Today being a Tuesday, Meg and I were looking forward to the little chats we have with the Tuesday morning in the Waitrose cafeteria. One of our number was there and we were joined a bit later by one of other friends but a third friend was off doing her bowling and hence couldn’t meet us this morning. It was fortunate that I had my mobile with me because I got a telephone call halfway through our coffee from Social Services with whom we are organising some support for Meg. Today is the day in which I normally attend a Pilates session but I judged that I could not make the session this week. Also, every so often we have a committee meeting in our local church which I am required to attend but I sent an ‘Apologies for absence’ and an email of explanation for the fact that I was not able to attend this evening. On consulting my emails this afternoon, I have have received a very sympathetic and heart warming response from the chairman to whom I sent my apologies and it is always a little reassuring to know that you are in other people’s thoughts.

We normally like to tune in to the daily Politics programme each day on BBC2 and today was an examination of some of the issues facing the Liberal Democrats who are in conference this week and also the Conservatives who are in conference next week. The interesting thing about the whole HS2 cancellation row, which is rumbling on, is that it might not be possible to announce any cutback in the programme just yet as the Conference is going to be held in Manchester which is not the best of venues in which to announce that the Manchester to Birmingham leg was about to be cancelled. It used to be said that ‘middle of the road’ Tory MPs hated going to the annual conference because they needed to rub shoulders with members of constituencies whose political stance is always far to the right of their own. They had to ostensibly pay obeisance to overtly right wing viewpoints with which they were not naturally in sympathy but they did not dare not attend in case they were sanctioned by their own local constituency association. The fringe meetings outside the main conference used to see dominated by the those of the likes of Boris Johnson at the time he was garnering support from those interested delegates before he eventually became the Prime Minister. So the Tory party conference is always reasonably interesting for those interested in the political process and whilst one is well used to the Labour Party having lots of internal splits and divisions, the same is also true of divisions in the modern Tory party particularly over Europe and Brexit and is not supposed to be true of the party who like to think that they are singing from the same hymn sheet. In practice, the divisions in the Tory party were bitter and deep but Boris Johnson tried to put an end to all of that by withdrawing the whip (ie throwing out of the party) all of the moderate and Remain minded MPs.

After lunch this afternoon, Meg and I thought we would catch up on one of the most interesting Prom concerts which was a rendition of Mozart’s Requiem but with a ballet accompaniments. I am not sure that this really came off because whilst the choreography and individual performances seemed well enough, the various balletic movements seemed somehow to jar with the essential spirit of the Requiem. One has to experiment in the Arts, I suppose, but sometimes it doesn’t really quite work. But afterwards, there was a follow-on programme on the BBC’s iPlayer called Making Music English. In this, historian Amanda Vickery and broadcaster Tom Service unearthed the fascinating story of the lifelong friendship between composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. A lot of the music was familiar to Meg and myself but having it contextualised in the time period of just pre-WWI to the 1920s was absolutely fascinating. The programme documented the forging of a distinctive musical genre that was both backward looking and evocative – probably the best known piece from this time period is the Vaughan Wlliams composition of ‘The Lark Ascending‘ which practically always topped the ClassicFM charts when listeners were allowed to vote for their favourites.

Sometimes, I take the long range weather forecasts with a pinch of salt but this year, things may be a little different. A mini heatwave is being predicted for us in mid-October so it might just be that after a truly terrible summer, we are getting something that compensates us a little. It is making me wonder whether it is worth contemplating a few extra long days out somewhere before the clocks change and whilst we have the promise of some warm, autumn sunshine. I have always quite enjoyed the autumnal period because in the course of my life, I have always started either a new job or a new venture in September/October. As the year progresses, though, I do count off the days until the shortest day in December 21st because I feel happier when I know that the days are getting longer rather than shorter. One has to live through ‘Trick and Treat’ first, though, which to my mind I rather deplore as a quasi-American import.

So Monday morning morning has dawned again and we had several little shopping type trips planned for this morning. The day did not start off particularly well, though, as we went to collect our newspaper only to be greeted by a little note on the door that the newsagent would not be available until 11.15. So we went on our way, picking up some supplies from Waitrose and then reparking the car at the other end of the High Street to see what the AgeUk furniture shop had to offer. There I did see a type of walker technically called, I believe, a rollator with two wheels at the front and two feet at the rear and as this was only £5,I hoped it might help Meg’s mobility issues. So this I acquired and then went on to a further suburban shop run by AgeUk where I picked up a large face wall clock that I needed (also for Meg) We called in at the newsagent on the way home but he was still closed. Upon my return home, I needed to do a little clean up job on my two purchases. The clock worked out fine after a new battery was fitted but the rollator was a bit of a disaster because Meg could not quite get the knack of how to use it. Then I made a further trip to the newsagent (but to no avail) and then got on with lunch. After lunch and another fruitless visit to pick up my newspaper, which was my fourth visit of the day, I bowed to the inevitable and bought my newspaper from Waitrose. After that, we knew that our chiropodist was due to call and so our feet have been seen to for another month. She did tell me about a local yoga teacher whose classes she has been attending for years and who also has an online presence so having got the details, I may do a bit of investigation as it is getting so problematic to attend my Pilates classes these days. After lunch, I wanted to watch again the whole of the second half of the Wales vs. Australia game, if only because Wales scored a stunning victory of 40:6, effectively knocking Australia out of the World Cup and inflicting the largest defeat against a northern hemisphere club, surpassing the 53-24 loss to Scotland in 2017. The BBC website wonders whether Wales were that good as they beat the previous best 25-point margin of victory against Australia? Or were the Wallabies that woeful, with former England boss Jones left to face the music as Australia lurch towards World Cup oblivion? It was probably both of these factors but given the pre-emince of Australia in years gone by, this defeat must be very hard to bear.

The Liberal Democrats are in conference this week – and although normally ignored by much of the Main Street Media, this year it is somewhat different because in the event of a tight election, their role could be piviotal. Sir Ed Davey has hinted his party would be prepared to do a post-election deal with Labour to prevent the Conservatives from forming a government. Speaking to Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby at the Liberal Democrats annual conference, the leader categorically ruled out any agreement with the Tories, saying his party could ‘play a critical role’ in removing them from power. But pushed over whether he would consider some form of deal with Labour, Sir Ed appeared to be keeping his options more open, saying instead he would not ‘speculate what else may happen after polling day’. It could be that the Liberal Democrats pose a severe threat to the Tories in the (prosperous) South of England that would never normally consider voting Labour whilst the Labour Party may be able to recapture some of its traditional heartlands in the Midlands and the North of England. We are definitely in a pre-election mode at the moment and one feels that every move that the government makes is calibrated upon how it will play with the electorate particularly in marginal and the ‘red wall’ seats. As regards the HS2 imbroglio, it is now being argued that at the very least Manchester and Leeds (only 40 miles apart but with the Pennines in the way) would have benefitted from a really fast rail link and then HS2 should have started from the North and then pressed southwards instead of the other way around. I seem to recall that in Spain, the Socialist government in office at the time pressed ahead with a really fast rail link between Madrid and Seville and with a non standard guage as well. But most commentators have argued that at the end of the day when the financial costs and benefits are evaluated that the capital city, Madrid, benefitted far more from the high speed link than vice versa. What I suspect really ‘did for’ HS2 was the fact that opeople living in the Chilterns and other desirable places en route exacted such a heavy price in the demand for tunnelling, compensation, landscaping and goodness knows what else that the costs escalated to the extent that they have. But ex-ministers like Anna Soubry have argued that even since Victorian times there have been cost overruns on infrastructure projects but the country has always benefitted in the long run. But a high-speed link between London and Birmingham only is either a bad joke, a white elephant or the desire to make the UK the laughing stock of the world.

Today after we had got up, it was evident that Meg was in too frail to attend the craft centre nearby to us where we intended to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend for a Sunday morning coffee. But then at just before 10.30 we received a text from one of my nieces who had intended to attend the baptism of two of her grandchildren (one of them delayed because of the COVID pandemic) But fate had intervened in a cruel way because although she had intended to visit the ‘happy, clappy’ Anglican Church in Gateshead where the baptisms were scheduled to take place. But courtesy of the primary school where my niece teaches, she contracted COVID and a journey to the baptism was now out of the question. But the church itself had made available a live feed of its services over YouTube and so it was possible for my niece (and also my sister and Meg and I) to witness the baptisms which, as you might imagine, was quite an emotional experience for us. Afterwards, my sister and I had quite a long FaceTime chat which we will probably do most Sunday’s and exchanged news about the types of services provided by the churches where the church ‘comes to you’ rather than the other way round, as it were, as ministers visit the house every so often to provide a miniaturised service for the sick and housebound.

We had a fairly traditional Sunday lunch of roast beef (cooked in the slow cooker), with the complement of a baked potato and some broccoli. Afterwards, Meg and I knew that we were going to watch the rugby and the evening but we decided to treat ourselves to a film which we pretty sure we had available to us as part of our Amazon ‘Prime’ membership. This film was called ‘The Way’ and it was a story filmed from a book, about the journey made by an American doctor who had lost his son who had met with his death whilst travelling along the Camino de Santiago in the French Pyrenees. His father decided to complete the Camino (and hence the title of the film) on his son’s behalf carrying his son’s ashes with him. On the way, he acquires some travelling companions and whilst these might be slightly larger than life, the things that happen to the travelling companions en route were quite credible. The journey has an incredibly emotional ending which I will not specify for anyone who wants to view the film for themselves and see how it ends but suffice to say that I actually wept buckets at the end. So Meg and I have quite an emptionally charged day what with one thing or another but we are currently enjoying Scotland getting the better of Tonga in the World Cup. But the match to view today is undoubtedly Wales vs. Australia and I would have normally backed Australia but who knows in this particular World Cup. We are now approaching the end of the pool stage and will be moving towards the quarter finals in which every game from now one will be a knockout game. One great source of disappointment for all rugby fans is that the outstanding French fly-half, Dupont, sustained a cheekbone injury in a recent match and has already had some corrective surgery. This will keep Dupont out of the competition for several more rounds and perhaps for the rest of the World Cup.

The big political news today is the story that the Tory government of Rishi Sunak is thinking of abandoning the HS2 High Speed line which means that if the Birmingham to Manchester leg is not completed, then we could have a high speed line that only covers a half of its intended length leaving the North completely adrift. Of course there are cost overruns but there were in the case of Crossrail across London which did not stop the project and there now even talk of a Crossrail2. I heard Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, furious with anger that big infrastructure projects affecting the North are regarded as problematic, so we could end up with a nation with updated rail projects in the South and a basically Victorian railway infrastructure in the North. Whilst all the signs are that HS2 will be ditched by the Tories, the Labour party is being a little coy about whether it still fully supports the project – for example, there is not a commitment from the Labour Party to immediately restore the abandoned Birmingham to Manchester link were they to gain power. There are even hints that a mjor Tory donor is reconsidering his support for the party if a major infrastructure is abandoned, despite the costs.

A NASA capsule carrying the largest sample ever collected from an asteroid has returned to Earth. The capsule, which landed in the Utah desert at 3.52pm, contained around 250g of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu as part of NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission. The significance of all of this is that materials gathered from the asteroid may give some clues about the formation of our own earth and solar system. If there is any evudence of any organic molecules, this would prove to be tremendously exciting and could point to the fact that the origins of life itself might have been brought to earth by a visiting asteroid – not a scenario out of science fiction but a hypothesis actually entertained by some astronomers and astrophysicists.

Today, being a Saturday and also a fine bright day, now we’re looking forward to our little trip to Waitrose where we hoped to bump into Tuesday crowd that we also tend to meet up with as well as Saturdays. Today we got onto the topic of the kinds of games and pastimes that we remembered as children and I wondered if any of the girls remembered any of the skipping rhymes that they probably used to sing in their junior days. In the days of a rigid division between the sexes, the boys were engaged in a type of football (actually we kicked a square block of wood around the playground) and, if we got bored with that, we boys used to play cigarette cards which involved throwing them down into any convenient corner and then picking up any of those that your own card came into contact with. I seem to remember that there were a couple called Peter and Iona Opie who spent a lifetime collecting rhymes and songs and I the one that I remember, althugh there were several was ‘Children’s Games in Street and Playground’ I think the Opies published several works of a similar nature and wilst the older generation will remember many of them, a lot will have been lost to current generations of children. I wonder, for example, whether the ‘skipping rhymes’ that girls (aged 6-9)used to sing when skipping in a group still persist. So afer these discussions we came home and contemplated the rest of the day. It really was a beautiful day but the grass had grown so exceptionally long not having been cut for a couple of weeks, I decided to give it a go in a series of ‘tranches’ so that Meg could be kept an eye on at the same time, Firstly our large communal grassed area to the front of the house generally takes about 40 minutes to cut and to cross-cut. Today, I divided the task into two and after twenty minutes came indoors to check on Meg. Then making sure she was comfortable, I completed the second 20 minute tranche, mightily pleased that I had managed to get this done at last. There is something about the grass this year which is making it grow at a prodigious rate and the grass today seemed practically as thick as it would be on the occasion of the first cut at the end of March. Then I settled down to watch most of the second half of the Portugal-Georgia match. This proved to be a fascinating contest betweem two equally matched but not particularly good teams. Portugal seemed to have gained the upper hand but in the last five minutes of the game, Georgia drew level on points and if they had completed the conversion for the extra points then they would have won. But with the scores level and literally only a minute or so on the clock, Portugal was awarded a kickable penalty and had they kicked this successfully, they too would have won the match. So the teams ended up with a draw which could well have been a fair result but both left wondering that with a slightly more accurate kick at goal, then both teams could have won the match.

We had a lunch of the other half of a chicken-and-ham pie complemented with some sprouts and baked tomatoes. This was fine but, as you might expect, I was quite keen to get outside and get the back lawn mowed which is only a 20 minute job. I left Meg watching a ‘Nrs Brown’s Boys’ and then raced to get the back lawn cut, which, as it lays within the shade of the house often has even thicker grass than at the front. I got this completed, and Miggles our adopted cat showed up at the end to give a nod of approval (and a little meal of fish that he/she has come to expect). After that we had a quiet afternoon of reading and music listening before we decided to watch the first half of the England-Chile game. We had decided that Meg and I should try to attend church for the first time in three weeks as Meg has felt a bit too wobbly in past weeks but was probably going to be a little OK today. I must say that having attended the church fairly regularly over the past four years, our recent no-shows had been noted and we were treated very solicitously today which was quite heart-warming in its own way. Our regular parish priest is on holiday for five weeks but we have a ‘Rent-a-Priest’ here for the next few weeks, I must say that I rather enjoyed hs rather jolly approach and not particular pious homily which he delivered sitting down rather than standing up.

Upon our return and our customary bowl of soup,it was the Ireland-South Africa rugby match and these two teams are rated as the two best teams in the world at the moment. The level of tackling was ferocious and either team could have won. But the Irish held onto a narrow lead and in the closing minute, the South Africans could well have scored a try from a rolling maul that would have won them the match – but the Irish snaffled the ball and hence emerged as victors. But these two teams might meet again in the final rather than the pool stages, in any case.

Well, it was certainly an interesting start to the day. Yesterday, we experienced a slight domestic disaster when Meg had a stumble in our downstairs toilet, the upshot of all of which was that a crucial little plastic bit broke away from the retaining pin making the while caboodle not really functional. It was going a little astray in the first place so I remembered that I probably had the box from a similar replacement toilet lid that we had fitted several years ago now. To my surprise and delight, I found that I had a complete replacement unit which saved me having to go out on the road to source one. Then all we had to do was to remove the old unit and replace it with the new one – easier said than done. I got so far and then got a bit stuck but very fortunately, my son was on hand to complete the job so that we had now a functioning unit again. My role was confined to holding the lid upright so that it did not fall down during the fitting process and to shine our (powerful) torch on the work area so that we could get the job done effectively. As happens in many walks of life, if we had to do it again we could do it in a jiffy but the first time one is working one’s way through a set of instructions and this always a bit iffy but we got there in the end. I suppose that many toilet lids other than the most basic ones contain the following feature, which is that you give them a gentle nudge from the upright position and they qietly and slowly close themselves without clattering or banging. The make was a Croydex which was a well-known brand of seat and I am not sure from where we bought it from in the first place.

After this had been fixed, it was time for us to have a rendez-vous with our University of Birmingham friend in the Waitrose cafeteria and we spent a happy hour chatting and also conversing with some of the regulars who seem to be there on Fridays. Normally, we meet in the park but after the experience of yesterday when Meg and I got thoroughly soaked, it was a case of ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ so the cafeteria was the better option. Friday is the day when our domestic help calls around and we always seem to have a lot of news to impart to each other, today being no exception. Our domestic help is a great source of assistance to us and we try to help each other with all kinds of little domestic things that go way beyond the call of duty. I generally buy one or two things that are easily available in Aldi but not usually else where and vice versa. We tend to have a fish pie lunch on Fridays (born of long tradition of ‘fish on Fridays’ dating back to our schooldays) and we complemented this with some tenderstem broccoli and a quick microwave roast of some plum tomatoes, enhanced with a little garlic mayonnaise. After lunch, we tuned into James Martin and today were entertained to a few stupendous views of Granada (with which we are familar) and then an interesting way of cooking fish (sliced into thin slices) which not have occurred to me in any case. James Martin’s cooking is always interesting but of course all of the outdoor cooking implements are always just to hand. He always seems to utilise a very sharp broad bladed culinary knife to prepare and dice all of his vegetables so I am wondering whether this might be a useful thing to ask Fr. Christmas for a little nearer to the date.

One gets used to a certain degree of political chicanery but the last day or so has seen the evolution of a new policy which seems to break all previous bounds. This week, Rishi Sunak made a surprise speech announcing delays to a number of key Conservative pledges aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But the amazing thing here is that certain items have been delayed or abandoned that were not even policy on the first place. Pride of these must be the pledge not to put a tax upon meat which was never part of a Conservative political agenda in the first place. One wonders where this will end, when politicians promise to put an end to ‘unpopular’ measures that they never intended to introduce in the first place.

Meg and I watched the rugby in the late afternoon, and specifically Argentina vs. Samoa. At the start of the match, it was a bit hard to predict who might turn out to be victorious. In the first half the Argentinians established a 10 point lead but the second half was a dour battle between the two sides with Argentina coming close to, but not actually scoring. But then against the run of play, Samoa scored a late try and if they managed to do this again the last five minutes of the match (not impossible), they might have won the match. So the last five minutes actually turned out to be pulsating and almost nail-biting. Tomorrow, though, will see a clash between Ireland vs South Africa as well as England vs. Chile will be quite a day.

Today is my shopping day and I was happy that I managed to get everything done whilst Meg was still in bed. As she was up several times during the night, I was relieved to see that she was staying in bed until I got back and slowly unpacked all of the shopping before cooking the breakfast for her. Whilst yesterday was wet all of the day, today seemed to be a beautiful day but appearances can be deceptive as we shall shortly see. I made up a flask and some things to eat and then progressed through the park, pushing Meg in a wheelchair. On the path, we met up with one of our regular ‘park’ friends that we used to see on an almost daily basis during the COVID days when the park was our lifeline. We had not seen each other for quite some time and we learned that our friend, who is not in good health and a wheelchair user, had been in hospital for a three week period and was still recovering from her hospital stay. We indicated that our trips to the park were less frequent than they used to be for a variety of reasons but it was nice to see her and to have a chat. Our friend went on her way and then we made for our usual bench and started to drink our coffee. Then within seconds, the heavens opened and we started to experience a really sharp and intensive shower of the sort that can wet you really thoroughly within seconds. Just to make matters worse, I was just receiving a telephone call which we had to terminate incredibly quickly and then dive for cover under the branches of the nearest large tree. Meg and I got soaked through but we had to stay there for a good 5-10 minutes until the intensity of the rainstorm had diminished considerably and we could make our way back to the car. This we did but, of course the minute we got home, we needed to strip off all of our outer layers of clothing and more besides, so that we could get ourselves dressed in some dry clothes. Once this was all done, we needed to get warmed up with a hot drink and then it was time for us to cook lunch. This turned out to be the kind of lunch which is quite typical for a Thursday when I made a sort of fry up of vegetables which were then served on some pasta (for Meg) and some cream crackers (for Mike)

After lunch, we received a telephone from one of the volunteers who works for AgeUK. We are trying to find some type of companion for Meg to perhaps sit with her for a little period of time on some afternoons but all of this may prove to be a little problematic and may not be possible. One of the volunteer organisers is going to perhaps pay us a visit and make some kind of assessment whether Meg could benefit from the voluntary services that may be available but we are rather in the lap of the gods until this happens. But we have been in text contact with one of Meg’s cousins with whom we have made an arrangement to visit Cheltenham to have a family meal a week on Saturday and to this, we are looking forward very much (but as we are both fairly ardent fans of Welsh rugby, let us hope this does not coincide with an important World Cup fixture)

So far, I have failed to comment on the Russell Brand affair but the latest revelations tonight have spurred me into comment. In the latest allegation, a woman says Brand exposed himself to her, then laughed about it on Radio 2 show. It strikes me that puffing up the egos of presenters and making them into ‘super stars’ as it were was almost inevitably going to lead to a situation in which some of these individuals (not all) must have felt themselves to be above the law or not subject to any kind of control or restraint. If we were to examine the context of the Brand comment in the latest allegation, Radio 2 was desperate to attract a younger audience and to be appear a bit more ‘edgy’ and ‘cutting edge’ and therefore probably let Brand get away with things which, upon a more sober reflection, should have never seen the light of day. The BBC is conducting its own investigation and it is apparently the case that in any tape of a Radio show which is pre-recorded, this has to be listened to someone in the BBC with editorial responsibilitie and adjudged to be compliant or not. But it is interesting to reflect that in the 1970’s there was an incredibly relaxed ‘zeitgeist’ surrounding some broadcast content. About a year or so back, a series of programmes were broadcast on the theme of ‘What they said in the 1970’s and then showing them to modern audiences – who viewed/listened with their eyes agape. In one infamous example, there was an advert in which a young woman was seen sauntering through a corn field exclaiming ‘I want to be – RAPED!’ One is amazed that anything like this was broadcast but indeed it was, to modern day astonishment.

Today started seemingly raining like cats and dogs and, indeed, it appeared to be like that for the rest of the morning. We had made a fairly early start to the day getting up and breakfasted but as the weather was so bad, we were not really tempted to go for a walk or a venture anywhere. I did brave the elements in order to make a quick dash out both to get a newspaper and to get some supplies from Waitrose. Then Meg and I had a lesiurely elevenses-at-home today. On a day like this, there are certain features of the day to which we look forward and one of these is the Politics programme broadcast at 12.15. To a large extent, this programme was anticipating what is expected to be a major climb down on several key ‘green’ targets such as the date upon which all petrol only driven cars will be phased out. The discussions are rather akin to that which you get on election nigt before any results actually roll in. But there is a strong suspicion that both Downing Street and perhaps Conservative Central Office have got their defense lines prepared in depth. The kinds of arguments that are being deployed go as follows. As a nation we have to be severely pragmatic and not saddle people with costs (e.g. for a heat pump replacement for their gas boiler) which they cannot afford. Also, it is necessary to take into account what the popular support for green measures to likely to be. There is masses of pure politics at work here. The Tories have consistently been about 20 points adrift in the opinion polls and are desperate to find policies with broad appeal which will claw back some of the lost ground. ‘Rowing back’ upon a green agenda, the Conservatives believe, will appeal to would-be Conservative voters and particularly to the ‘red wall’ seats (one time traditional Labour held seats which the Tories won at the last election with the promise that ‘Brexit means Brexit’) But where this cynical advantage of electoral advantage will come to pass, I am not so sure. It it true to say that the full costs are adopting greener policies have only been hinted at by both major political parties and certainly not spelled out in any detail. Industry is a lot more equivocal about the proposed changes. It is said that industry wants (and needs) is a long term and stable investment climate in which long scale decisions are to be taken. For example, the modern car industry which is predicated upon electric cars as the only direction of travel are not throwing up their hands with joy at the prospect of delaying the date when petrol cars are to be phased out for another five years from 2030 to 2035. But as I write, Andy Street, the Conservative elected mayor for Birmingham and the West Midlands in general is not agreeing with the latest rowing back on green targets. It looks as though the Labour Party may well decide to reverse wharever ‘reversals’ the Conservativees put into effect just before the forthcoming election.

Today after we had lunched, we tuned in the James Martin program which featured the way in which paella is cooked in industrial quantities in Andalucia (and, I believe near the town of Nerja which Meg and I know quite well) The paella is cooked in huge pans over open fires (fuelled by ex pallet timbers) and the featured restaurant, 600 meals a day were provided (as a cost of about 6.5 Euros per head and you could actually ask for seconds if you were not full after it) In the James Martin program, it showed the elderly proprietor overseeing each part of the cooking process and the overall quality was pronounced to be excellent. If Meg and I ever get to that part of the world again, this will be something for us to try. After this, we watched a rather silly but still enjoyable ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ after which it was time for me to attempt to get Meg settled down so that she can have a good rest to soothing images and music on YouTube.

At 4.00pm in the afternoon and by prior arrangement, one of my ex-University of Winchester colleagues and myself had arranged a ‘Skype‘ chat with each other. By an extraordinary coincidence, we are both caring for wives who seem to share a similar set of medical problems although the causes vary in each case. My friend and I share a lot of infomation with each and attempt to give each other mutual help, support and advice. But we also have shared experiences dating from the time when we both started off our teaching careers in Manchester (in different institutions and timescales although the colleges in which we both taught were only about a couple of miles apart). After our video call was terminated, Meg and I enjoyed watching the Italy-Uruguay rugby match in the World Cup. Uruguay was 10 points in the lead at half time but the Italians (‘Azurri’) quickly overtook them in the second half and eventually won by quite a handsome margin of 38-17. I really did want Uruguay to do well against a ‘first tier’ team such as Italy and they put on a brave show but their inexperience was bound to tell in the end.

Tuesdays are a day to which we always look forward because it is the day when a little gaggle of us meet up in the Waitrose cafeteria for a chat and some mutual support, also including some very mordant black humour. Today, we got onto the eternally jolly topic of funerals and several of our funeral stories were exchanged with each other. One that I contributed to the discussion when on the occasion of the funeral of a beloved aunt of Meg’s, her (brain-damaged) son not being fully aware of the fact that he was at his own mother’s funeral started off the proceeedings by shouting out ‘Goood old Millie’ when his mother’s name was first mentioned. The rest of the proceedings, conducted by a very adept Methodist minister, ended with the son shouting out, at the end of he service ‘Well prayed, Vic’ The old congregation was in tears, some because of genuine grief but the other half because they were helpless with laughter. After we made our way home, I had already made the decision that I thought I would need to give my Pilates session a miss today because of other priorities within the day. We needed to have an early lunch, which we did, of fishcakes and steam-in-the-microwave veg which was absolutely aequate for our needs. Then after lunch and our post-prandial drink, we watched some of the news headlines and then I started what I thought was an important routine for Meg this afternoon. The hairdresser who has been coming to us for years is scheduled to come to us at 4.00pm this afternoon and it is not uncommon for her to be late as appointments overrun. This afternoon, she is due to give Meg a perm which is rather a lengthy procedure so I thought that it was important that Meg had a good rest well before her visit. So I got Meg sertled down on the settee and encouraged her to have either a doze or a sound sleep whilst, courtesy of YouTube, we can observe some stunning images, accompanied by some soothing music. Under the circumstances, I trust that we will get into a routine similar to this most afternoons and I think this will help Meg to manage her frailties somewhat better.

One of the news stories breaking today is that Birmingham City Council is, in effect, being put under special measures as it is effectively bankrupt. The immediate claim upon the city’s finances has been the fact that female staff have been underpaid for years, if not decades, and the bill to remedy this is of the order of £1bn. A compounding factor has been the failure of a big IT system and the fact that tthe local authority has to endure some swingeing cuts to its budget over the years. This sitution is most acute in Birmingham but not unique to it and several other local authorities are said to be in a similar plight. Of course, from the viewpoint of a Tory central government, all of this is like ‘manna from heavan’ as they can argue that it is is Labour incompetence and financial mismanagement that has brought about the present situation and thereby hope to generate much political capital over this. There are also hints that incredibly valuble assets such as Birmingham International Airport and the National Exhibition Centre might need to be sold off (to the sharks no doubt waiting and circling in the water) and this could cripple Britain’s second city for years, if not decades.

It is not often that a government minuster gets a real roasting on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme but this does happen occasionally, including this morning. On the programme this morning, Nick Robinson told Barclay (the Health Secretary) that the move to practically ban junior doctors and consultants from he picket line ‘risks worsening already bad industrial relations between ministers and medics’. The health secretary insisted the new law was necessary in the interests of patients, and said the doctors’ union the British Medical Association (BMA) would face fines if its members still went on strike in defiance of the rules. Nick Robinson said: ‘You didn’t plan to do this just a matter of weeks ago. You didn’t think it was a reasonable thing to do then and you’re doing it now. So presumably you’ve changed your mind about the BMA. Have you decided this is a battle to the political death, that one side or the other is going to win and you’re determined to fight them?’ Barclay replied: ‘It recognises the fact that there has been an escalation from the BMA.’
But Robinson told him: ‘It’s recognition of the fact, Mr Barclay, that you have no answer to the strike 181 days since you had talks.’ A clearly-irritated Barclay was clearly annoyed about being taken to task in this manner but one has the suspicion that when the dispute is eventually settled, which indeed it must be eventually, there will be ‘blad blood’ between Tory Ministers and the BMA that might take many years to resolve. The longer this dispute rumbles on, a fight to the death will continue but the Scots solved this problem by coming to a workable agreement weeks ago. Of course the very heart of the dispute is how much of a pay cut the doctors are willing (unwilling?) to accept, given the past rates of inflation and the below inflation pay settlement that has been proposed.

Monday morning is always the start of a new week to be sure but we do not have a routine associated with it. I am sure that a century ago, it used to be the case that one wore one’s Sunday best and consequently Monday was often ‘wash day’ so that items could be washed, cleaned and ready for the next weekend if need be. Last night, whilst Meg was in bed during the later evening, I came to watch the rugby and also explored some of the facilities available on our newly acquired second TV. But, first of all, the rugby. It should never have been in doubt that England should eventually beat Japan in a game of rugby but the Japanese put on an extremely spirited performance. In fact, by half-time, if memory serves me correctly, England were only leading by a single point. As the BBC Sports channel revealed, England edged closer to the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals, but did little to impress in a scrappy 34-12 win over Japan in Nice. Lewis Ludlam forced his way over from close range for the only try of a first half littered with England errors. Early in the second half before a fortuitous try from captain Courtney Lawes, after the ball had bounced off the head of Joe Marler, gave England some breathing space. This was a truly remarkable incident and one I have never witnessed before in the years since I have been following rugby. As England were making advances towards the try line, there was a very evident ‘forward pass’ and this was so self-evident that both teams seemed to stopped playing for an instant. But what had actually happened is that a backward pass had bounced off the head of Joe Marlar and this is not regarded, within the law of the game, as a forward pass. An England player touched down and after consultation with the video referee, the pass was awarded. After this bonus try, England really did seem to play some more imaginative rugby to the extent that they actually secured a bonus point for scoring a total of four tries, the last in the dying seconds of the game. So we have now had our fill of rugby until Wednesday at the earliest. The second feature of the evening was a degree of experimentation with what is now available to us on our new (and for that matter, existing, telly) I had initially resisted all thoughts of taking out a subscription to YouTube in order to get rid of adverts but was then tempted by the fact that one could get a ‘free’ month before taking a subscription which then amounted to about the equivalent of one cup of coffee a week (which is how I measure things these days) One thing that YouTube does, probably as it is owned by Google, is to keep a record of recently watched programmes so that they can be accessed again. High on the list is a really outstanding Glyndbourne production of Mozart’s ‘Marriage of Figaro’ with some outstanding singers such as Benjamin Luxor, Ileana Cotrubas, Kiri te Kanawa and Frederica von Stade who I always think of as the absolutely definitive ‘Cherubino’. I have discovered some comedy programmes (and stories behind comedy programmes) and am currently playing one of those really ‘relaxing’ slow videos of beautiful countryside vistas whilst a soothing piano is being played in the background. I am experimenting a little with this to see if Meg can have a sleep each afternoon because I am petty sure that her body needs this and anything I can do to induce a state of relaxation and natural rest can only be a bonus.

I must say hat I particularly enjoy the contributions of Ed Conway on Sky News who often reports on economic issues but whose official title is something like ‘data analyst’. Certainly, his reports are data rather than opinion led which is surely a good thing. Today, the ex Prime Minister, Liz Truss entered the political fray again arguing that getting rid of Boris Johnson was surely a bad idea. But the Ed Conway analysis runs as follows and is certainly more nuanced. The economy was still recovering from the pandemic, from lockdowns and the supply chain disruption that ensued. The public finances were in a particularly weak position, with the national debt having rocketed higher to finance the furlough scheme. Britain, in other words, looked vulnerable. There were bombs buried throughout financial markets. But here’s where things get less flattering for the former PM, because there’s little doubt that what pushed the UK over the edge was the behaviour of Ms Truss and her team. Tonight, though, we are due the second instalment of the Laura Kuenssberg series ‘State of Chaos’ (and yes, I quite like the ‘double entendre’ in the title) This is detailing the Brexit imbroglio and the second episode is broadcast today. Although not a great fan of Kuennsberg, I thought she did an incisive job in the first episode which whets the appetite for the second. She interviews many of the key players which includes advisers, civil servants and several others regarded as key players and although one has already lived through these times, it is still quite revealing to understand how events unfolded, even though it is all still quite recent political history.

Today being Sunday, we pop into our Sunday morning routine. What with one thing or another, we had a rather disturbed night but no matter because we needed to face what today has to bring. By the time we had got ourselves up, dressed and ready for breakfast, we popped into our newly equipped Music Room where I got Meg some cereal to have for her Sunday morning breakfast. Meg was eating her breakfast and watching the Lorna Kuenssberg politics program where she was interviewing the Foreign Secretary. The only real thing that I remember from this interview was that the Overseas Aid budget had been cut from £15bn to £12bn a year (and one suspects that to many on the right of the Tory party, they would prefer it to be nil unless, of course, it was aid with strings attached to the ultimate benefit of the British economy). Expenditure on overseas aid has been reduced as a result of the pandemic from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP. In addition, the current government has raided the overseas aid budget to the tune of about one quarter (£3bn) to finance the migrant and refugee crisis. This means that in the last few years, the amount of aid being given to the poorest countries has been reduced from £15bn to £9bn which is a dramatic fall. Eveen the Foreign Secretary was forced to concede that this cut in the aid budget would have consequences but his counter-argument was that the money that was being spent was now spent in a much more effective and targetted way (which sounds like a ‘civil service type of argument) Apart from this item, I must confessed that I dozed throughout the rest.

We had agreed that we would meet with our University of Birmingham friend at a kind of outdoor sports centre in which people engage in canooing, kayaking and similar pursuits but in which there is a cafe overlooking what I suspect is an artifical lake. This is called the Aztec Adventure Centre and spectators are welcome – in practice, most come along just to have a coffee overlooking a local stretch of water. When we arrived, the café was not yet open and our friend had forgotten our arrangement, until prompted by a quick phone call. I took Meg along in her wheelchair, the better to negotiate the walkways to access the cafe which was not actually open at the time at which we arrived. There was quite a cold wind blwoing across the water, so after our coffee we went inside to escape some of the colder blasts. Our friend and I then engaged in a long and some might say, arcane, discussion about the role of statistics in researches presented in the typical PhD. In particular, I knew that one of my erstwhile colleagues at De Montfort University had been failed his PhD because it was argued that he had used the wrong statistical test and in this long and protracted argument he came off the loser and was failed his PhD which, I suspect rankled with him for the rest of his life particularly as he subsequently wrote a statistics primer for students. There are two very broad classes of statistics – one being called ‘parametric’ statistics where the population assumes the shape of what is known as the ‘bell shaped curve’ and the other broad class being known as ‘non-parametric’ statistics. The whole argument revolved around the extent to which could depart from the assumes of ‘normality’ for the parametric statistics still to be legitimate and to be valid or, at what point, the departure frm ‘normality’ is such that a non-parametric category of statsitics should be deployed. One can see that there an area for disagreement and debate about how far, and to what extent, a departure from ‘normality’ is to be tolerated to invalidate the use of parametric statistics. Meg very widely dozed off throughout this particular discussion but our University of Birmingham friend and myself had very similar thoughts and approaches to this problem. We both concluded that the degree of understanding of this issue could be quite small, even amongst supervisors of PhD students, let alone their supervisors and examiners, and from this discussion, we went on to share our experiences of the PhD examination process.

In the rugby World Cup, the match of the day was Australia vs. Fiji (Fiji had recently in the warmup matches beaten England and Wales only beat them narrowly in the World Cup). Fiji beat Australia for just the third time in their history as they blew Pool C wide open with a thrilling win at the Rugby World Cup. It really was an entertaining match and I think it fair to say that the Fijians seemed to outplay Australia in every department of the game. It was the first time they had ever beaten Australia in the World Cup as well and the celebrations around the stadium, and I imagine in Fiji itself, was something to behold. So after the thrilling match this afternoon, this evening it is going to be England vs. Japan. England ought to win this game but nothing is certain in this World Cup as the smaller nations are often playing well above what their world rankings might suggest. I speculate to myself whether the Japanese being such a rule-governed society will infringe the laws of rugby less than the English – we shall see.