Today has been a very interesting day, alhough it started off dull and gloomy. It was the day when our domestic help calls around and she brought with her a specialist carpet spot cleaner which proved very useful after Meg had a little fall but a cup of coffee was sent flying everywhere. This little unit proved so good that, after a demonstration, I may even feel tempted to purchase one for ourselves in the fullness of time. After we had breakfasted, we knew that we would probably meet up with some of our friends and acquaintances in the Waitrose coffee lounge and so it proved. We met up with our University of Birmingham friend plus another two of our pre-pandemic friends and a jolly time was had by all. I recounted our experiences at the club the other day when we were treated to the renditions of some traditional early 1960’s songs by members of a ukelele band. I even sang (softly) the words of ‘The foggy, foggy Dew’ and one of my friends had heard it before, one denied all knowledge of it and the third was a bit unsure. I have Googled the words (although, confusingly, there are several versions) but I have downloaded the version that most closely accords to my own memory of the ditty so that when I render it next time (if there be a next time), I shall have memorised the words correctly.

This afternoon, I reviewed some of my WhatsApp messages and received a message which is always nice to receive. It was from the daughter of the couple we meet on Wednesday who has spent some of her life in Spain and some in Mexico and seems to try to get back to Hispanic cultures whenever she can. To cut a long story short, Meg and I have issued an invitation to her and her parents to pop around for an afternoon cup of tea and we are finalising some diary dates for this. When we do meet, I am sure it will be fascinating for us to exchange our reminisciences of our experiences of the two Hispanic countries we have in common (Spain itself and Mexico) and we may be able to try out some of our, by now, very rusty Spanish as well. We also sent a quick WhatsApp message to Meg’s cousin in Cheltenham just to confirm that we are still on track for our lunch date next Friday, to which we are looking forward as there is so much news to catch up on when we do meet.

Although today is wet and windy, there is every indication that the weather is going to improve quite markedly in the few days ahead. I am quite keen to get out into the garden and to start what I call my spring maintenance jobs. I know from bitter experience over the years that you more you get the garden basically shipshape during these early growing periods, it saves a lot of time and effort subsequently. I like to work on what I call ‘the gullies’ but basically it means that every border to each flower bed is maintained by cutting the grass short and ensuring that any adjacent and accessible weeds are well and truly dealt with. Over the years, I have evolved a technique to try to ensure that I do not engage in too much bending which can wreak havoc with one’s back. Rather, I lay semi-sideways so I can reach anything within about a two metre radius and thus work my way down the whole length of the garden. As with my other jobs of this nature, some sections always require a great deal of work whereas others allow me to proceed at a much faster pace. This year, though, instead of trying to do the whole of the back garden in a couple of days, I am going to confine myself to little increments of about 20-30 minutes at a time. We used to have a regular gardener to do some of the heavier pruning but in mid-Autumn of last year he was taken quite seriously ill and has to abandon his gardening activities.

There is some quite mixed news on the nurses and ancillary NHS workers in their pay dispute with the government. Members of the Royal College of Nursing are to go on strike again after they voted against the latest government pay offer. This result comes despite a recommendation from union leaders that they accept it and means there will be a round-the-clock 48-hour strike – without exemptions – from 8pm on 30 April to 8pm on 2 May. Meanwhile, members of Unison voted to accept the government’s latest pay deal. As of now, it is a little difficult to predict whether there will be a degree of solidarity to maintain the strike or whether there actually be a split with some going into work and others supporting the strike. Any split on the side of the workers actually plays into the hands of the government in this dispute and, as with doctors whose strike is due to end at 7.00am tomorrow morning, the degree to which public opinion remains supportive of the NHS workers will be a critical factor.

Today being a Thursday, I get up early to get some money out of an ATM and then get to the supermarket about one minute before it opens. This morning, all went to plan and I did a normal weekly shop-up, frustrated only by the fact that one or two of the regular items that I buy each week seem to be missing from the shelves. As I am in that particular part of town, I swing by the newspaper shop to collect my copy of The Times before arriving home to unpack the shopping and then cook breakfast. It was a beautiful fine day but rather windy as the weather forecasters had pre-warned us but we thought we would make the best of the morning with a trip to Droitwich, only seven miles down the road. We had our elevenses in our favourite coffee shop and then went next door to the cancer charity shop where we bought a couple of plain skirts for Meg. Then it was quick whizz through Wilko, our favourite hardware store, buying some grass seed which I think I can utilise in the next week or so. The communal grassed area which I mow once a week has a patch damaged a bit by the hot sun of last summer because there seem to be more weeds than grass plants so if I treat it quickly when the growing season is intense, this may help to alleviate the damage. After that we reparked he car, had a whizz around another charity shop where there was nothing that took our fancy and then popped in to Waitrose to buy some hosiery for Meg that she particularly likes. After that, it was a case of getting home and getting a curry cooked which used to be a regular dish of ours from our student days but one we make a little less frequently nowadays.

The death has been announced of Mary Quant, the iconic fashion designer of the 1960’s. Why this has a particular significance for us is that for our 50th wedding anniversary, I managed to digitise all of our (black-and-white) wedding photographs and I have these on my mobile phone. Quite often, when the occasion arises, I tell whoever is interested that Meg wore a ‘Mary Quant’ style wedding dress. Bur the full story is this. Meg’s mother was an excellent seamstress and before her marriage had her own shop. In preparation for our wedding, Meg sketched out a design which owed a lot to Mary Quant and then she and her mother bought the materials and Meg’s mother made it up. So the story is that Meg wore a Mary Quant style dress, although not one one actually designed by her but with the passage of time since then, the uninformed viewer of the photo would not be able to tell the difference. For the record, the wedding dress was worn just above the knee. It is being said today that Mary Quant ‘invented’ the miniskirt but this is not strictly true. Mary Quant popularised the miniskirt and helped to make it accessible to all and the consensus view today is that Mary Quant’s influence upon the UK fashion scene is hard to over-estimate and her influence lives on.

The Joe Biden visit to Ireland is evidently dominating the media at the moment. The US President has addressed a joint session of the Irish parliament – the first US president to do so since 1995, before the Good Friday Agreement was signed. However, despite the fact that all of the leaders of all of the political parties both north and south of the border were invited to the session, the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson chose to absent himself. The ‘optics’ of this look terrible as it rather reminds one of a child in a temper tantum who takes away his bat and ball and refuses to participate in a game if he cannot get his own way. The fact is that the Northern Irish Assembly has failed to operate for a year because the DUP will not join the power sharing executive which was one of the key provisions of the Good Friday Agreement. There is an ‘elephant in the room’ here because despite all of the diputes over the DUP not liking the Brexit trade agreements as renegotiated by Rishi Sunak, it is fairly obvious to all and sundry why the DUP is failing to cooperate. This is because the Nationalist vote now exeeds the Unionist vote in Northern Ireland which means that the first minister would be the leader of the Nationalist party, Sinn Fein. The fact that the DUP would have to play ‘second fiddle’ to Sinn Fein and would not automatically supply the First Minister means that Unionist domination of Northern Irish politics is well and truly over – and this fact is so unpalatable that it cannot be countenanced. I have a feeling that the DUP will never join the power sharing executive again until after fresh elections after which support for them may have dwindled even further.

There is the slightest glimmer of hope in the junior hospital doctors dispute this evening. It may be that that doctors will not hold fast to a pay claim of 35% and it looks as though ACAS (The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration service) may now be allowed a role in the dispute but I have a feeling there is a long way to go yet.

We knew that today was going to be quite a busy day so we got ourselves up and breakfasted with plenty of time to spare. The weather seemed fairly bright and sunny this morning but we knew from the weather forecast that we should expect some quite high winds today, as well as blustery squalls. When in 1973, we moved house in Wigston, Leicestershire there was a little name plaque on the front gate post which said ‘Finstall’. This was a mystery to us but one of our new neighbours informed us that she thought it was a little village in Worcestershire. Now that we have been settled in Worcestershire for so long, we know that Finstall is a village and civil parish in the Bromsgrove District of Worcestershire with a population of 663. To all intents and purposes, as Finstall is contiguous with Bromsgrove, it can almost be thought of as a district of Bromsgrove. We have never had occasion to visit Finstall as such before today but we aimed to attend an event in the village hall organised by Herefordshire and Worcestershire Age UK for those with memory difficulties and their carers. One of our Waitrose friends had told us about this ‘club’ and, upon consulting the web, we discovered that the club held an event every second Wednesday of the month so we decided to give it a try to see what was in store. We sat ourselves down at a table with two other couples and engaged in conversation wih them. It transpired that the lady who was opposite to us was actually born in Manchester, so this provided one avenue of communication between us as Meg and I met at Manchester University, our son was born in the local hospital there and my first teaching job was at a College pof Education in Manchester. But as our conversation developed, we found out that we were both worshippers at the same church (although typically at different services) and thus we had some contacts in common. Finally, the couple had travelled extensively in Mexico where our son had undertakn a year’s scholarship before he attended a university in the UK. When one thinks about it, this was an exraordinary set of coincidences (co-religionists, very familiar with a Northern town in which we had both lived and with an intimate knowledge of Mexico). The morning was structured around a Ukelele band which formed the backing group for a singalong of popular songs of the late 1950’s and 1960’s – I am thinking here of Connie Francis, John Denver and the like and we happened to know the majority of songs that were played. So we had quite a jolly sing-along washed down with tea and biscuits and the two hours allocated to the club meeting passed by very rapidly. In a month’s time, the theme is going to be ‘Photographs of Old Bromsgrove’ which I am sure is going to be a lot more meaningful to most of the participants rather than directly to Meg and myself but I am sure it will prove interesting nonetheless and Meg and I will certainly attend.

Meg and I dined on fishcakes which provided a fairly quick lunch for us with the minimum of preparation because our hairdresser was due to call around this afternoon. Our hairdresser was almost half an hour late but this in itself is not unusual and we still had to get ourselves ready in time. Soon it was time for the Skype call that we had pre-organised wih one of our Hampshire friends and so for about an hour and a half we enjoyed a wonderful session in which the time sped by. We have got quite a lot to say to each other, not to mention mutual support, as both of our wives are needing support with their various conditions. Hopefully, we shall actually see each other in the flesh, as it were, because the ‘Old Fogies’ dining club (ex-University of Winchester colleagues who meet up once or twice a year to chew over old times or the present political scene). Meg and I have just purchased our train tickets because we rather like ‘the train to take the strain’ when we engage on these litttle ventures. Instead of going to a suburban railway station and then on into Birmingham NeW Street and then onto the Winchester train we tend to short-circuit the whole process by travelling along the M40/M42 to Birmingham International. This way, we save about an hour and a half at each end of the journey which makes the whole day a bit less tiring. We also have another trip scheduled in about nine day’s time to Cheltenham where we have a lunch date organised with one of Meg’s cousins (or rather, daughter of a cousin). We have a lot to catch up when we do meet up because Meg’s cousins had spent some time in Paris and then also in Seattle before returning to the UK. As well, there are quite a lot of family news to impart to each other as children have establishd their own careers and are now making their own way in the world. I think we last met for our 50th wdding anniversary celebrations but that was five and a half years ago now.

We seemed to have a nice and bright day when we awoke this morning but we still had a nagging doubt that it might not last. After we got ourselves up and breakfasted, we went on the road to collect our newspaper. I asked why our newsagent had been shut for the past two days and he, for his turn, asked why I had not called by to pick up my reserved copy of the newspaper. It transpired that after opening at 8.00am or even earlier on these special days, he closes at 11.00am which I had not realised. So we had actually missed each for the past couple of days. Being a Tuesday but a non-Pilates day as my instructor is taking her Easter break, we popped into Waitrose as is our wont every Tuesday morning. There we bumped into two of our regular Waitrose, Tuesday crowd and spent a jolly half hour or so with them. Then we picked up a few supplies and made for home. By this time, it was midday and the sky was glowering somewhat but not actually raining. The weather app on my phone informed me that there was a 50% chance of rain after 2.00pm so I launched straight into a cutting of the lawns, whilst I could. I am always reminded that the gardening books I used to consult earlier in my youth were full of phrases such as ‘Choose a fine day’ as though one could. In April, particularly, one is always dodging the showers and fitting in jobs like mowing the lawn whilst one can is par for the course. As it turned out, this was a good decision because towards the end of my mowing ‘hour’, some spots of rain started to appear and the rain did, indeed, fall in more copious quantities as the afternoon progressed. So I was very pleased to get this job done as I have several commitments tomorrow. I came in and quickly cooked us a spot of lunch before having a well earned rest.

Last night, we abandoned the TV in order to listen to the last half hour of the ‘Hall of Fame’ on ClassicFM to see which piece of classical music would make it to No. 1 this year. I was pleased that the perennial favourite which is the ‘Lark Ascending’ has been knocked off its No. 1 spot to be replaced by Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. This latter piece is best known for being the background music to the classic black and white movie ‘Brief Encounter’ which had another showing about a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if this might have influenced just enough people to have cast a vote which enabled the Rachmaninoff to triumph once again. I am pleased, in any case, to see this change in fortunes. There was a rather snooty article in ‘The Times’ the tone of which I did not really like but which confirmed my impression that film music is coming more prominent in the ClassicFM charts. Now that I have some good audio installed in our living quarters, Meg and I are listening to the offerings each day and I gain the impression that they have somewhat more relaxing and soothing tracks on in the afternoon and early evening.

The visuals in the newscasts today have been rather dominated by the sight of thousands of young hospital doctors on strike and demonstrating their case to whoever is listening in Trafalgar Square. The junior doctors are saying that their real pay has been squeezed by some 35% in the past ten years whilst the government are saying that a claim of 35% is completely inadmissable. One can say that both sides are essentially correct but how this dispute gets resolved rather depends upon whether each side can successfully appeal to public opinion to sustain their case. So far, public opinion seems pretty firmly on the side of the hospital doctors and the interesting question is how far this might move in the next few weeks as the local elections approach. Whilst local elections do not generally attract very much interest, it feels very different this time around. If the Tories have a particularly bad night, they may lose up to 1,000 local seats which would be a great blow to party morale and to workers on the ground.

The IMF has warned that world economy is entering a ‘perilous phase’ of low economic growth and high financial risk, in its latest set of assessments. The forecasts are some of the most gloomy since prospects for the world ecoomy are published in the spring of each year. The prospects for growth in the UK were the lowest in the whole of the G7 group of advanced industrial economies. When one looks for reasons, the impact of high interest rates and high energy costs are more severe in the UK than amongst other member nations of the G7. Of course, Brexit never seems to be specifically mentioned in this context but it is hard not to draw the conclusion that this must be one of the contributory factors to the low projected UK growth rates. The fact that the IMF is using words like ominous, perilous and ‘significant vulnerabilities’ rather sum it up a great deal of nervousness about the future shape of the world economy.

So Monday morning dawned and it was evident to us as we gazed out of our bedroom window that today was going to be one of those blustery types of days. After we had breakfasted, we made our way into town only to find that our regular newsagent was closed for the day. As he is normally open all hours that God sends, I hope that nothing is amiss because if he had intended to be closed for two days running, I am sure he would have told me as a regular daily customer. So I popped around the corner and got my copy of The Times from Waitrose who were well stocked with it. Then Meg and I made our way to the park and thought to ourselves that whilst the weather forecast was indicating that the temperatures might drift downwards for a few days, it might actually have been a tad warmer than yesterday. We enjoyed a few brief minutes of April sunshine, sitting on our normal bench and enjoying our coffee and the surreptitious pleasure to be derived from eating a little portion of our Easter Day chocolate. But we were soon to be badly abused because a short and sharp shower drifted overhead so we quickly packed up and made for home. Before we went out this morning, I had written a few emails so upon our return home, I was pleased to see if I had a reply. One of my University of Winchester friends had responded to an earlier email and we basically exchanged a few notes about the support we we offering to our respective spouses. We are setting up a Skype session so that we can have a long face-to-face natter in a day or so. This afternoon, I had scheduled in my mind to give our lawns a cut as they were last cut a week ago now (when the weather happened to be brilliantly fine) By midday, it had rained so much in the morning that I thought the grass might be a bit too soggy and/or muddy for an effective cut. But Sod’s Law swung into effect and we enjoyed quite a sunny afternoon so I might have managed to undertake a cut but it would still have been a bit soggy underfoot so that pleasure will have to be deferred until tomorrow.

This afternoon, Meg and I have had a pleasant afternoon, mainly spent reading. When we last had our little trip out to Alcester last week, we picked up a hardback copy of Jeremy Paxman’s latest (and autobiographical) book which Meg is enjoying. The event that had made today a pleasant listening experience is that the ClassicFM countdown of favourite pieces, as voted for by its listeners, is now approaching the final stages of the ‘Hall of Fame 2023’ and we are now at about number 40 having counted down from 500 which started on Good Friday morning. In these final stages, there are predictable classics such as Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and some works that I would not have expected to be quite so popular, such as Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. The whole culminates at 9.00pm this evening so Meg and I may well abandon whatever the TV has to offer because this last half hour, building up to this year’s No 1, might be particularly interesting for us both. When I reflect on the pieces of classical music which are particularly memorable and/of which I never tire of hearing again, then I can always remember almost exactly the first time I heard it including where I was and what I was doing at the time. Of course, some of this might be what the psychologists call ‘false memory syndrome’ but perhaps the association beween the music, the time and the place locks it in my memory. For example, I can remember the first time I heard Beethoven’s 7th when I would have been about 12-13 and was taken along to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to listen to the Liverpool Philharmonic playing this. Our school took us to concerts regularly and as the school always booked the last couple of rows in the uppr circle, we were given a dispensation to sit on the tops of the backs of the seats in order to have a completely uninterrupted view. I have not discussed this ‘quirk’ that I have, to lock together the music and the time and place where it was first heard, to work out where it is just individual to myself or quite a common memory trait.

I am still appalled by the fact that the Labour Party is running these ‘attack adverts’ on the Prime Minister. Their argument is that the Tories regularly do this to the Labour Party (for example, the ‘Labour isnt working’ poster) and the Labour Party just has to accept it – so this time around, they have decided to get their attack in first. But to mind, this approach (morality apart) is that it only contributes to the ‘Politicians are all the same’ riposte. I would much rather that the Labour party leave the Tory party to get on with these low tricks and to deliberately arise above these kinds of attacks by indicating that that sort of politics is beneath them. I think, in the long run, this would benefit them in electoral terms as well.

So Easter Day has dawned for another year. Last night, Meg and I attended the Easter services which were much longer and more complex than usual. Perhaps not unsurprisingly in the course of a two hour service that looked a little under-rehearsed, some of the celebrants looked as though as they had lost the plot a little and a certain amount of improvisation was called for but everybody got there in the end. Today was promised to be a slightly better day but it did not turn out to be such a fine day as yesterday. We got off to a slightly false start as we intended to pick up our copy of the nespaper from our usual newsagent but it was closed. So we said to ourselves that we pick up a newspaper after we had paid a visit to the park. There, on our usual bench, we met up with our University of Birmingham friend where we carried forward some of the conversations of yesterday, mainly considering the research cultures of the universities in which we had worked and our various coping trategies for dealing with the regular assessments for what became known as the ‘Research Assessment Exercise‘ All research active academics wer meant to be put forward the best of the papers they had published in the past four years and each submitting department given some kind of score, to the best of my memory. But a certain amount of gaming went on in all of these activities and some injustices were certainly in evidence, in both of our experience. Our friend received a telephone call and this rather cut short our conversation this morning. Nonetheless, we had enjoyed a coffee taken in our flask and allowed ourselves to partake in some little chocolate eggs contained within a larger Easter egg present which our son had thoughtfully provided for us the last time he had called round at the house. Last night with fellow worshippers and again today, I announced to anyone that would hear as that Lent was now over, and I had given up fast cars, loose women, drinking, gambling and chocolate for Lent, I was now at liberty to pursue all of these activities again (when the opportunity presents itself). After we had left our friend in the park, we realised that we still had to get a copy of our usual Sunday nespaper somewhere. Our first point of call was the local garage but they were sold out. Then we tried a shop on the High Street but that appeared not only shut but now closed down. We set off for our local Morrison’s supermarket, passing en-route a ‘One Stop’ shop but that, too, had run out. As we got to the supermarket, it too was closed but as we drove past the associated garage, we noticed that they had some newspapers so I called in and got one of the last two remaining copies. Evidently, when other avid newspaper readers could not get a paper from their normal source of supply, every other source in the district was visited so we felt fortunate to get our newspaper at last.

Once we got home, I checked on ‘spatchcock’ chicken that we had had cooking in the oven. Fortunately, it was only a little over its suggested cooking time so it was a comparatively simple job to prepare some vegetables and have a traditional Sunday lunch. I happened to have some cranberry sauce in the fridge and this went just as well with chicken as with turkey that it traditionally accompanies. After lunch was over, Meg and I thought that we would treat ourselves to a quarter final match of Championship club rugby. The billed match was the French tean La Rochelle vs. Saracens (which team supplies several players in the English national team) In the event the match was disppointing as Saracens conceded penalty after penlty (I think I stopped counting after the first 18) from which the French team typically capitalised and then scored. So La Rochelle were nine points ahead after only about aix minutes and this became the pattern for the rest of the match. Although the match was played at a lighning pace, the errors conceded by Saracens at the breakdown eventually made the match completely one-sided.

We sometimes watch the BBC ‘CountryFile‘ programme which must have been going for decades now but they have a slot (aimed at farmers and growers?) giving a weather forecast for the week ahead. We can now expect a week of lower temperatures, bands of showers and some quite gusty winds until things improve next weekend so it is case of spring delayed. The same program looked at the way in which plants and herbs that were traditional remedies are now being re-evaluated as antibiotic resistance is gradually increasing. I knew that leeches were still used in the NHS today but the same applies to some maggots (very good at removing diseased and dying portions of skin and flesh in certain conditions) Later on, I spent some time sending an Easter e-greetings card to a friend who sent me one recently but whose return card may sit around in the postbox until next Tuesday, given the non-collection of mail over the Bank Holiday.

Easter Saturday has arrived in a fine and bright way which means that today and tomorrow at least, the nation might rejoice in springlike weather. The weather forecasters are predicting that the UK may well be hotter than certain parts of Greece such as Crete in the next day or so but the Bank Holiday will end with a massive downpour. Meg and I breakfasted and then I spent a certain amount of time digging out the first three lectures in a rather innovative course that I used to teach called ‘Thinking About Management’ All of this arose because I was talking to our University of Birmingham friend about this particular course and that I had managed to incorporate within it some rudiments of a course in Logic which I had studied for ‘A’-level (on my own) in order to gain admission to university in 1964-65. The first three lectures of ‘Thinking About Management‘ were concerned with thinking about the thinking process itself and I wished to convey the different styles of thinking, principally contrasting the straight-line deductive type of thinking which characterises a lot of Western science (labelled by one academic source as ‘convergent thinking’) with other thinking styles such as more circular, lateral thinking styles popularised by academics such as de Bono and sometimes decribed as ‘divergent thinking’) After a very long and discursive ‘romp’ around the field in the first leture, the second was concerned with the rudiments of logic whilst the third was concerned with the correct way to approach a critique of an academic article. When we eventually got to Waitrose, I treated our University of Birmingham friend to a mini-tutorial on these materials and, of course, he had come across some of these ideas before but in a different guise. In return our friend gave us a series of Foundation and Intermediate CD-based courses in Spanish by Michel Thomas which I think was highly regarded when first produced. There is a ‘cunning plan’ behind all of this because I am hopeful that if the weather is fair in the next week or so ahead, I can get busy with some gardening whilst Meg can sit on either of our benches (one at the front, the other at the rear) of our property and can rekindle her proficiency in Spanish whilst keeping an eye on me as I garden. That is the theory upon which I am going to work in any case.

Whilst we were having our coffee in Waitrose, we experienced a little incident for which I must confess total responsibility. Our University of Birmingham friend was by my side at a double table, whilst Meg was sitting opposite to us. I had brought along two quite heavy philosophy books to lend to our friend and I asked Meg to pick up the the quite heavy bag and pass it to me. Being unbalanced and twisting sideways Meg fell, or rather slithered, to the floor and finished up flat on her back. This created quite a commotion and people rushed to help. One of the Waitrose shop assistants and myself hauled Meg to her feet and thence onto a bench from which further falls were unlikely. I explained that this was quite a common event after Meg had drunk a pint of gin for breakfast but the whole incident was characterised by smiles and laughter all round. The manager made an appearance and was duly solicitous whilst another of the staff who is primarily responsible for looking after the extensive flower collection came over with a donated bunch of spring flowers to help Meg get over the shock of being on the floor. Of course, as probably the oldest of this store’s clients and being frequent visitors, we are well known within the store but the reaction of the staff and fellow customers was incredibly heart-warming. Mind you, I have been scraping Meg off various floors all of our married life and even before, the first such incident being when I had to pick Meg up from a moving moving pavement in an airport in Paris. She was wearing a 40lb rucksack at the time which had occasioned the first topple but others have followed regularly over the years.

This afternoon, we have spent a very pleasant afternoon listening to the ClassicFM countdown. Each year, ClassicFM exhorts its listeners to vote for their favourite pieces – these are then played in reverse order starting at 9.00am on Good Friday morning and then culminates in the most favourite piece some time in the evening of Bank Holiday Monday. This makes ClassicFM quite an an interesting listening experience over a Bank Holiday weekend and pulls it ahead of Radio 3 who decided to broadcast popular tracks of film music to compete. I think that Radio 3 has misjudged what is appropriate to an Easter Saturday afternoon but that I suppose is a question of judgement and taste. But I think the ClassicFM strategy is quite a sound one as you are led into listening to items which reflect listeners’ choices. This evening Meg and I are on duty to ‘meet and greet’ in our local church. We are looking forward to the fine weather tomorrow and we have arranged to meet our friend in the park, all being well.

Today dawned bright and clear and just the weather for a day out – more is the pity that we had our day out yesterday but nonetheless, we had things to look forward this morning. After we had got ourselves ready and hastily breakfasted, we made our way to Waitrose, via the paper shop, where we were due to meet with our University of Birmingham friend. Once esconced in front of a cup of coffee and a round of toast, we got onto the subject (I do not know how) of the way in which cities grow and develop. When I was at university, one of the most interesting courses that I undertook was one in urban sociology. If this sounds very esoteric, this is not really the case as much of the same subject matter is shared with another academic discipline but in this case called human geography. As our friend was an engineer by discipline and eventual employment, I spent a certain amount of time explaining the Burgess model of city growth which is now well known to countless generatons of students. These theories were originally formulated in the 1920’s in the Chicago school of urban sociology and conceived of the city as a ‘natural’ biological mechanism in which certain principals could be seen as being worked out. Two of these are ‘invasion and succession’in which land use changes as one ‘species’ drives out another (in the urban case, read populations) Another pair of principles are ‘commensualism’ in which similar organisms cluster together (in the urban case, think of financial institutions) and ‘symbiosis’ (in which unlike ‘organisms’ are to be found adjacent to each other such as restaurants adjacent to theatres, flower/fruit sellers to be found outside hospitals and the like) All in all, my friend and I spent about an hour discussing how these principles apply to cities that we knew well, Birmingham in my friend’s case and Manchester in my own.) We also spent some discussing the kinds of self-tuition language courses that might be of particular use to both of us because I have in mind that a lanuguage refresher in Spanish might prove to be of particular interest to Meg given her past level of proficiency in languages. Incidentally, the Spanish have rather a nice phrase because whereas we would say that we ‘proficiency’ in a language, the Spanish use the noun ‘dominion’ (almost literally the usage we have in English) which tends to imply a certain amount of struggle followed by eventual ‘mastery’.

I consulted the radio guide published in today’s newspaper to see if the BBC would maintain their tradition of broadcasting a ‘Passion’ (typically Matthew Passion or John Passion) this afternoon, as it is Good Friday. I found that Radio 3 was broadcasting St John Passion rather than the better known Matthew Passion. This Passion is shorter than the Matthew Passion and is not as well known and has somewhat fewer choruses, although the ones they do have sound similar and are rather derivative of those from Matthew Passion. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the clarity and superb exposition of the singing and so enjoyed this during the afternoon. Incidentally, I have confirmed but still do not know why this should be the case but FM recption on Radio 3 is certainly improved if one places the aerial wire into a horizontal rather than the vertical orientation that most sources would suggest. My limited reading around the subject suggests that it depends upon the polarisation of the transmitted signal and that vertically aligned aerials work better placed next to a wall but horizontally oriented ones when mounted adjacent to a ceiling. Perhaps that is why many dipole aerials are sold in a ‘T’ shape so that some of the aerial is vertically whereas the arms are horizontal. Anyway, all of this is somehat of a black art but I have found out empirically what suits my system(s) and I will stick with that, evn though there is a theoreticl reason for the results I am achieving.

Meanwhile, British politics is fast descending into the gutter. A Labour Party ‘tweet’ is implying that Rishi Sunak would not want to send either child molestors or armed criminals to gaol whereas Suella Braverman (and Boris Johnson before her) has also attacked Keir Starmers record as Dirctor of Public Procecutions on similar grounds. I am pleased to say that voices are being raised to the effect that a party confident of its own values and policies has no need to engage in this kind of ‘gutter politics’ and condemnation of the tweets and the consequnt debate is coming from all sides of the political divide. But, of course, politicians are in full electioneering mode now that parliament is in recess, the local elections are about 3-4 weeks away and Easter is a traditional time to get one’s message out before the electorate. But perhaps it is self evident that these sorts of ‘tit-for-tat’ attacks upon political opponents are ultimately self defeating and probably harm the perpetrator more than the intended target. I have always rather like the riposte, first used I think by Adlai Stevenson the American Democratic politician, that ‘if (political oppenents) stop telling lies about us, we will will refrain from telling the truth about them’ This is, in my view, political repartee at its best.

Thursday being my shopping day, I got up reasonably early in order to get to my supermarket of choice about one minute before the doors opened. This I did and reminded myself to buy a couple of Easter eggs for my son and his wife as it is Easter Day on Sunday in only three days time. An interesting philosophical question that arises from this is: how old do your children have to be before you stop buying them Easter Eggs? Whenever I have posed the question, the answer appears to be ‘Never’ which might mean that in some time in the future the 90-year olds in our society will be buying Easter eggs for their 65 year old offspring. As Easter approaches and this is probably, together with Christmas, the greatest of the Christian festivals, I wonder how many children in our society know what Easter is all about? As there seem to be quite a few websites published which explain the meaning of Easter to children, I can only assume that there is a lot of ignorance out there. It is probable that most 5-6 year olds know all about Easter Bunnies and probably Easter eggs as well but that is probably as far as it goes. To be fair, the name ‘Easter’ was derived from ‘Eostre’ originally a Saxon word (Eostre), denoting a goddess of the Saxons, in honor of whom sacrifices were offered about the time of the Passover. Another explanation is the Norse eostur, eastur, or ostara, which meant ‘the season of the growing sun’ or ‘the season of new birth.’ The word east comes from the same roots. In this case, easter would be linked to the changing of the season.

This morning, Meg had intended that we pay a visit to Alcester, a pretty little Georgian town not too distant from here. Although there were plenty of rain clouds first thing this morning, there was every hope that these might roll away and we might finish up with a fine day. I attempted to make a booking at the hotel where we normally dine but the telephone rang for a long time before there was a message that the line was out of order. I did not really believe this so tried again half an hour later when I got through and made the appropriate booking. Then we set off in plenty of time but ran into a massive problem into one of the little towns en route where the main route was blocked and traffic was diverted. Once we had gone all the way round the houses, it was unclear in which direction to travel so I chose the route which was not signposted Birmingham and the M42 and promptly found myself going round the same diversion again. I then switched on the SatNav but it too failed at a point where another exit route from a roundabout was blocked off. This time I followed the diversion signs again but at one point where it indicated that I should turn left, I went in completely the opposite direction. This turned out to be an inspired, intuitive guess because I found myself on a road which I knew which bypssed the town and then got me on the correct road into Alcester. Although we were too late for a coffee, we had an element of luck because we found a parking place, against the odds, and went straight into the hotel for a meal. This was as excellent as usual and we avail ourelves of the special ‘Pensioner menu’ After lunch we did a tour of about three of the excellent local charity shops and found two extremely good tops for Meg which, when we got them home, both proved to be an excellent fit and interesting design. Just before we left, we could not resist a little tour round a local hardware shop which is full of the little things that you suddenly realise you can make use of. In the event, I bought a couple of stationery items but as we were prepared to leave, there was a cloudburst punctuated by hail. Together with many others, we had to dive into another charity shop which we did until the weather had abated sufficintly for us to get back to the car. After that, it was a very rainy drive home but and as is often the way with these things, as we got into Bromsgrove the clouds rolled away and we experienced a really bright and sunny afternoon, just about as we got home.

More about the scandal of the Tory MP offering himself ‘for hire’ as an advocate of a company with gambling interests which was actually a ‘sting’ operation mounted by The Times. Apparently the gambling industry had learnt somehow(!) of provisions that were going to tighten up the regulation of the gambling industry and had succeeded in getting some of these measures adjusted in their favour before they come into effect. Apparently, Westminster has been aware that the gamblong industry must have some ‘insider’ knowledge and now we realise how and why. The Tory MP involved just happened to be the Chair of the Select Committee on the Gambling and Gaming industry and has been shown to be well and truly ‘nobbled’

The weather forecasters indicated to us that a band of rain would sweep right across the country and they were surely correct. It was one of those days today when it seemed to be spattering with rain for most of the day and although not cold, it was not really the weather for a walk in the park or a day out. First thing in the morning (well, at 8.01m actually), I telephoned our doctors to get an appointment for Meg to be seen and was fairly surprised not to have an engaged line. I did secure the position of No. 14 in the queue but the queue advanced fairly rapidly and I secured a telephone appointment with the same doctor who had adjusted Meg’s medication the other day. So Meg and I got ourselves up and dressed and breakfasted and then the dotor phone at about 10.00am in the morning which was OK. After an initial round of questions, I indicated that I really did want Meg to be seen in a face-to-face consultation with the doctor. This was agreed to and we had a slot allocated to us at 12.10 in the late morning which was quite good by today’s standards. So Meg and I had a quiet morning and then set off to collect our morning newspaper and also popped into Waitrose to top up our supplies. We got to the doctors just in time and had quite a fruitful consultation, all things considered. The GP conducted some tests to rule out certain ‘nasties’ and then gave us some some useful advice so we felt that we had not had a wasted morning. Then it was home and a lunch of quiche, broccoli and tomatoes.

This afternoon, we had a quiet time both reading and listening to ClassicFM and we are getting ready to go out for the day tomorrow once I have got the weekly shopping done and put away. Much of this is weather dependent but all of the indications are that we should have a reasonable trip out tomorrow. If all goes to plan then we quite enjoy ourselves having a coffee in an excellent little coffee shop and browsing through a range of absolutely excellent charity shops from which we rarely return empty-handed. To complete our day out, we go to one of those large and frankly quite old fashiond hotels which always puts on a superb ‘pensioners lunch’ with all of the ingredients freshly prepared and a very satisfying dish – normally a lasagne or something similar. This afternoon, I took the opportunity to take out our green and brown bin ready for emptying first thing in the morning and, whilst I was at it, I also take our neighbour’s bin along the drive to the kerbside (necessitated as we live on a private road and the dustbins have to be dragged to a particular location so they can be emptied.) Our next door neighbour called round and we had a nice little chat. I consulted him about the planter that we intended to install straight in our eye-line when we are enjoying a warm summer afternoon sitting on the bench in front of the house.

Our pleasure, if that is the right word, at the Trump indictment and the sight of him being put before the courts is a little short-lived. The informed commentary today is to the effect that Trump’s army of well paid lawyers may well find ways of delaying or dragging out the proceedings. In any case, the ‘trial’ proper is not scheduled to start until December or even January which seems quite a long time gap in any case. But there are some legal experts who have opined that any trial might be delayed until 2024 or even 2025 and the prospects for a prosecution success are far from certain. Even if convicted and fined, Trump’s potential candidature for the nomination of the Republican party has been considerably boosted as have the donations to the Donald Trump cause. One of his aides has said that Trump has received $7 million in campaign donations since the indictment and even if this is an exaggeration, there has certainly been a massive boost to campaign funds. I should not be surprised if, with incredibly weak systems of accountabiliy, a lot of these funds find their way into the pockets of Trump’s lawyers as well.

Yet another home grown scandal has emerged today. A Conservative MP has been caught indicating he would be willing to break parliamentary lobbying rules for money in an undercover sting operation by The Times. Scott Benton, the MP for Blackpool South, met undercover reporters posing as employees of TAHR Partners, a fake company lobbying to influence government policy, at a central London hotel in March. The newspaper contacted a number of MPs offering paid work as an expert adviser. Mr Benton responded and suggested he would be happy to be paid between £2,000 and £4,000 a month to help the fake company. Surprisingly enough, none of this is regarded as newsworthy for the BBC Newsdesk. What saddens me about this malfeasance is that it feeds into the popular feeling that ‘politicians are all the same’ and whilst there is venality amongst all MPs, I do think that the levels are higher in the current governing party.