Looking at the planning whiteboard I maintain in our kitchen, I am reminded of the act that in just about a week’s time there is to be meeting of the lunch-time dining club which goes under the name of ‘The Old Fogies’ This all dates back to a period of time when several of us work colleagues realised that at least four of us had birthdays in May and mine just happened to be in the middle of the month. So we started to have a communal celebratory meal in  May and we complemented this with another meal in the autumn generally at about the time of the start of term and this tradition has carried on almost unabated for the last twenty years. We are a group of colleagues who all enjoyed each other’s company and retired more or less within a few years of each other. Since then we have carried on with this tradition but the experience of COVID was an evident huge interruption and the ‘gram reaper’ has taken its toll of a few of our number as well. But I imagine there are about eight of us who will enjoy a meal where we feel inclined to reminisce about how good things were when we were in charge and how terrible they are now. I am the farthest flung of the group so after we have had our meal and dispersed, I generally have an hour or so before I can catch my train back to the Midlands. So we have got into the habit of repairing to a local Wetherspoons in Winchester were we can sit around a table and extend the conversations not always possible when we are seated around a dinner table. I saw many of these colleagues six months ago on the sad occasion of Meg’s funeral but, that apart, I have not been able to attend many of the get togethers in later years whilst I was caring for Meg in her declining years. I must get cracking and get the train ticket booked whilst I can and often  go from Birmingham International or even Warwick Parkway as this cuts out the link in to Birmingham New Street and saves some time (and a little money as well). There is a survey reported this morning that Aldi has been knocked off its top spot for being the cheapest supermarket in the UK to be replaced by Lidl, particularly if special offers are taken into account. These days I tend to vacillate between Aldi and Lidl depending on whether I have a heavy or a light week and even ease of parking comes into the equation. Thursdays is my  usual shopping day but this is preceded by a session of Tai Chi and hopefully a cup of tea and a good natter with my (male) friend in the local Methodist Centre. This can mean that the whole of Thursday mornings are well and truly occupied by the time I have the shopping unpacked and the lunchtime meal cooked.

Thinking that I ought to act quickly, I went on to my favourite train tickets booking line (called ‘thetrainline’). I had almost made up my mind to got to Winchester via BNS (Birmingham New Street) instead of cutting off the corner by going via Birmingham International. But the train times seemed exactly right for me and I actually don’t mind undertaking the entire journey by train which, although it takes longer avoids the quite steep car parking charges and negotiating Birmingham International and the M40 in the dark, which  it will be when I return. I was amazed how cheaply I purchased the tickets and I am sure I only paid about two thirds of what I paid last time I undertook this journey. Of course going in November is helpful and I think the trainline app is utilising ‘split ticketing’ which is helping to lower the cost of the whole journey. My son and daughter popped by this morning as they told me that they would and we are discussing the kinds of Christmas food in which we are going to indulge. As a rule, I tend to avoid turkey and go for what I like (beef) but this year we are probably settling on some god lamb shanks. I promised to prepare the vegetables and intend to put the sprouts on at about 11.00pm the night before to ensure that thy are well done (family joke) My daughter-in-law just happens not to like any of the foods associated with Christmas so this year we are going to buy just what we want to eat and throw tradition to the wind. We have made a quick agreement not to buy each other presents this year but spend the money saved on the food that we happen to enjoy.

Whilst on the subject of organising things in advance, I have been contacted by one of Meg’s carers to see how I am am getting on and I suggested that we have a party again this year like we had last year. This suggestion went down very well and I was able to offer a house in which we could have singing and dancing and even a sleepover in a spare bed for those who might want to drink more than is safe for them to drive. There is a group of at least four of the ‘care’ youngsters who are great mates with each other and I am sure that there will be quite a few more who will take the opportunity to drop in. I knew in my heart of heart that last year’s party was likely to be the last that Meg attended and this, of course, it proved to be. Later in the morning I went down to the Methodist Centre and had my normal Tai Chi class with about a dozen other class members. Afterwards I was delighted to share a coffee with my new ex-bank manager friend and he told me that he was actually in the Centre yesterday but we must have missed each other, a bit like ships passing in the night. Anyway, we had a good old chat today that made up for the disappointment of yesterday and then I shot off to Aldi to do my weekly shop. Fortunately, the store is pretty quiet at this time mid morning and when I got home I had only forgotten a couple of things. 

Knowing it was going to be a ‘big night’ in American politics, I stayed up a little in the night to glean what was probably gong to happen in some important elections held in America – the first real test of public opinion in the mass since Trump started his new term. The Democrats were engaged in several races for governorships of states and were successful in three important contests. In the most important, Zohran Mamdani, 34, has won New York City’s race for mayor in a contest that rallied young voters and sparked debate about the future direction of the Democratic Party. The Ugandan-born Mamdani, a Socialist Democrat, beat former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, to become the youngest person in over a century to lead the largest city in the US. A self-described democratic socialist, he made affordability the central message of his campaign, pledging to expand social programmes paid for by new taxes on high earners and corporations. Democrats also won governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, and in California voters backed a proposition to redraw the congressional electoral map ahead of next year’s midterm elections. These elections are important because they give Democrats a new impetus and fresh directions in which to attack the Trump presidency and are an important precursor of the important mid-term elections next year when the composition of the US Congress may well change. President Trump’s approval ratings have taken a nosedive. Once the honeymoon is over, presidents tend to lose popularity quickly. But no recent president has fallen so low so quickly as Donald Trump. At the start of his second term public opinion was nearly evenly divided between those who approved of the president and those who did not. Now his net approval rating—those who approve of the job he is doing less those who do not—is minus 18. That is three percentage points lower than any point in his first term. Mr Trump’s numbers are poor even on the issues at the centre of his political platform. Net approval for his handling of immigration is minus 7. On inflation and prices, it is minus 33. The biggest shift away from Mr Trump has been among Americans under 30 years old. His net approval among that group was positive  when he returned to the Oval Office but now it is -40. His ratings among Hispanic and black Americans, which began negative, have also plummeted. And white Americans, who approved of him on net by 16 points back in January, are now evenly split. According to analysis by The Economist, every state, save Idaho, has moved against Mr Trump. Oklahoma has swung hardest, from positive 27 net approval to minus 12. The president nw has a 37% approval rating and a corresponding disapproval rating of 63%. It is the lowest rating of his second term seen in CNN polling and stands just one point higher than the 36% approval rating Trump had at this point in his first presidential term.

I knew that I needed to get my skates on and get a hotel booked for the Christmas visit to my family in Yorkshire. I used Expedia who gave me a discount for being a former customer of those and secured a room at a very good, and what I would regard as a ‘pre-Christmas’, rate. I have booked for only three nights, a day less than I had anticipated because a hospital appointment came through the day before forcing me to revise my plans somewhat and to curtail my visit by one day. But then I went and booked some train tickets which I also got at a very good price and not a great deal more than I would have spent on petrol in any case. So I am very relieved to get these bookings made and in the bag by acting promptly before prices rise.

Today is a day in the week when I have no firm commitments so I have made it a habit to go down to the Methodist Centre in the centre of town were there is a ‘chatty table’ round which anyone can sit and engage in conversation with others around the table. Today, though, did not turn out to be the happiest of experiences as I found myself, as by now I am accustomed, to be the only widower (i.e. male) amidst a group of widows. Today turned out to be unfortunate because the entire conversation within the group and sub groups around the table was a discussion of he comings and goings of their grandchildren. To this, there was evidently not an opportunity to contribute nor was it possible to move the conversation onto other topics. So I felt fairly acutely that not only was in a minority (being the only widower) but the lack of grandchildren made me feel even more of a minority within a minority. If you were to apply nationally published statistics  then as a widower without grandchildren, I am outnumbered by the ratio of 20:1 and therefore feel my minority status quite acutely. So after I had drunk my coffee and when it was not evidently leaving in the middle of a conversation flow, I departed feeling rather sorry for myself. I have to evaluate whether I even try to participate in this group next week and, of course, my one male friend, an ex-bank manager, was not there today. So, I re-parked the car in a car park adjacent to the centre of town were I went to pick up the engraved tag which I had bought yesterday. When I got it home, I discovered that quotation marks around ‘Sunshine’ had been omitted by the engraver and I think this alters the symbolism of the whole, so I will have to take it back and ask them to do again properly this time and following the clear text I had provided for them. I did not feel particularly hungry and had run out of bread so could not have a quick ‘fish on bread’ quickie lunch but I made myself a meal utilising some chicken and rice which I did not particularly enjoy. The TV viewing tonight is going to be a science-based on the power of the algorithm and as this dominates our lives these days, I feel it is probably well worth a watch.

Yesterday, I had allocated myself some viewing time for a series on BBC on ‘The Great Philosophers’ which I thought would be both illuminating and instructive. But the whole programme of 45 minutes was a conversation between two talking heads on a sofa (both eminent philosophers) which was not what I thought I was going to view. In practice you had to know at least some of the elements of the philosophy which was the subject of discussion before you could make head or tail of the programme and, even so, I fell asleep during it. So the programme was a bit of a disappointment and I may try just one more in the series (the first being Plato, the second Aristotle) and may then abandon this little project in favour of a return of the Alice Robert’s paleo-anthropology programmes which I find much more interesting. Yesterday, I also typed up a series of notes I had made of a video presentation I had seen on YouTube, the theme of which was how to live longer by adopting the correct series of routines with which to wake up each morning. Some of this sounded sensible (rotating ankles for example), some wacky (using coconut oil to rinse out one’s mouth first thing) and some even bizarre (such as drinking a pint of water laced with some pink salt and lemon juice) Again, I am trying some elements of this but will probably end up with a subset which seems a lot more sensible. I am still continuing with my little snippets of reflections each day and am posting these on the web and have utilised one of those web-names shortening routines to a version which is not copy protected but whose name is adapted in such a way that people and even web-bots are unlikely to come across it by accident. I follow what the political commentator Beth Rigby has to say because she is often ‘spot on’ with her analysis. Later on today there is going to be an announcement the net effect of which seems to be to soften us up for imminent tax rises and income tax itself seems to be the simplest fiscal tool to raise large amounts of money even though it has a ‘totemic’ status and the Labour Party in opposition pledged not to increase it. As Beth Rigby reports there is no need to tell you how difficult and contested this is going to be.  Only a year ago, the chancellor unveiled the biggest tax-raising budget since 1993 and said it was a ‘once in a parliament event’. MPs will be fearing a massive backlash should manifesto promises on not raising income tax (and VAT and national insurance) for working people be broken. Government figures know how hard it is going to be but argue the chancellor has to level with the public about the hard choices ahead and what is driving her decision-making. In fairness to the government, the world financial scene has altered so much recently not least with the Trump administration of tariffs left, right and centre and the slow growth experienced by the UK seems to be the same across all of the other major European economies.

In the morning after a long and customary char with our domestic help, I walked down into town and had a coffee with my elderly chorister friend. One of our usual number is in hospital and although she went in with a chest infection, it now looks as though she has other problems  that they are attempting to resolve. My friend and I are a little fearful as to what the future holds once she is discharged for what prospects may be in store for her. My friend rather ruefully remarked to me that it was not so long when we used to be six in number (my friend and her husband, Meg and myself and two more regular friends) and now we are reduced to just the two of us to chat away as or numbers are diminishing. My friend’s husband had dementia, and this has progressed to the point where he doe does not recognise his wife any more which is always a painful realisation. Earlier in the morning, I had looked at my watch and realised that it had stopped and needed a new battery so after coffee I took myself to a local cobblers to have the new battery replaced – and the price for this seem to have shot up in the last year or so. Whilst I was waiting for the new battery to be fitted, I idly browsed through a display of what were probably dog tags and I found a plain, oval dog tag which I promptly purchased. This has been in my mind for some time so  asked the shop to engrave it for me with the inscription ‘Meg (“Sunshine”)’ and this will be ready in about a day’s time. Then I intend, possibly with the assistance of my University of Birmingham friend, to go down to our local park and when the opportunity arises to affix it with superglue to the back of the iron bench upon which Meg and I used to sit regularly in our trips to the park. Here it will not attract undue attention but I will know that it is there and hopefully it will remain for some time to come. I walked home and then after a brief rest went and had my usual Pilates class, after which I returned home to a lunch of mackerel fillets spread with some seafood sauce and eaten upon a bed of salad leaves which is a lunch quick and easy to prepare after my Pilates session each week. Then I typically have a restful afternoon after which I know there are a couple of vintage comedy programmes for me to enjoy (episodes of ‘The Good Life‘ followed by ‘Yes, Minister‘) which is always broadcast at this time in the week. I know that today there are some important local elections in the USA but because of time differences we may not get the results until tomorrow. The Democrat candidate for the mayoral race in New York is DeZohran Mamdani who calls himself ‘Donald Trump’s worst nightmare’. They are the words of a man living the dream. It is because the 34-year-old is the headline act in Tuesday’s referendum on Trump 2.0. A statement night in US politics, as Americans – some, at least – deliver a verdict on what they’ve seen so far. Of four electoral contests across the US – including in California, New Jersey and Virginia – the race to be New York mayor is the most compulsive and consequential. The polls have Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, as the frontrunner. If he wins, it would signify big change in the Big Apple. This would be a wonderful launch pad for a Democratic candidate to challenge Donald Trump in about 2-3 years time.

After terrible stories such as the stabbings on the train near Huntingdon over the weekend, other stories tend to emerge in the aftermath of the tragedy. What is apparent today is the immediate reaction of the train driver undoubtedly saved many lives. He had previously served in the UK Armed services and perhaps some of his military training kicked in. The driver, on receiving the news alerted, the signalling authorities so that the train could be diverted from the fast high-speed line onto a slower ‘stopping’ line so that the train could actually stop in Huntingdon station. From a platformed station, it was so much easier for the emergency services to access and treat the wounded passengers than if the train had been stopped in open countryside. One LNER staff who was severely wounded trying to apprehend the attacker is currently fighting for his life and the word ‘hero’ is rightfully being applied to him. Although the information as not yet been released, the whole incident looks at this distance as a mental health episode which will raise further policy reflections when the situation becomes clearer. My Droitwich friend recently returned from a holiday in South Africa to visit her family has brought me back a little present – actually we had discussed beforehand what this might be. I had asked for something that could not be bought in this country or Europe so my friend, with the assistance of her sister, had bought me a a collection of eight different African spices. These seem a wonderful present, but I am going to have to question my friend as well as other friends and relatives how I might deploy these spices to good effect to find out what the particular flavour of each one. My initial thoughts are to cook either a simple omelette or a vegetable ‘curry’ without the curry powder and then add the spices one by one to ascertain the flavour. Anyway, this is a pleasure that will unwind for me as the months go by. I had bought for my friend a little kitchen ornament which I thought she might not like but actually was quite tickled her pink and this was a little kitchen plaque with the motto on it ‘Wine improves with age but I improve with wine’. So that November is upon us, we are entering the long slow grind in the run up to Christmas and we are already starting to think in broad terms what our Christmas arrangements might happen to be this year. My immediate family have already agreed with me that we are going to have a Christmas this year, as it is the year in which Meg died, as a traditional family Christmas at home as it were and have started to think of alternatives to the traditional turkey which meat none of us particularly enjoys so we may have some lamb or beef instead. Somewhat later in the year but before Christmas, I might lay on a special little ‘at home’ party for Meg’s carers as I did last year and which proved to be a great success (and was, of course, Meg’s last social event)

One can never quite predict how the day is going to turn out and that was certainly the case yesterday. Firstly, I did attend church for a special service on the occasion of ‘All Souls’ day which is the day when the liturgical calendar enjoins that we pray for the souls of our departed and loved ones. Our church had ‘moved’ the celebration of all Souls Day which this year fell on a Sunday to the next day i.e. Monday. All Souls’ Day is focused on praying for the souls of all the faithful departed and a day to remember and pray for loved ones who have passed away. I felt that I really ought to attend in this year of Meg’s death and indeed the service was not devoid of emotion for me, particularly as I know that her name had been inscribed in a special book which is to be displayed in the Sanctuary during the whole of November. After the service, I went along to Waitrose to have a coffee and to pick up my newspaper. One of the ‘partners’ (e.g. Waitrose employees) was very happily displaying to anybody who wished to see it a photograph of her first and newly delivered grand-daughter born at just 4.00am this morning (I must admit it really did look a most attractive looking baby which is not usual as often new born babies look a bit on the wrinkly side) Then, over coffee I got into conversation with a Asian lady who was extolling a virtues of a special kind of Italian baked bread which the store happened to stock. She was explaining to me hew her Asian mother-in-law treated her terribly and this contributed to the breakdown of her marriage which is a story that I have heard elsewhere as well. I told her about Meg’s passing and showed her a photograph of Meg and, emboldened to ask the question of how old she thought I was, she replied that I was probably in my early 50’s!

I had rather been looking forward this afternoon to see if I could watch the whole of the England vs. Australia Rugby (Union) match played last Saturday at Twickenham but which did not seem to be broadcast by any of the major TV networks. However, I did find some highlights i.e. the four tries that England scored in defeating Australia 25:7 and this was better than nothing. Also a source of particular pleasure was watching Scotland defeat the USA 85:0 which was probably Scotland’s greatest ever margin of victory.  There is a series of rugby internationals this Autumn but the rights to the broadcast are held by obscure channels such TNT and I think only one match may be broadcast and that on the BBC iPlayer as well. Only the keenest rugby fans are going to subscribe to these channels so the rest of us shall just have to wait for the ‘Six Nations’ broadcast in the spring. I have discovered, though, that the BBC has published a series of 15 programmes on the history of Western Philosophy starting (naturally) with Plato and concluding with Wittgenstein so I may start to watch these on a daily basis probably in the afternoons when I shall not fall asleep watching them.

Yesterday I awoke contemplating a fairly busy Sunday ahead of me for a change. Firstly I am due to visit our former Eucharistic minister who called round to give Meg spiritual comfort in the last few months of her life ad was excellent in her role. But she herself is now experiencing some illness so I am going to pop around with some bits and pieces which I hope will give her some cheer. Immediately afterwards, I have been invited for Sunday lunch with some Catholic friends from down the road and also invited is our new parish priest so this should make for an entertaining lunch and I wonder how the conversations will flow around the dinner table.  Some terrible domestic news has emerged late in the evening before when an horrific stabbing incident has occurred on a train neat to the town of Huntingdon. The minute the communications cord was pulled, the train driver acting with great presence of mind drove the train onwards into the station where evidently the emergency services could board the train and deal with the nine seriously injured people who were immediately transported to hospital. Two men were arrested and our various emergency services acted with the speed and professionalism one would expect of them. Although people often denigrate the state of he country and complain that ‘nothing works’ in general terms we as a society are exceptionally good, if not world-beating, at the way in which we respond to emergencies. This does not happen by chance by there is always a plan and rehearsals do take place but in this particular case, the emergency services have been excellent in every way. Fortunately, the principal suspect was disarmed by a taser rather than being shot dead by the police and this means that the motives of the attacker may well be revealed which would not be the case were he to be shot dead. So far, the incident is being treated as a terrorist incident but if I had to speculate at this juncture I would say that a more realistic explanation is a severe bout of paranoia as part of an ongoing mental health crisis but no doubt news will emerge in a day or so. I have all of the technology lined up to continue with my ‘Reflections’ journal but am finding it a little difficult to think of some pithy reflections that I would wish to record. When on BBC Radio4 used to broadcast ‘Thought for the Day’ I was always extremely impressed by the contributors often drawn from the complete range of religious persuasions used to cram some really interesting observations into the space of only three  minutes. I used to wonder whether I  could lecture in such a way that the lecture contained the equivalent of 20 ‘Thoughts for the Day’- the ‘slot’ is still present at 7.45 each day but I generally have the radio tuned to ‘ClassicFM’ whilst I am doing my daily exercise routine at that time.

In the morning, I collected the copy of my Sunday newspaper and then proceeded to try to find my friend’s house in order to call around and have a coffee.  Because of the extensive roadworks around the town, the entrance to the estate was completely blocked off and the SatNav and I were forced to take the most circuitous route imaginable to reach my friend’s house – fortunately, I was only delayed by a few minutes. She was holding up pretty well to her chemotherapy and was having another round of it in the next few days. After about an hour and half I had to take my leaver to arrive at the house of my Catholic friends down the road where, together with our new priest, I had been invited out for a Sunday lunch. We had a marvellous chat not to mention a very good lunch and the conversation ranged freely over a whole range of topics. I knew that I had to leave some time before 3.00pm because my Droitwich friend was scheduled to pay me a flying visit in the afternoon. She arrived quite promptly just about 3.00pm and I had thought of preparing an instant meal for her which was a prawn omelette. I had hunted out a pretty good video on the best way to prepare such an omelette and it started off in a way that I would not have predicted which was to fry off on very finely chopped onion together with some ears of garlic. Then when all of these softened, the prawns were added and then all cooked, all of these ingredients are taken out of the pan. Then the omelette is cooked in the oil mixture which is left around the pan and then the prawns are added slowly and carefully in strategic places within the omelette. All of this only takes a minute or so to cook and I then served it up complete with some oven chips and salad leaves, Naturally, this was washed down with some Prosecco as well. my friend and I had quite a lot to discuss, not least was a minor operation which she was due to have on Friday afternoon. Afterwards her physicians  have suggested she needs to keep herself stable and monitored for 24 hours after the procedure. Having looked after Meg for years and years, I made the offer to look after my friend in the immediate post-op period to which she readily agreed. So we have made arrangements  for transporting her to and from the hospital as well as making some practical caring arrangements. This afternoon, after a fairly hectic day, I am going to have a pleasant time relaxing to music on ClassicFM as well as having a leisurely read of the Sunday newspapers. It seems a pretty dire night on the TV this evening so I may hunt around the BBC iPlayer and see if there are documentaries in which I might be interested. As I enjoyed the Alice Roberts biological anthropology series so much I might just watch the whole series of three for a second time. There are no particular commitments in the week ahead but I may attend the special ‘All Souls’ service in church on Monday morning and, if the weather holds up, seize the opportunity for the very last grass-cutting of the season.

The night before last, I engaged in a long and always very enjoyable video link conversation with one of my University of Winchester friends. We tend to prearrange a time by text message and then chat away happily at the appointed time for an hour or so, usually talking about the care (past and present) of our respective spouses and also having reminiscences about the so-called good old times. As it happens, we will be meeting up in Winchester for a communal meal and there should be at least eight of us there. We all retired anything up to 16-18 years ago but enjoy each others company tremendously and therefore meet up once or twice a year when this is possible. As it is quite a long journey and parking can be a nightmare, I always go by train and therefore I can enjoy a dink with friends as well. Domestically, the news of the stripping of the peerages and honorific titles from the former Prince Edward are still dominating the news headline. The public supports Charles, poll shows a poll has revealed the public supports the King’s decision to strip Andrew of his titles and remove him from the Royal Lodge. Of the 4,739 people surveyed by YouGov, 79% answered ‘the right decision’ to the question: ‘Do you think the King has made the right or wrong decision to strip Andrew Mountbatten Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) of his prince title?’ But when asked about the speed of King’s response to the Andrew-Epstein revelations, 58% of those asked indicate they feel the monarch moved too slowly. But other interesting question are now emerging. For example, should Andrew be encouraged to go to the US to give evidence about his involvement in the Epstein affair. And perhaps more to the point, should he be investigated for sex offences committed in the UK (as Virginia Giuffre claimed in her biography) or is there no proof that would make for a successful prosecution? Later on today, I hope to meet up with my ex-chorister friend for a coffee on the High Street. I am always tremendously impressed by her resilience as she manages at the age of about 92 to bobble about the High Street to do her shopping. We date back to the Waitrose days when I used to meet with her and her husband but he is suffering from dementia and is in a local residential home where he appears to be happy and well cared for.  I am still carrying out with my experimental ‘Reflections’ journal in which I am only 2-3 sentences being a pithy thought for the day. I already have some webspace allocated but will post the file on a weekly basis when I have sufficient contributions for a worthwhile read. As this is quite personal information, I am going to password protect the file and already have a longish (20 character) password phrase which whilst being long (and hence super secure) just happens to be very memorable. All be revealed in due course!

This morning I went into town by car and picked up my newspaper which was in copious supply for a Saturday morning (as it often seems to sell out) Then I made my way along the High Street and met up with my nonagenarian chorister friend in the coffee bar we now frequent. One of our regular number was away at a bowls competition and the other is in hospital. My friend remarked to me, somewhat ruefully that there used to be six of us meeting regularly when Waitrose had its coffee bar but our numbers keep declining over the years as our spouses have gone off to pastures new. After we parted, I took the opportunity to go to Aldi and buy a few things I had forgotten but also bought some roses for my visit to a poorly friend tomorrow.

A Reform UK councillor has defected to the Tories after becoming ‘uncomfortable’ with Nigel Farage’s party. James Buchan said he wanted to be able to look my family in the eye and say, ‘that is not who I am’ after his former party announced plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain. The Dartford Borough councillor, who won his seat for Reform in a by-election in July, said the policy creates a ‘huge amount of fear and anxiety’. He also accused the party of having ‘a pretty unfortunate way of treating people. I stood for election with the sole aim of working for my community and getting things done for local families. Having had the opportunity to see Reform from the inside, I have concluded that the party does not really have the experience or ambition to do that. Relying on rhetoric and slogans is not going to help real families in communities like his and the more I saw of Reform UK, the more uncomfortable I felt to be part of it Things like a proposal to remove indefinite leave to remain from all non-EU residents who are working here perfectly legally is an example that could be devastating for decent people who have built a life here and contribute to our country’ he added. Earlier this year Reform announced it would axe indefinite leave to remain and replace it with new visas that would require migrants to reapply to live in the UK as part of plans to tighten immigration. The interesting thing about this defection is that generally speaking people who switch parties tend to drift further and further towards the extremes, normally the right. The last published figures indicate that 10 Tory MPs or typically ex-MPs and 20 local authority councillors have defected to Reform but these figures are probably not up-to-date and probably greatly understated. So to move leftwards in actually quite illuminating and tends to reveal some of the draconian policies that Reform have indicated that they would implement. One recently announced policy is to remove Indefinite Leave to remain (ILR). Ending the granting of ILR divides the public – and most are opposed to removing it from those who already hold it At the beginning of this week, Nigel Farage announced proposals to abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR), instead requiring migrants to reapply for a visa to stay in the UK every five years. The move has come in for significant criticism from the party’s opponents, and a new YouGov survey finds that the prospect of ending the granting of ILR divides the public: 44% say they support doing so, while 43% are opposed. If ending the granting of ILR is divisive, removing it from current holders is downright unpopular. Support for removing ILR from those who have already been given permission to reside permanently in the UK falls to 29% – even among those who support ending the granting of ILR, only a minority (41%) agree with stripping permanent residency rights from those already granted them.

The evening before last proved to be quite an eventful one as half-way through the evening, the announcement was made from Buckingham Palace that the King had formerly stripped his brother, Edward of all of his titles and privileges and hence he was to be known as simply ‘Edward Mountbatten-Windsor’ Moreover, he was being made to relinquish the lease on the 16 room mansion known as ‘Royal Lodge’ and would henceforth be accommodated in other accommodation on the Sandringham estate. This was a very swift and comprehensive action on the behalf of the King but it appears that he and the rest of the family had simply had enough and it looked as though further revelations in the posthumous biography of Virginia Giuffre (with whom it is alleged that Edward had underage sex when she was 16) looked as though he had sex with here on three occasions. Despite earlier denials that he had ended an association with the convicted paedophile, Epstein, an email has come to light that Edward maintained a contact with him at least a year after he had claimed to have stopped their association. So Edward was himself shown to be a liar and public opinion was very much indicating that the King and the rest of the Royal family needed to take decisive action to protect the monarchy. The general reaction seems to be a sigh of relief and amazement that this has not actually been done before now. I was listening to ‘Question Time’ in the late evening and the programme had been recorded a couple of hours earlier. When the presenter, Fiona Bruce, received the news over her headphones and paused the programme whilst she informed the audience, then only after the first sentence of the announcement the audience broke into spontaneous applause which was an excellent indication of the public mood. In all of the subsequent analysis following the announcement, there is no-one who has suggested that the King has not made the right move stripping Edward of all of is titles and, in effect, banishing him from the Royal family. During the remainder of the evening, I composed what might be the file in which I keep some daily reflections (technically, I suppose a journal) and experimented with some techniques how this might be password protected should I decide to post it on the web for friends to read. I am going to compose a couple or so of sentences a day and then post the file to some webspace about once a week as there is no need for a daily blog but I already possess some webspace with a URL which is easy to remember, as well as an accompanying password which although long is also quite memorable. I decided not to buy any special journalling software as I am still at the experimental stage but it appears that my own home-made solution is more than adequate for what I have in mind. It could be that I run out of reflective material but a couple of sentences should be child’s play to compose each evening.

In the morning, I went down to town by car and having picked up my newspaper and some porridge oats walked along to my favourite café that I frequent on a Friday. There were two other people in the cage being husband and wife and whilst the wife browsed around the shop, the husband and I got chattering about steam trains. He had worked at the Didcot railway centre for well over 30 years and was a real steam enthusiast so we got talking about the kinds of locomotives with which I was familiar from the 1950’s and early 1960’s when I used to go ‘train spotting’ with an older boy who lived around the corner from me. From Harrogate we go to Leeds or to York to do this but our real local ‘Mecca’ was Doncaster where thee were some engine repair works. Provided you kept to the perimeter and did not interfere with any of the work being undertaken, one could wander around the repair sheds which was always a fascinating and eye-opening experience. Doncaster also received and repaired the rarer engines located in Scotland so this was an additional bonus. After a pleasant half an hour’s chat, I shopped for some cosmetics and then returned home to make myself a lunch out of bits-and-bobs. The afternoon was dark and gloomy but later on tonight I am going to video chat with a Hampshire friend which is always welcome. This afternoon proved to be one of those frustrating afternoons where for some unexplained reason my text editor of choice (which I use to prepare this blog) decided to stop functioning. It took several resets pf my laptop to restore it to some kind of functionality and one could have done without that. But in the late afternoon, I got a call from my Droitwich friend and we have arranged to meet on Sunday afternoon which will be a good catching up time for both of us.

Today a YouGov poll found only 26% of people said immigration and asylum was one of the three most important issues facing their community. Only a quarter of people think immigration is an important issue locally – and concern about it is a manufactured panic, it has been claimed. This was half the 52% who said it was one of the biggest problems facing the country as a whole, and put immigration seventh on the list of important local problems behind issues like cost of living, health, crime, and housing. Saeema Syeda, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), said the poll ‘proves what we have been saying all along – there is no immigration crisis. It is a manufactured panic, pushed by some politicians and parts of the media to distract from what actually matters to people. Across our communities, we share the same priorities – making ends meet, accessing healthcare, decent schools and secure homes. We need to end scapegoating and look for solutions.’ I suspected that this might be the case but immigration/asylum seekers seems to be prominent in every news broadcast and the issue is being exploited to the full by all of the right wing (Conservative and Reform) parties for all it is worth. If you include the Brexit campaign (in which the last week or so were filled with arguments about immigration) then this issue has been forced up the political agenda for years.

Recently, when I was doing some wider reading around the subjects of ‘contemplation’ and ‘mindfulness’, I reminded myself of a concept which was very much in vogue a decade or so ago and is still present in much professional practice. This is the concept of the ‘reflective practitioner’ (which, broadly speaking, indicates that, in our personal and professional lives, we should take a certain amount of ‘time out’ as it were to reflect upon the events of the last time period (which could be a day, week or a month) and come to some kind of conclusions as to the level of our performance and our reactions to it.  We could conclude that some of our ventures had worked out well and we might reflect upon why this may be the case whereas others were less successful and perhaps there are lessons that can be learnt from the future. Taken to excess, this can result in a spiral of introspection which is not healthy for us all and could become, as I can almost hear an ex-boss of mine snorting, that we become involved in excessive navel gazing. On the other hand if kept within reasonable bounds, then this can help to improve our performance as professionals and can probably assist in our personal and emotional lives as well. Fundamentally, it gives the opportunity for an occasional pause to ask questions about whether we should blindly carry on doing what we have always done in our ventures or are there lessons to be learnt? The concept of the reflective practitioner is now widely embedded in a whole range of professions and we used to require it of our students when they had to write up their final reports of their experiences of ‘supervised work experience’ that they spent the third year of their four year degree course gaining practical experience in the work environment. It is widely used in therapy circles as well when people are suffering from a trauma such as an addiction, or a major transforming life event such as a bereavement or a divorce and are learning to reconstruct and make sense of their lives typically by chronicling their thoughts perhaps in a journal. One technique that I have come across is to write a sentence or so each day in a journal kept for the purpose and I suppose this can either be a private or even a public document to be shared as the writer wishes. I cannot quite decide whether this would be a useful activity for me these days as well as this daily blog but it may be that I just have one long file which I augment if not on a daily basis, then when the mood takes me. One organisational practice which I thought was excellent was embedded in the culture of the last university in which I worked. When all of the examinations had taken place and results considered in multiple Boards of Examiners, the whole university had what was termed a ‘washing up’ day or half day in which we collectively reflected upon that which worked well in our procedures and those that needed some tweaking or improvements for future years. This worked well, was not time-consuming or filled with any sort of blame culture and I thought was an excellent way to maintain the quality of our procedures.

In the morning, I have to make a fairly early start as it is my ‘Tai Chi’ class, conducted in the same Methodist Centre which I attended yesterday. These sessions are 45 minutes long which I find long enough because, as opposed to my Pilates sessions, the exercises are conducted entirely in a standing position and I find that both my knees and hips start to feel the pressure after the passage pf a certain amount of time. But I was delighted at the end of the session to have a coffee with a new-found male friend, a one-time bank manager, who attends both the ‘Strength and Balance’ class on a Wednesday as well as this class on a Thursday. So we spent a very pleasant time in other’s company, enjoying a coffee and some-made drizzle cake before we have to go on our separate ways. In my case, this entailed a weekly shop where I frequent the Aldi store if money is a bit tight in that particular week and I know I need to keep a careful watch on my expenditure. By the time I have got home and unpacked, it is generally about 1.00pm or later and then I bustle about both unpacking the shopping and cooking lunch (quiche today) at the same time. On consulting my phone, I received a couple of texts one being from one of my University of Winchester friends setting up a video-call between the two of us for the following day – this we do about every three weeks or so. The other text was from an old ‘Pilates’ class friend who apologised for not being I touch to arrange a coffee together. She had been quite poorly with a really bad cold but at the same time was hobbling about the house, trying to get herself in reasonable shape for a replacement hip operation which is scheduled in a week or so’s time. Then I received a telephone call which was welcome in the extreme from some of my Catholic friends who love down the road, inviting me around for Sunday lunch this weekend. Also coming to lunch would be our newly installed priest so that might make for an interesting conversation over lunch – I wonder if we shall steer clear of religious/moral issues altogether and confine our conversations to social issues. I feel pretty sure that the topic of how Meg and I were introduced to each by the Jesuit Catholic chaplain at the University of Manchester might find its way into the conversation, although in all fairness Meg and I did know each other by sight before this meeting and actually only really ‘got together’ as they say during the Rag Week celebrations in the following February. The whole university had mid-year examinations at this point and as our tutors were busy marking our scripts, the University in effect  said ‘go out and play, students’ which we did, raising £20,000 for charity in the process (probably worth £500,000 or £0.5 million at today’s prices)

As indicated in the blog yesterday, I treated myself to the second in the series by Alice Roberts about that ways in which we, as humans, have evolved. The episode last night was succinctly entitled ‘Guts’ and I always find these programmes both fascinating and instructive. As you might imagine, the programme last night focused on the fact that once the phenomenon of fire could be generated and cultivated, we then, as a species, started the cooking of our food. What I learnt from last night’s episode was that if you were eat something in the raw such as a carrot then it would take a certain amount of time for the body to digest and thus release the calories. Cooked food generally releases calories more quickly and allows the body to absorb more energy than the same food in its raw state. The total potential energy does not increase, but cooking makes the calories more accessible to your digestive system. This is one of humanity’s most significant evolutionary advantages, enabling our ancestors to thrive on fewer resources and develop larger brains. Apart from cooking, the mastery over fire evidently conveys other evolutionary advantages such as providing warmth helping to ward off disease as well as protection from natural predators such as wild animals. There is something exceptionally primitive but quite understandable about the way in which we as humans will enjoy a huddle over a camp fire. This something often experienced when perhaps as children we went camping and the evening was often spent around a fire and even to this day, we still will tend to have a fire as the focal point in our living space. To illustrate this point, I have an electric fire in our main lounge and it has the facility, which I often deploy, to have a flickering, camp-like flame effect even when the heating elements are kept switched off. There is a massive psychological effect at work here as well, because the flame alone makes one feel both warmer and better even in the absence of heat and you even feel warmer when fire light is lit. The ability to release more calories from our food in this way meant that that the whole business of ‘hunter gathering’ could evolve into more specialised roles such as men being involved in hunting and women involved in what we would call the domestic roles of food preparation and childcare. Alice Roberts visited one of the least developed of African societies, perhaps in Kenya, and asked the young women how they chose their mates. Their reply was not surprising but adds a corrective to the theories of mate selection based on physical attraction to which we have become accustomed as we have acquired layers of civilisation. To the question on what made a good mate, the reply that the young women gave was to discount physical appearance but to select upon the basis of whether a potential mate was, or was not, a good hunter.  To attempt to show how this might have relevance, even today, Alice Roberts looked at a group of young men learning in how to skateboard and engaging in more and activities judged as ‘risky’ in order to learn a new and more difficult manoeuvre. When young women were introduced onto the scene as observers, then the young men engaged in riskier and riskier moves (in an attempt to impress) which led Roberts to conclude that risk-taking (as evidenced in earlier hunting) had become hardwired into the evolution of the male brain, Evidently, I am looking forward to the last in the series entitled ‘Brains’ and it is not often appreciated fact that our brains are the greatest consumer of calories of any other organ in the body. Turning now to domestic matters, I sent off an email to the parishioner who cared so much for Meg in her later months and used to call around regularly. She herself is experiencing a bout of illness and I was anxious to call around and see her, if this was at all possible. I was delighted to receive an email yesterday to the effect that not only was she available to visitors but she thought that the weekend, and particularly Sunday when I am often bereft of social contact, was  a really good time to call around so I am delighted that we are able to reestablish contact and share a lot of news with each other at the weekend.
 
In the morning, I engage in my regular weekly routine of attending the Methodist Centre and after supplying myself with coffee and cake I sit myself at the ‘chatty table’. Some people sit at this table before they dash off to a ‘Balance and Strength’ class held next door and the table can empty whilst others sit at it once their previous class is over. This happened to me again today and I reflect (not morbidly) upon the fact that practically all of the occupants of the room are women and many of them are widowed but I am perhaps the only widower in the whole room (but then we know from national statistics, that for people in my age range, widowers are outnumbered by a ratio of well over 4:1) But a couple joined me on the table and after we had exchanged some of the usual pleasantries they asked me about Meg- so they must have been part of the quite large group of people who had observed me pushing Meg to many places, including the  Methodist Centre, in her wheelchair. So naturally, I told them about the fact of Meg’s death and the fact that she had died at home surrounded by family and friends and enjoyed what some religious would call ‘a good death’ After they left, I also took my leave as I felt disinclined to break into the large circle of widows sitting at an adjacent table all of whom seem to have known each other for years, I popped into Waitrose and picked up my newspaper, before having a ‘free’ coffee and then making for home. I had already foraged throughout the deep-freeze and found some deep frozen barbecued chicken legs which I put in the microwave oven and then supplemented with carrots and peas.

Before lunch, I decided to contact the Borough Council to request an extra green bin as the Council are changing their design but have replaced my green bin with a newly designed one. I had to fill in the relevant information on the web and was instructed not to try to speak them about this on the phone as it might overwhelm this system!  But I did get a reply to the effect that my request had been successfully submitted and I might expect an extra green bin within the next 20 days. I have tried a parallel procedure to get my one brown bin supplemented by a second but without any success so far.

The evening before yesterday, I treated myself to viewing the first of a series of three programmes made and presented by the anatomist and biological anthropologist, Alice Roberts. In the first of her programmes entitled ‘Bones’ she detailed how perhaps as a result of climate change, some chimps evolved from living in the jungle to living in woodland becoming bi-pedal (standing erect and walking on two feet) and we can illustrate this by the study of skulls from the fossil record which show how the skull gradually became more erect held in place by crucial ligaments. But I learnt two things from this first programme which I suspect is knowledge not widely shared. Dr. Alice Roberts mused who the large muscle in our buttocks the ‘gluteus maximus’) is the size that it is because it would appear to be ‘over-engineered’ in biological terms for the simple act of standing and walking. But it really comes into own in the act of running giving that extra punch to the leg muscles. Combined with the fact that we lost body hair and could thus sweat freely, the combined effect was that we could outrun practically every other animal on the planet and this gave our ancestors a crucial evolutionary advantage. Even though other animals could run faster in the short term, humans could eventually outrun them as the muscles of most animals locked up with lactic acid and they became heat exhausted. Hence eventually humans could track animals and feast on their meat which large amounts of protein no doubt, as subsequent programmes will show, was crucial for sunseqent brain size and development. In fact, there are ‘man versus horses’ organised to demonstrate this biological fact. The annual race, over 21 miles (34 km), has runners competing against riders on horseback through a mix of road, trail and mountainous terrain. The race, which is a shorter distance than an official marathon road race, takes place in the Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells every June. The first woman to run the race was Ann King in 1981. In 1982, the route of the course was amended slightly to give a more even match between the competitors. The course is slightly shorter than a traditional marathon at a reported 22 miles, but over rougher terrain. In 1985, cyclists were allowed to compete too – and that year, U.S. ladies’ champion cyclist Jacquie Phelan narrowly lost to the first horse. In 1989, British cyclist Tim Gould beat the first horse by three minutes – the first time that a horse was beaten by a human in the race. The second thing I learned from the programme was the critical advantage bestowed on humans in their evolutionary journey by not only the opposable thumb but also its strength and versatility. So chimps given an apple will hold it in both hands as they lack the grasping ability which humans now possess as a result of their evolutionary history. Now this means from the time of ‘homo habilis’ onwards, man evolved not only to make tools but also to use them in a way that animals cannot. The ability to use tools in this dextrous way evidently helps to kickstart us on our evolutionary journey which no doubt is still continuing as I constantly marvel at how the younger generation write texts on their mobile phones by using their thumbs alone. So, I have learnt a lot from last night’s programme, and I have the remaining two available to me on the BBC iPlayer for the days ahead.

First thing in the morning, I attended at the doctor’s surgery for a 9.00am appointment.  In order to see a doctor face-to-face one has to make an appointment on a website the day before and then receive a telephone call to assess whether you actually need to see a doctor at all. Finally, when you do see a doctor, it was, in my case, with a physician associate (= cut-price semi-qualified medical practitioner) who I have admittedly seen before. The outcome in my case was no diagnosis but a reference onwards to two other clinics and one can only reflect how incredibly hard it is in these post-COVID days to actually see and get treated by a doctor I returned home by car and had my customary chat with our domestic help at whose urging I set forth to walk to the coffee bar to meet with my ‘Tuesday’ coffee-drinking partners. But in the event, they were not there so I turned around and immediately walked back up the hill but  did find hat after a walk of over couple of miles, there and back and with no coffee sit-down in the middle,  was pretty exhausted when I did reach home again. After a rest, I went down by car and had my usual Pilates class after which I returned home and made myself a mackerel risotto.

In the USA, there is something called a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) which is a lawsuit filed to intimidate and silence critics of powerful individuals or organizations, such as corporations or government bodies. These suits are often meritless, and their goal is to burden the defendant with the high cost and time of litigation, not to win the case itself. By bankrupting or exhausting opponents, SLAPPs can have a chilling effect on free speech and public participation. But in the last day or so, we have the extraordinary situation of the tables being turned against the Trump coterie. Author Michael Wolff has sued first lady Melania Trump, charging that she threatened a $1 billion legal action against him to stop him from reporting and writing about her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.  ‘Mrs. Trump’s claims are made for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff’s free exercise of speech,’ said the suit, which was filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. The filing includes as an attachment a letter Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent to Wolff, the author of ‘Fire and Fury,’ last week demanding that he retract and apologize for public comments he has made linking his client to Epstein, the notorious sex offender, and that he make ‘a monetary proposal to Mrs. Trump to ameliorate the harm that you have caused.’ Trump has been aggressive in pushing back against what her lawyers describe as false reports linking to her Epstein, and her office said in a statement Wednesday that she ‘is proud to continue standing up to those who spread malicious and defamatory falsehoods as they desperately try to get undeserved attention and money from their unlawful conduct’ The letter from Brito cited comments Wolff had made to The Daily Beast this year in a story headlined ‘Melania Trump ‘Very Involved’ in Epstein Scandal:’ as well as comments he made on a Daily Beast podcast. Now nobody is in a position to predict how this will play out as very few cases actually get to court. But in legal theory it is possible that Wolff may be able to subpoena the president to appear as a witness which, of course he will not. What happens then is anybody’s guess but there could be further legal sanctions against Donald Trump if he fails to appear as a witness.