Yesterday was actually my son’s birthday – of course, parents remember  the birthday vividly of their first born (and in my case, only) son. All those years, I actually helped to deliver him as they were short-staffed that night in the maternity hospital – plus ça change! As I remember it, he was born at about 5.23 on a Monday morning. I remember walking back from the hospital, feeling elated and we drank to the new born baby’s heath in the flat I was sharing with my university friends with NHS Orange juice and gin. In those days, new delivered mothers and mothers about to give birth were supplied with excellent orange juice but upon some investigation find that this  practice did not survive for very long after my son’s birth. NHS welfare orange juice was officially withdrawn for young babies on 31st December 1971.The supply of this concentrated, sweetened orange juice, which had been provided to children under five since 1941 to combat vitamin C deficiency, was replaced by synthetic vitamin drops and tablets. All that I can remember was that it tasted very good and the Spring morning and the daffodils in full bloom. Meg was discharged from hospital very quickly as in those days she was regarded as an older mother (at the age of 21!) as most mothers were then aged about 16. Both my son and I got up promptly at 6.00am because I needed to up in plenty of time before my trip out for the day to Jodrell Bank and he needed to motor over to his flat to open up for the kitchen fitters who are making very good progress with the installation of his new kitchen and may be finished in a few days time. An interesting snippet of news from the USA emerged yesterday morning to brighten at least some of our day. The Democrats have won a Florida special election, flipping a state legislative district that is home to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Emily Gregory, a first-time candidate, beat Republican Jon Maples, who had been endorsed by Mr Trump. Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, declared: ‘If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what is possible this November.’ That refers to the upcoming midterms, when the Democrats will be looking to inflict major damage upon the Trump presidency with potential wins in the House of Representatives and Senate. Actually, it is only one of a series of electoral defeats inflicted on Donald Trump but flipping the constituency in which Trump has his stately pile must be especially sweet for the local Democrats. Trump’s hold on reality seems to be more and more challenged these days as he recently tweeted that a CNN poll indicated that he now received 100% support  from the electorate, but the most recent opinion poll from CNN put Trump with an approval rating of 37% and a disapproval rating of 60% If this is sustained until the Autumn mid-term elections in November, then it spells the end of Republican control of the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate as well.

Yesterday was the day of my trip to Jodrell bank so I walked down into town to pick up a copy of my daily newspaper and then made my way to the bus station. The coach arrived fairly promptly and as we set off, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my travelling companion in the seat next to me was the person ho I had met in the Musical Appreciation Group who had worked at the National Lending Library in Yorkshire but some eight years after me. We carried on exploring our joint experiences of working both before and leaving university and the journey to Jodrell Bank flew by in no time at all and we arrived just after 11.00am. The weather was pretty cold upon our arrival and we were given a map which  showed which of the various sites we could visit for free and which we needed to pay £5 per site to visit. I think that some of us, including myself, were expecting some kind of guided tour but instead we were rather left to our devices. By this  stage and after an early start, many of us headed for the coffee shop to regale ourselves before we sampled some of the (free) exhibition sites and films. We left the site at 2.00pm (although originally scheduled for 1.00pm) and then made our way to Nantwich which was about three quarters of an hour away. Here it is was bitterly cold and many of made for a nearby parish church which  was more like a small scale cathedral and reminded me very much, probably because of its use of a local red sandstone, as a sort of miniature Chester cathedral. We admired some of the misericordias (half seats in the choir stalls used probably by choristers inn the past so they could half stand, half sit during long church services) On a local recommendation many of us made for a highly recommended local book store which  also incorporated refreshment facilities. As it as so bitterly cold outside and I had had only one sandwich for lunch. I treated myself to a bowl of soup and a roll which was delicious and many of the party ended up in this particular locale. Then at 4.00pm we started the journey back to Bromsgrove where we arrived just after 6.30 I chatted to the same travelling companion all the way back and again we had an entertaining talk. What was interesting when I asked around several of the other visit members and when I responded to some of the questions that I was asked, it appeared that many of them of they had been widowed then it was a period some 15-10 years ago and not recently. To that extent, I was regarded as a relative newcomer to the group but everybody with whom I spoke seemed very friendly and not at all stand offish. I was a little dismayed that I had taken a little travelling case with me but my coffee flash had leaked into it. When I got it home, turned it inside out and then gave it a good cleaning, it fell to bits in my hands but then I calculated that it was about thirty thee yeas old so perhaps it was not a wonder that the seams had rotted away.

When I awoke yesterday morning, it was to be of those days when, as you look out of the bedroom window, the sky appears to a mixture of grey and a light murky yellow. The day promises to be quite a fine one in the morning once the cloud has burned off but we are to expect increasingly cloudy conditions into the afternoon. Whilst  was preparing my early cup of morning cup of tea, I decided to see what my forthcoming musical presentation would sound like if played on my ancient iPad. To my surprise, it came out as quite an acceptable sound and, despite the occasional advert as we are relying upon YouTube, and a combination of the videoclips accompanying the arias I have chosen and the music itself will give me the overall effect I am trying to achieve. Of course, I will be making the point that my love of Mozart operas is not only a treat for the ears but a visual as well as an emotional journey as each entry is played. I have to admit that playing my iPad in my kitchen gives a slightly different effect as there are plenty of hard surfaces from which the sound can rebound, rather than the soft furnishings of a living room, but nonetheless playing the presentation over to myself reminds me of what I intend to say about each item on the agenda.

Quite a shocking and unusual accident is being reported upon as I write as a plane flying from Montreal in Canada has crashed into a fire truck in La Guardia airport in New York. As the nose of the plan struck the fire truck, the nose of the plane reared into the air and both the pilot and the co-pilot have been killed outright whereas all of the passengers appear to be safe although some are injured. This is one of the most unusual types of aeroplane accidents that I can ever remember as it is often the case that passengers who suffer most badly in an air crash and not the pilots. No doubt many more details will emerge but it appears that the firetruck was responding to a separate incident at the time. One would have thought that a firetruck is more than capable of getting out of the way of a large plane rather than the other way around but we will have to see what emerges. According to the news breaking last night, The American ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is planning to enter every airport in the United States and arrest those they deem to be illegal immigrants almost the minute they step off the plane. There is already  an agency within the US charged with the tasks of ensuring security and it is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) which is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has authority over the security of transportation systems within and connecting to the United States. However, the Trump administration has transformed ICE into a practically private army which roams around  American cities to do Trump’s bidding and, of course, it was ICE agents that killed two American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis before the local population rose up and effectively demanded that their city be left alone. What is so frightening about the personnel recruited  to ICE is that they are very heavily armed, are masked to avoid identification, do not appear to have any IDs evident to the outside world  and appear to have been recruited in great quantities from a much increased  budget. Congress is deadlocked  over the issue of the deployment of these ICE agents as the Democrats are trying  to block the funding stream that has allowed so many to be recruited and deployed but Trump’s private army appears to be not an inaccurate description.  To British eyes, this seems absolutely horrifying but the Trump administration and ‘modus operandi’ are actually quite admired on the far right of British politics and one wonders if Reform were to win the next election whether this American import will be replicated on the streets of Britain. I think the time has past when we can say to ourselves that ‘it will never happen here’ as the world appears to be evolving in such dangerous directions. 

After a light salad lunch, my son, daughter-in-law and I continued our investigation into my grandmothers (and hence my mother’s) origins but we have precious little to go on. Part of the problem  is that we not have birth certificates or even town of birth to go on ad there happen to be quite a lot of ‘Alice Maud Ward’s around in the 1890’s. But we have a 1911 census form entry which  we know is genuine as it matches up with some of my grandmother’s writing in a book of poems given to my mother when she was 15 years old. We are currently working on one line of enquiry where it was possible that my grandmother was ‘passed around’ the family because  we have located a record where she may have been living with her grandfather in the Hull area at the time of the 1890 census at the age of 10-11 but I need to contact  my sister to see if she has the slightest fragment of information that might help us in or searches. As with all historical records, it is possible that errors were made at the time the data was collected – we have found a record, for example, where my mother’s name may have been entered incorrectly as’Maria’ rather than Marie and then corrected later as the final type written  ‘e’ does not align with the rest of the name. My son and I very carefully removed a picture of a sailing ship from its frame to see if we could find a provenance or a date but nothing was yielded up so we taped it all up again. In the late afternoon, I thought  I really needed to get on and carry on with 30-40 minutes of patio clearance (scraping moss from between the slabs) so I now have about one half of this job completed. My son and daughter-in-law invested in a good home-produced outdoor reared chicken so this will be the first of many meals that the bird will provide for us in the next few days.

My routine has changed somewhat at the weekends as I now attend  my local church for the 8.30am service, if only because there is the attraction of meeting fellow parishioners in the parish hall afterwards for tea and biscuits. This provides me with the opportunity of meeting with other age groups which I relish and afterwards, I go along and fill the car up with petrol, pick up a newspaper and then call in at my local supermarket where I can utilise their ATM machine as well as purchasing any last minute supplies. Then when I returned home, my son, daughter-in-law and myself started attacking the huge pile of family photographs we had released from some of the storage space in the house. In past decades, one took a roll of film along to a local chemist for development or even sent them away but we approached the task by throwing away any scenes of landscapes that we could not recognise or seem to have any significance for us. But any photos with family members featuring in them we tended to keep but labelling them up and then trying to add a date and, if possible, a location to help explain the context of the photo. Some of the photos detailed Meg and myself astride a summit on some Lake District mountain and my son himself features in many of them. I think that the earliest photo dates from the time that we introduced our son to fell by walking up Skiddaw (about the 3rd or 4th highest mountain in the area) but we ourselves were staying in a little family run hotel on the slopes of Skiddaw in any case. After we had a light lunch, we fell into talking about family  history and we started  to research some details  of my family history on my grandmother’s side of the family. This proving to be quite problematic as we have so little to go on. But we have one or two fixed points and knowing that she died in 1960 aged 81 we can ascertain a birth date. I also have on my computer an image of the copy of the relevant entry made by my grandmother on the 1911 census but this is relatively little to go on. But my grandmother’s two Christian names were very common at the time as was her maiden name and we do not know some basic details such as the town I which she was living or even her marriage date or the first name of my maternal grandfather. My son and daughter-in-law have subscriptions to ancestry.com website to help them in their searches. To try and make sense of some of the very  limited information that we have we are working on the theory that my grandmother may have been adopted at the age of 2 as we can find details of somebody with the same (but fairly common first name and surname) living with another family in the Hull area and this family may have had a child baptised at the same time as, eerily enough, both this family and my grandmother appear next to each other on the register of christenings suggesting that there was a ‘job lot’ of christenings and the families  may have been entwined somehow. This task is like fitting together pieces of a huge jigsaw and it possible that we are making all kinds of false assumptions but we may all be wrong. 

The war in Iran is taking on some new and interesting dimensions. Trump has told the Iranians that if the Straits pf Hormuz are not reopened then the SA and Israel  will attempt to wipe out Iranian power plants. By way of retaliation, the Iranians are saying  that if Americans attack power plants, then Iran will do the same including the power plats of any of the allies. A certain amount of this is just posturing almost for the sake of it but it is always possible in these ‘tit-for-tat’ situations that one side or the other will make a bad miscalculation and the entire conflict spirals to a deeper and much more serious level. The week ahead is going to prove to a particularly interesting one as I have two new social activities in prospect. The most noteworthy one is a trip to the Jodrell Bank telescope where I am signed up for a trip and a tour of the facilities next Wednesday. This is a U3A trip and the coach picks me up from Bromsgrove Bus station just after 9.00am and then we are whisked up the M6 to the plains of Cheshire. In the afternoon we are going to tour the historic parts of Nantwich so it promises to be a great day out. The following day is going to be the initial meeting of the conversational Spanish group and we have been asked to say a little something about ourselves, including our hobbies and interests to get the ball rolling. What will be fascinating to learn is how good/bad/rusty all of us turn out to be. Those who have studied Spanish at school may well have a higher standard of grammatical accuracy to bring to the part whereas I shall just burble along in my self-taught kind of way. We are going to have a colder spell of weather in the next few days because the grass mowing season is upon us but this will have to wait until the end of the week. Of the various groups that I have joined, the one that has proved to be the most popular is the ‘Curry Club’ I think that this group already has well over 30 members and at least two thirds of them have already signed up for a meal in an excellent restaurant in the Droitwich area.  As I have only recently signed up I have not managed to get into the party for the next eating occasion but at least I am in the system for the next time around. After I have experienced the various groups to which I have signed up, I will be able to make a decision  as to which of these I shall continue with but in the meanwhile there is a house to maintain and a garden to get licked into shape. It is also my son’s birthday later in the week but I believe that his wife is taking him out for a special meal in Birmingham when I am out on my trip in any case. I have looked at the longer term weather forecast for the few days ahead and whilst the weather is going to be quite seasonably warm in the early part of the week, it will drift down towards  the end of the week which is just when I wanted the weather to be fine for my gardening activities.

It is unequivocally spring like when I awoke yesterday morning to a clear blue sky and a temperature that will eventually rise to about 13° which is not quite as warm as a few days ago. This weekend is  one of the weekends in which the Methodist Centre holds a general ‘get together’ for those who are on their own. The format is generally a coffee occasion for the entire group which can number as many as about 60-70 of us and this is then followed by a talk, film or presentation given by someone who local links in the area e.g. a local historian. The talks are not always a great deal of interest to be fair but it is a good opportunity for acquaintances to meet up with each other and to make new contacts. I anticipate that my trans-Atlantic friend with whom I had coffee during the week will attend and I think that one of the people attending will also be part of the coach holiday I am to undertake in April. Yesterday, I put some finishing touches to the presentation I am going to make to the recently formed Classical Music Appreciation group which is in about three weeks time and ran through some of the video clips I had assembled with my daughter-in-law. She made the observation that each of the clips was on various aspects of love (youthful, sorrowful, anticipatory) and I suppose  she was correct in her observations which gives me another angle or discussion point when I come to make my contribution. At the moment, I know everything that I intend to say about each piece but it is all in my head and not written down but this is fine. Of course we do not know at this stage how the dynamics of the group will develop and when we all share our musical experiences with each other it will be in a very different way but I am hopeful that we can both share and also learn from each other as the meetings go by. But we have only had an introductory meeting so far so it is early days yet. It is interesting that our group is about 12 members strong but the Curry Club membership is already bursting at the seams and it seems that the next meeting of this will be of the order of two dozen of us (half a restaurant full?) in an Indian restaurant which  has a very good reputation locally. The other group which I have joined but not yet attended is Conversational Spanish and this again should prove to be interesting when we eventually convene and share our (fumbling, no doubt) experiences with each other. It now appears that the UK is being sucked, step by step, into the Iran conflict as news has emerged that as a country we are now going to allow the Americans to use British bases as a springboard or staging post for their own operations. I feel that the cautious approach of our own Prime Minister has been judicious so far but we may now be entering a phase when we are seen as an active ally of the United States and therefore our military assets will be regarded as legitimate targets to attack. It will be interesting to assess the mood of the House of Commons when the government approach will be subject to a critical scrutiny and assessment. For example, the shadow of the Iraq intervention by Tony Blair when ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were found to be non-existent but just rhetoric has not been forgotten, or forgiven, by a large swathe of Labour MPs. 

The talk given at the Methodist Centre today  featured a presentation of photographs on the theme of ‘Island Hopping by Camper Van’ The couple  who presented it had evidently been very keen coastal path walkers in their younger days and their photos featured the remote islands and headlands off the west coast of Ireland, Crete and some of the more remote and inaccessible Greek islands and finally the Orkneys and Shetland Isles. The illustrated talk turned out to be a little more interesting than I thought it might be and I had visited some of the Orkneys in a round Britain cruise decades before. One of the audience is coming on the coach trip to Scotland and she very kindly had brought along with her a history of the hotel and its environs for me to read before the holiday starts in early April. After I returned home, I made myself a salad lunch and was delighted to see that my daughter-in-law had busied herself with some much needed weeding and hedge cutting at he front of the house. After lunch and as the weather was fine, I decided to make a start on the moss and weeds that had made rather a mess of our patio at the rear of the house.  I had neglected doing this routine gardening whilst Meg had been so ill and was gradually fading away and I do not regret for a moment spending  as much time as I could by her side. As it was, even getting the lawns cut proved to be quite a difficult logistical exercise the summer before last. So although I have no regrets, the day of reckoning is approaching and I have made a start on the quite massive garden maintenance task in front of me. In the afternoon, I split my activities into two sessions of work and got the moss and large weeds removed. Now I am starting on the longer task of removing the finer weeds and moss between  each of the paving stones and this I will continue by doing at lest 30 minutes a day until the task is completed. Then the patio will need a good re-grouting followed by a specialist cleaning, but I will take advice on which way round I ought to organise these activities. In any case, lawn mowing will start next week so I need to get supplies of lawn mower oil and fresh petrol organised. Once the lawn mowing season starts, it becomes a once-a -eek job because the very act of cutting the grass releases a hormone which encourages further growth and of course we have the longer days, some Spring sun and the inevitable April showers to assist rapid growth. 

Two particular facets of the horrible conflict in the Middle East are becoming apparent to us this morning. The first of these is the absolute scale of the devastation that is being wrought upon the economies of states in the area by attacking oil and gas pressing facilities, one by-product of which is that the cost of has supplies in the UK has already doubled since the start of the conflict. Defining oil and as reprocessing, the life blood of the Middle East as military facilities, liable to be open to enemy attack is opening a Pandora’s box and both the Israelis and the Iran have just crossed this threshold, to the extent that even Donald Trump is expressing at some alarm at this development. The second nature of the conflict is that Israel now feels no restraining hand of the USA as has been customary over the decades. Netanyahu has stated he was going to ignore the Americans anyway. In the past few decades, the Americans have always let the Israelis know that America could cut off Israel at the knees immediately by withholding all military supplies and economic aid but the Israelis have evidently judged that with the present turmoil in the American polity they can do whatever they want without restraint. The Economist recently published a long analysis detailing just how unrestrained Israel is becoming. This new, hegemonic Israel is the product in part of the lingering trauma of October 7th. Before the massacre Israel sought to avoid all-out conflict, contenting itself with periodic strikes against its foes, to assassinate threatening leaders or destroy sophisticated weapons. When it went to war, as it did several times against Hamas, it kept the wars short. The goal was to deter and weaken its adversaries, not to obliterate them.In hindsight, many Israeli generals and spies see that policy as naive. They are no longer willing to tolerate threats on their borders—even hypothetical ones. Syria’s new rulers have been clear that they want a peaceful relationship with their neighbour (and after a decade of civil war, they are in no position to fight the Middle East’s strongest army). That has not stopped Israel from seizing even more Syrian territory, to protect the land it seized in 1967. For Israel’s hard right, though, the goal is not merely to protect the country but to expand it. They have dreamed for years of rebuilding Jewish settlements in Gaza, which were evacuated in 2005, and annexing the West Bank. Some fantasise about a ‘Greater Israel’ that stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. They are a minority in Israel, but they are an increasingly powerful one. Mr Netanyahu may not share their yearning for a biblical kingdom, but he needs their support for his earthly goals. He wants to stay in power, and that requires keeping his extremist allies on side. There is another development as well concerning the health of Donald Trump. Although technically, psychiatrists are breaking their codes of ethics by diagnosing at a distance, there now seems to be growing consensus that Trump is suffering from a malignant narcissism which accounts for much of is behaviour. Added to this, details are started  to emerge of Trump’s evident dementia as it has become public knowledge that he has had more than one ‘annual’ check on his health status and this has included both an MRI scan and also cognitive tests which are almost certainly conducted as Trump’s medical team can see the signs of Trump’s dementia worsening almost by the day. My feeling is that is a combination of the oil price rise on the one hand and Trump’s health status that will occasion his downfall well before the conclusion of a second term.

Later on in the morning, I made a journey down into town by car and then introduced my son and daughter-in-law to the delights of the ‘Gifts of Love’ outlet which sells artefacts and supplies coffee and cake to raise funds for a local horse sanctuary. After this we wandered back slowly upon the High Street buying one or two things for the collective lunch. After a home-made soup, it was such a nice afternoon that I spent a certain amount of time reading the newspaper whilst also chatting with my daughter-in-law who was simultaneously  enjoying  the sunshine. Whilst outside, we bumped into our next-door neighbour who I have not seen for some time now but the three of us have been invited round for tea and cake later on in the week and we seem to have quite a lot to catch upon. Earlier in the afternoon, I had thought of an additional aria that I wished to stitch into my presentation so I located a suitable clip of video on YouTube. We prepared our evening meal together and then settled down to watch some comedy that my family thought I  might quite like.

There is a suggestion that Israel my be breaching international law by using white phosphorous in Southern Lebanon. Since October 2023, Sky News has interviewed dozens of residents of southern Lebanon who say they have seen white phosphorus being sprayed on their crops, farmland and houses. A video verified by Sky News, shows an IDF operation in southern Lebanon. Amael Kotlarsk, a weapons expert at defence intelligence company Janes, told Sky News that the substance is white phosphorus. The chemical is used by militaries to create smokescreens or for illumination, as above, but can also start fires, damage crops and cause severe burns. Its indiscriminate use in populated areas is illegal under international law. The evidence for this latest allegation is not 100% proved but there is enough circumstantial evidence that white phosphorous may well be implicated in the war. The people of Lebanon must be used to frequent Israeli invasions by now and Israeli Force Force (IDF) has rolled into much of Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is widely considered to be better armed, funded, and trained than the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). With significant Iranian support, Hezbollah functions as a ‘state within a state’  with an arsenal of over 150,000 rockets, surpassing the conventional capacity of the official national military, making it the dominant armed force in Lebanon. A total defeat of Hezbollah is unlikely and then it is best thought of as a smart ‘de facto’ government of Lebanon.

The night before last, I decided just before I went to bed that I would have a quick look at some of my HTML (i.e. web-writing) templates to see if there was one I could easily adapt to make a little playlist for my presentation to the Classical Music Appreciation group. Making the initial template was very easy so I thought I would just ‘populate’ the first line of the table which would be Cherubino’s aria from ‘The Marriage  of Figaro’.  This I managed to do fairly quickly, even though it was getting late by then but I did find a good YouTube clip which shows off the youthful Cherubino played in the way that it ought to be i.e. with a light, clear adolescent voice. I should have stopped at this stage, but I pressed on and managed to find a recording of the Countess bemoaning the fact that her husband had seemingly abandoned her in favour of younger women. The recording I came across was that made by Kiri Te Kanawa which I have always regarded as practically definitive. But then, in the course of my researches, I came across a rendition by Renée Fleming which some would argue was the most expressive rendition of this aria. In addition, the clip of video contained several bars before the main aria in which the Countess is expressing her rage and exasperation at her husband’s antics before the much more poignant ‘Dove sono’ which follows. By this stage, I had assembled three clips but  was in full flight by now so added a couple of arias from Don Giovanni before concluding with the magnificent trio from Cosi fan Tutte which is (n English) ‘May the breeze blow softly’ In practice, my progress in obtaining clips of video was delayed because I was trying to find definitive performances or outstanding singers and a setting which illustrated the aria. After all, the whole point of Don Giovanni trying to persuade a girl whom he espies in a balcony window to succumb to his blandishments is lost if the videoclip shows neither the girl nor the balcony! So eventually, I had assembled the six clips together into my programme and I was pretty pleased with the whole. But there was both a downside and an upside to my efforts. The ‘downside’ was that after I had transferred my script to my own webspace, YouTube managed to insert a quick advert before each clip that was played but this was quite a small price to pay under the circumstances. The ‘upside’ was that at the conclusion of each clip, and sometimes after another advert, another  rendition of the same aria was available as a follow-on. This means that members of the group who are interested can watch two performances and then compare and contrast the two and see which they prefer. To cut a long story short, I was up until about 3.30 but was very satisfied with my night’s/morning’s work which I needed to prepare in advance anyway as our next meeting is the day after my return from holiday. I have a little  more work to do which is  to run off some of the libretto and/or write down the screen captions that accompanies some of the video clips so that fellow group members can follow the sentiments being conveyed.

This morning, I did oversleep a little ad had a rather lazy morning as I had so little sleep the night before. So I abandoned my Tai Chi class but did go down and have a coffee and biscuits with one or two of the regulars. Yesterday was the day in the month in which the two community police people turn up and make themselves available for anybody who might need some advice. It was the most beautiful day outside and my son and daughter-in-law availed themselves of it to walk down into town. We all had a mushroom soup for lunch, made in the soup maker and are going to eat a rolled pork joint together in the evening. This afternoon, we spent some time as a family going through past collections of holiday ‘snaps’ working out which to retain and which to throw away. I was pleased to find a photo which a colleague (not myself) must have taken of Meg dancing on a taverna table in Thessaloniki, Greece which Meg knew she would never be in a fit position to do again. Finding some more photos of Meg I her youth was a little painful but this was only to be expected.

Donald Trump’s utterings seem to be becoming more and more bizarre. He says he is not putting boots on the ground in Iran – while seeming to leave himself room to change his mind. In a meeting with Japan’s prime minister, he also took another swipe at NATO – while claiming he didn’t need any help in the Middle East, anyway. And we have the strange situation where Trump would rather like  European ships to possibly bear the brunt of any attacks on the Straits of Hormuz but is unwilling to let American ships get into that position (presumably, the sinking of an American ship would be a loss that was too much to bear) It now appears almost certain, as the war escalates, that a massive blow has been inflicted upon the world economy. A prolonged war could do calamitous damage to the global economy. In just one day and night, Iran has hit energy targets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Israel. So much for its military being defeated, or its leadership decapitated after almost three weeks of bombardment. One attack alone on the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar, using just a handful of missiles, did an estimated $26bn worth of damage and will, we are told, take years to repair. Even less liquid natural gas will now get to market, jacking up prices. The cost of gas for European consumers has already leapt 30%.  Here in the UK, a debate is going on whether it would sensible or not to allow for more exploitation of the oil and as deposits in the North Sea which may be worth a temporary resurrection if the blow to world trade turns out to be as serious as predicted. Or own gas prices are predicted to actual fall for a month or so but after that we can expect see rapidly rising gas and oil prices. The way in which airlines will play out this crisis is interesting as the costs of aviation fuels are bound to rise substantially.

I awoke yesterday morning to a day filled with a beautiful blue sky and wonderful sunshine and, according to the weather forecasters, the day promises to be one of the warmest of the year and is projected to rise to about 17°. I was a little delayed this morning because some of the short-hand links that I use to access some photos and videos were not working quite as they should but I managed to get these working after a certain degree of fiddling around. The day in prospect today is quite a full one because  as well as visiting the Methodist Centre in the middle of the town I also tend to go out and do my weekly shopping. Later on today, I am due to viit a house of a U3A member for a meeting of ‘Classical Music Appreciation’ I have absolutely no idea what is involved in this  group or what our activities might happen to be but, no doubt, I shall soon find out. At the moment, following the advice of my University of Birmingham friend, I am joining lots of groups organised by U3A at the moment and will then whittle these down to a manageable number once I have found the most conducive ones.  The major trip that has been organised for us, and to which I signed up within minutes, was a trip organised to the telescope of Jodrell Bank and this will be the highlight of next week. So far, I am in a Classical Music Apreciaton group, Conversational Spanish, a Curry Club dining group and regular activities organised on Saturday morning each fortnight so that is certainly enough to keep me going. I also go along to church each Sunday morning with the bonus of tea and biscuits after the service and this is an opportunity to meet parishioners who of course a cross section of all ages. Now that the weather is improving, regular grass mowing will start next week and I also need to get out and do about 30 minutes of gardening each day, as there is a lot to be done. The evening before last, I watched the last of the series of programmes on modern Europe presented by Katya Adler – I knew that she had good French and German but her Spanish was equally good. Then the programme revealed that she had lived in Spain for a period so this helps to explain why her Spanish seemed equally as good as her other languages. I am in a slight dilemma at the moment whether to try and get a brief holiday in Spain in the Autumn but in the meantime I am a little tempted by another coach holiday to Scotland in the Autumn because it is only half the price and one gets picked up by coach from the centre of town which  means that a lot of the hassle of travel is cut out for one. The coach company which is organising the trip to Scotland in April seems to be praised by everyone to whom I speak about it and one only hopes that the weather is not going to be dire. One of the trips is a boat excursion on Loch Lomond which I have never actually done before but I used to camp on a large island opposite Balmaha in the days when I went off to scout camp as a teenager.

Later on in the morning but a little later than planned, I went down and did my weekly shop. This turned out to be quite a ‘light’ week not least because I am sharing the meal preparation with my son and daughter-in-law whilst they are staying with me as they having a kitchen re-fit. I knew that I needed to get home and the shopping unpacked and then a light lunch because this afternoon, I was due to attend an inaugural meeting of the Classical Musical Appreciation group, set up under the auspices of U3A. The meeting was to be held in the house of the convenor and there were about a dozen of us altogether almost equally split between men and women and some of whom I knew by sight from the Methodist meeting centre. My daughter-in-law very kindly agree to drop me (and eventually to pick me up again) by car, as we unsure what the parking situation would turn out to be. After a rather tentative start, we soon started to gel as a group by speaking about the influence that had led us towards classical music.  Some of us had been introduced to classical music as a formal part of the school curriculum, others by being played pieces in a school assembly and several of us via the medium of film (e.g. ‘Fantasia’) We decided upon a format in which at our next meeting, there would be three of us each presenting something from our experience that we thought that others might appreciate and enjoy. At our next meeting in a month’s time, I have volunteered to be one of the three presenters and said that I would prepare something on some of the classic Mozart arias. This really will be a labour of live for me because it gives me the opportunity to explain the context of the aria before it is played to the group. I will probably pull the pieces that I need off the internet and then perhaps put them on a website so that I can play them as I need and the rest of the group can listen to them again should they so wish. After a couple of hours we finished our meeting with a cup of tea and upon chatting with one of the other ladies in the group discovered that we had both worked in the same civil service establishment (what was then called the ‘National Lending Library for Science and Technology’) although separated by a space of eight years. So this was an amazing coincidence and is the only the second person I have come across who has worked in the same establishment (the first being a former student of mine) It was fortuitous that I was part of the initial meeting of the Classical Music Appreciation group and I am sure that there is an enormous amount that we can both share with, as well as learn from, each other. One important by-product of the group as well as extending friendships we can also share knowledge of upcoming concerts and musical performances in the area and may even attend some of them as an entire group.

I have a great deal of respect for the journalist Emily Maitlis and I followed her latest podcast on YouTube. Last night she was giving a most informative analysis the purport of which was that most European societies (and particularly European members of NATO) were effectively rebuffing Donald Trump’s call for assistance in helping to main the Straits of Hormuz to allow for oil shipments. Her view was that the Europeans had discovered some backbone and were,in effect, saying to Donald Trump ‘you got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out of it’ Another analysis on Sky News argues that the USA might have made some massive miscalculations. By organising a swift and decisive military operation to decapitate the leader of Venezuela and to install the deputy as an American puppet, Trump may have thought that Iran was more of the same – but the societies are very different. At the time that there were massive street protests in Iran, the USA was preoccupied with Venezuela and its military  forces were focused in the wrong direction. Had they at that time focused on Iran then it is possible that regime change might have been possible but as it is, the Iranians feel they are achieving victory the more they resist the might of the US and can keep the Straits of Hormuz as a strategic weapon. Returning to more mundane and domestic matters, I was somewhat dismayed when my email client found it difficult to load and the problem was identified as an out-of-date browser. So on my principal desktop computer system which is now about 10 years old I have managed to update the operating system to one that is less than two years old and seems to run more crisply than its predecessor. So now I am in a situation where my email client works satisfactorily and my system can limp on for another month or so. But once I have got holidays out of the way, I am going to bet an up-to-date  because once even a MAC gets more than about 10 years old, although still usable for simple tasks, the operating systems do not get updated and security issues addressed so it is time to think about a replacement model. Apple do maintain operating systems for their less than up-to-date versions of their hardware but a point comes at which they do not release further updated  versions of the software and the time is ripe for a change. Later on today, I have my Pilates class and then possibly the AGM of the U3A group to attend straight after my Pilates class so I may make myself a sandwich and see if I can attend the U3A immediately after my Pilates session, even though I shall arrive 30 minutes late. Spring is very definitely in the air at the moment because we are promised quite a warm spell soon. Temperatures in parts of the UK are set to rise close to 20C this week and bring the warmest weather of the year so far.

Later on in the day, I chatted with our domestic help when she called around  and then delayed going into town. Then I picked up my newspaper and attended my normal Pilates session.  Knowing that I was going to try and pull in two commitments today, I had made myself a cheese and beetroot sandwich on sourdough bread which I consumed in the car park of the Methodist Centre. Then I attended the last few minutes of a talk that was being given  to the approximately 75 members who were attending the U3A Annual General Meeting. The talk was given by a local solicitor and was all about the importance of setting up Lasting Powers of Attorneys and Making Wills – both subjects upon which I happen to be informed enough  already, Then I had a coffee with the ‘mid-atlantic’ acquaintance with whom I had a coffee yesterday and took the opportunity give her details of the coach trip  which I am shortly to undertake at the start of April in the off chance that she might be tempted, even at short notice, to join up for the same trip. I know she has used this company before when she took her mother on holiday so she will know what expect from this particular holiday. I also took the opportunity to get my name forwarded onto the ‘Curry Club’ which, as its name suggests, is an outing about once a month to explore the curry delicacies of the area. As I have cooked myself a meal of curry once a week for the last sixty years, I thought this was an opportunity not to be missed. So after this I got home and had a quiet time reading the newspaper until my son and I cooked an evening meal together.

Events are startling to unravel as the lack of clarity over the planning, goals and execution of the Iran war are becoming more apparent to the Americans. Donald Trump is under pressure to explain his motives for starting the Iran war, and the resignation of a senior counterterrorism official will not help, US correspondent David Blevins reports from Washington. Joe Kent was not just director of the National Counterterrorism Centre in the United States but is himself a retired combat veteran. For someone of his rank, position and experience to be questioning the motivation for the war will be a major problem for the president. Trump is likely to be questioned on the matter when he holds several events at the White House later this afternoon. One does wonder what sources of advice are now available  to Trump as in both the Pentagon and the White House, seasoned and experienced personnel with no particular axe to grind have been replaced by Trump loyalists who are not very competent or experienced. On this side of the Atlantic, there is even speculation whether Trump had heard of the Straits of Hormuz and whether he was actually given advice that any attack on Iran would immediately result in Iran deploying the strategic stranglehold that they have over the Straits. Past presidents have no doubt been given military briefings about all of this which is why, until now, a direct attack on Iran has never been seriously contemplated. There are persistent rumours that Trump may have been given some such advice but decided to ignore it anyway but we might have to wait some time to ascertain of this is the case or not.

We awoke yesterday morning to the new geopolitical realities facing us. It is now apparent that the Iranian’s chief asset in the war against USA and Israel is to keep control of the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point for oil tankers. Donald Trump having told the UK that it can send its ships home as there is no point sending naval assets into the theatre of war when the conflict is practically over is now asking, or rather threatening, the NATO alliance to assist in keeping the Straits of Hormuz open. The fact that one Chinese tanker and possibly, according to rumours, one Indian tanker have made their way through the Straits tends to suggest that the area is not mined. However, it is evident that supplies of oil through this route may be reduced to a trickle which implies high prices and possible rationing lies ahead of us. Before nations engage in war, it is nearly always the case that the relevant military planners have made extensive war plans or have ‘war gamed’ likely scenarios but this conflict appears to show that no military planning or preparations were undertaken by the Americans at all. So we find ourselves in a situation in which America having wrought a certain amount of havoc across the Middle East is now calling for help to resolve the situation. But is evident that the geopolitics of the area have been changed irrevocably by the way as the gulf states of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and others who have tried to act as mediators have now had it demonstrated to them that the US cannot be called upon to protect them and is anything other than a reliable ally. But really tricky decisions lie in the path of NATO and other European states as they try to resolve how they can deploy military resources to attempt to keep oil supplies flowing whilst not inviting any retaliatory counter attacks. Meanwhile, Israel has no restraining American arm to restrain it and is embarking upon a dream of avenging and eliminating its enemies which is a dream that they have held onto for the past 40 years. Netanyahu’s popularity is high even on the Israeli left and it seems probable that he will seek early elections to consolidate his own political position. Of course, we have seen all of this before. Margaret Thatcher had been one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers of all time at the start of the Falklands/Malvinas war but her popularity soared when victory was assured which is why she went to the polls to secure a thumping election victory immediately after it. So wars can sometimes prove to be exceptionally advantageous for right-leaning political leaders. But the USA case has its own particular features as Trump is threatened over time with rising oil prices, the revelations from the Epstein and his own failing health and which of these factors will prove to be the most decisive will be interesting for future historians to debate.

Yesterday turned out to be a different kind of day. My son having slept here overnight made a journey back to his own flat to check that the kitchen fitting procedure was proceeding satisfactorily and so far it appeared to be on track.  My son returned from his own house and then the three of us walked down the hill and had a coffee in the Waitrose dispensing area after which we walked home. I had a fairly light lunch of fish-on-bread and then my major commitment of the day was to go down and meet an U3A (University of the 3rd Age) acquaintance who had emailed me (after we had exchanged business cards about a month ago) and we decided to have a catch up in a local coffee bar. My new-found friend had worked for sixteen years in the USA and had travelled extensively across European societies so we had a certain cosmopolitan outlook on life. She is going to attend the same Spanish class as am I in about a week’s time and, of course, the more members a group attracts the more viable it becomes and less liable to fold for lack of support. The following day there is going to be a sort of AGM of the U3A membership so, having attended Pilates I shall turn up half an hour late but till hope I can be squeezed in somewhere. After all the name of the game these days is to maximise our social contacts where we can and I suspect that my new-found friend and I are of a like mind in this respect. So the next couple of days might prove to be quite busy, particularly as my son and daughter-in-law (both suffering from extremely heavy colds!) are I are out quite a lot. 

An interesting stand-off is taking place between the European NATO allies and Donald Trump.  Having insulted the UK and annoyed with Britain for not immediately joining in the war against Iran, Trump is now calling for help to keep open the Straits of Hormuz and indicating to other NATO members that the consequences for them will be dire if other European countries do not fall behind the American war effort. European countries  are saying that ‘it is not our war’ and I would hope and suspect that Europe might be playing a long game. Rising oil prices and Trump’s evidently failing health might prove his nemesis within a month or so and therefore it might be rational for European leaders (including the UK) to play for time in the present conflict. In the evening, I have some interesting TV programmes by way of diversion. Firstly, there is going to be an examination of the pernicious effects of social media which I think is well worth a watch followed by a comedy programme. It is going to be one of those nights when I make sure I have the electric blanket on and then get to bed in plenty of time to watch the programmes I want, knowing that if I fall asleep in the meantime, this is all to the good. I find these days that missing the main new bulletin is not necessarily a bad thing as I much prefer to watch the analysis programs that take place on BBC2 and on Sky News from 10.30 onwards.

After the excitement and tension, not to mention disappointment, in the France vs. England Six Nations rugby match, I watched a little bit of what might be termed the liberal political podcasts available to me on YouTube. There I learned something about one of the first incidents when the conflict started. Evidence is growing that outdated US intelligence was likely to blame for the attack on a school in southern Iran which killed more than 170 people, most of them children. But in the early hours of the near two-week conflict, an elementary school was hit, and outdated US intelligence was likely to blame, NBC News has said.  It is now being sad that intelligence that was ten years out-of-date was probably the root case of the disaster. But it was another aspect to the story which really caught my attention. After operations in both Iraq and the Afghanistan, the American military well understood that killing scores of civilians, even as so called ‘collateral damage’, is not a good idea. Therefore, a specialised unit was formed, the intention of which was to try to minimise the civilian deaths occasioned by the conflict to be called the ‘Civilian Harm and Response’ plan. On Feb. 20, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced, per guidance from the Department of Government Efficiency, an 8 percent reduction to programs not related to 17 priority items he has identified to spare from the downsizing efforts. He emphasised that the department is particularly looking to cut ‘non-lethal programs.’ In accordance with the emphasis on lethality, the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Plan and its associated Center for Excellence have been tagged for elimination. Consistent with Secretary Hegseth’s complaints about overly restrictive rules of engagement, it is possible that the program may be seen by the new administration as a ‘woke’ project that makes the United States soft in war, one that ties the hands of combatant commanders and interferes with U.S. lethality. The TV clip that I saw last night indicated that the unit has lost about 80% of its core staff and had this unit been up to strength and working as intended, then the whole tragic error might not have occurred. So here we can see a direct link between cutting a much needed service  and devoting the funds to a muscular form of conflict. When faced with news of the incident, Trump tried to blame the Iranians themselves even thought they do possess any Tomahawk missiles. After this original attempt to deny responsibly  failed, Trump lied again and indicated that he knew nothing  about the incident. I wonder if another level of explanation will be forced out of Trump’s mouth in the days and weeks ahead. My son and daughter-in-law called around early and we had a light lunch together although we will share a bigger Chinese meal tonight. Before they arrived, I had been to church and had a pleasant coffee and biscuits with some fellow parishioners. Then I picked up my copy of the Sunday newspaper and made a trip round my local Asda, picking up some of the kinds of supplies which are missing from my normal shopping venue.

After a light lunch, we settled down to watch a drama ‘whodunnit’ on ITV whilst simultaneously carrying out conversations about the ways in which universities are preparing their students for a very different world compared to that of their parents. We are now witnessing a generation of students whose school life was disrupted by COVID after which we had the financial and energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Often when we are at leisure, we discuss and compare notes about the ways in which we interpreted our various roles whilst we still employed in the education sector but in my own case this was over 18 years ago and things have changed so rapidly. Students are carrying a huge burden of debt around their shoulders when they graduate and many are forced back to living in the parental home whilst jobs seem increasingly hard to get. A feature of the modern employment scene is that employers do not feel able to make long term commitments to staff any more and hence there is a proliferation of short term contracts. Since we have the end of winter well within our sights, despite a current cold snap, I am taking the opportunity of participating in some U3A (University of the Third Age) activities. In a couple of week’s time, I shall be part of a coach trip to see Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and some of the associated science museums. In the afternoon, the trip takes on a tour of some of the historic buildings of Nantwich in Cheshire and all of this is in about ten days time. I have also joined two other groups and will attend them in week or so. One of them is a Conversational Spanish course and this will be interesting (or perhaps a little disturbing when I discover how my Spanish has deteriorated due to not having been in Spain for about six years now.) Another group that I have joined is a Classical Musical Appreciation group and I have no idea how this will actually pan out. It is being held in a private house so I imagine the group will be quite small. Whether we just listen to music or whether we form a discussion group around it, I shall discover. I may or may turn up to an Easter fair associated with the Horse and Donkey sanctuary which is to be held in a local village hall again in a couple of weeks time. The principal event to which I have to look forward is a five-day tour of some of Scottish lochs but this pleasure will infold in early April. The small and specialised company that runs this holiday seems to have a good reputation and the company owns the hotels so again, this will be an interesting new experience for me. I have recently received  an invitation to go and meet up wit a U3A member with whom I exchanged some business cards weeks ago and we have agreed to meet in a local coffee bar. If all of this sounds like a whirl of social activities, it is certainly the case that I am seeing which of the various  groups on offer seems to offer an interesting experience given that I wish to go out and make/sustain social contacts  each day of the week so long as I am capable of it. No doubt, I will find some activities much more rewarding than others but it is a case of ‘suck it and see’ before I  settle down into a somewhat less frenetic pattern.