I awoke yesterday morning to a temperature, according to my smart speaker of -5° which is predicted to rise to a dizzying height of 2° during the course of the day. I think we may have had a slight scattering of snow during the night as well and because of the cold weather various social arrangements are all rather fluid. My son had said he was going to turn up this morning but this visit has been delayed. I am due to take the car into the garage to have a new battery fitted at 2.00pm in the afternoon and I am hoping that the weather has improved somewhat by then. The evening before yesterday, after I had got various domestic duties completed, I settled down to watch a catch-up TV a film broadcast on the BBC called ‘Operation Mincemeat’I had seen this film once before years ago but it was always worth a second viewing. It detailed the greatest deception of WWII in which the British arranged for a dead body loaded with fake papers that looked as though the planned invasion of the continent to end the way would be Greece rather than Sicily. Both the British and the Germans were exceptionally aware of the power of deception and planning of the false identity had to be meticulous. For example, to ensure that Churchill’s signature did not appear to be a forgery, he added his real signature to the documentation. After many twists and turns, the body (of a supposed airman) was launched by submarine where it would float onto a beach in Southern Spain where ‘neutral’ Spain would eventually allow the documentation to be handed over to the Germans. The deception proved to be successful and the Germans redeployed troops away from Sicily and towards Greece – it is estimated that thousands of lives may have been saved as the deception evidently worked. The full story is recounted at great length in Wikipedia and is fascinating as was the subsequent film made of it. Of course there were several ‘human interest’ factors built into the story but the major participants in the story kept quiet about it (a military secret) for decades afterwards. So this was probably the best of viewing for me over the whole of the Christmas period.

Emboldened by his ‘success’ in Venezuela, Trump is now threatening Colombia as well as Cuba and it seems that there are plans to ‘de facto’ annexe Greenland (which is a protectorate of Denmark, a member of Nato) The British are somewhat compromised by all of this as well. Speaking to Sky News, Home Office minister Mike Tapp is asked about the scenario of Donald Trump potentially seizing Greenland. The president has openly coveted the island, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Over the weekend, the Danish Prime Minister again warned the US president against trying to take the Arctic region. In an exchange with Sophy Ridge, Tapp repeatedly declines to warn Trump against taking military action there. First off, the minister says ‘careful diplomatic conversations’ are happening behind the scenes between the US, Europe and the Five Eyes alliance and a ‘running commentary’ will not be given. On Greenland, Tapp then says both the US and Denmark are NATO members and that is the forum for discussions to take place. I find that the way that the UK and other European powers refusing to confront Trump disturbing in the extreme. 

Once the weather had warmed up a bit, or to at lest above freezing level, I popped over to see my friend in Droitwich as we had not seen each to speak to since the start of the year and was greeted by a little portion of marinated lamb and some rice. This was just a flying visit as I need to get over to Redditch to get a new battery fitted into the car which I suppose is good to have given the extreme demands made on batteries with the current cold snap. Then I filled the car up with petrol and my son was in the house when I returned from  the garage, his visit being delayed from first thing this morning. The house as a whole feels pretty cold so I am putting on extra layers of clothing for the next few days, including one of these winter-type shirts that were being off loaded in a charity shop for £1 the other day but I thought  would come in useful.  This week starts to see the return of some of my ‘normal’ activities suspended over the Christmas period including Pilates on Tuesday and Tai Chi in Thursday whilst on Wednesday my son and daughter-in-law are scheduled to come around and we are going  to tackle the clearing up of one of ‘hobbit holes’ which is what we call the low access doors to the eaves of the house where we store excess things like suitcases and the like. Although I do not like the excessive use of ‘deliver-to-the-door’ facilities like Amazon, I cannot deny the usefulness on occasions. As a case in point, I ordered two hot bottles (for my feet) which were sold as a pair and of those specialist A3 size desk calendars that I keep my desk to record important appointments. Both of these arrived today and the hot water bottles will be pressed into service  this evening. Early in our married life when Meg and I acquired out first house with no central heating in the bedroom we made use of one those stone hot water bottles and we both managed to get our feet on it somehow. These stone bottles retained the heat for a long time but were inclined to fall out of bed with a resounding bang in the middle of the night (and I think we had only rugs on our bedroom floor, so it tended to wake us up) I do not recall ever disposing of this stone bottle so I wonder what happen to it? You can still get them on eBay for about £10 plus quite a lot of postage, being so heavy. Looking at my weather app, I see that the night-time temperature is likely to be -6° for the next day rising to 0° after that but the daytime temperatures will hover around 3°-4° for the rest of the week.

As it was so very cold yesterday morning, I allowed myself the luxury of staying warm in bed for an extra hour. I knew that my University of Birmingham friend was away and had no social engagements for the day so I indulged myself somewhat. When I did get up, my smart speaker informed me that the temperature was -2° but the highest we could expect throughout the day was a high of 3° but a low of -5° during the course of the day. Conditions will become less cold through the upcoming week but temperatures will most likely stay below the January average, and further snow showers are expected in places. The second half of January should be a bit milder with temperatures near or a little above average overall. This would mean more rain than snow but occasional wintriness will still be possible. At the moment, it appears to be a little too cold to snow but we might expect some later in the week. The weather charts show that that the cold snap is affecting Scotland and the east of the country but here in the Midlands, it appears that we might be spared some of the worst excesses of the cold. Even going to church the evening before entailed a de-icing of the car which I have not experienced before at this time of year. After I returned from church, there was one of those really good end-of-year programmes which was the Earth viewed from space throughout 2025 and, as you would expect, some of the shots were astounding. I spent some time in the evening before yesterday fiddling about trying (and failing) to get the Tesco Mobile PAYG app working on the phone which used to be Meg’s but upon which the credit from my ancient Nokia has successfully been transferred so I did not lose this when TescoMobile switched off their 2G/3G last Wednesday.

I am absolutely appalled by the new world order which is developing once the Americans have resurrected the ‘Monroe’ Doctrine which dates from the C19th and which can be summarised as letting America do what it likes in its own ‘back yard’ i.e. Latin America and the Caribbean and the USA will not interfere with other people’s affairs. So now emboldened by all of this, Trump may now invade or interfere with other adjacent countries and I would think that the Chinese must now thinking that there is nothing to stop them (following the American example) invading and annexing Taiwan which they regard as ‘theirs’.The seizure of Nicolas Maduro takes the world into new territory. Geopolitics is about to become weirder and potentially a lot more dangerous. America’s president has justified seizing the leader of a sovereign nation by drawing on the US foreign policy of the 1830s – and he says the US will now be running Venezuela for the foreseeable future. The liberal American media which I view on YouTube are convinced that Trump is now seriously demented, falling asleep and slurring his words and all of this, probably true, is making the world an incredibly dangerous place as there appears to be no opposition, even within the military to more madcap adventures.

With getting up a little later than normal, I was further delayed when in the middle of my Pilates exercises by my Italian friend from down the road. I had pushed a little card through her door to enquire if she needed any medications whilst feeling under the weather with cold-like symptoms. We had quite a long chat about this and that and if she is feeling better by next Sunday, then I may well take her in the car to the later Sunday morning service at our local church. We are both hoping that the parish hall might be open for tea and biscuits where we can meet up with fellow parishioners with whom we may have lost contact. Instead of walking down the hill, I decide to go by car as otherwise I might not have been eating lunch until, about 2.30 or 3.00 and there were some cleaning jobs that  wished to do whilst the last of the natural daylight. It was a gloomy afternoon but the clouds parted for a few minutes which was helpful to me in my cleaning activities but they soon rolled back again.  Down at Waitrose, I availed myself of a cup of coffee and chatted to one of the staff that I knew quite well as, with two other members of staff, she had actually attended Meg’s funeral last May. In our brief snatches of conversation, it emerged that she had joint UK-Australian citizenship and had spent some of her early life there. She had also had employment in the diplomatic service for some years before she was married and I told her that I had desperately wanted to get employment in the diplomatic service but was offered a position in the Central Office of Information instead. I have noticed before that the ‘partners’ (as John Lewis, owners of Waitrose, staff are called) have often had quite interesting jobs before they joined the Waitrose staff. 

The massive implications of the US invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Maduro (no shining angel himself, but that is not the point) I think it is now fully appreciated that since WWII we have a ‘rules-based’ international order in which it is regarded as completely illegitimate for strong nations to invade and take over weaker ones – as the Nazis did in Poland, for example. But now that Trump has revoked the post WWII consensus, it opens the door for Putin to be expansionary in Europe and the small Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania must be quaking in their boots) and, even now, the Chinese might be licking their lips at the opportunity to ‘take back’ Taiwan. Although many people are blaming Trump, some more informed analysts are arguing that we always have mad men in our midst like Trump but the real failure in the American constitution is the failure of the Congress or the Supreme Court to halt such plainly unconstitutional actions. I think an estimated 40 Venezuelan troops might have been killed (or is it murdered as war has not yet been declared by Congress) although I think that the President can take action under the ‘War Powers Act’ but any military intervention such as this need Congressional approval within 60 days.

The day before yesterday, I received a pleasant surprise through the post. This was the ‘Health and Welfare’ component of the Lasting Power of Attorney documents which now come in two parts, the first being ‘Property and Financial Affairs’. We had already got these in place for Meg before she died and I did not really use the documents although the local authority. for whatever reason, needed a copy forwarding to them for their records. The website that guides through the process is really very straightforward and my son and I went through the process in the Autumn. One document was straightforward but in another we had got some of the dates in the wrong sequence and parts of it had to be resubmitted. But this has now gone through the system and is duly registered and recorded. I had always imagined that these legal documents had to be seen by a judge or a court but I am mistaken in this belief. But it does take a process of weeks after submission for the documents to be finally validated and returned to you. In my own case, it is straightforward insofar as my son or daughter-in-law are now the nominated persons and I am relieved that this is now in place. If you leave it until it is ‘too late’ i.e. following an accident or admission to a residential home, then without an LPA, relatives are involved in a long, complex and expensive procedure so it is much better to have these things in place way before they are actually needed. Now that the New Year has arrived, I probably need to turn my attention to updating my will (which is 18 years old and things have happened in the meantime) and, in about a month. my son and I are going to make a trip into Worcester to pay off the remainder of the small mortgage I took out when my son and daughter-in-law moved out of this house. My family and I are starting some of the ‘decluttering’ process because being a dormer bungalow there are several small access points to the eaves which we have fondly called ‘hobbitt holes’ and these have been used for storage of little used items such as old suitcases. So we are going to do about one of these a week and then the material that is found can either be thrown away or a few precious items retained. My Tai Chi teacher has written to us indicating that classes are due to resume in the forthcoming week as will my Pilates and I just want to return to a routine of normality as it were.

A shocking political story is being exposed by the Liberal Democrats this morning. Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of diverting £3 billion of NHS funding a year to appease Donald Trump. Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said taxpayers’ money was being ‘rerouted at the request of Donald Trump’ from frontline NHS services ‘into the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies’. At the beginning of December, the UK agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines by 2035 to stop the US imposing trade tariffs on pharmaceutical products. The deal involves an increase in the baseline threshold used to assess whether medicines can be offered by the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will increase the threshold by 25%: from £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000. The government says this means NICE will be able to approve innovative medicines that deliver significant health improvements but might have previously been declined on cost-effectiveness grounds. It has suggested the deal will cost around £1bn a year by 2029. Others, including the Lancet medical journal, have said the cost to the NHS will be £3bn. Exact costs will depend on how many medicines are approved under the new system.

The news media was agog this morning with the (probably, quite illegal) invasion of Venezuela by the United States and the capture of the Venezuelan president who has taken aboard a US warship and will then be taken (and tried and probably imprisoned) in the United States. This story will unfold throughout the day so more of this when details emerge but it delayed me walking down into town. As well as the evident flouting of international law, I am rather dismayed by the reaction of Keir Starmer and other European leaders who refuse to issue a word of criticism of Trump in all of these nefarious activities. Starmer is saying ‘we must wait for the full facts to emerge’ whereas the facts are already known and spattered across the media in that the US have invaded another country, captured its president and is then transporting him to the US. If this is s not an act of war, then  I not know what is but the US constitution reserves the right to wage war on the approval of Congress which has not been sought. The MAGA  crowd are being somewhat silent because whilst they might admire the a ‘strong’ president and the use of the military to pursue America’s aims, Trump came to power on the premise of stopping all wars and certainly not starting one. If Trump had any hopes of attaining a peace prize, then these hopes must surely by now have evaporated like a snowball in June. On my way out, I bumped into my next door neighbour and we will will have a little Christmas drink together, probably in his house as his wife has only just had a hip operation. I walked into town, wrapping up very well against the cold and aware that it may well get even colder over the next day or so. In Waitrose, I spent a leisurely amount of time slowly reading the weekend pages of ‘The Times’ which contained many features best described as ‘makeover’ in terms of diet, exercise, lifestyle, and finances. One particular feature was of great interest as it was written by an Asian doctor who is going to present a special programme next Thursday evening but the major import of which seems to be that there are all kinds of things we can do to improve our health, fitness and well-being by approaches which dispense with all drugs and medications. This sounds an innovative approach and I shall study the article in the newspaper with great care. When I got home, I cooked myself a gammon steak and supplemented by this with an onion/tomato/sprout type of fry-up mainly to use some of the stocks of items left over from the Christmas period. Later in the evening, church beckons but it is not very pleasant going out when the weather is as cold as this. Mu University of Birmingham friend is away for the weekend so I am having to amuse myself for a few days. I will probably make a start removing some of he Christmas decorations but I only fancy doing this in the light.

The start of a New Year is always one of good intentions, not to mention resolutions, as it is evident that we metaphorically and literally turn over a new page when we dispense with the last year and start with the next.  Personally, I am not immune from these influences and do enjoy the occasional inspirational quote when I come across one, which I did a day or so ago. My Droitwich friend supplied me with a quote (which she, herself, was going to find useful) and it ran along the lines ‘Don’t let your happiness lie in other people’s hands’ and is an apparently very well known aphorism which is deployed to help people to sustain their own emotional health and well-being. A bit of research on Google revealed quite a number of accounts about the relevance of this particular quote and I somehow feel that I will not forget it in a hurry. Sometimes, I am reminded of the bitter comment by the French philosopher Satre that ‘Hell is other people’ which one can feel quite often after a bad day at the office, but I have read a quote before which I rather like that ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.’ – Soren Kierkegaard. On New Year’s Day evening, I did rather indulge in the long and drawn-out serialisation of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in which all six episodes were broadcast – I wonder which of the words attributed to the characters in the book they left out, if any. Incidentally, I think quite a lot of people know the story that Jane Austen herself accepted a proposal of marriage on one evening and then thought about it overnight and had changed her mind about it. Women in the 18th and early 19th century were almost regarded as chattels and were very much at the disposal of their male relatives who bequeathed and inherited property from each other and hence the constant theme in the Austen novels about marriage as that was the only way that a woman could generally avoid destitution and the ultimate degradation of the work house. Modern day women, of course, have careers and a degree of economic independence and Austen herself was enjoying (unusually, for the time) success as a female author so she probably valued her independence over the married state – particularly if all of her earnings could be expropriated by a future husband.

Sky News is reporting this morning that Rachel Reeves is ‘quietly hammering’ workers with stealth taxes as a result of her budget last year, a think-tank has said. While the chancellor did not increase income tax, national insurance contributions for employees or VAT, avoiding a manifesto breach, her November statement did see her extend a freeze on the first two until 2031. It means people face being dragged into paying higher rates as their wages rise over time. The Treasury has defended the policy as ‘fair and necessary’. It is expected to raise £23bn in 2030-31 to help the government ‘deliver on the country’s priorities’ like cutting NHS waiting lists and debt. Sir Keir Starmer has promised people will ‘feel positive change’ in their pockets this year. According to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), someone earning £50,000 today will be £505 worse off in real terms come 2031 despite their salary being forecast to increase by more than £6,000. On the flip side, pensioners and those on welfare are set to be better off. Thanks to the triple lock guaranteeing increases in line with inflation, earnings or 2.5%, whichever is higher, a pensioner could expect to be at least £306 better off in real terms in 2030-31. If people relying on the state pension are exempted from paying income tax even once the payment crosses the personal allowance threshold, they could be £537 better off. And increases to the standard rate of universal credit will mean someone on unemployment benefits will be £290 better off.

This morning my son called round which is always nice because I was not quite sure that he planned to come round today.  We discussed the problem of the car battery that had failed after only a year’s use and then I started to get ready to take the car into Bromsgrove. We knew it had been very cold during the night and my son’s car (five miles away) had snow on it this morning. I looked for some cold weather gear in a piece of hall furniture called a Monk’s Bench in which we store hats, gloves and scarves. This turned out to be quite a painful experience because I came across a lot of the woolly hats and gloves that Meg used to wear and they were a very vivid reminder of her absence. I suppose I ought to bundle them all up and take them to a charity shop but today was not the day. The Bromsgrove High Street was in a half open, half shut mode – my favourite little cafe where I am greeted each Friday was shut, for example, but I went off to a supermarket and bought the minimum of needed supplies as I still have a fridge stuffed full of Christmas food. The supermarket had run out of stocks of ‘The Times‘ and my favourite TV listing programs magazine was not yet on display but I managed to secure a copy of my newspaper at the local garage. Some of the charity shops were open and some shut but I did manage to snaffle up a winter weight shirt (as the weather is so cold) and the charity shop were selling every item of clothing within the store for £1. It was quite late when I got home and I just had a ‘fish-on-bread’ type lunch. not being particularly hungry. In the afternoon, I ran off some ‘free’ calendars for 2026 but I was really looking for one  downloaded years ago which had all of the sunrise/sunset times on it for each day of the year. I did manage to locate a website, though, with sunrise/sunset times centred on Bromsgrove but each individual month needed printing off individually and the cartridge in my laser printer ran out half way through. Now, I need to take my various calendars and make then ‘hangable’ by judicious holes and perhaps string but I might leave this task for another day.

So the evening before yesterday was evidently New Year’s Eve and it turned out to be an evening of pleasant surprises. After a day that had been pretty fraught what with my escapades with the car’s battery and my tribulations in dealing with mobile phone companies, I received some pleasant surprises. My Droitwich friend turned up with her son and we spent the early part of the evening together cooking a meal for the three of us – the other son was away in London adjacent to the ‘London Eye’ eagerly anticipating the end of year celebrations. My friend had specially commissioned a Christmas gift which failed to arrive by Christmas Day but did arrive in time for New Year. It was a glass/acrylic medallion designed to be put on a Christmas tree but could be deployed anywhere. Our friend had surreptitiously taken a photograph of the wedding photograph which displays Meg and I looking at each other on our wedding day in 1967 and this had been incorporated into one side of the medallion. On the other side was the inscription ‘Those we love don’t go away- they walk besides  us every day. Meg and Mike 2025‘ This was the most thoughtful and imaginative gift and it will give me a tremendous amount of pleasure as well as reminding me of the generosity of my friend who had it made for me/us. My friend and her son left my house to conclude their own Christmas Eve celebrations at home and, just as they were departing, I received a phone call from my Italian friend down the road with New Year best wishes. My Italian friend and I made a tentative arrangement to see each over this New Year period but she had the most terrible cold and felt flu-like symptoms coming on so was retreating to her bed without seeing New Year celebrations. I did stay up until the magic hour but did not to be honest see much of the fireworks as I was too busy texting ‘Happy New Year’ greetings on my phone to a range of family and friends. my longest standing Spanish friend texted my greetings for the New Year and I tried to reply to her in Spanish using the words ‘Y para ti tambien!” which means ‘and the same to you as well’ Unfortunately predictive text wrought its worst and I finished up with the terrible greeting ‘And for your tampon’ which I did not stop until it was too late (the predictive text had turned ‘tambien’ into ‘tampon’) I immediately sent a corrective message and I am sure my Spanish friend so well versed in English will understand and be amused by what happened. I did have a vey small liqueur glass of whisky with which to see in the New Year but one of my resolutions is to have a ‘dry’ January which should be not too difficult for me. New Year’s Day will see me renewing contact again with an old friend and I hope that in 2026 I can extend and consolidate my social circle which shows ominous signs of fast diminishing around me.

To start of the New Year, as I intend to carry on, I had arranged to meet a long lost friend in the Webbs Garden Centre down the road as it is easily accessible for those coming from further afield via the M5. As we both arrived, it was pouring with rain but after a coffee and a catch-up, we went our separate ways. On my way home, I picked up a copy of the newspaper and popped in to offer New Year Greetings to my Italian friend from down the road but she was still feeling pretty poorly and even asthmatic and may need to make a doctor’s appointment to get one of those puffer decongestants that asthmatics use to keep their airways clear. I had prepared some risotto earlier in the day so this meant that there was a fairly instant meal awaiting for me after my return. After lunch, I spent a frustrating degree of time trying to watch the Channel4 film ‘Hidden Figures’ about the contribution made by young, female black mathematicians to overcome all kinds of prejudice and the contribute to the space programme in the early 1960’s. To my dismay, this film did not seem available via catch-up for Channel4 but eventually it transpired that the system wanted me either to rent or to buy it, neither of which I was inclined to do. Then I had a long conversation with my Droitwich friend as we are both, in our own ways, looking forward to some order and consistency in our day-to-day lives, the patterns of which have been disrupted by the Christmas festivities. 

A major question overhanging the recent political scene is the nature of the Trans-Atlantic alliance. European allies worry that the Trump administration will push for a quick and easy peace in the Ukraine war, which as a result will not prove a lasting one. One pressing question for the year ahead is can European leaders find a way of living with an unreliable partner in Washington who does not share their values, whatever they claim to the contrary, or is some kind of deeper split increasingly inevitable? There is an ebb-and-flow in the nature of this relationship but an impending issue with Ukraine may well bring the issue to the fore once again.

I looked rather too late at the TV schedules to discover that ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was being broadcast during the whole of the afternoon in six episodes starting quite early in the afternoon and going on until 9.00pm this evening. However, most of the real action and drama of the novel comes in the second half of the book so I was not unhappy to start viewing from episode 4 (of 6) onwards. Later on, there is comedy in abundance with a review the life of Dave Allen (the celebrated Irish comedian) as well as an episode of ‘Outnumbered’ which I have always found excruciatingly funny. My TV viewing is quite likely to be interrupted by telephone and/or video calls at this time of year which is always a good thing, of course, and certainly takes priority over a TV programme. Tomorrow of course, is a ‘back to work’ day for some whilst others are squeezing the last bit of vacation out of the festive season before back to work with a vengeance on Monday next week.

I had to ensure that I awoke in plenty of time for the very last day of the year. Most importantly, the car needed to be taken into the garage at a scheduled time of 8.30 as a consequence of a message appearing on the console saying ‘Engine malfunction – get technical support’ (but this message has now, even more mysteriously disappeared) So once the car has been taken to the garage, I know that there is a fairly adjacent large store where I can go and treat myself to a breakfast which I will if only to occupy a little of the morning until the car is fixed (or not)The evening before, I had entertained my Irish friends from down the road with a little Christmas get together – we had both eaten our meal earlier in the day so I just rustled together a few ‘light bites’ to accompany our drinks. But I did introduce our friends to a little delicacy which I only tend to enjoy at Christmas time. In Yorkshire, there is a tradition of serving a slice of Christmas cake with a slab of Wensleydale cheese on top of it and the local publicans will tend to dish this titbit out to their regular customers (or they did in the past) Now it just so happens that Aldi sell a simple unvarnished slab of fruitcake not adorned with marzipan or icing but just sold as a slab of cake. This is absolutely delicious so last night I introduced our friends to a little bite of this Yorkshire delight that they had not tried before. My neighbours used to have an extremely likeable neighbour who was a French lady who in her professional career had been a teacher of both French and Spanish. She was always game to celebrate anything that needed celebration and was great fun at any of the little parties that we used to hold. But, with advancing years and a large house to maintain, she has now moved off to Sandbach in Cheshire to live in an annexe to her daughter’s house which is completely understandable but we all feel her loss quite keenly as the people to whom she has sold her house do not seem to have the same community spirit of ‘joie de vivre’ exhibited by our French friend. My Irish friends were looking forward to a two week cruise of the Canary islands upon which they were due to depart in a week’s time and, no doubt, this will help to pull the teeth of some of the worst of the January weather. We are having a cold and icy start to the New Year with an initial temperature of -2° predicted to rise to a dizzying 5° later on in the day. I have not studied the offering to be had on the TV for this last day of the year but I know there is a good film to be viewed as a catchup from yesterday during the afternoon and then we shall see how the rest of the day unfolds. I am looking forward to catching up with an old (musician) friend whom I have arranged to meet on New Year’s Day and I am sure that we have got quite a lot to catch up on between us. Having listened to ClassicFM for several hours each day since its inception nearly thirty years ago now, it does not surprise me that I recognise most of the tracks that are played. I used to think that listening to my favourite composer (Mozart) would be incredibly difficult once Meg had died as we shared the same musical tastes but, fortunately, that is not the case. As I type, I am listening to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 which, written in a minor key, expresses a degree of melancholy but there are always rays of hope bursting through. When I reflect upon it, I think I was incredibly fortunate to have attended a grammar school (Thornleigh College in Bolton) with a good, but by no means outstanding, musical tradition which taught me so much at an impressionable age that has stayed with me throughout life. I do wonder whether this type of musical education which I was fortunate to experience has been entirely squeezed out of the modern curriculum. I remember being played the overture to the ‘Marriage of Figaro’ at the end of my third year in the school with the message that this was going to be the piece to be analysed in real depth for our ‘O levels ‘which were still two years off but we might as well make a start now so that we could get off to a flying start when our fourth year in school commenced. I then moved schools as my mother had completed her teacher training course and I then attended a school in Leeds with no musical traditions whatsoever (apart from a few singing lessons taught only to the 11 year olds) and this was a massive culture shock for me at the time.

Well, I had a feeling that the day was not going to run smoothly and so it proved. I got to the garage at 8.15 and, fortunately compared with the last time I took this road to Redditch it was just that little bit lighter making for easier navigation. Bur then the receptionist dropped a bit of a bombshell telling me that the message ‘engine malfunction’ meant that they could not release the car until about 5.00pm in the afternoon. I walked to the nearby Morrisons and treated myself to a large English cooked breakfast, not least to while away the time. I had availed myself of a copy of ‘The Times‘ and as the restaurant was uncrowded occupied myself with doing a ‘Seriously Fiendish Sudoko’ for half an hour before doing a wander of the store. I made for the stationary section but everything in which I was interested was either sold out or not stocked but I waited until three hours had elapsed and then walked back to the garage. Here I was informed that the battery was faulty and leaking even though I knew it was a fairly new one. A quick call to my son revealed that it was a ‘MazdaCare’ replacement but they had subcontracted to another firm who had supplied and fitted a battery that they claimed was superior to that supplied in the original Mazda (which it plainly was not, having failed after thirteen months and just, of course, out of the warranty period) So the Mazda garage explained that thy were just a franchise and had no record of what MazdaCare had done who, in turn, had subcontracted out a part pf the repair business. So we seem to have a business model here in which organisations take whatever profit they can and then subcontract out parts of the business so they do not have take any losses. Even the battery could not be replaced in the main Mazda dealership because they were ‘out of stock’ having had a run on them recently but I am booked in for next Monday when they should have replenished their stocks. So I have a diagnosed but not repaired car but was still glad to get home. Then I had an extremely frustrating afternoon trying to get the credit transferred from one Tesco Mobile phone (an ancient Nokia, where they are discontinuing 2G as from tomorrow!) to a more modern iPhone with a TescoMobile Sim card inside but the number of hoops through which I had to jump were incredible. They say it has been done but I shall have to wait 48 hours to see if the credit has transferred over (and I suppose that will exclude New Year’s Day and the weekend)

The evening before yesterday, I engaged in a small but important task which was to go carefully through each of the Christmas cards that I have received and to mark off on my master list those that I have received. I am much more concerned, of course, to work out those from whom I have not received a card and whilst some might be distant neighbours, others are life-long friends or distant family members from whom one might normally hear at Christmas. So I am a little worried about one or two people and, in particular, my son’s godfather who I have known since my university days and who I know was not in the best of health. So now I have a little ‘mini-list’ of people to whom I can send a sort of New Year’s card with a gentle enquiry wishing them the best for the New Year and hoping that all is well. I have all of my ‘Christmas card writing’ gear in one or two places cross-referenced to each other such that I have spare cards, address lists, labels for the computer and the like so that I can make a flying start next year. At the same time, I know that I am a little short of those occasional notelets that are so useful to send to friends or acquaintances on occasion but I have managed to locate about a dozen of the same acquired probably decades ago from a National Trust outlet. So I decided to augment my collection so I went onto Amazon and have ordered a pack of 30  of  floral design but complete with envelopes so now I can be confident that I have I have a good stock of these and, of course, when  am next in the stationery department of a suitable store, I will probably buy even more. My very well organised daughter-in-law always keeps a stock of birthday cards to hand and this really seems to be an excellent idea as it is quite easy to forget, or even not know, about an imminent birthday. I have decided to engage in another seasonal activity which should be relatively easy for me as, although I have a stock of alcohol in the house, it would never occur to me to drink alone. So  thought I would engage in a ‘dry’ January and this is what is generally thought of the idea. Dry January is generally considered a good idea for many, offering significant short-term health benefits like better sleep, more energy, weight loss, and improved mood, while also helping people reset their relationship with alcohol for long-term moderation, with studies showing lasting reductions in drinking. It helps identify triggers, saves money, and lowers health risks (blood pressure, diabetes, certain cancers). However, it is for resetting, not for those with severe alcohol dependence who need professional help. It has always struck me as a little counter-intuitive that one starts off New Year with celebrations that involve imbibing a little alcohol and although I have regularly done this, it has generally been with a minute amount of whisky. Meg, when she was alive, was normally fast asleep in bed and asleep so I have actually seen in the New Year very often on my own. Although the fireworks seem fantastic, they really have to be appreciated in the open air and not just on a TV screen.

In the morning, my son called around and I discussed with him some tentative plans that I am making for a somewhat more active social activities once we have the Christmas festive season out of the way. Part of the trouble is that from early to mid December onwards, forthcoming Christmas seems to dominate everything. So my Pilates class and my Tai Chi classes have ended for the Christmas break, all U3A (University of the 3rd Age) classes are in abeyance and the social networks in which  participated were filled with the preparations that were being made for the visits of children and grandchildren. Of course,  I was caught up in all of this as well with going to visit my relatives in Yorkshire, decorating the house, getting Christmas cards written and delivered, shopping for Christmas food and present and so on. And so in many ways, I am really looking for ward to Monday, January 5h because that is the point at which that more ‘normal’ life resumes and we can get back to the routines that are part of our more normal mundane existence. Allied to this, of course, we have New Year Resolutions with which to comply and I am going to try to have a ‘dry’ January. Here towards the end of December, I got to get the imminent car service out of the way. I am seeing different friends on both New Year’s Eve and also New Year’s Day and for this I have needed to go out today and do a minimal bit of shopping to make sure that I have the requisite supplies. At this time of year, I do enjoy watching the Royal Institution Christmas lectures for young teenagers and I have missed the first couple so far as they are broadcast at 7.00pm and I have forgotten to turn over in time. This year, the theme is ‘Is there life on other planets?’ but the first was devoted to fairly space-related things such as how the International Space Station works, interviews with astronauts and so on. There is going to be a very good film on later on today which my University of Birmingham friend has told me about entitled ‘Hidden Figures’ and it is advertised as a fact-based drama featuring the contributions of female African-American mathematicians and the prejudice they had to face as they worked on the US space programme in the early 1960’s. The transmission time overlaps with a little Christmas ‘at home’ I am holding with my Irish friends but this will be a treat for me to watch in the next day or so. These days I often study the TV schedules for the day before in case a very good film has been transmitted late at night the evening before and that I can then ‘catch up’ on the next day. I made myself a ‘quickie’ lunch which was to parboil some potatoes, carrots and sprouts and then add them to a tin of a chunky lamb and vegetable soup which actually translates over into a ready-made stew. Needless to say these days, I inevitably make enough for two days so one half is saved for a later date.

The end of the year is bringing to us a blast of cold air with temperatures only just above freezing and with a fair bit of cloud to boot. The weather forecasters predict that the cold snap will continue until well into the New Year. Here in Bromsgrove, the temperature is currently 4° but the breeze is predicted to make it feel colder than this. I think it is one of those days when a scarf is mandatory and I may well invest in an extra pair of socks as my heels are inclined to crack in spells of cold weather like this. I have just bought via Amazon some special heel plasters because I am in need of one at the moment and I will probably need a good supply for the days and weeks ahead. If anyone was holding their breath expecting to see a break through in the Mar-a-Lago talks concerning the future of Ukraine, then there is nothing much to report. Zelenskyy is saying that a peace plan is 90% agreed but this is only between the Ukrainians and the Americans who, in the last analysis, will always side with Russia. Part of the peace plan is suggesting that the contest areas of Ukraine, the Donbas area much of which is occupied by Russia shall be de-militarised and perhaps made into a special economic zone (it is rich in coal and minerals), But such a plan would have to be monitored by ‘boots on the ground’ and who is going to supply such forces? America always prefers to drop bombs on the ground rather than commit troops to a ground war with the risk that body bags will be shown live on American TV which is a real ‘no-no’ for the Americans after their experience in Vietnam. So it it going to be other Europeans whom Putin will argue are just Nato in another guise and intent on seizing what Putin regards as Russian territory. So what is decided between the Ukraine and Trump will subsequently have to secure the agreement of the Russians. For their part, they have gained some territory at an enormous cost in lives but had to concede nothing and will never agree to any monitoring forces from what country that might impede their own territorial ambitions. So perhaps the Ukrainians have to fight on  wishing for an end to the Trump presidency or at least its emasculation following the Congressional elections later in 2026 and a desire that a similar administration (such as one headed by the current Vice President J P Vance) does not follow for the next eight years. So there is no prospect of a real and lasting peace and all of the Russians have to do is to say ‘Nyet’ and consolidate the gains they have made since the start of the war. This is all rather depressing but perhaps the future lies in ignoring the Americans altogether and the European nations increasing their defence expenditures and doing what they contain to contain the Russian threat (which is all rather reminiscent of 1930’s Germany, but do our collective memories stretch back for practically a century?) 

The day turned out to be quite a ‘domestic’ day what with one thing or another. There were several texts that I needed to send so that I could keep in touch with families and friends over this festive period before work pressures start to intrude upon us one again the minute we have New Year out of the way. It would be nice to see my Yorkshire family a little bit more than I do as I tend to confine my visits to things such as birthdays and the Christmas season itself and, of course, bad weather makes travel by road a little more problematic than in the summer. But I noticed that in Leeds there is going to be a production of Mozart’s ‘Marriage of Figaro’ which is one of my favourite operas so I need to think whether I can combine an opera visit and a family visit into one trip. My Irish friends are due to come round to share some Christmas festivities with me and then the following day, the car is booked into the Mazda garage because I got an ominous message on the console saying ‘Engine fault- arrange for a technical examination’ or something similar. I have the car booked into the Mazda garage at 8.30am and no doubt they will plug the engine into their own diagnostic computer and  then we can find whether the fault is a very trivial one, a very serious one or something in between. But whereas a normal service can take a predictable amount of time, I have no way of knowing how long the car is to be out of action. I know that there is a local supermarket with a breakfast where I can go and have some breakfast whilst I while away the time but evidently I am hoping that whatever is wrong can easily be fixed. On Thursday, which is New Year’s Day I am due to meet up with a friend I have not seen for some time at the Webbs superstore down the road and I checked that they are actually open on New Year’s Day, which they are. I suspect that a lot of the population are going to regard the whole of this week as a ‘holiday’ week as there is only on working day i.e. Friday, January 2nd and many will have taken this is annual leave. Then the whole country will try to properly return to work next Monday morning which is January 5th. 

The Epstein release of files is proceeding slowly and the Department of Justice has already broken the law passed by Congress to release all of the files before Christmas. It is said that a million other files have just been found but how you lose a million files in the first place defies imagination. The American liberal media are already crying ‘foul’ because in the most recently found material including a letter associating Trump with underage girls, it is claimed that a handwritten letter is a ‘forgery’ But if the letter has only just come to light, then it takes a fair amount of time of detailed investigation (of the paper, ink, signatures,  provenance) so it does appear that the Department of Justice have just called it as a ‘forgery’ (to not implicate Trump) without a full investigation. 

You can always tell that there is no overwhelming news stories when each of the Sunday newspapers chooses a different headline. But the international news seems unremittingly grim in one way or another. In Gaza, despite being practically flattened to the ground children as young as 8 years old are being regarded as suspects should they inadvertently stray near to the Israeli army (IDF – Israel Defence Force) positions, There is also a report than a young Palestinian baby died not from a disease process or injury but just of hypothermia ie, the cold. the Ukrainian situation also does not look very hopeful. The Ukrainian leader, Zelenskyy is due to meet with Donald Trump in his Florida hide away but despite a peace plan being reportedly 90% ready, Putin appears to have made n o concessions of any kind and the Russian leader knows that as long as Trump is in the White Hose, then all he has to do is to sit tight and slowly consolidate the military gains made on the ground. Meanwhile, Kyev is being bombarded with hundreds of Russian drones on a nightly basis and at least a third of the city is without power. But the Ukrainian leader is going to present a plan to Trump which seems eminently sensible (and one, incidentally, which I suggested in this blog some months ago) Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has given details of an updated peace plan offering Russia the potential withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the east and the creation of a demilitarised zone in their place. Detailing the 20-point plan agreed by US and Ukrainian envoys in Florida at the weekend, Zelensky said the Russians would respond on Wednesday once the Americans had spoken to them. Describing the plan as ‘the main framework for ending the war’, he said it proposed security guarantees from the US, Nato and Europeans for a co-ordinated military response if Russia invaded Ukraine again. On the key question of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, Zelensky said a ‘free economic zone’ was a potential option. He told journalists that as Ukraine was against withdrawal, US negotiators were looking to establish a demilitarised zone or a free economic zone. Any area that Ukrainian troops pulled out of would have to be policed by Ukraine, he stressed. A critical point is the offer of a referendum in the Russian speaking Donbas region in the East but this approach has already been rejected by Putin. But from the point of view of the Ukrainians, it could be argued that is a majority of the population on a ‘fair’ referendum want to go off and become part of Russia, then as a good democrats they should let them go.  The fact that Donald Trump would not agree to a referendum speaks volumes about the mindset of an American president who is supposedly upholding the values  of the free and democratic west and it is probably not going to happen. But it would be a way in which the Ukrainians could reconcile themselves to a loss of a region which the Russians have largely, but not completely, captured in the war so far. Meanwhile, on the more domestic front I have issues an invitation to Irish friends down the road to join me for some Christmas festivities in a day or so and so we shall look forward to that and then start to think about taking down all of the Christmas decorations at the end of next week and once New Year has been celebrated. There is one Christmas related task which sound a little calculative but which I still think needs to be done. As part of my ‘mechanisation’ of the Christmas card writing process, I have run off a master list of those to whom I have sent cards this year and I need to remind myself of those from whom I have not received a card in return, In the past, this has sometimes meant severe illness or even worse but I shall not know until I have engaged in the process.

Yesterday had been a somewhat unusual day. There were several domestic jobs such as washing to be attended to n the morning and then I popped down in the car to collect a copy of the newspaper (fortunately, not sol out) and some supplies of sweetener.  When  got home I needed to attack some bird droppings on the cat before they hardened and etched their way into the paintwork. Then the dryer started to give  some messages that ‘something’ needed cleaning and I worked my through the four ‘cleanable’ bits which are the water repository, the large main filter and then two subsequent filters housed i the base of the machine. I managed to sort out the problem but I think i need to make this into a routine on about 1st of each calendar month so that the problem does not build up over time.   My son and daughter-n-law were due to come around at 3.00pm in the afternoon  and  entertained myself until they came with a viewing of the classic film ‘Casablanca’ which is always watching for it is multi-layered, multi-layered towards the end and then ultimately quite exciting and poignant (although my family arrived half way through) Then we had various family matters to discuss but one of them involved the putting to sleep of my daughter-in-law’s mothers dog which was upsetting for all  concerned. My family stayed with me until quite late and then I made some telephone calls as there was nothing to engage my attention for the rest of the evening.

It is too early in the day to judge the success of the talks at the Trump retreat into the future of the Ukraine and, even they have concluded, it is unlikely that a breakthrough will have been achieved. Trump is desperate to add Ukraine to the list of conflicts that he has boasted that he has resolved but the attitude of Putin and Russia is unbending in the extreme. This is the time of year when may programmes are taking a backward over the lives and careers of prominent figures in politics and the arts who are no longer with us. I knew that Robert Redford was tremendously respected as an actor but the tributes pid to him revealed that he was much admired and loved when he turned his creative energies to directing as well. the news has just emerged of the death of Brigitte Bardot who was ‘the’ pin-up girl of the early 1960’s but who devoted her latter years to campaigning for animal welfare (but also lent her weight to some rather nasty right wing politics as well)

Almost inevitably at this time of year, one has got Christmas Day and Boxing Day out of the way and most of the population are enjoying a few days of rest but also reflection. The reflection part of consists of looking forward to the New Year which is now only a few days away and because of the sense of renewal and ‘turning over a new leaf’ one’s thoughts turn to New Year resolutions. It is interesting that many people make New Year resolutions and then these might be sustained for days or weeks and then one reverts to patterns of life and behaviour that the New Year resolutions were meant to avoid. In my own case, I resort to a little acronym where each letter of the word relates to an activity or behaviour pattern and, depressingly, this seems to be the same year after year. The middle aisle of the Aldi supermarket is often stuffed full of ‘keep fit aids’ such as weights and personal training aids and I remember with wry amusement seeing one piece of kit which was adorned with the slogan ‘This is not just for January’ or something similar. Many people start off the New Year with very similar goals and a brief search of the web reveals that the most common resolutions are to exercise more, lose weight, get organised and learn a new skill or hobby. Some of these are negative (things to avoid} and some are more positive (things to do) but I suspect that the secret is to have a series of essentially quite small steps which are eminently achievable. For those addicted to nicotine, for example, the resolution to ‘Stop Smoking’ is probably a huge change in their lifestyle and it is not surprising that many people fail in these endeavours. The advice available to the population on the internet is not only to make ones resolutions a series of quite small steps but also to have some kind of accountability such as a diary in which one can record and perhaps take satisfaction from some successes. It is also important not to let the occasional lapse throw one off track band and not to abandon the whole of the resolution but acknowledge than an occasional ‘wobble’ is quite understandable.

There is a huge dispute going on between USA and Europe which seems difficult to resolve. The row between Europe and Washington about what you can do online just ramped up. On Christmas Eve, the White House imposed visa bans on five public figures in Europe. It is all about what European officials describe as the regulation of online harm and what America’s officials consider censorship. ‘If you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you are unwelcome on American soil,’ said Sarah Rogers, the US under secretary of state for public diplomacy, as the bans were announced. The highest profile figure facing travel restrictions is Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner responsible for regulating social media and a key architect of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a piece of legislation that is very unpopular in the White House. The Trump administration has accused the EU of placing ‘undue’ restrictions on freedom of expression in its efforts to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation. It argues the DSA unfairly targets US companies and cities, who it is not elected to represent. Of course, this reflects the fact that huge organisations that dominate our commercial and online life are American corporations (the Amazons, Google, Twitter or ‘X’) and their power and influence are extremely difficult to regulate or even to curb. Naturally, my sympathies lie with the European side of this debate but even looking forward to a post-Trumpian world, it is hard to see how these differences in world view can be resolved. American power and hegemony are such that the USA refuses to recognise the World Court, will generally not allow the extradition of US citizens to face justice even when crimes have been committed abroad (one particular example being the young British motor cyclist who was killed by the wife an of American military officer who ‘forgot’ on which side of the road to drive when she drove out of an American military base in the UK and, being on the wrong side of the road, killed the young motor cyclist).

There is a great source of pleasure at this time of year and it comes in the form of a collection of cartoons by ‘The Times’ cartoonist, Peter Brookes. He often ties together two events happening at almost the same time into one cartoon but of course one has to be completely up-to-date with all of the current news stories. At the end of the year, some of the most noteworthy cartoons (66 this year) are brought together in a special supplement entitled ‘The Year in Cartoons’ In order to decode and fully understand each cartoon, Peter Brookes supplies a paragraph of information giving he context and other relevant information so that the cartoon can be appreciated to the full. Actually, the supplement takes some time to read as the cartoons have to be studied in some detail (for the interesting little touches and flourishes e.g. Donald Trump’s enormously long red tie which he often used to wear) and can be viewed several times over especially with the accompanying commentary.

Now that Christmas Day and Boxing day are over, normal life resumes as it were and in the evening I shall attend a church service which is part of my normal routine for. a Saturday. Instead of repeats of decades old comedy programmes (such as repeats of Morecombe and Wise) there is going to be a very interesting programme detailing the career of Judi Dench and tracing out some possibly real Shakespearean connections. But at this time of year, there are only a few jewels of programmes that stand out amidst the dross. It used to be the case that either an opera or a ballet is broadcast at this time of year but if that has been the case, I may have blinked and missed it. But I have just managed to secure a couple of tickets for our local Arts Centre where, in about two weeks time, there is going to a live transmission via video link of a production of ‘La Traviata’ from the Royal Opera House. I have been to one of these before and it is a way of enjoying a good operatic production on the cheap as it ere without having to journey to London.