These are strange days as Meg gradually declines. She is now at the stage where we do not get her out of bed any more as excessive handling via the hoist may be painful for her so we are keeping her as comfortable as possible. Last night, the two young carers who put her to bed were absolutely excellent and, after Meg was in bed, sat with her holding and gently stroking her hands and were so full of tenderness. I went to bed at about 9.30pm but was awoken an hour later by my Italian friend down the road who had texted me to enquire about Meg and we exchanged a little ‘ping-pong’ of good night texts. When her husband died about seven years ago or even longer, I tried to be a source of emotional comfort to my friend and she has promised that she will do exactly the same for me now that we are in an analogous situation. My son texted and phoned this morning and after an early morning swim (now that he is retired and can do that sort of thing) he will be over a little later on in the day. The day may prove to be a busier one that normal as our domestic help will call around as well as the scheduled visit of the District Nurses. The staff from the care agency are being absolutely marvellous and are giving me lots of hugs as well as TLC for Meg. Sky News has an interesting post this morning which as it is a videoclip I have not played but the import of is a discussion why the Pope is important to all of us even to non-Catholics and can make an impact on our own laws as well as world affairs. I was recently completely offended by seeing Donald Trump dressed up (in an artificially constructed photo) in the Pope’s regalia coupled with his expressed desire to be treated like a Pope – this is the ultimate obscenity and a mark of the depravity of the man. I hope USA Catholics who voted for Trump now express their revulsion in their voting behaviour. On the domestic front, we are now in for another spell of warmer weather but not as hot as the weather we experienced about a week ago which set records for 1st May and, eventually when time permits, I must get out and start to do some gentle gardening again (a task neglected over the months, I am afraid to say) Yesterday when the ‘sit’ carer arrived, I did manage to make a lightning visit outside the house to get some cash out an ATM and to fill the car up with petrol (which, given it is hybrid, does not have to be done too often these days) In the morning, I exchanged series of supportive texts with my sister and niece who are following events closely and are offering all of their love and support which, is, of course, wonderful to have.

Our domestic help called around and very kindly did one or little acts of ministration to Meg by combing her hair and putting some cream on her hands. Obviously, she is as upset as the rest of us but managing to contain herself. Later on the two District Nurses called around and after a hunt around we found the morphine medication which is available for us them to administer to Meg should the need arise. There is now no need, apparently, for the Palliative care team to call around as Meg is already under treatment but the two District Nurses are skilled and knowledgable about these matters from what I could tell. I have been left with a telephone number if Meg’s condition worsens or there are any other matters to report. The house now seems empty after a flurry of activity this morning but the next visit of the care workers will be in a couple of hour’s time. This morning whilst it looked as though Meg could safely be left for a few minutes, my son and I completed the tidying up of the study by getting rid of the multitude of cardboard boxes which had been stored along the top of the bookcases and were being retained in which any equipment bought in the past needed to be returned. We must have got rid of about 30 boxes all in all but we ripped these up so the cardboard was reduced to fairly small pieces and then straight into our green bin. I was pleasantly surprised that we did not fill the bin to overflowing but this is a job well done and we still have things (like toner cartridges of which we seem to have a good supply) which are still housed on top of the bookcases. I forced myself to cook some lunch for which I was not really hungry but I have spent some time emailing/texting various friends and relatives informing then about this last stage in Meg’s illness. This way, when I have to convey some sad news, most of my friends will have had some forewarning. After I had taken the grey bin out ready for collection in the morning, I tool the opportunity to call in on our neighbour to inform him of developments.

As you might imagine, the return of Labour MPs to the Commons has given the opportunity for them to vent their anger at the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance. This is the one issue that came up on the doorsteps time after time and the amount of political damage it created is incalculable. Of course, we have the situation where the Prime Minister feels he has to justify the policy even when it is subject to attack but there is no indication that the government will change its mind. The Opposition parties must be rubbing their hands in glee as the policy of withdrawing the winter fuel allowance will not save a great deal of money and makes the present government appear to be lacking in both competence and any kind of concern for the voters who elected them.

We seem to be rather a different timetable with our care agency this morning. Despite the planning sheet with which we are issued once a week, things often change on a daily basis. Whereas the normal ‘getting up’ time for Meg is normally 8.00am or sometimes 8.30am, this has been re-timed this morning to some time after 10.0am which is unusual. I think that what has happened is that the care agency think Meg should be confined to her bed for much of the time, a move which I have resisted until now. But now the Bank Holiday is over, we are hoping from an assessment visit from the palliative care team and as they probably wish to examine Meg, she needs to be in her bed in any case. So we are prepared for the late start on this particular occasion and then we have to see what (if?) the palliative care team and then start a process of ‘playing it by ear’ As a creature of habit, I much prefer a more settled routine to which we have become accustomed over the months but we need to accommodate to changing circumstances. As Meg is asleep so very much of the time, I do not suppose it makes a great deal of practical difference but sometimes after a ‘bad’ day we have a ‘good’ day and vice versa. Last night, I managed to use a syringe to get some drops of water into Meg’s mouth and the care workers ere excellent in helping me to achieve this. But I also manged to get a little pot of custard-and-jelly inside Meg in the evening which acted as a vehicle for her normal pills which was a bonus that I did not expect.

In Rome, the world’s attention is turning to the conclave in which those cardinals aged less than 80 who are entitle to vote will participate in the centuries old and secret tradition of electing a new Pope. The Italians themselves are already speculating on the outcome with several Italian cardinals in the running but an Asian or African candidate not being ruled out. The most recent conclaves – for Pope Francis in 2013, Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and Pope John Paul II in 1978 – all lasted less than three days. Except for the first day, when only one ballot is held, the cardinals hold four daily votes – two in the morning, two in the afternoon – until one candidate has a majority of two-thirds plus one. In this case the required number is 89. After each round of voting, the ballot papers are burned and a black die added to turn the smoke from the specially installed chimney to black. But when a successful candidate has been chosen, a special die is added to the bundle of ballot papers to turn the issuing smoke to white. And then the announcement is made from the balcony of St Peters that  ‘Habemus Papa’ (‘We have a Pope’) and the name of the newly elected Pope is announced. If I might engage in. little speculation of my own, I suspect that if the newly elected Pope assumes the name of ‘Francis II’ this will be a signal to the world that the reforming tendencies of the previous Pope will be continued. On the UK domestic front, MPs are returning to Parliament after the recent tumultuous local elections and it could be that Labour MPs are in both a fearful and a rebellious mood. After all, when canvassing on the doorstep, the issue of the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance must have been mentioned to every one of them and never has so much political damage been done for the saving of comparatively small amounts of money.

This morning I seemed to be on the phone most of the morning, the only really productive phone call being to the company who installed the stir lift about a year ago asking them to now uninstall it. I did get a phone call from the Palliative Care team but was dismayed to learn that their hands were tied until they had received an official quest from the GP’s surgery which was not forthcoming. This then necessitated a phone call to the surgery and after a long wait, I vent my anger at them that the request that should have made by them on Friday afternoon, they were just getting around to  it now, the weekend and the Bank Holiday intervening. I had to point out to them forcefully that when one if at end -end-of-life scenario, a wait of four days is intolerable and it was within the realms of possibility that the Palliative care team would arrive on the scene too late. In the middle of the day, we had Meg’s normal ‘sit’ carer plus two late morning carers, but Meg’s breathing was so laboured at this point that we thought she might only have an hour left to live. I called my son who came around promptly and our Italian friend phoned so I appraised her o the situation and she came around as well. In the event Meg had a pretty tranquil afternoon and seemed to be peaceful, pain free and comfortable. The care company staff are all now informed of the situation so our collective aim is to keep Meg in bed and as calm, comfortable and pain free as is possible with minimal handling. So I am reconciled in my mind and soul as to what the next few hours or even day or so might bring but  am relieved, so far, that Meg is experiencing a tranquil end to her days on this earth. Tomorrow morning the District Nurse team will call around and they might summon the Palliative Care team but perhaps, too little and too late. Last night whilst Meg was in bed and before the issues of today developed, I managed to down a Handel aria (‘Waft her, angels, through the skies’) for which I paid the princely sum of £1.20 but now I have a legitimate copy of the requisite .mp3 file. I am making some tentative plans for the days ahead which are to follow and although Meg appears not to recognise me any more (which is painful) I am trying to reassure myself and all who care for Meg that she has a tranquil passage out of this world.

Yesterday, after the front lawns had been cut, I had just settled down to start to watch ‘Paddington’ for the umpteenth time when I noticed that one of my nieces in Yorkshire had tried to phone me in the morning so I decided to return her call. What ensued was a telephone conversation which went on for an hour whilst we discussed lots of family matters but particularly the state of Meg’s declining health. I know that my niece would dearly like to pay us a visit but we are separated by a difficult cross-country journey of about 160 miles and she (and her husband) have their own health concerns in any case. We discussed a lot of matters in very great depth and i know that she is constantly thinking about our situation and she assured me of her constant love and support. We discussed various matters which I had also chewed over with our University of Birmingham friend yesterday and whilst my niece is generally appraised of what is going in in our lives via this blog, there are evidently lots of details which it would not be appropriate to reveal. It is always reassuring to know that there are family members who are available and to whom one can turn in moments of distress and/or despair but we are not at that point yet. On the subject of family matters, my son and his wife were due to come over later in the day to help to do some gardening and, given this is the rapidly growing season, this is also much appreciated. After we had moved to Leicestershire in 1971, Meg and I and our son moved to a beautiful 1920’s built detached house where the owner had regenerated all of the house’s important domestic systems such as electrical rewiring and plumbing but what he had not had time to do was the garden, apart from an evident cutting of the back lawn. Now what greeted us once we asked to see the garden was a formal back garden, then an orchard and then a vegetable plot at least 50 yards in length. This had been neglected during the illness of the two previous owners and we were faced with a plot where the weeds were between 4′-5′ in height. But my son and I turned it around by cutting down the jungle of weed and gradually digging it over. Even at a young age, my son was a good little digger and he earned money at the rate of about 2s6d (12.5p) an hour which he utilised to buy Hornby track and locomotives for his model railway we had laid out in a back bedroom. At a later age, my son graduated onto ‘real’ trains, and this has been an enduring life interest and, as a hobby, he both part owns and drives Class 50 diesel locomotives on the neighbouring Severn valley railway. In fact, his joint interest in photography and these locomotives resulted in him being commissioned to write an illustrated history of these locomotives which adorns my bookshelves to this day. At some point in the next few days, we are expecting a visit from the Palliative Care team who will call around to make an assessment of Meg’s needs but the intervening Bank Holiday (May 1st being a national holiday in most countries but not the UK) makes life arkward. Without wishing to sound too curmudgeonly, Bank Holidays just represent a departure from normal routines and are not particularly appreciated. For example, the birthday card which I have written for a friend in Oxfordshire has not yet been posted as it will only sit around for about 4 days before the post box is actually emptied (Friday until Tuesday).

My son and daughter-in-law called around this morning and I was very pleased to see them both. We spent quite a lot of time discussing family matters and how we were going to navigate the days and weeks ahead in view of Meg’s condition. Afterwards, they set to work pruning the laurel hedge which surrounds our BioDisk. This job is now so large, it is going to have to be done in two tranches. I used a miniature syringe that the District Nurses had supplied in the past to get a few drops of water inside Meg’s mouth but any lunch was clearly beyond her. The sun started to shine brightly so I thought I seize the opportunity to get the back lawn cut. I left a note for the nurses hanging out of our letter box and I had just complete my mowing when they turned up and read the note. We conveyed Meg to her downstairs bedroom where the District Nurse applied a dressing to the new pressure sore and then we collectively decided to leave her in bed to minimise any further handling, which is proving increasingly painful. I requested the nurses that they make a further request of the Palliative Care team to come to assess Meg’s needs and they said they would when they returned to the office. When the Bank Holiday is over, I hope the Palliative Care can swing into action. We are in the scenario now where myself, the carers and the District Nurses are doing what we can to avoid unnecessary handling to minimise the amount of pain that Meg may be experiencing.

The media has been dominated by military parades and aircraft fly past to celebrate VE Day (Victory in Europe) day. The exact anniversary is on Thursday, May 8th but there are four days of celebrations planned, starting today and utilising, no doubt, the May spring bank holiday. It is now 80 years since the end of the war in Europe and there are just a sprinkling of veterans left who served in the second World War and in ten years time (then 90th celebrations) there might not be any. A lot of focus is on the celebrations and street parties at the time, and it now well known that the young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret crept out from Buckingham Palace under a cloak of anonymity in order to participate in and to enjoy the universal celebrations that were going on around them. I think the government has relaxed the licensing legislation so that people may enjoy an extended evening of drinking on Thursday evening, as well.

Last night, I rather delayed my getting to bed time because I spent a certain amount of time ‘playing’ with my IBM ThinkPad which I have in the study and is built like a brick. The original ThinkPads were built by IBM but the Chinese company LenNovo acquired the brand name and continued to build successors to the ThinkPad under is own name, LeNovo. But the original ThinkPads had an extraordinary build quality and they were indeed allowed in space, specifically on the International Space Station (ISS) The first ThinkPad to go into space was the 750C model in 1993. For many years, ThinkPads were the only laptops certified for use on the ISS. The brand has a strong loyalty following and there are some journalists who are prepared to forego some lack of features in return for the superior keyboard. ThinkPad keyboards are widely regarded as among the best, especially for touch typing, due to their clicky action, longer key travel, and overall tactile feedback Many users find them comfortable for extended typing sessions. They also incorporate unique features like the TrackPoint pointing device. While there are some differences in keyboard feel across different ThinkPad models, the overall quality and typing experience are generally considered high. ThinkPad keyboards tend to have a more pronounced click when keys are pressed, along with a greater distance that keys travel, which many users find more satisfying and easier to type on, The TrackPoint, a red nub in the centre of the keyboard, allows for cursor control without moving your hands off the keyboard, a feature appreciated by many. ThinkPads are known for their robust construction, including durable hinges, reinforced chassis, and spill-resistant keyboards. The keyboard layout and overall feel of ThinkPad keyboards are often praised for their suitability for touch typing and long-term use. So I have a degree of affection for my ThinkPad but as it was designed decades ago, the older models have a ridiculously small 40GB internal hard disk. I have extended this with one of those little ‘nub’ like SanDisk drives which SanDisk called ‘Ultrafit’ of 128Gb as well as a larger, credit card sized hard disk of 500Gb. So all in all, the number of USB ports is very limited and the external speakers would normally demand another USB port to draw some power. This is where an external Power Bank comes into play because you can use this as a power source thus obviating the need for an extra USB port. These are really thought of as emergency sources of power for one’s phone when on the road but I have just purchased a high capacity one cheaply from the web. I wanted to see how long it would provide power for my speakers and discovered that whilst it takes some time to charge, it seems to provide about an hour’s worth of power at the cost of 1% of its capacity. So if I play my ThinkPad for about an hour a day whilst in the study I will have about three months ‘playing time’ before I need to recharge it. I was also hunting for some classic photos including one of Meg pushing our son in a little pushcart when he was about 2 years old and I was glad to have rediscovered the location of this and one or two historic photos evidently scanned in at the time but the originals have been lost decades ago.

Our University of Birmingham friend called around this morning and, as usual, I was delighted to see him. We had a very serious discussion about lay ahead in the months and he gave me some very good and practical advice, much of which I am I will follow. Our The arrival of the late morning care workers is always a signal for our friend to depart and I always say goodbye to him with a heavy heart. The two care workers who called around today were the same two who called around four times yesterday so we decide collectively the next way to make Meg comfortable without unnecessary handling that might her cause her discomfort or actual pain. Then I proceed to cook my Sunday lunch which is to sear some chicken pieces and then have them cooked in a sweet and sour sauce in the microwave oven which I use a lot these days. I gave my son and his wife details of how to get to Clevedon to which we had been first introduced by our University of Birmingham friend and he had made his first visit there yesterday. It had evidently made quite an impression upon him because he had some of the best tapas ever in a restaurant overlooking the Bristol channel and had evidently taken on the delights of walking along the pier which has been described by Sir John Betjeman, that most notable lover of Victoriana, as ‘the most beautiful pier in England’. When Meg was more mobile, my friend and I took het there on at least two if nor three occasions and we always enjoyed our excursions out there made more accessible by the fact it is easily reached from the M5 motorway. In the afternoon, as soon as lunch was over, I set myself the task of getting our front grassed area mown. Although the sun was a little overcast when I started, the clouds rolled away and I finished the task with the sun shining. Later on this afternoon, they are showing ‘Paddington’ for the umpteenth time. Although I have seen it several times, I still enjoy it tremendously and actually prefer the first film slightly to its successor, Paddington 2. I have always maintained it as much an adult’s film as it is a children’s with some interesting themes such as how, as a society, we react to strangers (even polite ones like Paddington) in our midst. The carers will come to Meg in the late afternoon and we may follow the pattern of the last day or so and actually put her to bed , but not actually go through the actual ‘going to bed for the nighttime’ routine until later on in the day.

Perhaps for once, it is no exaggeration at all to say that the local election results fundamentally changed the political landscape of the country. In terms of councils, Reform gained 10 (previously 0), the Liberal Democrats 3,Conservatives 0 (previously 18) and No overall Control (10, up from 4) And in terms of seats, the Reform party gained 677 (previously 0), Liberal Democrats 370 (gain of 163), Conservatives 319 (loss of 677 – spookily, exactly the same number as Reform gained), Labour 98 (loss of 189) and No Overall Control, 177 (gain of 26) . As is evident, on this showing Reform would, on suitably adjusted figures, form the next government were the results to be mirrored in a general election. It is no wonder that these results are being viewed as no flash in the pan but a fundamental change in the British political landscape. The results are almost as bad for the Labour party as they were for the Conservatives as Labour lost two thirds of the seats they were defending. The overall headline figures conceal even more though. Here in Worcestershire, the Conservatives lost control but Reform finished the day with 27 seats, the Conservatives 12, Greens 8 and Liberal Democrats 6 and Independent 4. So although, technically, Worcestershire is No Overall Control, in practice the Reform party is far and away the largest party. They only have to persuade 2 of the 4 Independents to vote with them (or not vote against them) to have effective control of the County Council and this result may be repeated elsewhere. So what we are witnessing is the death of traditional two party politics and the birth of genuine multiparty democracy. The really huge political question, though, is how Reform is going to govern at a local level. In terms of their policies, their principal policy (strict control of immigration) is the hands of central government and they have no say, even over the location of hotels in which illegal immigrants are accommodated. What is their exact policy on the principal budget item which is the budget for social care? So far, I have heard them talk of running the service more ‘efficiently’ whatever that means but is the same policy as both Labour and Conservative in any case.

Turning to domestic matters, yesterday was the third day in which Meg failed to fully come around from a sleep and it was almost impossible to get any food or drink inside her, let alone medication. So we are now in a scenario where we have to make Meg as comfortable as is possible. The care workers’ inclination is to have Meg in bed all day long but even this stage of Meg’s illness might last for a considerable time and I want Meg to carry on occupying her chair in the Music Lounge where some of the music played may permeate her consciousness and the proximity to the kitchen makes it much easier to transport food and drink in her direction. Last night, I received a sympathetic text from one of our ‘coffee’ friends hoping that she would see us on Saturday but as her own husband died from dementia, I think she has a very full appreciation of the situation. As the weather is still fine and Meg will be asleep I fully intend to push Meg down the hill in her wonderful new wheelchair but I am conscious of the fact that this may be the very last time this is feasible. The care agency manager, having received reports from his staff, was appalled at the poor service given by our GP practice and sent them a message in effect saying ‘Get visiting today and prescribe some proper pain relief’. This missive evidently had an effect because a young, I think Nigerian GP, called around and I managed to convince her that Meg was now at the stage where Oramorph patches were required. She said that on her return to the surgery she would activate an assessment from the palliative care team but as Monday is a Bank Holiday, this may take some days to work through the system. Meg was put to bed at teatime by the carers yesterday ie. about two hours earlier than usual and I did not demur on this occasion. But on a more pleasant note, yesterday evening I received a phone call from our close Irish friends who live down the road. They have intimated to me that they are organising a ‘surprise’ birthday celebration for me at the local Holiday Inn (which is only about 200-300 metres away) on the occasion of my 80th birthday, which is on Sunday, May 11th i.e. only just over a week away. We discussed some of the practical arrangements and my earnest hope is Meg is still with us on that occasion, although no doubt she will sleep through the proceedings. This whole organisation of a birthday celebration is a most wonderful testament to the efforts which my friends are making on my behalf, and I shall be eternally grateful to them but let us hope that everything falls into place as we are planning.

Yesterday was a little unusual in that the same two care workers were together for the each of the four visits during the day. They have known each other and worked together as teenagers so they are very experienced. Nonetheless, when they were getting Meg ready this morning and she was in some pain as they were getting her legs straightened out a little, I thought they had tears in their eyes – as did I. Their inclination is not keep Meg in bed during all of the day but I wish to maintain a ‘normal’ routine as long as humanly possible. In the morning, I managed to get several spoonfuls of porridge inside Meg which is an advance on previous days and then, neatly bundled up in her new wheelchair, we set off on a journey down the hill to Wetherspoons and saw two friends, the third friend being away on holiday. I am pleased to say that Meg seemed fairly soundly asleep during these proceedings and after our coffee I had a quick tour around a cosmetics shop and also our local ‘Poundland’ where I bought a couple of items of stationery. The local cosmetics store also received a visit with items bought for myself on this occasion.Then, of course, it was the long haul up the hill but I take it easily so that I do not exhaust myself. Having said that, having got home, the wheelchair wheels cleaned of grit and Meg divested of her ‘going out’ blanket, I did promptly fall asleep only to be awakened by the carers ringing the doorbell. We lunched on a Aldi ready meal where the marketing department had done a good job in making a miniscule amount of rice, beef and sauce sound exotic but it was somewhat pedestrian. But I did manage to get Meg to eat a little, finishing with a chocolate mousse desert so I am satisfied with that.

Yesterday, I had a start to the day I could well do without. I woke up some time before 5.00am and immediately discerned that something was amiss as my clock radio was not showing the time. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that the entire power circuits in the house (but not the lighting circuits) were ‘down’ My first port of call was evidently the RCB in the garage where all of the switches were ‘up’ except one which evidently controlled the power circuits which was in the ‘down’ position. I tried to flick it up but it immediately sprang down again and I thought it was best not to be forced. So I got up myself up and dressed, texted my son with my dilemmas and got a little battery operated radio to work so I could tune into some news and then made a request to an emergency electrician which according to the web was a family owned concern, good quality ratings and did emergency call-out work. Then my son came around, flicked up the switch on the RCB with the requisite amount of pressure and all of my power was restored. My relief was palpable but I think I need a good consultation with neighbours to see if they have a regular and reliable electrician on their books so that I know who to contact when the next emergency occurs. As I was waiting for my son to arrive, the news of the Runcorn and Helby by-election came through after a recount. Reform won this by six votes (it was by 4 votes until the Labour party demanded a full recount) and this must be one of the closest by-elections of all time. The Labour Party activists and canvassers on the ground report dismay at Labour policies with the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance head of the list of grievances and it is no surprise to me that the Labour Party gets a bloody nose whilst the number of Reform MPs has gone up from 4 to 5. Most of the counting of Thursday’s vote will not take place until Friday so the analysis and post-mortems will come later in the day. It could well be that the fine weather is coming to a close today with a risk of a thunderstorm so it is touch and go whether I put Meg outside in her ‘good’ wheelchair to enjoy a breath of fresh air.

In the morning, I popped out for a few minutes to pick up our daily newspaper and some supplies and got back in time for our Eucharistic minister to call around and perform a little service for Meg. This is the third day in which Meg has been asleep a lot of the time and the care workers are reporting this back to their manager. He has sent out a ‘groupnote’ chat so that all carers are aware of Meg’s gradual decline and has been rather appalled by the poor oversight offered to us by our doctors. He has got onto them to ‘suggest’ that Meg should now be an Oromorph routine (for when Meg is in pain when handled onto the bed via the hoist) He has also requested a home visit as he felt the doctors should be prescribing (or in Meg’s case, not really prescribing) adequate pain relief and the GP practice have texted me to say that a request to visit is in the system. I am fortunate, if that is the right word, that one of the middle-aged care workers nursed her own grandmother to her death (by dementia) and is aware of all of the final stages and impending signs for me to look out for. She is a great source of both first hand knowledge and also emotional support and I am very grateful. It looks as though the various parts of the care agency are pulling out the stops to care for Meg and this is really appreciated.

In the course of the morning, I have had the local election results coming through as the vote is counted. The newly formed Reform party (in the past UKIP and then the Brexit party) has made massive gains and even quite sober analysts such as Sir John Curtice are talking about a game-changing election as well as being a ‘turning point’ in British politics. To illustrate this, then in the case of Staffordshire County Council, then at the time of writing this, some 42/62 seats have already been declared in Staffordshire, a traditional Tory run council. Reform taken 33 seats out of the 66 and the Conservatives 9 but this is a dramatic turn around. Reform has been taken votes from the Conservative party (as in evident in the case of Staffordshire and no doubt other county councils) and also from the Labour party where people have been expressing dissatisfaction with the Labour party. One can well understand the disillusionment of the electorate with the Labour party as constantly on the doorsteps, the issues that come up are the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance, the threatened cut back to disability benefits and the trashing of the local rural economies in the case of inheritance tax. One Labour MP has observed that the electorate voted for change when voting for Brexit without seeing any benefits, voted for Boris Johnson with no real change being observed in the lives of ‘ordinary’ people, then voted for the Labour party who advertised ‘Change’ but none of this has happened but Reform does appear that they might deliver some kind of radical change for the electorate who have evidently voted for them in great numbers. It is normally said that local elections are no guide to the next general election, but the large majority secured by the Labour party has been dubbed a ‘loveless’ vote. Lincolnshire has now followed Staffordshire as being won by the Reform party so what seemed to be moonshine only a few weeks ago now seems a real possibility that Reform could challenge the two major parties and even win the next general election. The analysis on the airwaves at the moment is that the Labour party is in a real ‘funk’ as the leadership seems not to be listening either to their own back benchers or to the electorate and seem to many of the electorate, and particularly, the Labour voters to be like some kind of Conservative party and not particular competent at that. This happens when you have a large majority and now that Reform is proving to be so successful, will the Labour Party be encouraged to adopt some form of electoral reform?

Late yesterday afternoon, I participated in my normal late Wednesday duty of making sure that our wheelie bins are pulled to the side of the public highway. As we live on a private road, the bins have to be hauled about 150 yards and yesterday was our brown (garden waste) day. By the side of our communal roadway, there were tall but fast growing weeds which were a real eyesore. In the past, I have maintained this strip of land and my neighbour has done it in the past but yesterday was too good an opportunity to miss. As the weeds are inhabiting gravel they were very narrow rooted and easy to get rid of and so after 10 minutes work the task was done and everything looks so much better, although to be fair I only concentrated on the tall growing weeds like rose bay willow herb and thistles that proved amenable to a rapid disposal. Then in the late afternoon when I was in our newly tidied up study, I thought I would try and see if the ancient IBM Thinkpad was still in operation and was a bit dismayed to see that I needed to supply a password to activate the account. Thinking whether I might have saved the password a year ago, I found a little blue book in which I may have written down some details but as it is about a year ago, I had completely forgotten whether I had written down this critical password or not. Whatever gods of fortune there are must have been smiling on me because when I opened the book not only was it the correct one but it even fell open at the page revealing the forgotten password. So now the little laptop swung into operation and I must say that I found the old operating system, Windows 7 Home Premium was crisp and intuitive to use. Doing a bit of reading, I think this particular operating system was a successor to the much loved Windows XP which is now defunct but was loved by millions worldwide. I detached the little credit card portable drive which the Thinkpad was utilising and took it off into our Main Lounge where I downloaded several downloads of music (principally Mozart) on to it. Then it was a case of whether the Media Player would recognise these .mp3 files. The first few, the media player would not play for whatever reason but I was left with a handful of quite playable Mozart tracks. Now it was a case of whether the hooked up laptop speakers would work. These are powered by a USB connection but the Thinkpad has very few of these and one of this is occupied by the unit for the cordless mouse. The speakers that I have are designed for laptops i.e. not big and clunky but designed to give the laptop a decent sound whilst still being portable enough when necessary. These I reminded myself were a Logitech Z120 and are I think are still available for purchase as the reviews of the sound quality were almost universally favourable. These, once I had plugged in the audio cable correctly, worked like a dream and I utilised some of the online ‘Test my Speakers’ programs to ascertain they were working correctly. To my ears, the sound quality was superb and intrigued, I did a quick browse on the web to gather some consumer views. A generally held view was that these little speakers punched above their weight and one reviewer went so far as to claim that the quality obtained was almost comparable to a Bose (which are generally globally acclaimed for their best-in-class sound and balanced output). My final little act of recommissioning was to charge up a little portable power source which means that the speakers can be run directly from this releasing one precious USB port and generally reducing the clutter on the computer table. So all in all, I had a very satisfactory late afternoon and early evening’s work although it delayed my bedtime a little.

Yesterday was the day when the electricity supply company told us there was going to be a planned electricity shutdown between the hours of 9 and 12. The power went off at about two minutes after 9.00am and once Meg’s ‘sitter’ carer had arrived, I went off to do our weekly shopping. This all went off as planned and Meg had been fast asleep all during the morning, as indeed she has for the last day or so. Even when the carers came to check on Meg in the middle of the day, she was in such a deep sleep that I asked that Meg not be disturbed. I was not particularly hungry today but made myself a meal of fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs thinking that I might be able to get some of this soft food inside Meg. Anyway it was not to be so I just have to leave things until Meg becomes somewhat more responsive. Yesterday was the day of the local elections which included some mayoral elections and a bye-election as well. But many of the councils are not starting to count until Friday morning, so there appears to be little point in staying up at all late as there is precious little to report upon, unless there are some exit polls. On the other hand, the start of the month is when the Premium Bond prizes are announced which is a flutter of excitement for some.

There is some surprise news on Wednesday that the US economy had contracted over the first three months of the year – caused by a dash for imports to beat tariffs – drove a decisive blow to oil prices. They have fallen steadily since Trump 2.0 began in January but the declines accelerated after the ‘liberation day’ tariff bomb was dropped early last month. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 15% in April alone and is currently trading at a four-year low of $60. So all of this may mean that energy prices and petrol prices could see a drop. However, it is wise not to hold one’s breath as a drop in wholesale process like this does not imply that prices to the consumer will drop, the utility and energy companies not resisting the temptation to add to their profits whilst buying more cheaply but not reducing prices to the consumer.

After I went to bed last night, relatively early, I woke up and decided I would treat myself to a cup of tea and a watch of Sky News. The latter was devoted to Donald Trump engaging in a long and vicious rant on the successes he had achieved after his first 100 days in office. His address to the party faithful was as usual full of invective and bile from which we learned that all illegal immigrants into the US were guilty of drug trafficking and the rape of (obviously) white American women which is why they were being deported despite court orders to the contrary. Then I must have fallen asleep and had the most terrible nightmare in which I was lost in a strange American city in which I had no map and nobody would help me. At every street corner and in all of the shops there were voices that appeared to be multiple Donald Trumps and wandering around this city seemingly for ever, I could not escape. I then woke up and it was one of those occasions when one realised it was all just a bad dream and none of it was actually happening. Evidently the rants of Trump on the TV were inserting themselves into my nightmare which why I dreamed that the whole city seemed to be filled with Donald Trump clones. But I read the following on Sky News this morning that Donald Trump on the campaign trail denied all knowledge of Project 2025, a right-wing plan to tear down swathes of the US government. Written by a prominent conservative think-tank, Project 2025 is a plan to fundamentally reshape America. Its 900 pages set out how a president should expand their power by gutting the federal workforce while abolishing the department of education. For some it represents an anti-woke ‘wish list’. For others it is a fundamental threat to American democracy. A copy of Project 2025 held up during the Democratic National Convention last year. The document got a lot of attention during last year’s election, leading to Trump disavowing its contents and saying it had nothing to do with his campaign. But now – 100 days into his second presidency – we see how much of what has occurred since he returned to the White House looks like the Project 2025 blueprint. The architect of the plan, lawyer and political activist Paul Dans said what Mr Trump has achieved in office is ‘beyond my wildest dreams’. The lessons of history teach us that Hitler came to power using the organs of democracy and then promptly removed any democratic sources of opposition to himself as he created the Nazi party. There is quite a degree of debate out there on the web as to whether comparisons between Hitler and Trump are fair comment or whether this analysis misses the point. Trump’s meandering style of address means that observers are constantly wondering whether to take him seriously or whether we are just seeing a series of rants that will blow themselves out. But what is incontestable is that Trump has issued so many executive orders that a liberal opposition to them does not know where to start, particularly as court orders are regularly ignored and American citizens deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador where they may spend the rest of their lives and probably die.

Yesterday being a Wednesday morning, it was the day in which our domestic help calls around and we also expect a visit from a duo of District Nurses to see Meg. I gave our domestic help a nice surprise by showing her our newly ‘turned around’ study that she had not seen looking as neat and tidy for about the last ten years. Needless to say, I have an enormous motivation to keep it that way and she herself was delighted, not least because it is now so much easier to clean. As it was such a beautiful day, our domestic help and I were resolved that Meg should enjoy as much as she could of the fine weather so having been located in her new, ‘good’ and very comfortable wheelchair, we put outside to enjoy the sunshine, not forgetting that Meg probably needed a sunhat so that did not get over hot. I took the opportunity to collect our daily newspaper and also to buy a birthday card for one of my University of Winchester colleagues. When we were employed, which was some 17 years ago now, there were about five of us who all had birthdays in May. So all of those years ago, and I am going back more than 20 years ago, we all had a joint birthday celebratory meal. It made a lot of sense to have it in the middle of May (as two of our birthdays were on successive days in any case) which happened to be very near the date of my own birthday. We called ourselves ‘The Old Fogies’ and the tradition of meeting still limps on but COVID on the one hand and my continued absence looking after Meg on the other has made it increasingly difficult. I know it is remiss of me but the first birthday in our group is on 2nd May and over the years, although I always send a card, it is very often late by a day or so. So yesterday I bought a card from Waitrose which I addressed in the store and then got into a nearby post box from whence it will hopefully be delivered on time. I pointed out in the card that I was trying this year to break the tradition of a lifetime and get a card in the post so that it will arrive on the due date. Upon my return, Meg was still in the sunshine, and I sat outside and had my elevenses with her. Although Meg’s condition varies somewhat from one day to another, she was very unresponsive from the moment when I first work up this morning at about 8.30 just before the carers arrive. The inclination of the two carers were to keep her in bed the whole time which I think would be disastrous as she would be subject to no mental stimulation of any kind such as a concert on YouTube which is a fairly regular fixture in our day (as well as watching the news programmes) The two District Nurses made an appearance in the late morning and after a grumble about the care workers not removing the sling (which happens to be easy but reinserting it is a nightmare) renewed Meg’s dressing and monitored the condition of other pressure points. After they had left, it was a case of back outside until the two care workers arrived for the late morning call. Then Meg was relocated back into her comfortable chair in the Music lounge and I set about preparing the midday meal which was ham, some roast potatoes and fine green beans. Meg had about two thirds of her portion which surprised me somewhat as I had only managed to get about 2-3 spoonful’s of porridge into her this morning. Each Wednesday afternoon, I have to remember to pull the relevant wheelie bills out for emptying which takes place very early each Thursday morning and it was the turn of the green (paper) bin and the brown (garden refuse bin) The green (paper) bin seemed incredibly heavy and it took me all of my time to pull it to the end of our drive. But it contains masses of past papers from the clear-out of the study which explains why it was so incredibly heavy this week.

As we suspected, the Liberal party came out on top in the elections held in Canada on Monday. It is too to soon to say whether the Liberals have gained enough seats to form a majority government but, in any case, the media are dubbing this as the second election won by Trump as it was his intervention, calling for Canada to become the 51st state of the USA, which caused the swing to the Liberals. Last night, as the weather had improved so much and we are undergoing a warm spell, I decided not to bring the electric blanket into use and also dispensed with the use of a hot bottle for my feet. Although it is too early to say, I think I feel a little better for it and perhaps the use of the electric blanket was not doing me any good. Both Meg and I had little medical ‘contretemps’ yesterday putting our Tuesday venture out to see friends in some jeopardy but it is a case of ‘playing it by ear’ and seeing how we both feel after our breakfast this morning. Yesterday afternoon, our son called round and I was mighty pleased to see him as I had been feeling under the weather but he is to call round tomorrow and we will tackle the not onerous task of removing the empty storage boxes from the top of our bookcases. I have similar feelings this morning upon entering the study that I had when I had got our dining room restored to rights i.e. a feeling of relief that all was now neat and tidy and a joy to contemplate. I do have a psychological trait, which some would call a failing, that if I put things away I completely forget about them and leaving them around is a reminder that I have to take some action. But this is not a good enough excuse, actually, and my study now looks like the workmanlike place it is intended to be. Turning out the study has revealed one or two things I had put away in the past and forgotten about. Apart from the large photo I have discovered of Meg and I standing in front of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, my most precious find is the card addressed to Meg and signed by all of the members of the Erasmus linguist’s group in which she appears to have been a really active and much appreciated member in her day. The little electronic clock which displays the current temperature was also another nice find. When we left Hampshire some seventeen and a half years ago, I think we think we filled three skips of stuff that we wished to throw away and, with the exception of some Christmas tree lights which were easily replaced I have not missed anything that was thrown away. But down in Hampshire, the local tip was not too far away from where we lived and although I made frequent trips there, we did rescue from there a cast-iron tree mug and a Lowry print both of which are in use today.

Knowing that I was still somewhat in a recovery mode after feeling unwell yesterday, I had to plan today’s excursion with some care because I thought that the whole 2½ mile trip was probably over-ambitious. So I texted some friends down the road and was delighted that out Italian friend could see us for a few minutes and this had the bonus of only being a third of my normal distance. She was on her way to a funeral in any case and so we chatted for a few pleasant minutes and then Meg and I made for home. As it was such a beautiful day, I parked Meg in the shade of one of our conifers at the front whilst I sat on our garden bench, having made myself some elevenses. So we stayed here until our friendly carer arrived for a Tuesday sit session. I took the opportunity of her looking after Meg whilst I drove quickly down to pick up a newspaper and the carer very kindly folded a basket of clothes straight from the washer for me. To be fair, she is lightening fast at this job and reckons it is child’s play after doing a mountain of washing for her own family. In the days when I used to take Meg out to Droitwich in the car and we visited the Worcestershire Association of Carers, we often picked up some amazing bargains. One of these was a beautiful boxed set of a dozen children’s classics (such as ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Treasure Island’) I bought this hoping that as Meg’s concentration declined with her illness, she would be able to manage the simpler language and shorter length of a Children’s classic. I think many children might encounter these when they are 9-10 years old but in event, the volumes in the boxed set were beyond Meg. But I was delighted when one of the carers indicated that her children would love to read some of these so I gave away the boxed set with a great of alacrity knowing that it would bring a lot of pleasure to younger readers. Even if the books were slightly too advanced, I suggested to the carer that she might store them away in a safe place and release them for example for a birthday or a Christmas present. After the carers departed I started to think about lunch but I was not inclined to cook a hot meal, So I made a salad based on some already de-frosted mackerel, boiled potatoes allowed to cool and served with salad cream, tomato, cheese and some pickled beetroot. I found the meal very enjoyable and managed to get some of it inside Meg as well after a bit of a struggle. Then I had in mind to cut the back lawn which is now 2½ weeks since the last cut and badly showing it. As some of the grass at the edges was so long and lanky, I even adjusted the mower settings to the second highest height but soon realised that this was unnecessary so reverted to my normal ‘middle of the range’ settings. The engine did not baulk (i.e. choke) with this slightly longer grass length and I am now a little more streetwise when I use the mower. In particular I tend to avoid using the left hand side (with the dodgy repair) under low hanging bushes and the slight enhanced engine speed means that even slightly longer grass presents no especial challenges any more.

Yesterday morning, the care workers were scheduled to arrive an hour later than their normal starting time of 8.00am so I gave myself the luxury of an extra half an hour in bed. I did not have a particularly energetic day yesterday but nonetheless, I had completed the tidying of the study and mowed the front lawns so I was pleased with my progress. One does not normally take much notice of elections in Canada but this time around, there is a stunning difference. When Canada goes to the polls, it might be the second election Donald Trump wins in six months. The US president has transformed Canada’s political landscape, and the ‘Trump effect’ looks like it will be the difference between winners and losers. Tariffs, and his threat to annexe the country as the 51st state, have provoked a surge in Canadian nationalism, and it hass made a favourite of the candidate styled anti-Trump. Step forward, Mark Carney: former Governor of the Bank of England, now Canadian Prime Minister. His ruling Liberal party had been written off as an electoral contender. Canadians had turned its back on the party after a decade in power under Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau. The opposition Conservative Party, under the effective leadership of Pierre Poilievre, grew to a 25-point lead in the polls on the promise of change on the economy, crime and a chronic housing crisis. However, his conservative politics are more aligned with the neighbour in the White House and, in Canada right now, it’s not a good look. So it looks as though Mark Carney, actually very well known to us here in England, may sweep to power in the polls. Polls indicate that Canadians see Carney as a stronger choice to negotiate with Donald Trump. He is a veteran of economic turmoil, having dealt with the 2008 financial crisis and Brexit If he wins, and that is looking more and more likely, the swing from Conservative to Liberal will be the biggest swing in the polls in recent democratic history. We have experienced something a little like this in our own political history, though. It is not often appreciated that just before the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular Prime Minister of all time. Immediately after the victory, she became the most popular of all time and could not resist going to the country and securing a massive majority. There is nothing like an external threat to unite a country which is one reason why right wing leaders often pursue aggressive foreign policies as it diverts attention from domestic strife at home.

I have just completed a series of computing manipulations upon the HTML files that I had listed all of the files in my study (all 125 of them) and I have ended up with a completely alphabetical list which is what I wanted to achieve. The trouble is that each of the original HTML files was tied to a shelf location but that ordering is now lost so now that I have an alphabetical list I do not know where anything is! However, I have thought of a simple solution which is to go back to my unordered list, give each filename a suffix with its location number and then do the (online) sort all over again. This I have managed to do in little bits and pieces throughout the course of the morning and now I am happy to have an alphabetical list of each of my files and where it can be located. In the course of the morning. I have not felt at all well so have tried to have a very easy and stress free morning – so I have avoided doing things like reaching onto high shelves as I know that a lot of stretching up and bending down cannot be good for you as one ages. In the morning, I filled in the customary web form requesting some additional pain relief for Meg and also informing them that I felt rather unwell but there has been a marked lack of response. But the other day when the district nurses called around, they seemed to be exercised that Meg sometimes only had the visit from one carer when two were allocated and I think that ‘reports’ might have been circulated. In the late morning, I got a call from the social services area team and i tried to give them as full and account as I could. I indicated that the level of care provided by the individual care staff was of a high order but it was frustrating to the care agency itself, as well as myself, when care workers phoned in sick and the planned pattern of care was disrupted. I think I may have poured oil over troubled waters but we will have to see how things unfold in the next few weeks. The difficulties arise from the fact that Meg’s needs are gradually intensifying by degrees but the care package remains a constant and therefore a lot depends on the care and attention of each of the individual care workers.

In the public debates today, I learn that the replacement for the Ofsted inspection regime of schools (which contributed to the suicide of a headmistress when her school was downgraded from ‘Outstanding’ to ‘Unsatisfactory’) is subject to a great expression of concern. The current system was previously criticised for reducing school performance into a single-word judgement. It was described by ministers as creating ‘low information for parents and high stakes for schools’. The one-word judgement is set to be removed. But critics say the proposed replacement offers little real change. Report cards and a new grading structure have been suggested. But many argue these measures are only cosmetic and they fail to fix and alleviate the intense pressure schools are under. Among the coalition’s demands is the creation of a robust, independent complaints and appeals process. Currently, any complaints procedure is largely absent, leaving schools with little recourse to challenge potentially damaging inspection outcomes. ‘Trust in the system needs to be restored’ a circulating letter reads. ‘The rushed and closed nature of the consultation has only made that worse.’