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.

Yesterday, I awoke after quite a decent night’s sleep to a day that although cold and a little windy seemed reasonably bright and so I thought would provide no challenges for a walk down into town in the morning. The evening before, I had hunted around on the TV schedules and eventually saw the last episode in the paleo-archaeology series entitled ‘Humans’ When the program had ended, the iPlayer automatically started to load a similar programme which I decided not to watch but to save for later. This series is called ‘The Origins of Us’ and Professor Alice Roberts (one of my favourite documentary presenters) is presenting a series of three and in the series, entitled respectively ‘Bones’, ‘Guts’ and finally ‘Brains’ I think these are the kinds of programmes not only that I enjoy but help in the passage of the long dark winter afternoons until Christmas comes and passes and the days start to lengthen again. I was particularly pleased to have got the last weekend negotiated because it just happened that both my son and my three closest friends were all away so I was potentially bereft of any kind of social contact but I made the best of a bad job under the circumstances. There are no particular events this week to which I can look forward but after some of my friends have returned from their various social activities I can have a consultation with them and start to think about making some bookings for my Christmas trip to my relatives in Yorkshire. On the domestic political front, the opposition parties have been given a Christmas-present style wrapped gift in the case of the sex offender recently released by mistake from gaol but since recaptured. Although the roots of the problem lie in our under-funded prison service administering gaols awash with drone-supplied drugs, bursting with inmates and chronically understaffed, the government are receiving all of the flack. It is being said that the problem arose under the watch of the present Labour government and just fuels the feeling, rife in the population. that absolutely nothing works in the country any more. The recently revealed fact that the mistaken release was not a one off but there have been over 260 cases of mistaken release over the past year only reinforces the point. Although a huge manhunt was in place for the wrongly released prisoner, even the police did not actually find him but a member of the public telephoned the police to indicate his whereabouts which led to his recapture. To hide their embarrassment, the government are going to deport the individual within a couple of days but an interesting legal question is whether a confused, wrongly released prisoner is actually committing an additional offence? Senior government sources admit that not only was this saga incredibly embarrassing for government, but it also feeds a narrative that Britain is not working and the state cannot fulfil basic functions.

This morning after I had scoured the pile of newspapers for articles that I wished to retain, I walked down the hill to collect my newspaper. As I was passing the home of my Italian friend, I could not fail to notice that the Highways Department were scaling a large tree and lopping off branches. From my vantage point, I could not work out if the work team were just removing large branches that were in danger of fouling some overhead power lines or whether the lopping of off branches was just a precursor to the felling of the whole tree. I knocked on the door to have a word with my friend about what I was just witnessing but she appeared to be in a state of some distress, not related to the problem of the adjacent tree. It was unclear what was causing my friend some distress but I departed leaving her n rather an unhappy state and I could only speculate as to the cause of her problems. When I returned home having had my coffee, I was relieved to see that the tree was largely intact and the highways team had left the area. I made myself some lunch which today was a portion of oven-warmed quiche accompanied by what I can only describe as a melange of vegetables (tomatoes, onions, carrots and green beans) with enough left over for another day. Looking at Sky News after lunch, I noted that Nigel Farage was having a press conference to capitalise upon the government’s discomfiture over the fact that five victims of sexual abuse have withdrawn from the enquiry. He had given one of their number a platform to speak at a ‘Reform’ press conference were she repeated allegations that the victims had been lied to, belittled and their concerns not expressed as directly as they would all have wished. This may or not be true but once witnesses to an enquiry are invited to speak at a press conference organised by a political party, then a toxic atmosphere is being maintained. Nigel Farage has said that later in the day he is going to request of the Speaker of the House of Commons that an enquiry into the ‘grooming’ scandal be conducted by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. Farage is saying that this would be relatively speedy, and as well as being cross-party would have the advantage of compelling with witnesses to attend and to give evidence under oath.

Now that the colder weather is approaching, I am paying particular attention to the quality of footwear if only because wet leaves can be as slippery as ice if you have large leaves made wet by the rain. In the past, two members of my family and one of my students have been laid low by rushing about in the Autumn and slipping on wet leaves, so this is not a hazard lightly to be discounted. I have started wearing some desert-style boots which have Vibram-like soles and a good ankle support and I think that as one gets older, good footwear becomes and more important. On the High street, our domestic help directed me to a charity shop which always seems to stock some good quality men’s shirts. I have bought two of these recently and they are the Marks and Spencer ‘Easy Care’ range which I think means that after a careful wash and drying, they do not really need ironing. The three I have bought recently have all washed and dried excellently and I am getting to the point where some of my shirts with frayed collar and cuffs have to be relegated to gardening level or recycled.

The evening before yesterday was quite a fine but chilly afternoon and I had scheduled that I would get our back lawn cut. This I did but I motivated myself with a good hot cup of drinking chocolate before I eventually ventured outside. This is going to be the second last cut of the season and it would not be desperate if it turned out to be the last one but in two weeks time I anticipate the last cut of the year before the mower gets put to bed for the winter. In the evening, I went to church which is my Saturday early evening routine and our new priest announced a little innovation which I believe is going to be welcome. In theological terms, November 1st is ‘All Souls’ Day in which one particularly remembers those loved ones who have died in the past year. Our new priest was going to produce a special ‘In memoriam’ book which would have its place inside the sanctuary of the church during the whole of November. In addition, as ‘All Souls Day’ falls on a Saturday, he was going to have a special service to be held on the following Monday and the sentiment was expressed that members of the parish community might like to attend on that day to celebrate the life of their departed one. I filled in Meg’s details on a specially provided envelope so that these can be inscribed into the book and, as this is the year’s of Meg’s death, I feel as though I ought to attend this year of all years so that is something in prospect in about a week’s time. You well and truly know that autumn has arrived when the clocks go back and people look forward to an extra hour in bed but I actually spent that extra hour in getting my various clocks and timepieces to show the correct time. In many cases, this is a simple adjustment but I have one or two timepieces where it is especially awkward involving taking off the back and a pendulum in the case of the miniature grandmother clock I have above the desk in our Main Lounge. In the morning, I stared in some disbelief at one of our ‘Pure’ radios which should have updated itself automatically but failed to do so – this was easily remedied by plugging it in and then plugging it back again which forced the system to download the correct time. The car which I acquired from my son during the past year might prove to be a challenge but I was fortunate as the system updated itself automatically without any intervention. Domestically, the hunt continues for the prisoner who was a convicted sex offender destined for deportation but who was accidentally released about three days ago. The man appears to be in a state of utter confusion and hung about outside the prison once released asking on several occasions where he should go in order to be deported! Eventually the prison staff directed him to the train station from which he caught a rain into central London. The hunt continues and he has been spotted on a video in a library in London but was eventually caught after a tip-off by a member of the public. As time progresses, it appears likely that he might never be located because some members of the emigré  Ethiopian community might have ‘rescued’ him  and possibly he is now secure in a house from which he might not emerge for months. One would have thought that the release from prison by mistake was an extraordinarily rare event but this is not the case as apparently some 262 prisoners were wrongly released in the past year. The prison service has been so denuded of staff in government cutbacks that mistakes like this are almost bound to occur. When it comes to HMP Chelmsford – which is where Kebatu was being held – a report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons said the facility faced considerable pressures because of national capacity issues. There is now going to be a massive political debate about the state of our prisons with the opposition parties taking every opportunity to blame the government as the release occurred during their watch but, in truth, the under-funding of our public services has proceeded apace for several years when both Conservatives and Labour have been in power.

I had reconciled myself to a Sunday where I was very much left to my own devices as my son and daughter-in-law were away and my University of Birmingham friend had engagements elsewhere. So I decided that I would visit the parish hall attached to the church at the conclusion of the second service of the morning and so having collected a copy of my Sunday  newspaper I timed my visit to the church just when I judged it was ending. As I generally attend the service on a Saturday evening, I have lost contact with the other two thirds of the parish who attend the two services on Sunday morning and a visit to the social centre might be a good way of reestablishing some contacts. There was only a small group of us who attended for coffee and biscuits  but I sat and spent a pleasant half an hour with so with two other parishioners. One was a widow who had moved up from the South of England about eight years ago whilst the other was a much younger person who hailed from Brazil. I had taken with me some copies of my eulogy for Meg which they accepted and said they would read later at home. At the end of the day, I had contacts with two people for a pleasant conversation and if I had not made the effort, I would not have spoken to anybody all day. Next week, I shall repeat this experiment but might go for the earlier service two hours earlier, particular as the two ladies with whom I had been conversing indicated that they would not be there next week in any case. I augmented some of the remains of yesterday’s meal with some chicken pieces and cooked some carrots and broccoli alongside this before I contemplated how to spend the afternoon which, by now with the hour going back was quite dark and dull. Despite the theme not being the most suitable for someone in my situation, culminating as it does with the death of a beloved partner, I hunted out some recordings of ‘La Bohème’ where I thought I could just play some of the essential bits of the story (the initial meeting between Rodolfo and Mimi where the fall in love, the scene from the Christmas Eve party in the café Momus and the final, extended death scene) If any of the friends who may come to visit me are not familiar with opera, then here are some highlights with which I can entertain them (or bore them to tears, until they beg to leave!).

Now that autumn is well and truly upon us my thoughts are turning to things that need to be done and plans that need to be made. The prospect for this weekend is for the lawns to receive their penultimate cut (the last one I schedule for 5th November which is a date easy to remember) Many people might think that the grass has now effectively stopped growing so what is the point of waiting for another two weeks before the final cut. But I take on board a magnificent tip which  heard from the well-known gardener  and broadcaster, Alan Titchmarsh. After the leaves have fallen and, hopefully, a frost has dried them up somewhat, then a final cut of the lawnmower is particularly useful for the grass. This is because the action of the lawnmower (and particularly a mulching mower of the sort that I have) has the effect of chopping the leaves into much smaller pieces. Then, unseen to all of us, the worms get to work and gradually drag the leaf fragments under the surface off the soil making for an excellent lawn fertiliser so that the lawn can get off to a flying start in the spring. And  I always take care to ‘winterise’ my lawnmower to ensure that all of the petrol in the tank is used up or emptied and, of course, the season’s oil removed. But the other seasonal task is to think ahead to what my Pilates teacher calls the dreaded ‘C’ word by which she means Christmas. At this time of year, many families are thinking about or actively planning a break to coincide with the  Halloween/Bonfire Night celebrations which is the last break just before Christmas. But  I have started to think early about Christmas because whilst the nation’s attention is diverted onto other things, there are things like hotel bedrooms and train tickets that need to be booked. Now these always rise very sharply once Halloween is out of the way but I have started to think about planning the winter trip to my family in Yorkshire whilst the hotel rooms are still available and the cheaper train tickets not all snapped up. I have made some provisional enquiries and the prices are still reasonable but I need to stay my hand for a few days until I have had a chance to consult with relevant others a good time to make my trip and for some funds to flow into my bank account. The hotel and the booking agency that I usually use for booking my Yorkshire trip have a variety of prices but one mid-range price has the option of allowing a cancellation until a few days beforehand and only taking payment in mid-December so this is the most sensible option to cater for unseen contingencies. I have read the following on Sky News with a certain amount of ‘schadenfreude’. More than 2,000 counterfeit weight loss jabs have been confiscated from a factory in Northampton, in what is believed to be the world’s largest seizure. The UK’s medicines regulator and police joined forces to smash the illicit facility, which was manufacturing and distributing unlicensed products. Labels suggested the knock-off pens contained tirzepatide, an ingredient found in Mounjaro. But Eli Lilly, the company behind the real medication, said anyone who bought these jabs on the black market would have no way of knowing what they actually contain. I am always amazed about the gullibility of people who buy drugs off the internet knowing what an ‘unregulated Wild West’ we know the internet to be. But the demand in the UK is enormous as an estimated 1.5 million people in the UK are currently on weight loss drugs, with the majority (over 90%) obtaining them privately. While a growing number are eligible for NHS prescriptions, the current rollout is limited, with plans to cover a smaller number of patients over the next few years.  

Later in the morning, I went down into town parking the car in one of the top of the town carparks and then walked down the High Street to meet a couple of my Saturday morning friends for coffee. We are normally joined by a third friend but she is now in hospital following a chest infection and this may have worsened whilst she has been in hospital, allied to which she may have a foot problem as well. So we are worried about our friend who normally has to get to us in her motorised wheelchair and we are fearful as to what the immediate future holds for her. After I left my friends,  I went into the charity shop which normally has a good range of men’s shirts and bought a couple of Marks and Spencer ‘EasyCare’ shorts which I believe are non-iron and retail for £40 each but I only paid £5 for each of them. They have been popped straight into the wash and when they emerge from the dryer, I will better be able to assess how ‘non-iron’ they will actually prove to be. After I had got the washing going, I made myself some lunch which consisted of throwing some fragments of cubed meat into the remains of a curry and supplementing this with some carrots and beans.

Experts are warning that without fast changes the UK could run out of drinking water in the future. The first seven months of 2025 were the driest since 1976, with reservoirs across England only 56.1% full on average, according to the Environment Agency. Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology from Reading University, told Sky News that she thought that all need to worry about the fact that there is this possibility we could run out. She expressed the view that ‘It is only if we start thinking like that, that we are going to start conserving our water, otherwise we just take it completely for granted. It is all of our fault, we have not been paying attention to what is going on… we need some very fast changes to the way that we are using water and the way that we are storing water in order to stop this being a problem in the future, because our summers are only going to get hotter.’ By 2050, the government says that England could face a shortfall of five billion litres of water every day.

The evening before yesterday was the day upon which the induction of our new parish priest was due to take place. I set off for the church in plenty of time but the church car park was actually being reserved for the numerous fellow clergy who were due to attend so I was directed to park in the adjacent school playground which had been pressed into service as an overflow car park. The service was beautifully constructed and I could not help thinking was put together so much better than the previous one about three yeas ago. It was quite a poignant night for me in the church and I could not help thinking that Meg would have loved every minute of it. Then we came to the function held afterwards in a local pub. Having equipped myself with a pint of John Smiths bitter and then a plateful of food, I originally sat down with a Geordie parishioner who I know quite well and chatted with the people on the same table before I took the opportunity to ‘circulate’ around the room and have chats with some people that I knew. All in all, I had a wonderful evening and I took the opportunity to give one or two selected people who had known Meg a copy of the funeral eulogy which was actually a very good summary of her life and achievements. Towards the end of the evening, I made contact with a priest who was the brother of one of the leading lights of our parish but whose parish is normally in Lancashire except when he has occasionally been called upon to be a ‘relief’ priest in the case of vacations. This priest has an enormously warm and engaging personality and every parishioner who has come into contact with him has felt enriched by the experience. I reminded him that years before we had asked him to perform a blessing over the ‘Virgin of Guadeloupe’ medallion given to Meg by our son’s Mexican family and worn every single day until (and including) the day of her death and now in the safe possession of a niece in Yorkshire. I think the priest was quite touched to be reminded of this and had some wonderful consoling words for me So the function broke up at 11.00pm and I was the last car in the car park and so was relieved not to get locked in but the night held some very special memories for me. A special booklet for the ‘Order of Service’ had been produced and this contained some fascinating facts about the history of the church. For example, I knew that Edward Elgar had visited the church but had not appreciated that he was a frequent visitor and played the organ in the church whenever he visited. I must say that it was quite a heartwarming experience to be felt to be part of a larger community but with the inevitable facts of biology playing out, there were several widows present in the congregation but I think I was the only evident widower. As the night had been so late (for me) and the weather sharply colder this morning, I allowed myself the luxury (necessity?) of staying for an extra hour in bed in the morning. After I had a leisurely breakfast and a good read of yesterday’s newspapers, I set off down the hill by car and then walked along the High Street to my favourite charity shop-cum-cafe to which it is my habit to repair in Friday morning. There I had some coffee and had some delicious moist apple-and-sultana cake. Being a charity, they have some supporters who cook a range of cakes which they then sell in the cafe to assist in their fundraising. After that, I took the opportunity to get some money out of a nearby ATM and returned home. After last night’s feasting, I did not feel particularly hungry but had a meal of mackerel fillets on salad leaves which was more than sufficient for me. It seemed quite a fine bright afternoon so I resolved to do the second last grass cut of the season. This went as planned but the grass seemed pretty thick to me on this occasion and I was fortunate in that I had just finished and was cleaning up the mower, when the skies darkened and it started to spot with rain so I had just completed my task in time.  

I could not believe my eyes when I saw what Donald Trump has been doing to the White House. After denying that he was going to alter the existing structure, the whole of the historic East Wing has been demolished or will be in a day or so.  Trump denied that he was going to do this but has now gone ahead and the destruction, along with some historic trees, is practically complete. As roaring machinery tore down one side of the White House, President Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that he was having the entire East Wing demolished to make way for his 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a striking expansion of a project that is remaking the profile of one of the nation’s most iconic buildings. Mr. Trump was unsentimental as news of the demolition spread. ‘It was never thought of as being much,’ he said of the East Wing, which was home to the first lady’s office and spaces used for ceremonial purposes. ‘It was a very small building.’ The process of tearing down the East Wing was expected to be completed as soon as this weekend, two senior administration officials said, as Mr. Trump moved rapidly to carry out a passion project that he said was necessary to host state dinners and other events. But the previously unannounced decision to demolish the East Wing was at odds with Mr. Trump’s previous statements about the project, and underscored his intention to blast through the sensibilities of many in Washington to continue putting a lasting imprint on the White House. The president also said on Wednesday that the ballroom would cost $300 million, $100 million more than initially estimated. ‘In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,’ Mr. Trump said. He also said — somewhat cryptically — that certain areas are being left. But the two senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans, confirmed that the entire East Wing was being demolished. The West Wing and the White House residence, where the president lives, are not affected by the project, which is the largest renovation to the White House in decades. According to computer-generated impression of what the new ballroom will look like, it will completely dwarf he West Wing in scale and make the whole architecture of the White House completely unbalanced. Now renovations and alterations have been done by past presidents but the size and scale of this latest venture is completely unprecedented. Certain sections of conservative (not MAGA-land ) members of the American public are privately appalled but Trump being a law unto himself has sought no approval or expert view. If I were the next president, I would

I awoke this morning after a little nightmare of the type that makes you feel glad to wake up and realise that it was not real. My dream upon awakening combined two familiar elements in my present and past life. I was on a train and could not find my ticket amidst all of the other out-of-date tickets which I as carrying in my wallet. Then my travelling companion who was a colleague with whom I team taught a course enquired whether I had marked all of the student assignments ready to hand back to the students at the end of our journey – needless to say, he had done his quota but I had not marked mine which only added to my distress. Perhaps it was because I have a busy day in front of me that I had this sort of nightmare but when I do have dreams of this sort, it is nearly always looking frantically (and never finding!) something I had lost and badly needed.

A massive domestic political row is taking place over the ‘grooming gangs’ enquiry which is getting off to the trickiest of starts. All survivors who have resigned from the government’s grooming gangs inquiry panel will consider returning if safeguarding minister Jess Phillips resigns.  The four women who have resigned this week have written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, calling for Ms Phillips to step down and all survivors to be consulted on appointing a senior judge as chair with no major conflicts of interest. Ms Phillips told parliament on Tuesday suggestions the scope of the inquiry was to be expanded from just grooming gangs were ‘categorically untrue’. But leaked consultation documents and texts between the safeguarding minister and survivor Fiona Goddard show the survivors’ concerns that the scope would be expanded were valid. The survivors’ letter says: ‘Being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again. It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained.’ The survivors have demanded the scope of the inquiry remain ‘laser-focused’ on grooming gangs and called for victims to be free to speak to support networks without fear of reprisal. An independent mental health professional should replace the current victim liaison lead, they also wrote. The letter to Ms Mahmood says: “Her [Ms Phillips’] conduct over the last week has shown she is unfit to oversee a process that requires survivors to trust the government. Her departure would signal you are serious about accountability and changing direction. The survivors describe their demands as ‘the absolute bare minimum for survivors to trust that this inquiry will be different from every other process that has let us down’. Now it very difficult to really know what is going on here because I have had, and still have, the highest regard for Jess Phillips, who has devoted practically the whole of her political life to highlighting the lot of abused women and children and for whom these accusations sound completely out of character. It could be that Jess Phillips has been ‘bounced’ by Home Office officials who want the whole affair to quietly go away or its impact to be minimised. Trying to get some background to this story, I eventually found a long account in the (right wing) ‘Spectator’ magazine which appeared, on the surface at least, to have a good handle on what was going on. The article starts off with the reaction of Jess Phillips when she was informing the House of Commons about the government’s view of the whole scandal. If Ms Phillips’s spoken words confirmed her government’s fundamental lack of interest in grappling with the ‘grooming gangs’ scourge, her noiseless irritation upon hearing other MPs speak candidly about those gangs exposed something darker.  If the government cannot see how awful these optics are, how infuriating the sight of huffing ministers will be to the vast majority of Brits, then it must be even more lost than I thought. Finally Phillips responded to Lam. ‘I think it’s a shame that [Lam] only referred to one sort of child-abuse victim’, she said. Because when it comes to this vile crime, there ‘should be no hierarchy’ of victims. What incalculable gall. Jess, that is precisely the point Lam and others are making: that white working-class girls were not only savagely abused by gangs of men but also ruthlessly demoted down the ‘hierarchy of victimhood’ by a political class that cares virtually nothing for them and the Spectator concluded by saying ‘Don’t huff – it’s the truth.’

I was just getting to leave the house to do my Tai Chi class this morning when my Droitwich friend, recently returned from South Africa, phoned to ask she could drop by for a coffee. I knew that I was going to have a tight turn around after Tai Chi to be at home for.my chiropodist’s appointment so I decided to forego Tai Chi for one week so that I could have a snatched coffee with my friend. Afterwards, it was time to go shopping but next week promises to be a fairly light week as I am stocked up on a lot of the usual items and so  decided to whizz around  the local Aldi which might be quicker than the alternative. Once I returned home and unpacked the shopping, I made myself a light lunch and looked forward to my son calling around as he indicated in a text message that he would. We chatted over things domestic, family-related and political before he had to leave. In the evening there is going to be a special church service in which our new parish priest is due to be ‘inducted’ in his new role and afterwards there is to be a social event in a nearby pub to which all of the parish are invited. I imagine that tonight might be teeming so I intend to leave in plenty of time to ensure that I secure a parking place and the social event may prove to be interesting as well. It may be that there are people that I know vaguely by sight and knew Meg and myself as a couple. So I have prepared my little script for when people enquire as to the status of Meg’s health and how the news and circumstances of her death are communicated to the people that I may well meet.