So we run into a Saturday morning routine this morning and, having washed and breakfasted, it was time to make our way to the Waitrose cafeteria to meet up with our friends (as we did last Saturday on the celebration of our wedding anniversary but here we are one week further forward) We met up with our regular meeting with the three older ladies. After our customary chat, we bought som lime and mint cordial which Waitrose have on offer and to which we have become a little partial. Then it was a case of getting home and starting to think about our Saturday midday meal. Today, we were finishing off the remains of a large family pork and apple pie to which we added some broccoli and a special mixture of my own. The mixture was one onion, one sweet pepper and one tomato and once this was nicely softened and blended in the saucepan, I added a little tomato source and just a tad of sweet chilli sauce to add a little piquancy to the whole. This all worked out creating a very tasty meal and although Meg thought she not be able to manage it all, in fact she did.

Now that we have our new TV installed and Alexa activated, we are now starting to enjoy some of the other services on offer. Having got ourselves logged into YouTube (eventually), we then started to look at some of the relaxation videos on offer. These are generally of the mountain stream/forest/seaside nature but some are based upon the concept of the ‘Cosy Cafe’ whilst many of them seem to feature campfires (one of them being the sort of campfire you might have at the entrance to a cave in millenia gone by) Many of these are quite interesting, not to say relaxing and no doubt if you found one on one’s laptop you could bookmark it and return to it time and again. Although I although I seem to have seen a variety of these on the TV, the selection seems to alter each time I switch on an I can never seem to get back to the ones that I particularly liked (but no doubt there is a way which I shall discover). But the highlight of the middle of the day was that we just happened to be tune into YouTube when they were broadcasting a live performance of ‘The Messiah’ direct from the Sydney Opera House in Australia. The performance really was of the highest quality and I must say tht I enjoyed it tremendously both in the bit that we saw before lunch and its continutaion afterwards. There were three little moments that stood out in my mind, the first being a beautify rendition of ‘He was despisèd’ which Kathleen Ferrier almost made her own. I said to myself that it was a case of beautiful contralto singing but when I looked at the images on the TV, it was actually a counter-tenor. The second thing that I noticed was what appeared to be an exceptionally small sized trumpet, smaller even than he cornet. I did a little investigation on Google and discovered that this actually what is known as a ‘piccolo’ trumpet (being to the trumpet, I suppose, what the piccolo is to the flute) I discovered that the piccolo trumpet is recognisable for its small size and high pitch, making it a very specialised instrument that is mainly used in Baroque-era music. Distinguished by its shorter tubing length, its compact design produces brilliant and piercing tones with a bright, crisp sound. So now I know. I also saw what I now know to be a renaissance lute with the neck turned at sharp angle to make it more playable I suppose. After the performance ended with the traditional ‘Allelujah Chorus’,it looked as though there was going to be an encore of some kind and, indeed, one of the solists came out to give a rendition of ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’. Then there was a modern harpischord continuo and some oher arias followed for which we did not stay tuned in. I found this to be very enjoyable as I could simultaneously read my weekend copy of ‘The Times’, listen to the music and occasionlly glance up at the TV as the occasion demanded.

Wales met Portugal in the World Cup this afternoon. Actually most of the Portuguese players seemed to play for French clubs but some as low as in the 4th division. The game went the way that many of these type of fixtures seemed to go in this tournment. There was no doubt that Wales was going to win (but they only secured the bonus point for their fourth try after he clock had turned ‘red’) Wales played very much below their their potential whereas the Portuguse played the game of their lives – and in many ways played the more enterprising and entertaining rugby (which was a pattern that we also saw in the France vs. Uruguay match) This makes the whole tournament so much more entertaining – and the interesting thing is that the ‘best’ rugby seems to come from the minnows of the game rather than the well-established rugby nations, who you would have thought should have performed very much better than they did against inferior opposition.

We always look forward to Fridays and with good reason because it is the day when our domestic help does her weekly cleaning duties and, as we have not seen her for two weeks as she was taking her summer holiday, we had a lot of news to catch up on. Last night, I got ‘Alexa‘ activated on our new TV. Our domestic help showed us to access what I think is technically called ‘slow TV’ which are generally tranquil scenes of lakes, campfires and cafes which you can watch until what we really want to watch is scheduled. I think we shall use these quite a lot whilst having a cup of tea if there is nothing else on the TV to occupy one’s interest. Last night, Meg went to bed a little early and I watched the France vs. Uruguay game which was so entertaining. It was never in doubt that France would emerge the winners of this particular game but the French played somewhat below themselves and the young Uruguay team played excellent and exciting rugby making the whole match a delight to watch. Later on tonight it is going to be New Zealand (All Blacks) against Namibia which really is a David vs. Goliath type contest. Nonetheless, it should be entertaining and one wonders by how many points the team from Namibia is going to lose.

This morning, whilst our domestic help was keeping an eye on Meg, I was charged to go to a local hardware stock to get some replacement LED type bulbs as, until today, I did not the opportunity to get the types of bulbs required by some of our lighting units. Some of these have been failing but I have not had the opportunity until today to get out of the house and purchase some. The assistant within the store was very friendly and made sure that I good supply of what was needed and then they got fitted the minute we got home, which was all to the good. Outside the hardware store, I bumped into one of my fellow Pilates class members who had offered to pop by one afternoon for a chat and this is something to which I am sure that Meg and I will look forward. I am going to return to do another half session next Tuesday so that I can keep my participation in the group going, albeit at a somewhat reduced level for the time being.

Today, Meg and I had our by now traditional Friday lunch of a haddock and cheese pie, eaten with some mange-tout and baked tomatoes. We then tuned in to what is becoming a daily treat which is the James Martin culinary programme which also acts as a mini-travelogue for various parts of the Spain. James Martin always focuses upon that which is the regional speciality and today he was visiting Extramadura (a part of Spain practically unknown to most Brits) and, naturally, spent some time extolliong the virtues of the ham which comes from acorn-fed pigs, often adjudged to be the finest ‘jamon’ in the whole of a country noted for the quality of its ham. When this program finished, Meg felt as though we needed a breath of fresh air so we thought we might make a journey to Droitwich and walk by the side of the canal there, as it was a beautiful fine afternoon. But getting to the car, I had forgotten to pack the wheelchair and the late afternoon rush-hour traffic was particularly heavy in any case, so we cut our losses and made for a very short walk in the park, availing ourselves of the nearest park bench to the car and the only one that Meg can now manage if not in a wheelchair. I am thinking of ways to help Meg’s frailties, such as they are – many elderly people in practice have a doze as they are in their 70’s and 80’s. I am still coming to terms with the practical steps that I can undertake to help Meg as she is now quite frail. One thing which is relatively easy to organise will be to make sure that she always has a good nap, if not a sleep, on an almost daily basis. In theory this should be easy to organise if I can make Meg comfortable on our settee with the lights off, blinds drawn and some soothing music in the background. Another practical measure is making sure that Meg gets into bed in the correct orientation i.e. North-South versus East-West. I think I may have found a solution to this because I am going to organise a ‘step stool’ that I happened to have in another part of the house. Then with some judicious use of some intermediate steps, I think I may be able to get Meg into bed much more easily than proved to be the case last night but tonight may be a critical test whether my adaptations will work (as they generally do)

Sky News is reporting tonight that after years of strife, weak and corrupt governance, corruption and negligence, the Libyan authorities were simply not up to preparing for or coping with a disaster of this magnitude – and it is the Libyan people who have been killed, or left displaced in their thousands. It is being reported that this is a disaster of biblical proportions with an estimate of 11,000 deaths in the Libyan city of Derna alone.

Last night, in the middle of the night, I wrote a long and detailed account of Meg’s frailties for the benefit of social services from whom we were expecting a visit later on in the day. Meg and I have been anticipating this visit for several days, not knowing exactly what was going to be in store for us, later on in the day. But, as it is said ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’ Thursday is my shopping day and so I relieved the ATM of some cash and popped into the Morrison’s supermarket which was practically deserted at that time in the morning to buy some knee-high socks for Meg. I was quite fortunate in obtaining the supplies that I did and then I returned home at just after 9.00am with Meg still soundly in bed. THen it was a fairly leisurely case of getting Meg up and dressed before breakfast. THen the shopping needed to be put away and all of this took some time so it was all fairly late by the time we came to contemplate a trip onto the road. It was all a bit rainy and miserable so I wondered if I could find a coffee shop open in the suburban street where the AgeUK shop is located. I popped into the shop and bought a couple of really inexpensive items but they did not really have in stock what I was actually looking for. Then we shot back home and had our delayed elevenses at home, not managing to find a little coffee shop with adjacent parking. We then cooked a lunch which I suppose is best described as a chicken fricasée starting with an onion, peppers and peas and concluding with some bits of fried chicken seasoned with a peri- peri sauce. This turned out to be a nicer than might have been expected and Meg ate most of hers.

We got lunch eaten and the washing up just about eaten when I received a mobile call from the social worker who we were expecting in half an hour but actually turned up half an hour early. She tried her best to be helpful but, at the end of the day, I am not sure what we quite got the assessment that we had anticipated. I gather she was a bit appalled that we had the brush off from a unit that should have been able to get Meg some better medication. One suggestions were made for services for us to try out but at the end of the day, I am not convinced that there was anything on offer which really fitted our needs. So at the end of the day, it might be that Meg and I try some of the suggestions offered to us but without being convinced that they might turn out to see more trouble than they are actually worth. A further reference was going to be made for some physiotherapy but the last encounter that we had in this direction was not particularly helpful as we had some exercises recommended to us on a worksheet which I do not think addressed the core issues of a pattern of repeated falls. I do not wish to sound unduly negative at this juncture but perhaps I was hoping for a little more than was actually on offer.

The Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, is trying to ‘sell’ a new policy on the perennial problem of migration. Basically, he is going to have a robust policy on the people-smugglers by regarding them as terrorists. But to put this policy into effect, he needs to ‘nudge’ the Labour party policy so that it aligns more with an EU approach., This may involve a trade-off where the UK accepts a certain European quota of migrants in exchange for robust, collective action against the people smugglers. The liberal press such as ‘The Guardian‘ are regarding this as going to war with the people smugglers whilst the right wing press is portraying this as giving the green light for even more migration from the shores of the EU. I have a feeling that this issue will rumble on and on and will become practically the sole focus of the general election campaign which has practically started already months early. In face, the EU referendum campaign as I remember the closing stages was nearly all about ‘hordes’ of migrants from or via EU countries and there was the famous poster which tried to imply that the entire population of Turkey, not even an EU member, was eligible to enter the UK.

Now that we are through to this part if the week, the rugby World Cup is starting again with a vengeance. Our son phoned up giving me details of how the rugby is being broadcast tonight but on rather an obsscure ITV channel but as I had half forgotten about it, this has brightened my evening somewhat. Now that we are at this stage of the week, then I can look forward to several more nights of rugby – the last match that we watched which was Wales vs. Fiji turned out to be really exciting and let us hope that more is in store.

There is a hint tonight that the Government are considering scrapping the final leg of the HS2 project (broadly Birmingham to Manchester via Crewe) and, if this proves to be the case, it might prove to be the worst of all possible worlds with only one half of a high-speed line to the North actually built making a mockery of the whole project.

You can never be quite sure what a day is going to bring and today was no exception. Meg and I had a fairly lazy start to the day but we knew that our University of Birmingham friend was due to pick us up at 10.30 in order to undertake a pre-planned little trip out to Droitwich. It was a beautiful day today and a nice one to be out on the road. After a brief trip to pick up our newspaper, we made our way to the cafe in Droitwich that we had planned to visit – and were greeted almost like long last friends once we stepped inside. This independently-run cafe does work very hard to ensure that the ingredients for its offerings are shopped for freshly each day. We treated ourselves to cappuccinos and toasted teacake and were joined half way through our repast by the very friendly assistant who had been so helpful helping Meg into the car the last time we called. In the course of our conversation, it emerged that she knew Anne Jones, the previous women’s Wimbledon champion, who occasionally was a patron at the same club of which our University of Birmingham friend is a member. Somehow or other, we got talking about refugees and it emerged that the cafe assistant had befriended a young Afghan refugee and helped him on the road both to a legally settled status as well as further education and training so that he could make his own way in the world. Eventually, the young Afghan refugee told the assistant that he had actually known her for longer than he had known his own mother and regarded her now as his newly adopted family. When you hear the rhetoric coming from members of the government, it is really quite inspirational to be told stories such as this. We introduced our University of Birmingham friend to the cafe assistant and as well as the Anne Jones connection, it transpired that we both knew Harrogate quite well as that was the town in which I spent my youth and where the assistant attended the Great Yorkshire permanent show ground in order to sell some of her wares (skin preparations) As we were leaving the cafe/restaurant, a little container was pressed into our hands containing three buttered and jammed scones for us to enjoy as afternoon tea. I suspect that we will now be turning up as regular customers if we get treated as well as this every time. Not being part of a chain and not on the immediate High Street, we do get the impression that the cafe works hard to greet and retain its regular customers so I suspect that our allegiances will now start to transfer. This cafe also has the facility for me to pop Meg inside whilst I go and get the car parked so this is an additional recommendation.

Meg and I have discovered a series on TV which we think we are going to enjoy tremendously. It is on for an hour most weekdays and is really a culinary programme but is called ‘James Martin’s Spanish Adventure‘ Although the programme is not meant to be a travelogue, it is really very informative and stimulates all kinds of memories of Spain for us (some of them a little painful as it is not at all clear if or when we shall return). We then started watching half way through a film of ‘The Young Winston‘ which we did not watch through the end because afternoon tea beckoned. As we had been given some scones by the cafe this morning, we thought we would eat them up whilst listening to ‘Choral Evensong‘ I have lodged in my memory this is typically broadcast on Wednesday afternoons at about 4.00pm and I remembered about it in time this afternoon. After our tea, I judged that Meg was getting somewhat over-tired and out-of-sorts so I took her down to a darkened room where I am encouraging her to have a doze. I think that many people in the mid-seventies and onwards have a little doze in the afternoon. I wondered what the bulk of evidence suggested about such naps and discovered the following. ‘For most people, napping in the early afternoon when your body experiences a natural circadian dip, is the best way to catch a few winks without disturbing the sleep-wake cycle. There is no consensus on how long you should nap. Some experts recommend naps should last no more than 30 minutes‘. Having said that, excessive napping is probably not a good idea but I think that perhaps I need to get Meg into a more regular napping mode.

I have been considerably saddened by the loss of the hardware and household store, Wilko, in the last few days. But a list has been published of the stores that Poundland intends to take over and I am half pleased to discover that the Droitwich store is on the list. What is not clear at this stage is whether Poundland are just acquiring extra High Street presence and will only continue to sell the cheap, plasticky goods for which Poundland is noted. An alternative is that they attempt to take over many of the ‘Wilko‘ lines but somehow I feel that this is probably not going to happen.

This morning I awoke to the sound of gently falling rain which was pleasant to experience. It reminded me of an app I once accessed which was an audio track used as an aid to relaxation or sleep of heavy tropical rain which I also enjoyed. Last night, I watched the first part of Lorna Kuenssberg’s history of the Brexit adventure which was called ‘State of Chaos’ in which she interviewed many of the leading actors, including civil servants and advisers. I found it quite enthralling, as it happens, with some memorable quotes and I am going to look forward to the next few parts when they are broadcast. Even the ‘Daily Telegraph’ was quite complimentary about the series which is interesting in itself. Of most interest to students of political history, is that Brexit tested our constitutional checks and balances almost to destruction and it is interesting to reflect how close we actually came to a melt-down of the UK’s constitution.

As I was listening to the ‘Today‘ programme on Radio 4, there was a really disturbing account of a recent investigation. This showed that in the last five years, two thirds of female surgeons had experienced episodes of unwanted sexual advances, often in an operating theatre whilst a third had actually experienced instances of a sexual assault up to and including rape. This points out the massive asymmetry in the gender balance in surgery and the fact that female surgeons are often having to be in in a position to learn their craft from senior surgical colleagues who are typically male. This assymmetry and imbalance across the genders evidently led to a rampant culture of abuse. One does not have to be particularly ‘woke’ not to be horrified by this story.

Today being a Tuesday, Meg and I made our usual trip to the Waitrose cafeteria where we made contact with one of our regulars – our other two regulars had been rather deterred by the showery weather. As usual, we had a jolly chat about this and that and I amused our friend with the story about friend’s disappearing (and reappearing) hat, the other day. Then we did a bit of shopping for essentials before we made for home and I started to prepare for my Pilates class where I hope that I may be able to make a half rather than a whole session. Once I had made Meg comfortable, I made haste by car to my Pilates class which is the first I have managed to attend for two to three weeks. I informed my tutor and fellow students that I would only attend for half an hour and, I must say that each exercise seemed doubly precious to me as I knew that my time was limited. After half an hour, I got home as fast as I could and found Meg waiting for me with some trepidation so I had got home just about in time. We had our ‘normal’ Tuesday lunch of haddock fish cakes and easily cooked steamed vegetables, after which we settled down for a restful afternoon.

Half way through the afternoon, we received a visit from one of my fellow Pilates classmates who indicated that she might call round to see us. Our friend brought a beautiful bunch of gladioli for Meg and we then entertained our guest in the music room, after treating her to a rendition of a couple of the pieces that I have been practicing. Then we had a very pleasant chat for about an hour and discovered that we had some aspects of our respective biographies in common as we both had experiences of working in quite specialised libraries – the National Lending library for Science and Technology in my case which had a name change into the British Library Lending division. We were very grateful to receive this visit from our friend and I hope that it helped Meg to pass the afternoon with something other than the TV with which to entertain her.

Sophie Ridge is presenting a programme called the ‘Politics Hub‘ on Sky News which, as it happens, is competing directly with Channel 4 News at 7.00pm which Meg and I used to watch. Sophie Ridge is making a pitch for viewers at the moment with some interesting observations on the political scene. She is making the point that in the run up to a General Election, practically all government policy will be ‘bent’ towards that which please voters, both core supporters as well as marginal voters, but this is a terrible way to run a country where long strategic economic decisions are ditched in favour of that which is politically expedient. This is felt in a particularly acute form considering the ‘triple lock’ whereby pensioners are guaranteed whichever is the higher of the annual inflation rate, the rise in wages or 2.5% This year, it looks as though the triple lock will give pensioners an extra 8% on top of the 10% they received as a result of the last year’s settlement. Most politicians would argue that it is time for the triple lock to go but in the run up to an election, there is no way that any government is going to disadvantage such a large part of its core support and so the ‘triple lock’, which may well have outlived its usefulness, is to stay with us until the next election is won and lost.

So it is Monday morning and the start of another week. We are having a slightly different ‘getting up, washed and dressed’ routine this morning which seems to be working as we intended. Basically, it involves Meg sitting in a chair whilst I bring the washing materials to her instead of Meg having to catch onto a washbasin whilst washing and this small change to our routine actually does yeild benefits. Last night,Meg and I watched the Wales vs. Fiji rugby match and it could fairly be described as pulsating. The Welsh built up a lead, though, in the second half which looked as though it might be impregnable but Fiji scored two quick tries and when the clock went ‘red’ i.e. full time, were only 6 points behind. In a magnificent move a long kick (or was it a pass) was sent to a Fijian player lurking on the wing and had he taken it cleanly, he would almost certainly have scored and if the try had been converted, then Fiji would have won by one point. But the player fumbled it knocking the ball forward and so Wales won the match by six points, leaving the Fijians to wonder what might have been.

This morning, Meg and I decided to go to our local Morrison’s superstore in Redditch as we know that they normally had a supply of wheelchairs for the benefit of customers. Just outside the store, we received a call from one of Mike’s Pilates class mates who had been intending to pay us a quick visit. But she had gone to take the dogs a walk and had been caught in a huge shower and had got soaking wet so we thought we would meet on another day. On the way out of the store, we were caught by the same shower and got thoroughly wet whilst getting into the car. Within the store, we particularly wanted to buy some ‘knee high’ socks for Meg but Sod’s Law ensured that they were out of stock. We bought some other things whilst we were in the store but then beat a hasty retreat home. Once we got home, we cooked a meal of chicken thighs (cooked on the bone but with the skin and leg bones removed) when we were dishing up the dinner. This afternoon, we entertained ourselves with some quite decent natural history and travelogue type programmes, knowing that we had had a glut of rugby and would have to wait until Thursday before we could indulge ourselves again.
It now looks as though all 400 of the Wilko stores are going to close with the loss of about 12,000 jobs. A planned takeover by a rival store has failed to materialise after some initial hopes that about half of the stores/jobs could be saved but his proved to be a false dawn. It looks as though the job losses will take by October, according to one of the unions involved.

Normally on the second Wednesday of every month, we are invited to a special meeting for the frail aged run by AgeUK. We received a reminder about next Wednesday but I had to take a very difficult decision in replying to them to the effect that I considered Meg was too frail to be able to attend the event. For example, the last time we went everyone else walked to their cars but Meg fell over in the lady’s loo and, since then, her mobility has reduced somewhat. We are finding that the new TV with which we are delighted and which is situated in a good position in our Music Room means that we are tending to spend more of our time in this part of our accommodation. We are looking forward to seeing the social worker on Thursday next but needed to supply some additional documentation before Thursday. When I got into contact with the relevant unit to furnish them with updated information, I turned out to No. 10 in the queue and was subsequently informed that a reply might take up to 15 working days to resolve i.e. 3 weeks. This, of course, is a symptom of a service under severe resource constraints, not surprising after so many years of austerity.

Just when we thought that we had COVID-19 behind us, the new variant which contains a lot of mutations, is causing scientists some concern. There is even some advice that we should get used to wearing face masks again. Meg and I got booked into the combined fle and COVID booster jab but it is not until mid-October which sounds quite a long time away. I suppose we shall just to exercise caution from now on but face mask wearing sounds the option open to us. On the weather front, it seems that the hot spell is well and truly over and it is certainly the case that I got well and truly caught when Meg and I visited the supermarket this morning. It seems that a band of rain is stretching across the Midlands from the South West up to the North East and we seem to be right in the middle of the band. So far, apart from keeping windows open in the evening to help hot air to blow through the house, we have not been too badly affected but I shall be quite keen to experience a cooler days from now on.

Meg and I watched the England vs.Argentine rugby match last night and it was one of the strangest matches we have ever seen. For a start, there seemed to be no free flowing rugby on either side. The whole tone of the game was not helped by the sending of the England player, Curry, whose yellow card after a collision of heads was upgraded to a red so that England played for most of the time with only 14 players on the pitch. England won fairly easily after a succession of opportunistic drop goals by the English fly half, Ford, who actually scored the total of the England score which were all penalties or goals. Still, a win is a win and perhaps after the recent spell of poor form, it was good to see an English team with a bit more discipline (much more than the Argentinians) and sense of purpose.

After we had breakfasted and seen the Laura Kuennsberg politics program, we received a very welcome telephone from our University of Birmingham friend which help, as it happened, to resolve a huge mystery for us. Yesterday, after our friend left our little party to go in search of his lost credit card, I rescued his hat and brought that home, together with two slices of chocolate cake. These I put on a brick plinth in our porch whilst I was helping to get Meg out of the car and rescue other things.Later on, I searched in vain throughout the house for both the cake and the hat which I knew I had brought home but I could not find anywhere. What had happened was this. Our friend turned up to the house whilst we were having our family meal, saw the cake and his hat outside the door and assumed they had been left there for him to collect so he took possession of them without ringing the doorbell and shot off home. So when I looked all over the house thinking that in a moment of abstraction I must have put the items somewhere, it was no wonder that they could not be found. So today’s phone call cleared up a mystery for us. In view of the fact that it was either raining or threatening to rain, we decided to meet our friend in the Waitrose cafeteria is where we spent a very happy hour if not longer.

When we got home, neither Meg or myself felt particularly hungry so we threw together a salad from bits of pieces and some pork pie donated by a neighbour (who works in Webbs and sometimes gives us food items that would otherwise be thrown away) So we actually had a very satisfying lunch and then settled down to watch a variety of TV programs before we start watching rugby again. In the afternoon, we received a very welcome FaceTime call from my niece who had called in on my sister in Yorkshire and we had a long session updating each other of the various little tribulations with which we both had to deal over the last week or so. The video call was wonderful to receive, though, and was a source of great emotional support to us.

This afternoon in the late afternoon we were starting to watch the Scotland vs. South Africa rugby match with low expectations of Scotland given the world rankings of South Africa. But by half term, they were behind by only 6-3 so it will be an interesting second half. There is still a lot of discussion whether the red card given to England’s Curry was justified or not, one school of thought being there was no malice forethought but another being that head contact has got to be a ‘red card’ with the present interpretations of the rules and the desire to protect all players from head injuries. It was no surprise that in the second half of the game, the Springboks cut loose and scored a couple of tries against which the Scots had no real answer. The major contest this evening is going to be Wales vs. Fiji. As Fiji recently beat England, then this might be quite a mighty contest and I would not like to predict at this stage who might emerge as winners.

We have had several days of pretty hot weather which is so unusual for early to mid September. In fact, all of our married life I cannot recollect a period in which in the week in which we had our wedding anniversary, the weather should be so hot. We have rather got used over the years to a period of quite gloomy weather, as it was indeed on a wedding itself in 1967 when it threatened to rain the whole of the morning but then the sunshine broke through just at the point at which we were heading for our wedding reception. We have made a provisional arrangement with our University of Birmingham friend that he might pick us up and we all enjoy a coffee in the cafe/restaurant which we visited in Droitwich last week. Here we know that we will be able to get a table as it never too crowded and the staff are particularly attentive which as Meg gets a little more frail is actually quite important to us.

Today Meg and I slept in a little because last night we were a little late into bed, having stayed up to watch the opening match of the Rugby World Cup. France beat the All Blacks in quite a convincing display and this was a marvellous start to the tournament as a whole which does go on for 50 odd days. It looks as though we are going to have weekends permanently filled with rugby for weeks ahead but Meg and I do not mind, although we will need to watch a little selectively. After we had got our act together this morning, I made Meg some simple cereal breakfast and then we made haste for the Waitrose cafeteria. Here I bought a chocolate cake which turned out to be absolutely scrumptious (what an old-fashioned word) The staff divided it into eight pieces for us and we were soon joined by four friends, including our University of Birmingham friend. We had no hesitation is pushing the tables together so that we could have the makings of a pleasant little party. Our friends had bought for us a wedding anniversary card which they had all signed and we were just in the course of some jolly conversations when our University of Birmingham friend realised with some dismay that his credit card was missing. He knew that he had used it in a pub last night and I tried my best to reassure him that it was probably not ‘lost’ or stolen but in all probability he had put the card into a shirt picket or some other trouser pockets and that is where he would probably find it after all. But it is a horrible feeling when you know a credit card has gone missing so our friend shot off as rapidly as he could to try to retrace his steps and, if necessary, put a stop on the card before the worst could happen. The rest of us carried on munching chocolate cake and eventually realised that it was time for us to go our various ways. I rescued our friend’s hat for safe keeping and the remains of the chocolate cake and I am sure that I brought them home but I have put them down somewhere (I think) in a strange place and cannot find them. When we got in, I took the various bundles of Asian and Indian food out of the fridge in readiness for when our son and daughter-in-law were shortly to join us. Then it was a microwave job to get the starters going (onion bhajees and mini spring rolls) and then we had main courses of generally rice based foods, all washed down with rather a fine rosé wine I had picked up from Aldi. Normally, Meg and I are are not great rosé drinkers but with Indian/Asian food and a hot day, it made the meal into quite a little occasion.

Once we had got lunch out of the way, my son and I started to tackle the TV installation. The initial part of this seemed to be quite straightforward but we found we need to install a spare ‘gizmo’ to extend the WiFi through the electrical wiring of the house – fortunately, we had a spare one of these in stock but I left it for my son to install. The rest of the installation seemed to be pretty straightforward but I needed to go onto my laptop to feed into a code which the installation process demanded. This sort of thing only has to be done about once and we got the BBC iPlayer sorted out, as well as the ‘normal’ Amazon Prime to which we have had a subscription for quite a long time. A lot of the afternoon, we devoted to the watching of the Ireland-Romania match but, as you might expect with Ireland one of the stongest teams and Romania one of the weakest, the whole match was a bit of a walkover. The quality of the high definition images on the new TV seems superb to us and to my mind is superior even to the Panasonic which is our ‘main’ TV but is getting a little dated and long in the tooth by now. After we had got the rugby matches out of the way, my son, daughter-in-law and I (but mainly the younger generation) set ourselves the task of mastering the navigation of some of the facilities on the new TV. Certain apps are already ‘built in’, some of which we have be never heard of, but others tried and tested favourites such as YouTube (which we use extensively for watching opera) Here we ran into some intricacies as my Amazon Prime subscription gives me some access to some musical albums as part of the subscription but, at the same time, I have an individual subscription which I recently activated to ‘Music Unlimited’ All of this seems a little complicated and we discovered that we needed to download the Amazon music app and add it the apps already loaded on the TV. One way or another, we think we have the two kinds of apps downloaded and disentangled from each other. My daughter-in-law ensured that I knew what was I was doing with the TV control before we were let for the day. Meg and I intended to go to church this afternoon but as Meg was feeling somewhat wobbly again, we thought we would probably give it a miss today of all days, although it had been our intention to have made it if we could possibly could.

We are always pleased when Fridays come around and this Friday in particular because our very good Italian friend was due to pay us a visit for an 11.00am coffee. I had done a certain anount of record keeping work during the night and so we allowed ourselves the luxury of a mini lie-in this morning and were about an hour later getting going than is normal. Then I shot off into town to quickly pick up our copy of the daily newspaper, getting back just in time before the arrival of our friend. I had great delight in showing her the various bits of furniture in the Music room some of which we have enhanced since purchase and, of course, our keyboards. I managed to play our friend about three pieces, not quite note perfect but near enough and of course, they were recognisable. Then we had coffee and chocolate biscuits and I recounted some of the transactions that we had with the various parts of social services. We had a wonderful natter with our friend about all kinds of topics including family news fron our respective families. One topic of conversation with which we shared a common viewpoint was whether we should, as some economists have urged, sell the larger houses that many members of our generation are now inhabiting to release this housing stock for younger generations with growing families. But we both suscribed to the counter argument that we had worked hard all of our lives for the accommodation that we were now enjoying and if we wanted to retain our larger houses so that we had space for members of our family who might be visiting, our own friends or even to devote to alternative activities such as a craft room, then so be it. Just after our friend left, I received a wonderful email from the one member of our Pilates class that I know least well, offering her sympathetic support and I invited her round for a tea/coffee any afternoon that she was free, and to listen to a few musical offerings. It also gives me the incentive to try to perfect the few pieces of music that I do know and to try to hunt out some new pieces as well. After our friend left, I started to prepare lunch which was our usual fish pie with some appropriate green veg and baked tomatoes. I am resolved to give my wife slightly smaller portions than myself as she is smaller than I am and her energy needs are less – however, it is hard to abandon habits of a cooking lifetime in which I tend, after cooking the food, to serve up practically equal portions.

Whilst I was starting to write this blog in the afternoon, there was a programme on the TV about the industrial lives led by female factory workers in the 1960’s. This called to mind experiences that Meg and I had whilst we were at the end of our second year in university. We had the good fortune to be employed in factories which were absolutely next door to each other, which was a cardboard box factory in my case and the McVities biscuit factory in Meg’s case. She used to recount to me her experiences on the ‘Home Wheat’ production line (and I think Meg has had a revulsion against chocolate biscuits ever since) There was quite a rigid division of labour between the sexes and the work of handling the huge vats of hot and molten chocolate was the province of male workers. To the female worker on the production line, all that was ever wanted was that she could capture the attentions of a ‘chocolate man’ with a view to eventual matrimony. With the kind of innocence for which we were renowned in the 1960’s, Meg used to recount the story of how a young production line worker used to exclaim that all she wanted was a ‘chocolate man’ and if she were ever to capture the attentions of one she wanted to ‘cover him all over in chocolate and to lick him all over’ No further comment is required at this point.

The escape from Wandsworth gaol of the soldier who was about to be tried on terrorist charges is exciting a tremendous amount of media attention. There seems to have been a massive display of incompetence to perform elementary research procedures (not to mention counting how many staff were in the prison’s kitchens). One suspects that to cover up this incompetence and poor decision making, a ‘counter narrative’ is in the offing. There are two strands to this. The first strand indicates that as the escape seems so complete and there is no trace of him, then he must have had accomplices perhaps even within the prison itself. A second counter narrative runs that as UK trained soldier, he is full of initiative and perhaps low cunning that must explain his success so far. it is possible, of course, that both of these counter-narratives turn out to be the case but I find it slightly suspicious that these explanations are being pressed so hard, probably as a way of diverting attention from the evident failings of that particular gaol. There are persistent rumours that he may already be out of the country or have gone into ‘underground’ hiding to avoid detection by remote TV cameras but the fact remains that as long he is at large and remains uncaptured, the government is busy wiping egg of its face the whole time.

I started the day with a little experiment to see if I could use my iPad to compose my daily blogs – if I am successful this would be quite liberating because I could start off with my iPad in one room but do the finishing off, as it were, on my laptop in the living room. In my first little experiment, I have managed to compose a bit of text (this blog so far) and then save the file. This file I can send to myself via my own email and from this, on my laptop computer, I can copy the text composed so far into my working html file in which each blog entry is written. This has worked fine so far so I am just extending this entry and then sending it again to prove the first time was not a fluke.

We decided that it might be quite a good idea to visit Droitwich today but to visit one of our old haunts which was a large cafe that served light meals as well as lunches. In fact, we went there a month or so back but had a terrible time as there was an unaccompanied and unsupervised Tourette’s syndrome sufferer who made our meal intolerable to us as there was a constant stream of shouted imprecations in the background. Anyway, we were recognised and greeted in the cafe but it took me all my time to get Meg there as she was exceptionally wobbly again today and although she had not chosen the option of the wheelchair, this would have been the better course of action. We had nice hot cappuchinos and some homemade scones with cream and jam. When we had finished this, I realised that i would never get Meg around the Wilko store which was my initial plan but we had better make straight for home. There was a very friendly assistant in the cafe who offered to sit with Meg and talk with her whilst I collected the car from round the corner. This proved to be a life saver and I never turn down help these days. It transpired that she too was a Catholic and her mother-in-law had sufferered a frailty similar to Meg so she was incredibly sympathetic and even helped Meg out of the cafe and into the car which all proved rather troublesome. This is now the third occasion that Meg has had to be helped out of a cafe and into the car and I am not sure how much longer I have to rely upon the kindness of complete strangers.

After we made for home, it was so hot and humid that we decided to make ourselves a salad lunch. We called at a local ‘One Stop‘ quite near the the route that we have to take on the way home and bought some salad and coleslaw from which we made quite a filling salad to complement the quiche that we had scheduled for lunch. After lunch, we tried to have quite a restful afternoon but Meg found it difficult to settle. We treated ourselves to some ice-cream half way through the afternoon and we had a little spell outside on the garden bench to give Meg a bit of a change of scene and some fresh air. I read on the media that these few days in September are breaking all records as a mini heatwave and normally, we would expect much cooler and fresher air. Tonight, I think I am going to have to fling open some windows to allow a flow of air through the house to cool things down a little to make sure that we can have a restful night.

There was an amazing story that surfaced in the media this afternoon. Police interrupted a peaceful yoga class after people seen lying on the floor were mistaken for a ‘mass killing’. Officers stormed the Seascape Cafe inside the North Sea Observatory in Chapel St Leonards, Lincolnshire, after a concerned member of the public raised the alarm. But they were greeted by surprised and bemused people taking part in a meditation session on Wednesday night. Sky News is also reporting tonight that former Tory whip Chris Pincher has resigned his seat after losing his appeal against a proposed Commons suspension for drunkenly groping two men. It means the government will face another by-election. The Parliament’s standards committee found the Tamworth MP groped two men at London’s Carlton Club. It described his ‘completely inappropriate’ behaviour as an ‘abuse of power’. Mr Pincher, who had been sitting as an independent MP, had previously announced he would be standing down at the next election. However, on Monday he lost an appeal against the proposed eight-week suspension. I have started watching the Sophie Ridge show on the Sky News channel at 7.0pm instead of my usual diet of the Channel 4 news. This has got off to quite a promising start and her interviewing style is pointed without being too threatening to the politicians. Tonnight, we are promised some revelations of how a terror suspect dressed in a chef’s outfit has escaped jail by clinging to the bottom of a food delivery van. It sounds like the improbable plot of a film but there are masses of questions for the prison service to answer in this particular case.