until such time as there might be dramatic political change within the USA itself).

My son and daughter-in-law called around mid morning because we had decided that as threesome we would start to clear out what we affectionately call the ‘hobbit holes’ As the house is constructed as a dormer bungalow, the so-called ‘hobbit holes’ are small doors which give access to the eaves of the house  which we use for storage purposes. We set to work on what we imagined might be the smallest of these but found a multiplicity of things. These ranged from bedding such as duvets and bed linen but all needed for single beds so we had evidently brought them with us from our previous house. We also discovered a lot of packaging we had been saving, Christmas wrapping paper, wet weather gear that we used when climbing in the Lake District such as cagoules, over-trousers and boot socks and miscellaneous bits and pieces such a fan heater (with a broken plastic  foot), a set of steamer pans and all kinds of other things. We quickly junked at anything that looked beyond use and a few items that looked as though they had been mouse-nibbled in the past. Bur anything still in it’s original packaging or capable of current us we made into a separate pile destined for a charity store. We deliberated over how to dispose of two single bed duvets in their boxes but decided to take these to the local tip where they might be added to specialist recovery skip, as we had been led to believe. But the site operative insisted that duvets had to be thrown into ‘irrecoverables destined for landfill’ skip and so with a heavy heart, this was the skip into which  they were thrown. I console myself a little  that the energy that I might use to wash and then dry these duvets might be of a drain on the earth’s resources than would be gained by their recovery. After disposing of a car load of junk, I motored into town and got some  money out of an ATM before I went shopping in my local Aldi. Then I needed to call in at Waitrose  to collect a copy of ‘The Times’ and finally returned home in the dark where one more major task awaited me. As the local authority is using newly designed ‘wheelie bins’ for the disposal pf general, paper and garden waste , the older versions of the bins have to be hauled to the kerbside for collection first thing in the morning This took three trips to the end of our access road and the of course I needed to unpack the shopping. So all in all it has ben a pretty full day and I feel pretty tired at the end of it all.

Yesterday I awoke to a temperature of -5° and this was predicted to rise to just above freezing in the course of the day. A day or so ago, I ordered a couple of hot water bottles and they arrived in the evening and were promptly pressed into use. There is an area at the foot of the bed where the electric blanket does not reach so these hot water bottles proved to be especially welcome. Conscious of the fact that that, as the Scandinavians say, ‘there is not bad weather, only inappropriate clothing’ so I took the opportunity to wear my recently acquired warm winter shirt, a thin jumper as well as a thick jumper and an extra pair of socks (which I just put on when I go out of doors) It looks as though for the rest of this week and probably next week, the cold weather will continue but very slightly less cold than in the last day or so – but the possibility increases of snow across the Midlands although so far it has seemed too cold to snow. The political news seems just as bleak to most observers. Donald Trump has announced that he is very serious about acquiring Greenland but whether he intends to just march in or to formerly annex the territory as the 51st American state is unclear. The new Trump doctrine is that America ‘needs’ Greenland by which is meant access to rare earths and minerals. Greenland possesses vast, largely untapped reserves of rare earths and critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, niobium, and zirconium, making it a significant potential supplier for green energy tech, electronics, and defence, though development faces logistical challenges and political complexities, including debates over mining’s environmental impact. Its geology holds substantial deposits, notably at Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld, attracting international interest as the West seeks alternatives to China for these vital resources. The reaction of the rest of Europe to these latest Trump announcements has been muted and certainly not the outright and forthright condemnation which one would have thought is the natural response. Some analysts are saying that this all spells the end of Nato because an alliance can hardly be said to exist if one partner (USA) just seizes the territory of another. One is tempted to sat that the Europeans are playing a long tactical game and are awaiting the demise of Trump in the form of ill-health or political opposition in the USA itself but this hope may be a vain one as there is likelihood  that any successor to Trump such as J D Vance the Vice-President will happily continue with these Trump policies. Meanwhile, Putin in Russia must be rubbing his hands in glee as he seems to have been given the green light to walk all over Ukraine and the Baltic states and the Chinese will surely choose their moment to fulfil their own territorial ambitions. The Chinese may be waiting for the day when the USA takes over Greenland (if it does) as the attention of the world may be distracted and what a wonderful opportunity to take over Taiwan. Now that we are in the first full week of January, people across the country are taking down their decorations and I am going to seize the opportunity to do the same with the assistance of our domestic help who, hopefully, will battle through in the face of the bad weather.

I was absolutely delighted that with the assistance of my domestic help, I now have all of the Christmas decorations taken down. Normally, the house appears incredibly bare for the first few hours or day or so after  decorations are down but a lot less so on this particular occasion – perhaps the couple of captain’s chairs that I have facing each other and together with the wonderful family chest-cum-heirloom which cane from my father’s house (via my sister) have restored a feeling of normality to our hall. All of the decorations are neatly bundled up and although I removed them from the loft on my own, putting them back is a little trickier so I will reply upon my son’s assistance to do that in the morning. I did go to the Pilates session in the middle of the day and there are five of us regulars who have attending this class for years together. But next week will be a rather sad occasion because one of our number has sold her house and is now going down to Christchurch to live near to her married daughter, all of which I quite understand and so next week will be the last occasion that we shall see her- no doubt hugs (and perhaps some tears) all round. As it was quite late and I had to make extra journeys both for bread and also to hunt out a not-sold-out copy of ‘The Times‘ I just had a quickie type lunch spreading a pate and some soft spreadable choose on two slices of my recently purchased sourdough bread. Sourdough’s special qualities come from its slow, natural fermentation using wild yeast and bacteria (a starter), giving it a unique tangy flavour, chewy texture, and making it often easier to digest, potentially gentler on blood sugar, and more nutritious by breaking down compounds like phytic acid to improve mineral absorption. Tonight, I am going to have some vegetable soup which my domestic help very thoughtfully cooked for me to save me cooking when I got home late from Pilates (which was so thoughtful of her)

I always see what is going to be on the TV to be viewed after I have had my tea and this evening is one of those occasions where there is a clash of really good programmes. There are repeats of two episodes of ‘Yes Minister’ which doubtless I have seen before but the pleasure of watching them over and over again never diminishes. Then there is a very good food programme on Channel 4. giving is the low-down on the junk food to avoid which looks interesting. There is also going to be documentary programme giving the real facts behind ‘Operation Mincemeat’ which was viewed a couple of nights ago. As this programme is transmitted at 9.00pm and I want to get into good habits of not being too late to be, I may well ensure that I am all tucked warm in bed with electric blankets and, possibly, hot water bottles so that I can watch this in bed and it does really matter if I doze off in the middle of it.