Today has been an unusual kind of day. When I looked at the weather forecast, it seems that the West Midlands was about the coldest place in the country with an overnight temperature of -5 degrees but Meg and I were warm enough even in our downstairs bedroom. I got up this morning just after 6.00am and prepared for the workers to arrive some time after 8.00am but as so often happens these days, things changed at the last moment. The young Asian carer turned up rather than the scheduled carer but the other one was due to arrive later. In the meantime, I helped the young Asian carer but he was feeling below par so got him a Flue and Cold Relief preparation to make him feel better. I also gave him a supply of several of these sachets so that he could dose himself up later – I think he is intending to take one day off to help him recover from these cold and flue symptoms to minimise the amount of time he has to take off work. I had also prepared quite a large saucepanful of porridge which I was going to offer to the workers the minute they arrived. In the event, this offer was declined so Meg and I had it ourselves. In the meanwhile, the young Asian carer was substituted so that he stay on and do ‘the sit’ whilst I went off to do the normal Thursday shopping. I had already two of the anti-anxiety pills so that Meg would be a bit more stable but they did not appear to work so I had to try something different. We started off with YouTube and some sitar music (as I wanted to remind Meg of how she had gone to see Ravi Shankar perform, if my memory serves me correctly, when she went off with a flatmate to see perform in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1965. This seemed to perk Meg up a bit and then I resurrected a Joan Baez concert available on YouTube and Meg seemed to be enjoying this so I decided to go off and do the shopping. I raced around the shop as fast as I possibly could, thinking that it was quite likely that Meg was having an agitated session. I popped into Morrison’s to pick up a copy of ‘The Times‘ but none were available. Having done the shopping, I called in at Waitrose on the way home and, again, it looked as the newspaper had not printed that day. But when I got home, the young carer informed me that Meg and he had experienced quite a jolly time and there was also a certain amount of singing along with the music. This was a great relief to me so I unpacked the shopping and then started to think about lunch. We dined on the last bit of the roast chicken left over from the weekend and complemented with a roast potato and some broccoli. Having eaten my dinner, though, I actually fell fast asleep and was awakened only by the carers coming into do Meg’s (delayed) lunchtime call, after which I reheated Meg’s dinner in the microwave and fed it to her. This afternoon, after a quick FaceTime call with our son (who is still suffering from his severe bronchitis), I got Meg in front of the TV to watch the second half of ‘Don Giovanni’ which seemed to be proceeding satisfactorily up the point at which the program ‘freezes’ This happens quite a lot with YouTube presentations and I have a theory it is a buffering problem so Meg and I needed to find something else to watch which happened the be the concluding part of the programme on Immigration broadcast on Monday evening.

After Meg is in bed this evening, I hope to bring into use a smart speaker I have just impulsed purchased from Amazon. I was tempted into this purchase because there was a ‘Black Friday’ offer where a good model of Amazon’s own smart speaker was heavily discounted. I worked out that I had saved about two thirds of the cost anyway by not having coffee with Meg in Waitrose over the last few days whilst the weather has been so poor. I will need a certain amount of uninterrupted time to bring this into operation but in the meantime I have been reliant upon falling to sleep with the strains of Brahms ‘A German Requiem’ playing on my old iPhone which still has YouTube access.

What with the Post Office scandal enquiry and the American election, I think we had all rather forgotten about the COVID enquiry which is now taking evidence again. Today it was the turn of Matt Hancock the Health Secretary in the early days of the pandemic who was on our screens practically daily. Mat Hancock had to resign, of course, because he was seen as embracing his new found love (‘bit on the side’)in clear contravention of all of the rules on social distancing. Matt Hancock’s evidence to the COVID enquiry was interesting because there were multiple facets of the decisions he was making at the time that are now worthy of examination. I suspect he knew he would be subject to a fair degree of hostile questioning and therefore probably decided to make a concession early on in his evidence try to allay further lines of criticism. The concession given today was that in the difficult circumstances of how many would be allowed at funerals and what degree of contact could be had between mourners, the ex Secretary of State for Health admitted that the guidance had probably been drawn up too severely. This will be of no comfort to the hundreds if not thousands who lost family members and loved ones during the pandemic and could not give them a proper farewell. I do remember when Meg and I used to walk down the Kidderminster Road every day seeing on more than occasion tearful relatives as an elderly person was bundled into the back of an ambulance as the relatives probably knew they would never see their family member again. Hancock also admitted that the UK came ‘within hours’ of running out of hospital gowns and of the course the supply of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) on fast-track applications handed out to those with known Tory Party links is a national scandal in its own right. I doubt any of the mis-spent monies were ever reclaimed and certainly none of the ‘dodgy’ suppliers were ever prosecuted but that is just one of the many scandals surroundings UK’s response to the pandemic as a whole.

Last night, I did something which I have not done for years and that is to go to bed with a hot water bottle. Normally, one relies upon wives/partners and electric blankets to provide a bit of warmth when you first hit the sheets in the middle of winter but my present sleeping arrangements preclude this. I quickly located our two hot water bottles and had one at my feet when I went to sleep on the camp bed which I have beside the hospital bed occupied by Meg. It made a dramatic difference and I fell asleep with the aid of it in no time at all. Today we had two carers in the morning including the manager who puts himself ‘on shift’ occasionally. The day before there had been an open day at the day centre which the care agency is opening in Redditch and, other things being equal, we would have liked to been there. But the transport arrangements fell over much to the care manager’s annoyance and the weather did not help but nonetheless the open day went ahead but with a somewhat depleted attendance. In theory the mayor and the press were going to turn up to this event but it was a day of some mishaps as the care manager’s partner fell over and broke his hand which necessitated a visit to the hospital. On the advice of the care workers, we decided not to venture out this morning because although the skies had cleared and indeed were blue and sunny at one point, it was exceptionally cold and icy and we all felt that the pavements would have been a too risky to have pushed Meg out in. So we stayed in all the morning but ‘Politics Today’ was screened an hour earlier to make way for Prime Minister’s Questions so we entertained ourself in this way throughout the morning. We lunched on chicken, baked potato and sprouts just finishing before the late morning (now early afternoon) visit from the two care workers. In the afternoon, there was no clear candidate in the film world to be watched so Meg and I put on a performance of Don Giovanni (Mozart) which was a superb production but is somewhat long so we will probably watch it in two halves. The singing and performances were of a very high order and we enjoyed the production which occupied us for most of the afternoon.

There is a report in today’s ‘The Times‘ headlined ‘Life Expectancy in the UK is worst in western Europe’ Now we know that there are a host of factors which underlie life expectancy some of them being genetic. But the greatest cluster of factors are environmental and are composed of factors such as climate, diet, exercise, income distribution, social security benefits, efficiency of the health services and so on. But according to the OECD report, although life expectancy is just 81 years, this puts the UK behind the 81.5 average for the 27 countries of the European Union and last in western Europe. Life expectancy improvements in Britain stagnated in the decade leading up the pandemic and have fallen since. The British data shows the life expectancy. for men at 79 and for women at 83 in the period from 2021 to 2013. This is about six months and three months shorter, respectively, than the ages measured between 2017 and 2019 which were the highest on record. The significance of all of this is that this type of demographic data really does show the cumulative impact of government policy, whichever political party happens to be in power. As if to underline this point dramatically, there is also a report in the same edition of the newspaper that indicates that cutting winter fuel payments is going to push 100,000 into poverty and this fact is acknowledged by government ministers. Official estimates of the decision to strip more than 10 million pensioners of the winter fuel payments have concluded that it will result in about 50,000 older people being in poverty at any one time. To make matters even worse, Labour did not carry out a formal impact assessment of the policy before making the decision. Some Labour MPs are very upset but the risks associated with rebellion are high, such as deselection. Meanwhile Scottish Labour have threatened to restore these payments were they to be returned to power. One does get the feeing that of the £1.5 billion that cutting winter fuel payments is meant to save, by the time various factors have been costed out, the savings might be very much less and (hints of the farmers’ dispute) be not worth the political pain that the policy causes.

There is a report this evening that Mohamed al Fayed may have assaulted 290 women pursuing Harrods compensation over alleged assaults and one suggested figure is 420 individuals who have contacted the ‘Justice for Harrods Survivors’ group regarding allegations against Fayed. If this scale of abuse is confirmed, then this may approach the figure of 500 which is said to be the total number of period abused by Jimmy Saville before his death. When abuse on this scale emerges, then it almost defies imagination that one individual can commit abuse on this scale without significant others being aware at least dimly aware of the scale of it all. In the case of al Fayed, then there must have been security guards who protected his premises from the ingress and exit of young women and therefore they must share a degree of culpability. There are some lawyers who argue that such individuals as security guards could themselves be charged with assisting a rape but of course obtaining proof and then a conviction probably means that these individuals get away with things scot free, as it were. To my knowledge, the police are busy pursuing the cases of those actually assaulted by al Fayed and have not yet turned their attention to his accomplices of which circumstantial evidence that there must be some. The wider question, of course, is how the rich and powerful have the attitude that the force of law is to be applied to the ‘little people’ and they themselves feel free to be immune from the legal processes that seem to apply to the rest of he population.

Suddenly, the world seems a much more dangerous place tonight as there are reports that British made Storm Shadows have been fired at targets within Russia for the first time. I have a terrible feeling that for the sake of one or two missiles, costing about £1 million each that may or may not be shot down and may not cause any damage, the amount of harm that Russia could wreak on the UK (such as by cutting underwater cables) is horrendous. I hope this has been properly modelled and thought about within the British defence establishment but I am personally most unhappy about the steps that the UK has made by following the American policy of the Biden regime in its final days.

When I got up this morning, I noticed with a certain degree of dismay a show shower that evidently been blown over Bromsgrove. I had a quick look outside and was somewhat relieved to see that I think the shower could be described as light snow and as always the grassed areas of our garden had received their full share but the roadways did not seem so badly affected which meant that vehicles (ie the carers) can gain access to us without too much difficulty. However, the precipitation that we did have looked as though it could probably turn to ice which would make things treacherous. I quickly looked at the local BBC weather forecast that indicated ‘sleet’ but I suspect that we are going to have 2-3 unpleasant days before milder air takes over. The weather forecasters are saying that this is the type of weather to be expected in mid winter and not in late Autumn and therefore this amount if snowfall in mid November is rather unusual. We have had a few years with hardly any snow so this does come as a bit of a shock to the system but, of course, in the past I could transport Meg to places by car but now that she can only be moved in a wheelchair, the actual weather conditions have become a lot more critical for us. The snow shower seems to have abated by 7.00am so I am earnestly hoping it will stay that way. The snow actually petered out to a slight sleet for most of the morning when Meg and I stayed in – however, I did manage a quick dash in the car and back (whilst Meg was dozing and listening to some soothing music) to collect our copy of the newspaper from down the road.

The day has continued to be a very strange one, in lots of ways. Evidently, we had to stay in because of the inclement weather but I managed to snatch a few minutes whilst Meg was dozing to pay a lightning visit to Waitrose. One of our favourite carers came in the middle of the day to do the Tuesday ‘sit’ and we spent a lot of time exploring our respective attitudes to religion (the young carer being brought up as a Muslim but not really a believer as such) Then in the middle of the day, we received a most welcome telephone call to tell us that the special Riser-Recliner chair had been supplied by the manufacturer to the relevant depot and we needed to settle upon a delivery date. The first available to them was a week on Thursday but although it is normally my ‘shopping’ day, I did not want to put them off as I hope that the chair will be worth its weight in gold when we get it into use. Then we had the hairdresser arrive by appointment and although I had my haircut, Meg was not sitting in her wheelchair by this stage so we had to give it a miss. But our hairdresser is very understanding and we gave Meg’s hair a miss on this occasion but she will have it done just before Christmas.

In the middle part of the afternoon, Meg and I settled down to watch the second of two programmes on immigration broadcast on BBC1 on Monday nights. These were two excellent programmes and explored how politicians on both sides of the political divide (but mainly the Tories) coped or rather did not cope with immigration. We knew that the Home Office had instituted a policy of a ‘hostile environment’ to try to sweep up illegal migration but we ended with the Kafka-esqe scenario in which people who had been here for decades were classified as illegal an subject to deportation. Many people who arrived from the Caribbean as children had not kept their parent’s passports (which were issued to them as British citizens with an indefinite right to remain) but the children of those who arrived on the ‘WindRush’ in 1949 and their descendants could not necessarily ‘prove’ they were British. So we had the massive injustice that some people who had worked and lived in this country for decades and paid taxes all. of this time were now swept up under the ‘hostile environment’ policy and were access to jobs, houses and social security benefits. It took the Home Office a long time to very belatedly recognise what a pig’s ear it had made of the whole of this policy and the programme reported that only about 17% have to date received the compensation that they were promised. But I remember the closing days of the ‘Brexit’ debate quite clearly and practically all of the arguments were about levels of immigration and not about European issues ‘per se’ Nigel Farage realised that immigration was a wonderful way in which to weaponise the debates promulgated by UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party)that uncontrolled migration from Europe (and those countries that might enter the EC) were poised to enter the UK under the ‘Mobility of Labour’ provisions. At one time it was argued that the entire population of Bulgaria and Romania had the right to enter Britain and, on another occasion and the subject of a scurrilous poster entitled ‘Breaking Point’ the entire population of Turkey could enter. The fact that these were the most evident of misrepresentations (in other words, downright lies) did not really matter because although it was pointed out that the numbers it was claimed who could enter was greater than the populations of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey respectively, the argument had a powerful emotive force for many and the damage was done. It reminds one of the expression well known in political circles that ‘a lie gets half around the world before truth has a chance to pull its pants on’) On the programme, Nigel Farage was frank that they key to winning the whole of the Brexit debate lay in raising the emotive subject of immigration and the slogan ‘Take Back Control’

The day was rounded off by three pleasant events.First I had a FaceTime call from my son whose deep seated bronchitis is now being treated with steroids which I hope will have the appropriate impact. We watched a rendition of Mozart Piano Concerto No 23 on YouTube after an episode of a classic Alf Garnett. Finally, Meg was put by bed by the two young male carers with whom Meg always has a laugh and a joke and ensures that she goes bed in a relaxed state which is good to see.

Monday mornings are not meant to be very good and yesterday was true to form.It did not start well as when Meg woke up she seemed to be in a very agitated condition and took some calming down. The two carers were due to arrive at 8.10 but at 7.55 and before I was ready, one carer turned up, the other reporting sick (which is not an uncommon occurrence) So between us we got Meg up and as the carer was leaving, she intimated that the next call would be at 2.00pm which is in 5 and half hours time which is too long an interval. So we are going to make representations to the care agency who may, or may not, be able to do anything about it but I do get the feeling that things start to go wrong on a Monday morning, they do not correct themselves. My son is still poorly and confining himself to his own home although I had hope to be looking after him this week. Whilst Meg was taking a doze, I downloaded the BlueSky app to my phone which I have recently joined and become about their 18 millionth subscriber. Whilst browsing BlueSky, I also signed a petition that the UK rejoin the EU as soon as possible because the predictions of the absence of economic growth, now from official sources such as the governor of the Bank of England, are all pretty dire. A variety of economists are saying that the consequences of Brexit are getting worse and worse. According to Aston University Business School, the value of UK goods exported to the EU was 27% lower – and imported goods 32% lower – compared to what the economy may have looked like if Brexit had not happened. Leaving the single market officially in January 2021 has had a ‘profound and ongoing’ impact on Britain’s trade with the EU, according to the economists’ modelling. The variety of exported goods has also declined, with 1,645 fewer types of British products sent to every EU country and many manufacturers no longer sending their produce to the bloc.

The morning was quite dull and cold but without being too icy. Both Meg and I felt somewhat dozy this morning so we confined ourselves to a quick trip down to Waitrose to collect our newspaper and then straight home, regaling ourselves with a cup of chicken soup. We dined on the remains of the chicken from yesterday and just needed to heat up some of the veg from yesterday in the microwave. We had just about finished this when our carers turned up at the scheduled time of 2.00pm which I had wanted to bring forward but there were no staff available. The carers had some difficulty in getting to the house because they have theoretically closed off the whole of the circular road which runs around the town as a de facto ring road. In practice, though, it is possible to evade or ignore the barriers if you know your way around the system but it all adds to the confusion. No sooner had the carers arrived, then so did our chiropodist whose appointment was on our planning board but which I forgot to consult this morning. In the midst of all of this, our daughter-in-law phoned up with the unpleasant news that our son was in A&E with bronchitis-related breathing difficulty for the second time in less than five days. I am awaiting a progress report how long he is likely to be in the queue at A&E but we are thinking it will be at least six hours before some kind of resolution. No doubt he is being ‘triaged’ and I hope they can provide him with some oxygen whilst waiting so that his condition does not deteriorate.

In the dying days of the Biden presidency, a decision has been taken to allow the Ukrainians to deploy missiles against Russian military installations rather than just against the Russians who are occupying parts of Ukraine. There are some who think we might be on the edge of World War III at this stage but there is a bit of ‘game of chicken’ going on. Putin would no doubt label any hostile action taken against the Russian territory as ‘proof’ that NATO had long wanted a conflict and there is no doubt that the rhetoric will be nudged up several levels. But of course Putin knows that Trump will take over in a manner of weeks and Trump would like to think to think of himself as a ‘deal maker’ who, together with Putin, could bring the war rapidly (but certainly not within a day as Trump has claimed) The Europeans are in a real bind over this because if the Americans withdraw all support, does Europe have the money or the military capacity to fill whatever holes are left in Ukraine’s defences after a military withdrawal? The Ukrainians may be tempted to use their weapons if only as a bargaining counter when it comes to negotiations but one does the horrible feeling that one way or another, the Ukrainians will be abandoned and will be forced into a situation where they sacrifice territory for peace.

The weather forecasters are full of dire warnings tonight about what may befall us tomorrow. The blast of arctic air that we are experiencing does mean that much of the North of England may receive some show showers whilst the South appears to be subject to icy winds. I am hopeful that here in the Midlands, we will escape the worst of the weather and I hope we avoid snow which is going to make any journeying out of the house problematic. On the campus of the University of Winchester which was my last place of employment, I remarked to some of the locals that the university built on the slopes of West Hill and therefore with lots of slopes and steps must be murder to negotiate when there was snow. But I was met with an astonished look and I was informed that it never snowed just there. I think that any storms raging up the English channel hit the Isle of Wight first and then Southampton but had petered out when they got to Winchester 20 miles to the north. Similarly, bad weather sweeping in from the Bristol Channel hit towns like Basingstoke before they arrived in Winchester so I suspect that the whole university was located in a local zone whether the weather systems had already done their worst. But in all of my ten years there, admittedly experiencing a succession of mild winters, I think I can only remember it snowing mildly for about half a day only.

Our day started with us waking at just after 6.00am and the two care worker (not the most friendly or communicative, unfortunately) turning up just after 8.00am. Why I mention this is because if the care workers chat in a friendly fashion with Meg, it helps to set her up for the day but if they only chat with other about the clients they are going to meet later on that day, this is not the best of starts. We would normally have expected to meet with our University of Birmingham friend today but he has a cold that he does not wish to communicate to us so the morning’s coffee has to be given a miss. It was a cold but brilliantly sunny day so Meg and I make a trip down the hill, collect our newspaper and then come straight home again to see what the rest of the day has in store. The carers are coming quite late for the lunchtime call so Meg looked at the previous evenings offerings and eventually selected Alice Robert’s trip through the Ottoman empire (modern day Turkey) by train which is a very good travelogue. For lunch, we have one of those chicken crowns that you just pop into the oven complete in their tinfoil tin (which is a bit of a cheat, for which one pays) but it does make life easier. I tried a complete experiment with the vegetables to accompany the chicken. As well as a baked potato which does by itself in the microwave, I am trying a little experiment. I had a couple of quite large leeks left over which needed eating up so I have parboiled them and then thrown a couple of whole tomatoes. Then the whole lot is going to go into the oven to give me some baked vegetables which I really enjoy. It rather puts me in mind of when Meg and I used to fly to Murcia which was very accessible from our local airport when we lived in Southampton. In Murcia and its surrounding region, there is a speciality of baked vegetables so we had these every morning for breakfast as they were the standard fare of the hotel in which we stayed. As the oven was on for the chicken, I thought the experiment was worth while and I have just liberated from a charity shop some of those really old fashioned thick glass old Pyrex dishes that cook vegetables to perfection.

The highlight of the afternoon is going to be ‘The Jungle Book’ where the young Asian Actor who plays Mowgli is superb (despite the American accent)and the CGI for the animals is excellent as well. My mother in her cub mistress days used to have the cubs sitting around a campfire in the basement of the building where the Cub pack meeting was held and used to keep the group of approx. 8 year olds enthralled as she read out portions of ‘The Jungle Book’ week by week. I presume having engaged in this activity before she went to College to train to be a teacher late in life would have enhanced her application process no end, as she was desperate to train to teacher and it was a rare event for mature students in 1956 to attend Teacher Training College as it was in those days.

The big row over inheritance tax and its impact upon the farming community is an interesting little case study. At the outset, it must be said that whilst inheritance tax is a tax that only the dead pay, in practice it is their relatives. But in the case of a smallish family farm to pay the tax means actually selling some of the farm to pay the bill which lessens its overall viability. Although special rules apply, as well as particular rates, farmland is evidently in a very different category to the normal type of inheritance and although the figure of £1 million is often mentioned, sometimes inflated to £3 million if split between members of the family, the amount of political capital that has been lost on this issue is enormous. Th question has to be asked whether these consequences were thought about or modelled because the Labour government had long enough to contemplate the issue. If an ‘oversight’ had been committed because an emergency budget was undertaken a week after the election, one could understand the error if indeed there was one. But now one has the feeling that there is a complete stand-off with the government refusing to countenance whether it had made any errors of judgement at all. But we are now faced with the prospect of queues of tractors throughout London, as well as North Wales over the weekend and perhaps even the prospect of supermarkets running out of fresh produce (but not, paradoxically, junk food). It appears that Starmer in particular does not wish to appear ‘weak’ or to be pushed around by special interests but the political fallout is considerable and could have easily been averted by a formula to look at the issue again. There are various techniques that could be used so the government could save face and claim not to have been faced down but it could, for example, delay the legislation relating to farmers for a year or so, more technically, allow elderly farmers to give away heir assets and not have to wait seven years but only about two years for example. Like the whole row about winter fuel payments being withdrawn, a tremendous amount of political capital is being wasted for hardly any money being realised in savings. One would have thought it would have been politically sensible to have a quick change of policy and move the agenda onto other issues but, once again, the new government has shown itself to be not at all adept at anticipating problems and taking steps to avoid or mitigate them.

As the weather is getting colder, the phrase ‘winter draws on’ comes to mind. But at one time the BBC had a little Green Book for the benefit of producers which stipulated that among jokes banned were those concerning lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind, suggestive references to honeymoon couples, chambermaids, fig-leaves, ladies’ underwear (such as ‘winter draws on’ and so on), lodgers and commercial travellers. It has been observed that if these rules had been strictly followed a great many of the BBC’s most successful comedy shows since, such as ‘Beyond Our Ken’, ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ and ‘Steptoe and Son’ would never have been aired.

We had two carers yesterday morning but they were scheduled for 7.00am at which time scarcely any of the four of us are properly awake. I did get up an hour earlier, though, so that I could get myself washed and dressed and everything put in place for the carers. After breakfast, we made our way down into town about 15 minutes earlier than normal because in our local Salvation Army shop, they had in the shop window one of those electrical heaters that stand quite upright and have a large circular fan rather than the low, horizontal models. I was pretty sure that there was only a 50% chance of it being unsold and only another 50% chance that it actually was a fan heater and not just a cold air fan but I was in luck and snaffled it up. When I got it home, I gave it a test and am pleased that it is very quiet in operation and has two heat settings including a fan only option which means that I can use it as a cool air fan in the summer. It has two heats and a variable heat control which I believe will switch the fan off or moderate its intensity once the room gets up to a particular temperature. Although it is Chinese made, it seems a pretty sturdy piece of kit and evidently has to be tested before it can be sold to the public.I do have a particular reason for wanting this piece of equipment because in the next few days, we are going to be subject to a blast of cold arctic air and snow is even contemplated by the weather forecasters. Our Music Room and my son’s in house study are both pretty cold first think in the morning, so I though a quick blast or warming air would not come amiss. We had some quiche for lunch and to accompany this, I peeled some ‘wonky’ carrots, cut them into batons and parboiled them with a few remaining fine beans. Then I popped them into the oven with a spot of oil and a drizzle of treacle so I trust it will make a good accompaniment to the quiche when it gets served up. I was texted in the late morning to ask whether I could assist a single carer – this happens a lot these days. Actually, I do not mind because I get on very well with this particular carer who just happens to be a fellow catholic to whom I retold the story of the nuns forbidding the girls in their charge to wear black patent leather shoes lest young men in the vicinity would see the reflection of their knickers and be driven wild with lust.

This afternoon, I got a telephone call from our son who has experienced a very bad bout of bronchitis that put in hospital for a day until he managed to discharge himself. His GP had suspected that at the worst, they might be dealing with a case of sepsis so the A&E moved at quite some speed to do some necessary tests to ensure that this was not the case. But after a range of tests and prophylactics my son decided that on the balance of risks he would be better off at home and not exposed to super bugs such as MRSA, all too often found in a hospital environment. So he is recovering at home and I might be able to offer some help in the forthcoming days to keep him warm, comfortable and fed with a view to speeding up his recovery which might take a week or so. Given that my daughter-in-law had an equally bad bout of bronchitis, then there is a particular irony that out of my wife and I, my son and my daughter-in-law, I seem to be the fittest of all of us at the age of 79½.

Some fascinating news is starting to emerge from the world of social media this afternoon. Several days ago, my son had informed me that he intended to delete his ‘X’ (successor to Twitter) social media account as he was so disgusted with the behaviour of Elan Musk giving massive financial and moral support to Donald Trump in return for goodness what other favours as well. So I followed him in deleting my own ‘X’ account but it seems that we are not alone. Sky News has asked the question ‘The X exodus – could Bluesky spike spark end of Elon Musks social media platform?’ Even Google appears to trust X less, with one expert telling Sky News the search engine treats X competitor Bluesky as 10 times more important than Elon Musk’s platform. Bluesky claims one million users joined the platform in one day this week. Bluesky claims one million users joined the platform in one day this week after Musk was given a job in Trump’s new government. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, The Guardian newspaper, and even the Clifton Suspension Bridge have joined swathes of people deserting Elon Musk’s social media site X. Millions have instead joined Bluesky, which has a stronger focus on moderation, set up by former Twitter founder Jack Dorsey – who is now no longer affiliated with the social media platform – in 2019. According to the official Bluesky account, a million people joined the platform in just one day this week, after Musk was given a position in Donald Trump’s government. So this is something that I shall certainly investigate myself when I have a moment – probably in the hours after Meg is safely tucked up on bed and fast asleep when I have a bit of time to explore such things. There was also a report on Sky News which sounds so terrible it is quite hard to believe. This is that because of ‘hygiene poverty’ some 40% teachers admit to washing some of the clothes of the children under their charge, probably in a school bought washing machine as parents cannot afford to wash their children’s clothes. The same report indicated that 80% staff within schools knew of hygiene poverty and were aware of the efforts of other school staff to alleviate it. There was yet another shocking report which underlines the level of poverty and deprivation in the UK where real wages have not reason for at least a decade. This is that the so called ‘junk food’ has costs associated with it that amount to 50% more than the entire budget of the NHS. The UK has been addicted to junk food for decades now and we are second only to America in the amount that is consumed per head (unlike the rest of Europe)

The day started off fairly apart from the fact that I needed to assist one carer in the morning and it really is a full 45 minutes to get Meg up washed, dressed, hoisted into her chair and eventually sitting in front of the TV in our Music Lounge. but today was the day when our domestic help called around and I proudly showed her my new collection of porcelain mugs to nearly all of which she gave the nod of approval. As I suspected, she particularly liked the rather fine ReActivated Glaze mug which I now use for my early morning coffee. Later on the morning, we had a visit from the Eucharistic minister who is always very welcome. But today she came bearing the sad news of the probably terminal illness of a relative and naturally she was rather a sombre mood as she immediately had to make tracks for the hospital in Worcester which is some fifteen miles distant. We had received an invitation from our University of Birmingham friend which we accepted with alacrity and also shared a coffee with another regular who we will see tomorrow in any case. We felt no pressure of time this morning as the care agency have retimed the lunchtime visit to an hour later so this gives me time to get Meg up the hill and in the house before I start some food preparation. I made some smoked mackerel risotto today which despite the carbohydrates associated with the rice gives us a much bigger portion of oily fish which I am sure gives us a better serving of protein than we would get in a bought fish pie. My phone seemed to be going all morning with messages of one sort or another. Firstly, BT had written to me to say that I had not returned the Apple TV add-on which they supplied when I updated my phone but did not need and sent back to them. So I had to dig out my tracking number from my Post Office receipt to prove to them that I had sent it back as otherwise I would be charged for it. Then I received a further two text messages followed by en email to say that they had, after all received the ‘add-on’ back again but their systems needed to be updated. Then I received a report from my diabetic retinopathy which I attended last week but this went straight through to my NHS app through which I had to access it. Although the report was a little complicated and detailed first one eye and then the other the upshot of it all was that my eyes seemed to be in the clear without any tell tale signs of retinal damage to incipient macular degeneration which is what occurs if diabetes rages through one’s system and is left untreated. As well, I was exchanging text messages with my daughter-in-law and my son himself once he managed to access the (free) NHS wireless system afforded by the hospital.It looks as though there is no consultant available to check whether or not his oxygen levels have returned to a level where he is deemed fit for discharge so, versed in how hospitals work, he is now semi-resigned to the fact that he may have to stay in place until next Monday unless he does what he threatened to do and take his own discharge.

On the international scene, Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have spoken directly for the first time since 2022 – a move that has prompted anger from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It could be that the Scholz who is facing re-election has a vested interest in trying to get the Ukrainian crisis ‘solved’ but it seems quite likely that a combination of the Germans and the Americans are going to force Ukraine to accept a peace where some land is ceded to Russia (admittedly Russian speaking) in exchange for a negotiated peace. The view from the Ukraine is that Putin has got all that he could have wanted – no doubt, the Sunday newspapers will contain some more in-depth analysis.

Late last night, we received some rather unpleasant news that our son was in hospital. It appeared that he had been suffering from bronchitis like symptoms (like his wife) and when he eventually struggled to the doctors, it was decided that he should go straight to A&E. There he received some antibiotics, oxygen and a normal ECG check but as his oxygen saturation levels were too low, it was decided to keep him in hospital overnight (and probably for as long as it took to get his oxygen levels back to normal) So this is always a worrying time when relatives are in hospital but trying to get discharged on a Friday afternoon can often be problematic (as I know to my cost) and so we may have to wait until Monday until a consultant or someone who can act on his behalf can make a distinction whether to discharge or not.

The news from the other side of the Atlantic has caused some jaws to drop. Donald Trump is putting together his top government team and we have had surprise after surprise. The first came when a relative unknown, a reporter on Fox News was appointed to Defence Secretary in charge of the most powerful military force on the planet. The candidate has served in the Armed services as part of a routine young adulthood but has never exercised any degree of military rank and this caused eyes in Washington to roll in astonishment. The next announcement was that John F Kennedy, Jr had appointed as Health Secretary. JFK Jr has stood as an independent Presidential candidate and then withdrew in favour of Bush, and he has the most bizarre and unorthodox of views arguing that vaccines cause autism, that HIV does not cause Aids and then fluoridation in drinking water should be abandoned. The thought that a politician with these eccentric and bizarre views will be in charge of America’s health programme is almost beyond belief. And hen the final straw came when an extreme MAGA politician, Gearst who has been accused of multiple crimes including illegal sex with a 17 year old minor has been appointed as Justice Secretary (and will be in a position to abandon all of the legal cases against him as well as excusing all of the rioters who attacked the Capitol building four years ago) Of course, these appointments have to undergo approval hearings in the Senate and although it is rare for nominations to be overturned, these appointments are so extreme that moderate Republicans might rebel and refuse to endorse the nomination. It could be the case that Trump is involved in a ‘game of chicken’ putting up nominees who are ultra loyal to him but with no particular competence to flush out those Republicans in the Senate who are ‘for him’ and who against.

Yesterday morning was one of those where I needled to assist the single carer to get Meg up and ready in the morning. Although the carer is relatively new and to some extent inexperienced, she seems to be a quick learner and to like attending to Meg (despite a sit a week ago when Meg went into one of her agitated states) The carer and I made a good team this morning but Meg showed some signs of entering an agitated state again so I gave her a pill which sometimes helps. Then another carer arrived to do the sit whilst I do the weekly shopping but things did not run smoothly. Although I had given Meg a special pill half an hour before the carer arrived, it did not seem to have much effect and when it was time for me to go shopping Meg was in a truly agitated state (and did not recognise me either) She calmed down a smidgeon and then I went and raced around the shopping as fast as I could do, actually returning within an hour – nonetheless, Meg had proved to be very agitated and somewhat aggressive in my absence so the care worker, despite her best efforts to keep entertained with teddy bears, books, soothing music and all of the other things that we try on occasions like this, had unfortunately had a very hard time. Upon my return we wheeled Meg into the kitchen whilst I unpacked the shopping and eventually got Meg to calm down a little and enter a type of doze.

When Meg and I go on our little ventures down the High Street, as we did yesterday, I often pop into the charity shops to see if anything takes our fancy. I tend to make a beeline for the ceramics/pottery/kitchenware shelves where experience suggests that I might find something to my tastes. When Meg and I moved into our present house some seventeen years ago, we treated ourselves to a full set of good Denby crockery and tableware but our experiences have not been entirely happy. For example, some of the Denby has chipped although we cannot remember giving it a knock and some of the glaze on the interior seems to be breaking down as if we make tea in the cup, which we often do, then the resulting caffeine stain is proving difficult to remove. So we are of the view that the quality of Denby has drifted down over the years or perhaps we got a particularly bad production batch but certainly our own Denby ware has by no means fared as well as the set purchased by our son only a year or so previously. So our search for tea and coffee mugs has a utilitarian as well as an aesthetic element attached to it. Over the past few days, I have purchased seven pieces, each with a bit of provenance attached to it. The first piece I acquired was a cup of white porcelain decorated with stylised blue flowers which was an elegant little piece and when I saw a second exemplar of the same a few days later, I bought that to be a companion. The base of the cup reveLS the name ‘Nicola Spring’ who according to the website is a well known designer of kitchenware and artefacts and it could be that the pieces I have acquired are actually handmade. The third piece I might be describe as a whimsical choice is a white porcelain piece decorated with some grazing sheep which rather took my fancy and to accompany this I also bought a porcelain mug decorated by hedgehogs. When I last visited my suburban (i.e.not town centre shop) of AgeUK I saw a collection of miscellaneous cups and mugs and actually bought quite a wide and deep mug for 10p as it has the advantages of being quite wide and deep so is particularly easy to clean of coffee residues as I can fit the whole of my fist inside it. Now I come onto my sixth piece which was a piece of porcelain by the famous PortMeirion pottery made for the National Trust and decorated with garden herbs where the quality speaks for itself. My seventh and final piece I found in a trolley load of goods donated to the Salvation Army and not yet priced up. The piece I bought was one of those wider at the base than at its top and decorated by a deep blue glaze which gives rise via a way line do a lighter blue – subsequent investigations of this mug on a website indicates that this is meant to represent an ocean or seascape. The manufacturer was a specialised maker called Abbeydale and one of their specialisms (of which my mug was an exemplar) is the utilisation of a ‘reactivated glaze’. This glaze relies upon the fact that the various minerals and compounds in the composition of the clay together with higher kiln temperatures result in each piece being produced being unique i.e. no two pieces will ever look exactly the same as each other. For this reason, some cognoscenti hunt out this type of pottery because it adds a level of uniqueness to each individual piece thus making a change from the mass production style of pottery where every piece is meant to be identical. This, actually, is my favourite of the recently acquired purchases and one can see why they end up in the charity shops. They are often made in small and specialised craft potteries and small production runs. For this reason, they are often marked in stores such as Marks and Spencer as ‘one offs’ and would be purchased as a gift item for somebody rather than being purchased as part of a complete pottery set. As these are priced at anything from £12-£20, you can almost hear people saying that they are not going to pay that kind of price for a single piece of pottery and hence I imagine that they remain on the shelves unsold until they are swept away and find their way into into the charity shops. But here one has to shop with a certain degree of discernment because right in the middle of the pedestrian, utilitarian and sometime it must be said the downright tawdry, one finds a complete gem and I think it takes a discerning eye to spot these items of real quality. I suspect that antique dealers are the same for they can sweep their eyes over a load of old rubbish until something remarkable catches their eye and they purchase at a bargain price but later sell on at an inflated one.

Yesterday morning we had nothing in particular planned but after we had got Meg up and breakfasted, we made a trip down into town. The weather was still pretty cold but not quite as cold as the day before so the walk down was relatively pleasant. We we were delighted to bump into one of our friends who was engaged in some gardening and to learn that another friend, and near neighbour, had received some medical results that had been received the day before and that indicated that nothing had actually worsened. We were pleased to hear this news and then proceeded along the High Street where we bought some cosmetics and relieved an ATM of some of its cash. Then we made our back up the hill to have a warming cup of soup when we returned home, after which the carers called for their pre-lunch call. We had some fishcakes for lunch although the amount of actual fish inside them these days is so miniscule that having thrown away the batter, not much actual fish remains. This afternoon I contemplated getting the front lawns cut but this may have to wait until tomorrow when I have to ensure that Meg is in her wheelchair and can accompany me outside. So our afternoon TV viewing, we watched the concluding episode of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ with the final scene being where Angel and the sister of the just-hanged Tess make their way up West Hill outside Winchester which is where the University of Winchester at which I used to teach is located. Following on from this on the BBC iPlayer was a film called ‘Jude’ which said it was based upon the Hardy novel of ‘Jude the Obscure’ but it seemed to depart quite a lot from the novel as I remember it. The film was ‘dark’ in the extreme with the couples three children ending up dead whilst Jude and Sue were wracked with remorse and guilt, feeling the killing of the children was God’s vengeance for the fact they were living with each other as man and wife whilst actually being married to other partners. To be honest, we were pleased when the film had ended and the two carers came along to give Meg her teatime call and the two of them will return later in the evening to put Meg to bed.

We heard on the news yesterday that Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, was going to introduce a policy of grading hospitals so that they form a League Table and, presumably, those at the bottom of the pile would have their Chief Executives removed or be subject to other forms of sanction. More than 120 NHS trusts in England will be scored on their waiting times, patient care and spending in what is being labelled as ‘Football League’ type reforms. Members of the general public might think that this is a good idea to improve the NHS and it is evidently something that politicians, even Labour ones, think is a good way to inject a degree of managerial efficiency. But it is important to say that this type of measure has been tried before and did not yield the anticipated results. In the late 1980’s there was an idea to rank all hospitals and this policy was carried out. But I remember that, at the time, a hospital possibly in Lancaster was ranked as the lowest in the country when it came to outpatient waiting times (a research interest of mine) But when reporters descended on the lowest ranked hospital in the land, the patients that they interviewed were satisfied with the level of service that they received and evidently did not have the ability to attend any hospital other than their local one. But this league table approach has been found to be severely wanting because of what social scientists interested in quality management have termed the curse of the ‘perverse indicators’. When targets like these are set, then managers will do whatever is necessary to achieve the target and other important but unmeasured work will either not get done or be degraded. So the setting of targets can, and often does, drive down the overall quality in the system as senior managers reorient their organisations so as to meet the guidelines. The whole of this type of debate formed the backdrop to a series of papers which formed the backdrop to my PhD (on the subject of quality in the health service) so this explains my interest in the subject. But another question raises its ugly head, which is why this approach which had been tried before and shown not to work was being re-implemented? I think some of the must lie in the time scale of changes and those who implement them. It is now some 35 years since this approach was tried before but those responsible for implementing and pursuing the League table policy of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s will have retired. So there is no organisational memory that this approach has been tried before with minimal impact. Was there anybody in the Department of Health (or even the Labour Party) to tell Wes Streeting that this previously tried policy had not really worked. Did Wes Streeting even know this approach had been tried before – and, if he did, did he commission any papers to inform him why the policy had failed and what lessons should be learnt for the future? i think there are some parts of the Whitehall machine that attempt to learn from past mistakes (and I suspect that the Defence ministry is fairly good at this as it attempts to learn the lessons from each conflict in which the country is engaged) But, if I were to make a guess, it would be that there is a failure of collective memory in the Department of Health and so we shall probably go ahead and repeat the mistakes of the past.

The media has been full of the meeting between President Biden and President-elect Trump as they meet in the White House to agree and cement the transition details between one presidency and the next. At least Biden extended a cordial welcome to Trump if only for the sake of the cameras, a courtesy that Trump did not extend to Biden four years ago at the change of presidency. The transfer of power in the UK political system is swift and sometimes even brutal with removal vans drawing up at the back entrance to Downing Street the day after an election but the USA takes a lot longer over this process until the inauguration in January.

Two of our regular carers called around in the morning at 8.00am and although Meg was still sleepy, we got her up and dressed without any delay. Being a Tuesday, we were looking forward to seeing some of our regular Waitrose friends and, indeed, we did meet up with two of them including our friend who had experienced the unfortunate fall in Waitrose the other day. Over coffee, I ensured that I had got her telephone number so that I could send her a couple of useful telephone numbers, one being the contact that we have for the ‘LifeLine’ alarm worn around the neck and activated in the event of a fall and the other being my contact within the ‘Falls’ team itself. No sooner had we got back from our coffee break down the hill, I was met with the representative of the ‘LifeLine’ organisation because given that Meg is no ambulant and therefore in danger of falling, we are discontinuing this particular service as we need it no more. As Tuesday is a ‘sit’ day, one of the newish carers that knows Meg quite well was sitting with her whilst I made a lightning visit to a local shop. By now it was getting rather late for the fishcakes that I had planned so I made a ‘quickie’ lunch from a tin of chunky vegetable soup, a baked potato and one leek enhanced by an onion sauce. During the course of lunch preparation, I received a telephone call from a local physio who thought he could pay us a quick visit to give up some advice on Meg’s legs. He turned up at about 3.00pm and we had a very useful discussion with him. He confirmed that the recently ordered Riser-Recliner chair would be invaluable and in the short term gave us some invaluable advice how to keep Meg’s legs in the correct orientation.The source of my concern was that if Meg sat in a wheelchair for about 4-5 hours in the afternoon, this might ‘set’ Meg’s leg at a 90 degree angle and, for this reason, we put Meg into an armchair and a small, low height stool, to keep Meg’s legs at a less acute angle. The young male physio was very helpful and he explained some of the basic physiology involved and we were relieved to ascertain that Meg’s knees joints were not themselves being adversely affected. The physio was satisfied that we were doing the right things and gave us some simple stretching out exercises for us before Meg is moved into the hoist.

There was some unexpected economic news this afternoon after the Bank of England had made a cautious cut in interest rates the other day. A string of big lenders have announced interest rate hikes one after the other – as the mortgage market takes a turn for the worse. HSBC, Santander, Nationwide, TSB and Virgin have all announced hikes today and in recent days. It follows a budget that analysts fear could prove to be inflationary. There is concern extra costs for businesses, such as the minimum wage uplift and the national insurance rise, could be passed on to consumers. Last week the Bank of England cut the base rate to 4.75% but struck a cautious note, saying further rate cuts would be ‘gradual’ – prompting markets to further scale back forecasts for another cut in December. So I imagine that this news is unwelcome to the government and I wonder to what extent it was either modelled or anticipated. Donald Trump’s latest appointment to the person who is going to look after trade negotiations i.e. tariffs, seems to be one of the most protectionist it is possible to imagine so, once again, I expect some shudders and frowns deep within our own Treasury who are having to digest this news. With the various cries of distress that are coming from both farmers, sections of the hospitality industry and private schools after the last budget, I still think it is an open question whether there is genuine economic distress here or just significant groups crying ‘wolf’ and that the changes to taxation levels are capable of being absorbed.

The political landscape is full of two stories this morning. One of these is the fact that the Assisted Dying bill has just been published, ready for a free vote in the House of Commons later this month. Speaking absolutely personally, I have no objection in principle to this bill but a massive misgiving in practice. Were our hospice movement to be in good financial health so that there was no count that anyone who requested help could readily receive it, then I would feel happier were the bill to pass.(Incidentally, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, seems to have exactly the same position) However, I feel that this bill is unlikely to pass through the House of Lords which may feel that its view needs to be heeded whatever majority might be in the Commons. At this stage, I would predict that the bill would narrow pass in the Commons on a free vote but fail in the Lords.

When I heard the discussion surrounding the Archbishop of Canterbury, Britain’ foremost prelate, I was not in the lest surprised when his resignation came when it did. When I heard the criticism levied against him – that he had known about the Smyth affair in which across five decades in three different countries and involving as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK and Africa, John Smyth QC is said to have subjected his victims to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological, and spiritual attacks, permanently marking their lives.The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned after a report found the Church of England covered up sexual abuse by a barrister.The independent Makin review into John Smyth QC’s abuse of children and young men was published last week. Although Justin Welby was by no means a party to the abuse, the charge against him is that he did not pursue with sufficient rigour the rumours that he was told about Smythe which turned out to be true. It is being said that whilst safeguarding issues are generally dealt with well at parochial (i.e. individual church) level, the problem appears to lie in the labyrinthine hierarchy of the Church of England.Indeed it is being said that several bishops ought to resign as they all had collective knowledge of the abuse taking place but did not take any real action , presumably thinking that they had to defend the integrity of the Church. The criticisms in the media the night before were trenchant and I thought to myself that Justin Welby was a ‘dead man walking’ and I think this view was widely shared in the House of Commons itself.