Yesterday,it dawned as one of those grey and dreary looking days and it is a little hard to know how the weather is going to develop – but certainly cooler than the last few days. The evening before I had engaged in one of my usual heart-warming conversations on the phone with one of my University of Winchester friends and we are often in touch for a heart-to-heart when the occasion demands. The news was dominated as you might expect by the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska but as they are some six hours behind us then we are all waiting for the news to unfold. One thing that I did notice was that Trump was finding it very difficult to walk in a straight line down the red carpet that had been laid down in the tarmac and one stage zigzagged over it almost walking off it. Wondering whether I had been hypercritical, I did a quick Google search and, indeed, the social media and particularly ‘X’, are full of rumours about the health of the 79 year old president and are speculating whether his strange perambulation down the red carpet is indeed an indication of a much more serious medical problem. There are also video clips around on the internet showing Trump (like Biden before him) stumbling on the steps of the presidential aircraft, Air Force 1, so this one may run and run. It is a little too early to tell how the result of the Trump-Putin talks will pan out but many commentators are of the view that Putin being invited onto American soil and with no sanctions applied to him has already been brought in from social isolation and exclusion so this must make him a winner already. Looking ahead to the week that stretches out in front of us, there is going to be a big ‘family’ meal with some of Meg’s cousins at a nearby restaurant next Wednesday so this is something to which I can look forward.

Not many people realise that in our national efforts to curb carbon emissions, the fuel that we put in to our cars is not 100% petrol but up to 5% ethanol is used to bulk up the fuel. The UK’s largest bioethanol plant is set for closure with the loss of 160 jobs after the government confirmed it would not offer a bailout deal to the facility in Lincolnshire. This is quite a serious blow to the country and the company itself is blaming the imposition of American tariffs as the reasons for its failure. When large and important companies like this fail, and we can put Thames Water into the same category, there is a temptation that the government should step in and nationalise the asset in the public interest.  But we are living in an era when our government in particular does not have the resources to take over a failing national asset and the public at large would not be best pleased if public funds are diverted from, say the NHS, in order to prop up a failing privately owned asset. Governments can do a certain amount of back door support in the form of loans and special deals but these are often not sufficient. If there were an easy answer to this problem, then the government might already have grasped it. Perhaps there is a case here for a small levy on everyone’s petrol duty to provide the funds to keep the bioethanol plant functioning but this only adds a further twist to inflation which is already above guidelines. Incidentally, my son and I are watching the inflation rate that will may well peak in September with a great deal of interest.  This is because all of our pensions, including Teachers Pensions in our case, are uprated each Spring by the September inflation rate the year before so we both have a vested interest in this rising as high as 4%. The September inflation rate is published in mid to late October and my son has already got this date marked into his planning calendar.

In the morning, things did not tuurn out as I would have predicted. After breakfast, I was on my way down the hill when I bumped into my Italian friend and, as we have met had a good chat for ages, we stopped and spent some 20-30 minutes discussing how we were both going to organise our lives in the months ahead. For my Italian friend, the future is less certain as she has her house on the market and when she has got it sold, she is going to make a new life for herself somewhat  nearer to her daughter who I think lives in Gloucestershire. I can understand my frieds’s motivations in all of this but to abrogate a life time of over 60 years of contacts and then to try to recreate new friendships is a tall order. Having lived here for nearly 18 years, I am happy to reap some of the rewards of the ‘investment’ I have made in the local community. By the time we concluded our conversation, I judged that my Saturday friends would have given me up so I went down to Waitrose, made one or two purchases and treated myself to a coffee before striking for home. Just before I left the huse, I received a brown envelope from the Inland Revenue and normally these fill mne with a certain degree of foreboding but not on this occasion as it contained a cheque refunding some tax paid by Meg. The cheque covered most of the price of the three-day stay in a hotel in Harrogate and so was very timely.  So, I went down into townn by car to visit the bank and there was nobody else around when I was there so I sought the help of the young assistant who was manning the counter. First I had my withdrawal limit increased substantially which is going to be very helpful as it means in future that I can withdraw 2-3 weeks normal ‘living money’ at a time (I am one of the few supermarket customers who actually pays for their weekly shopping in cash) I also made an appointment to see a manager on Thursday next because the assistant thought that I was eligible for another current banking account that regularly pays a type of bonus each month into your account depending upon the nature and the amounts of direct debits in operation in the account. This is something I have been meaning to sort out for a long time now so I am delighted that the opportunity has arisen. I then made one or two small purchases in charity shops but also bought myself a simple no-nonsense little purse in which can store £2 coins when I happen to receive them in my change. Then I returned home and made myself a quiche and salad lunch before I contemplate washing the very dirty car in the afternoon.

Today is going to be quite a busy day what with one thing or another and perhaps for this reason, I could have slept a bit better than I actually did as I was contemplating the day ahead. First thing in the morning, our domestic help is due to call around which is always a great opportunity for us to swap news. Normally, she comes to us much earlier in the week but her domestic circumstances are such that she had to delay her visit to us until today. Now that the day has dawned, the whole of the world’s media are focused upon the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska to discuss the Ukraine conflict. The question on the lips of the world’s journalists is whether Trump will be outmanoeuvred or will he surprise us all? The omens are not good, not least because at one point in the last few days Trump announced that he was going to visit Russia (not realising that Alaska is actually part of the USA) and, of course, none of his entourage corrected him. Putin is an ex-KGB agent as well as a judo player and is well aware that one has to play upon the weaknesses of one’s opponent. In the case of Donald Trump, the question must be where to start. Putin may well start with a good dose of flattery and then offer the most minimal of concessions to show that he is willing to negotiate whilst clinging to his demand that Ukraine surrenders the whole of the Donbas region. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said on Tuesday evening that Mr Putin wants the rest of Donetsk – and in effect the entire eastern Donbas region – as part of a ceasefire plan. But the Ukrainian leader said Kyiv would reject the proposal and explained that such a move would deprive them of defensive lines and open the way for Moscow to conduct further offensives. Russia currently occupies around 19% of Ukraine, including Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region it seized prior to the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Apart from the evident desire not to lose territory, Ukraine feels that to cede the Donbas not only rewards aggression but provides a springboard for future invasions. A ceasefire sounds as though it is an easy thing to achieve but in practice, I suspect that the detail is devilishly complex. Presumably a ceasefire means that all troop movements have to cease as well but Russia feels that he has been making good progress on the ground and will be in no mood to compromise. Trump himself has expressed the view that there is a 25% chance that no progress will be made and normally meetings such as this are preceded by some detailed military planning but it is doubtful that this has taken place on this occasion. My best guess is that Putin will offer some vague reassurances that might make for a good soundbite but in the last analysis, words are cheap and might not result in any practical reactions on the ground, In the meanwhile, the Russians will have their attack lines prepared, declaring that is was the Ukrainian president that was standing in the way of a peace deal as Ukraine will not abandon land that I presently not occupied by Russia in the Donbas region. Of course to Russia, this is all part of the whole ‘Mother Russia’ region and the Russians believe that the whole of the Ukraine is rightfully theirs. Although it is another conflict, this puts me in mind of an interview that I saw recently of an extremely right wing ex-American settler on the West Bank who, when challenged about the fact the fact that Palestinian farmers were being chased off their own land by settlers given arms by the Israeli military explained that they were only reclaiming the ancient biblical lands of Judea and Samaria given to the Jewish people by God and illegally occupied by the Palestinian people. In the face of attitudes such as this in both the Ukraine and on the West Bank, it is a case of ‘might being right’ and I suppose is just an extension of what the American settlers did when they captured lands belong to the native Americans in the expansion of the American state.

In the morning, I had promised to take my Droitwich frend to a clinic in Solihull where she was going to have a procedure performed upon her shoulder. I relied upon the SatNav to get me to the little village outside Droitwich where my friend lives but it was one of these addresses sometimes found in little villages where there is a house name but no number as such. However, I had been given a tip what to look out for and my friend had told me the colour of the cars for which to look out and so fortunately, I got to my destination without getting lost but I think a certain amount of fortune was on my side. My friend and I chatted a lot in the car on the way to the hospital but although she was due there at 12.30 she texted me later to say that she would not be seen until 4.00pm in the afternoon. Fortunately, I had taken along a book for my friend to borrow and to read called ‘Watching the English’ and it looks at the English people through an anthropologists’ eyes in much the same way that the British used the native peoples of their extensive empire in Africa and in Asia. I have read and re-read this book several times and always enjoyed it. Indeed, I have often bought a copy only to give it away to a non-English friend for them to enjoy as well. Friends of ours who know England well but have been brought up in a different culture appreciate the book in all of its complexities. One exasperated American has been known to remark that the English male is so strange that they have to turn their pub into a children’s playground, complete with darts, skittles, shove half-penny, dominoes and a host of other games.  I have finally got around to booking my hotel and train journey for my trip to Yorkshire for my sister’s birthday in a couple of week’s time. I am contemplating what to buy for my sister but may settle on a plant which she can enjoy looking at as long it survives in her room. Fortunately, I have just avoided the bank holiday as booking a room might have been problematic otherwise.

The day before yesterday, my struggles with technology persisted until the bitter end. Although I had found a way of keeping my spare phone updated with a very reasonable Tesco Mobile SIM card, the relevant app failed to install on either my phone or my iPad. When I consulted the web, I found a video which detailed the five things you could try if you ran across this failure to install problem that told me I was not alone and many other users evidently had the same problems and the same frustration. This has all of the hallmarks of a badly written app in which this fundamental problem has never been fixed. So I tried the helpline, the number for which I just managed to come across in one of my notebooks. As is often the way, the member of staff manning the helpline had such heavily accented English that she was barely comprehensible but I think she said she could not solve the problem but would ‘escalate’ the problem and someone would call me back. Of course they never did and I expect they never will so as I have a reasonable work-around, I will not persist any more in this direction. But just before I finally come to bed and particularly if it has just turned midnight, I often consult my online banking because often deductions from my account are activated just after midnight. But my browser, which admittedly is  ancient and cannot be updated, indicated a problem accessing the bank and so this was potentially a major problem. I experimented with another browser which more-or-less worked but eventually came to a realisation of what may be the problem and a solution. I noticed that the entry from my Favourites section of the browser sent a long and complex string to the banking URL and I suspect that there is a cookie problem along the line. My suspicions were confirmed as if I typed in the bank URL directly instead of relying upon the string supplied by the browser I got straight through and my credentials worked as they should. So my solution was to save a simple i.e. not complex address in my browser which then shorn of its long and complex parameter seemed to work, So that I can now get through to my bank OK (which I do twice a day) then at least I could go to bed and sleep a little more easily but I lost some of my beauty sleep as a result of trying to fix the problem. When the internet works as it should, things are marvellous but when these problems occur, it can be a nightmare.

I learn from the news this morning that it is the day when ‘A’-levels are announced so am having to prepare myself for the usual pictures of long legged blonde ‘A’-level students leaping up and down with delight as they get the results that they wanted. It is not as televisually exciting to see pimply male students showing disappointment over not getting their desired grades but I have got used to these images over the years. It is being said that the results of ‘A’-level grades have gone up this year and I wonder whether, cynically, AI-assisted coursework components might be some of the explanation for this. I remember a cartoon from several years go when an ‘A’-level student announced to her mother ‘Congratulations! You got an ‘A’ for my last assignment’) but perhaps this is just an excess of cynicism on my part.

My son called around this morning as he often does after his keep-fit swim so we had an interesting chat and I recounted to him how I had overcome the technological difficulties of the night before. Then I went shopping as part of my normal Thursday morning routine. I treated myself to a packet of sweet and sour sauce and this proved to be a godsend because I was going to make some turkey pieces into the centrepiece of my lunch but the sweet-and-sour sauce made it a lot more interesting. I supplemented this with a baked potato and some beans, finishing off with Greek yogurt. After lunch, I wondered if I could bring Alexa (smart speaker) back into use on the lounge TV. When this lounge doubled as Meg’s bedroom I had a special Amazon ‘Echo’ device installed so that Meg could listen to some good music whilst she was drifting off to sleep but this has now been relocated back into the upstairs bedroom from whence it came. I just about remembered how to get Alexa operating on the downstairs TV but it does involve holding down a ‘Prime’ button whilst giving voice commands. Anyway, I must have remembered correctly because I got this operating again and can now remember the exact sequence of commands to activate it which I had forgotten. One of the unanticipated bonuses is that the TV displays the title of the actual track which is currently being played which is great to remind yourself of the exact title of the piece which may have slipped one’s memory.

These days, I am trying hard to have a ‘sensible’ eating and drinking habits. So I allow myself one, but only one, caffeinated tea drink as the first drink of the day. I tend to follow that up with Rooibos (Red Bush) tea or with green tea later in the day. For breakfast, I have two corn cakes with olive oil and tomato puree on one and an almond butter on the other. I am also consuming avocados on a daily basis but I buy four small ones in a pack and have one for breakfast each morning, split into two and with a little drop of ‘1000 Island’ dressing in the hole left by the stone. My main meal is always in the middle of the day and then I have a light nursery style tea at about 6.00pm and this generally takes the form of some tinned fruit and a little treat of ice cream whilst the weather is so warm, Incidentally, whilst on health-related matters, I asked my Pilates teacher if she had observed any differences in my physical shape since I have been attending over the past three months. Her view was that I am now practically in the shape that I was before I had to abandon the Pilates classes and so had made up the lost ground, as it were.

The day dawned with the prospect of a being a little cooler so it looks as though the current heatwave is gradually losing some its  power. Today I have nothing scheduled on my planning board so we shall have to see what the day will bring. Of course, I shall start off with a walk down the hill to pick up my newspaper and to have a free coffee and I hope that I might bump into someone that I know. It is actually a period that you might expect when a lot of people are holidaying and I am starring to vaguely think of some plans that I might make for September after I have made the trip up to Yorkshire in just over a fortnight’s time. The daily news is typically dire this morning with plenty to make one feel depressed both on a national and an international level so I may try a day of ‘cerebral hygiene’ in which I expose myself to precious little news today and find diversion in a good book. My friend brought with him a punnet full of plums from his garden which I most admit are absolutely delicious and although we got a handful of plums from our own plum tree, those from the Hampshire garden are so much more delicious. One of my long standing Pilates friends is in the process of selling up and moving to be a near her daughter in Hampshire so this occurrence is more and more frequent amongst my acquaintances these days. I did turn to the Huffingpost Post, though, for an interesting news story and read with a certain amount of glee how Channel 4′s anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy tore into Reform UK’s Andrea Jenkins last week over her party’s confusing policies. During a press conference, several representatives from the party blamed illegal migration for increasing violence against women and girls – although it’s well-known that a third of such abuse comes from an intimate partner. Faced with a well briefed and experienced interviewer, such politicians new on the block often crumble under pressure.  I think some politicians, particularly on the right, when they know they are going to have a hard time just refuse ever to be interviewed e.g. on Channel 4 and seek out journalists such as on the Daily Mail who they know will never present them with a serious challenge (such as presenting them with facts that shows their own prejudices are just that and are not rooted in reality) Having said that, it is pretty evident that illegal immigration is being used in a typically scapegoating way and as the probable source of all of the problems that the country does face and the so-called ‘race card’  instead of being deployed on an occasional basis is now used practically daily and some of the myths are now well embedded in some sections of the not-well-informed population. In fact, I suspect that not a day passes in which there is not an ‘illegal’ story somewhere on the front pages in a news bulletin.

This morning, I reattached a cleat to the inside wall of my bedroom window, the cleat holding the string to the blind to keep it in the ‘up’ position.  This sounds no great shakes but it more complicated than might be imagined. First the holes in the wall have to repacked with wooden splints to form a retaining plug and, over the years, I have found a match stick cut to the required length and then hammered into the wall works well, But then I have to hold the blind away with one hand as well as its draw string whilst screwing in the cleat left-handed and at a 90 degree angle. I made a good enough job of tis and then returned later with a Philips screwdriver which had a sharper point and did not just rotate in the screw hole together with a rubberised gardening glove to get my screwdriver plenty of grip and succeeded in getting the cleat really tightly against the wall where I hope it will last for years. I then turned my attention to see if I could get the YouTube video of a ‘bench’ exercise located and then made accessible on a very old iPad that I have. The idea is that I will keep this 9-10 year old iPad permanently in the bedroom on a stand so that I can view the video clip whilst following  the exercises, which take about 20 minutes. I have used this particular video clip for years and it can be difficult to locate on YouTube but I particularly like the young American instructor who is pleasant and not too demanding and seems able to gauge her instruction very carefully to her intended audience. In the past, I have always put on my Pilates jogging pants before attempting these exercises and these get me into the right frame of mind, as it were. When I thought about getting a bike, I thought this might be a recipe for eventually getting knocked off it as well as all of the gear that you need to buy so I thought that the bench exercises might give me most of the fitness gains I desire in the most efficient way.  One of the features of the video is a timer that counts down the timings of each exercise (anything from 30-60 seconds) and helps to keep you motivate to complete it and then to press onto the next. I spent a certain amount of time playing about with my spare mobile phone (my ex iPhone) into which I had put a Tesco mobile PAYG (Pay as You Go) Sim card but this proved a little awkward to do. In theory, you just use the App to download some extra credit but the app refused to play ball  even after deleting the old app and installing the new one. The app asks you to send in the number which it will then verify with a message but the message never arrives so the app fails to install. I put credit on the phone using an old web-based link on my previous computer which seems pretty reliable. So it has been rather a chewy type of day messing about with technology that seems to half work and then fail but at the end of the day I have got my exercise routines ready to play and some credit on my backup phone so cannot complain.

The evening before yesterday, I received a very pleasant surprise in that one of my close ex-University of Winchester friends is going to call in on me in the afternoon to pay a surprise visit. My friend visits a Birmingham suburb where he still has appointments with a dentist he has been attending for years and so is taking the opportunity to call in which will be a wonderful surprise. We have quite a lot of practical issues to talk over so I am looking forward to his visit. Today is the day when I generally both see my friends in Wetherspoons and also attend a Pilates class later in the day. Yesterday, I received a medical report on the X-ray I had recently had taken of my pelvis which was extraordinary for its banality. The text message received indicated that ‘there was no significant difference observable since the last X-ray’ but as this had only been taken 3-4 weeks before, I would have been amazed if any differences had been observed. Meanwhile last night there was the last of the series broadcast by Michael Moseley on the secrets of the ‘super-agers’ and the first item was the benefit to the immune system of regular cycling. This has left me vaguely wondering if there is a local cycle club in which there is a spare bike going which I could rent for a month or so and then ‘try before you buy’ but I might have a think about all of this. In the meantime, I will put the word around amongst friends and acquaintances of they have a spare bike available they could lend me for about a month to work out whether this is a mad idea or not. But I did learn one thing from the Michael Moseley programme which I found really interesting but also somewhat counter-intuitive.   One of the greatest enemies of late middle age, not to say old age, is the accumulation of fat around the midriff and some of your internal organs, known as visceral fat. This is the so-called ‘brown’ fat which is not good for you hormonally and is difficult to fix by conventional exercise. But it seems that the practice of Tai Chi is better at shifting belly fat even more so than gym exercise and so it seems the way to go. A bit of investigation reveals that there may a Tai Chi class in my local Methodist Centre. But everything is in a bit of obeyance at the moment as we are in the height of the August holiday season. But as soon as normal activities resume at the start of September, I will start to make active enquiries. In the meantime, I think that a quick search of Amazon to find an instruction book might help to get me going. The Michael Mosely series concluded with four activities – cycling, brisk walking, good Mediterranean diet with lashings of olive oil and finally Tai Chi so at least 2-3 of these are well within my grasp.

In the middle of the day, I went off to my Pilates session which I always do by car as I have already made one journey down into town and back again on foot. After our Pilates class, I made my way home and then enjoyed a lunch of mackerel on a bed of salad, complemented with some grated cheese and beetroot. This was highly appropriate for a hot day when I was disinclined to cook and then  after lunch,  I awaited the visit of my University of Winchester friend who was calling in on me. It was such a hot afternoon that we regaled ourselves with some zero alcohol lager and then had a long chat about all of the things that we wanted to catch up upon. Some of these were issues that we could talk to each frankly about both being in the situation of having lost spouses fairly recently. I then informed my friend that  my son and myself had gone through all the stages of preparing the two Enduring Power of Attorney documents which just needed some signatures before they get despatched to the Office of the Public Guardian. My friend was very interested in this as he was contemplating doing the same with his daughter and son and I explained how straightforward the whole process appeared to be and how much cheaper it was to do it for yourself online rather than going o a solicitor who would in effect charge you an arm and a leg for something that most people will be able to do for themselves. We then polished off  some rather nice ice-cream before my friend had to depart for the long journey back to Hampshire.

Thames Water seems to be on the brink of insolvency and the government have taken the step of appointing some special administrators should the company go complete ‘belly up’ Thames Water, its largest group of creditors and Ofwat, the industry regulator, have been locked in talks for months about a deal that would see its lenders injecting about £5bn of new capital and writing off roughly £12bn of value across its capital structure. The discussions are said to be progressing constructively, although they appear to rely in part on the prospect of the company being granted forbearance on hundreds of millions of pounds of regulatory fines. The root of the problem appears to be the amount of money taken out of the company in the form of dividends whereas the view of Margaret Thatcher, who instigated the policy of water privatisation, was that only the private sector and not the state could afford to invest the billions of pounds of much needed investment in the outdated infrastructure of water supply on the one hand and drains on the other. Normally, one would have thought of public ownership (nationalisation) as the only solution to a problem as complex as this but the debts are so enormous that the Treasury does not really want to know about it.  In addition, would the public be in agreement that money should be taken away from sectors such as education or the NHS in order to bail out and compensate the owners of a failed public utility? Thames Water has been teetering on the brink for years and what rankles is that it is being contemplated that they be let off the large fines that they have incurred for their misdemeanours in the past.

The evening before yesterday, I went out with some of my good friends and neighbours from down the Kidderminster Road and we frequented the local Thai restaurant which is open on Sunday evenings. It was a beautiful balmy evening and I sought out a Gabicci shirt to wear which was very appropriate smart casual wear for occasions such as this,. I had not worn this shirt for several years and feared that I might have expanded around the middle somewhat so that it might be too tight. But my fears were unjustified and so on it went for the first time in years. I took the car down my neighbours and then we walked the rest of the way into town and had a really enjoyable Thai meal. We none of us had starters or a sweet and after the meal we all repaired to our Irish friends’ house where we all had some coffee and some magnificent cupcakes. So, all in all, we had a really enjoyable evening out but I shall hardly see my Irish friends for some time because that are going off on a two-week (delayed) holiday and then coming home for a day or so before going off to see relatives in Ireland. We discussed with a certain amount of sorrow the circumstances in which complaints had been made to our bishop about our priest as a consequence of which he is being recalled by his missionary order to Kerala in India but after that may be despatched to another part of the globe. That having been said, we are all looking forward to the new young priest who is to take charge of our parish in 2-3 weeks’ time and I am sure there will be a fund of goodwill towards him. As according to his CV he has spent some time in a seminary in  Spain, once I get to know him I am going to invite him round, perhaps with my friends from down the road, and we can have an entertaining meal in our house, now that I have our dining room restored to rights. I think a burst of fine weather is due to visit us for the next few days ahead so I have to ensure that I have plenty of salads and ice-cream available as I do not really feel like a conventional ‘meat and two veg’ meal when the weather is exceptionally hot. With holidays and other people being away, I have a fairly light ‘social’ week this week but I am looking forward to one of the young carers who tended for Meg to drop by during the week. I am trying when I can to have at least one social contact per day now that I am completely on my own but Sundays are usually the trickiest day of the week in this respect as most people are naturally with their own families.  But these when I walk down into town fairly slowly, it is not uncommon for people to see me along and to ask after Meg. After all, as my son wryly observed, there are not many people in Bromsgrove who can be observed with a Korean style leather jacket, a Hi-Viz vest, an Australian style bush hat and a wife in a pushchair swathed in blankets so I know that was ‘noticed’ by quite a lot of people who I knew vaguely by sight (often called ‘nodding acquaintances’) as I made my trips up and down the hill which now seems an era ago. That having been said, I did push Meg for what turned out to be her final trip exactly a week before she did leave us.

In the morning, I made my way down the hill to collect my copy of ‘The Times‘ and also to avail myself of the Waitrose cup of coffee, free to card holders who bring their own mug. On skimming through the newspaper, I read an article to the effect that our practically local saint, John Henry Newman, was being proposed by the Pope as a Doctor of the Church – a very significant honour paying tribute to his intellectual and theological impact. This is the first time an honour such a this has been proposed for an Englishman for more than 1,000 years. So upon my return home, I penned a quick email to the secretary of my church’s Parochial Church Council (of which I was formerly  member but had to resign to care for Meg in her last year of life) I made the observation that I was sure that many, and perhaps less than able, members of our congregation would love to attend what celebrations are bound to take place in the cathedral in central Birmingham or even the Catholic Oratory and perhaps the parish could consider a coach (subsidised by Parish funds) to facilitate this. The secretary replied very quickly and said he would raise the matter at the next meeting which happened to be on Tuesday evening but he himself seemed to endorse my suggestion that ‘something’ needs to be done. Incidentally, he also invited me to consider rejoining the Committee which is something that I need to think about and perhaps take some advice upon.

At mid-day, my son came around and we set about the task that we allocated ourselves for this morning to fill in the forms for an Enduring Power of Attorney (both Property, Health and Social) which I had previously done for Meg and found the process very straightforward. The process went very smoothly and we paid the fee of £82.00 for each document, my son very generously paying for one whilst I paid for the other. When I consulted the internet, I discovered that lawyers charge fantastic fees for this and solicitors can charge up to £1000 with typical charges ranging from £300-£600 per document. So my son and I were very pleased with our morning’s work which was not onerous and now I just need to consult with my neighbour and ask for a confirmatory signature, after which I post off the filled and and signed documents and eventually receive back  from the ‘Office of the Public Guardian’ the full legal documents. The whole process is really so very straightforward and has been made almost ‘idiot proof’ allowing you to come back and complete sections of the form at a later time if necessary but my son and I managed the whole transaction in one go.

The evening before yesterday, I went to church which is now part of my weekly routine and it seemed rather appropriate as it was exactly three months after Meg had passed away. I bumped into my Irish friends and we agreed last minute arrangements for a meal at a local Thai restaurant which we are going to attend this evening as a farewell to our much-loved neighbour, a French widow who is moving away to live near her daughter in Cheshire. I had a fairly early night and thought I would listen to the offerings on ClassicFM and also ClassicFM Calm  which is a parallel station available on my smart speaker which has now been returned to a place in the upstairs bedroom (rather than helping Meg to go to sleep with a selection of Beethoven) I was very pleased to have finally got the selection of commands to get the smart speaker to recognise, and then to play, the part of Brahms’ ‘A German Requiem‘ which is particularly well known and that is ‘How lovely is they dwelling place’ which is always the piece played by ClassicFM on a fairly regular basis. I have found the Alexa smart speaker can be a little picky unless you get the command absolutely correct but I think I have cracked it now. When it finishes, I just ask it to repeat the last track after which I am often asleep. Through the mail the other day, I received a glossy magazine from Manchester University which is distributed to their alumni and whilst giving news of developments at the university is also designed to elicit donations, legacies and perhaps even sponsorships for deserving overseas students. But as Meg and were both Manchester graduates (1965-1968), the magazine was addressed to both of us. So, I needed to use the form inside them to ask them to remove Meg’s name from their database as otherwise it may be a rather painful reminder every time I receive a future issue. Actually, getting one’s name removed from a mailing list can be quite a difficult and prolonged affair and organisations do not seem to comply even when they are notified. The political news is full today of a meeting between Trump and Putin scheduled for next Friday in an obscure part of Alaska within sight of the Russian border in an attempt to resolve the Ukraine issue. British defence experts have already given their view that the Russian team will be stuffed full of experienced and street-wise negotiators whereas the American team may be popularly called ‘cowboys’ with no real experience of foreign affairs and the Russians will probably run rings around them. Incidentally,  the phrase ‘war is the Americans’ way of teaching themselves geography’ is a critique, not a literal statement. It suggests that, for Americans, geographic knowledge is often acquired through military conflicts and interventions, rather than through formal education or a broader understanding of global affairs. This view implies that the nation’s involvement in wars, particularly in distant lands, has forced Americans to learn about unfamiliar regions and their geopolitical complexities. 

In the morning, I walked down quite early to collect my copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ as they apt to go quite quickly on Sunday mornings. On the way down I had varied conversations both with a near neighbour and with a more distant neighbour and then collected my newspaper and treated myself to a coffee. As I was drinking this, I was greeted by one of the senior members (in every sense of the word) of my church’s parochial council  and he had been very instrumental in organising some of the really practical details for  Meg’s funeral (making sure that the funeral car  itself was not blocked from the entrance) and we chatted over things both funeral and also liturgical. One the way back, I decided to make a detour round the park exactly as I did last Sunday and I noticed that when I approached the two benches upon which Meg and I used to sit, they were both empty. I could not resist taking a photo of the empty benches to remind me of old times but decided against asking a young girl who occupied one of the benches to take a photograph of me alone on the other. I did make contact with another park acquaintance but not the same joke-cracking one of last week and we spent a few minutes in conversation about things we had done in our working lives. Then I came home and prepared a fairly large Spanish omelette for myself (onions, tomatoes, peppers, because I dd not want too full a meal as I am going out with friends in the early evening for a valedictory dinner with one of our close neighbours who is moving away. 

Although I had no inclination to do it, I pressed on and got the car washed this afternoon. Even though I am now on a weekly schedule the building works in each side of us whilst they are still at the earth moving stage means that the whole area is covered in a very fine dust which will start at about 8.30am on Monday morning and carry on all week until Friday afternoon, when they tend to knock off for the weekend. Fortunately, I have a fair bit of quite overgrown vegetation in my back garden but I know from actual conversations with neighbours that they are driven to distraction by the constant dust but can only pray for it to come to an end. Talking of ‘praying’ I have come across a prayer, attributed to Saint Teresa de Avila (Meg’s adopted saint) which is not really a prayer but is more of a secular homily about the things you say when you get old. I thought I would take it down to the dinner to read to the assembled company and I am sure that we can identify with at least parts of it. I just got a text late on this afternoon from one of Meg’s carers who wants to pop in and see me together with his new partner. They are just in the process of setting up house together and I wish them both well but I am waiting for the much-promised house-warming party here I am sure I shall make my number again with a lot of the other younger carers after a gap of some three months.

Yesterday when my son called around, he told me a story about Trump that I decided to verify. The story comes from Trump’s biographer in a book published about ten days ago and claims to know the real reason why Trump fell out with Epstein. According to this story, Trump was giving advice to Epstein on the purchase of a property and then with the aid of Russian oligarch money Trump went behind Epstein’s back and secured the property by out-bidding Epstein for it, Later the property was sold back at a huge profit to the same Russian oligarch and the whole deal seems like a money laundering operation. Epstein was furious with Trump and threaten to expose his entire knowledge of, and complicity in, the sex rackets that were Epstein’s stock-in-trade. Trump himself claims that he fell out with Epstein because the latter had poached young female ’employees’ from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Now all of this sounds incredibly murky and so far, the YouTube channels do not seem to have picked up on the story but I suspect that a flurry of lawyers and sworn affidavits are preventing some of the details from emerging. In the meanwhile, it appears that Trump is desperate to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize and for this reason is arranging a meeting in a week’s time between himself and Putin to ‘sort out’ the Ukraine. I am sure that much of the discussion revolves around the Donbas region which is a region in eastern Ukraine, historically and culturally part of Ukraine, but currently a significant portion is occupied by Russia and Russian-backed separatists. While the region is predominantly Russian-speaking and has a history of pro-Russian sentiment, it is not part of Russia. I think that the Ukrainian president could have a formula for handling this problem. As the region thinks of itself as culturally and linguistically a part of Russia why not offer the region a referendum  in which there are two deals on offer. The first would be a massive degree of autonomy and self-determination but still remaining a region with the existing Ukrainian borders. The other possibility is that the region votes to secede and join Russia and the Ukrainians, as good democrats, could respect the result.  I have not seen any solution like this suggested in the media but it might be a way forward. As I write Trump is talking about the ‘swapping’ of territories but as the Ukraine is not occupying any Russian territory to speak of, there is nothing to swap so this is another example of Trump ‘moonshine’ talk. The day started off bright and clear with the prospect of fine weather.  Apart from meeting up with some of my ‘Wetherspoons’ friends it may be that if the spirit moves me I do either some outside gardening or a car washing job. With all of the building work going on around, the car appears perpetually dirty with a fine sprinkling of dust but I am evolving techniques to get the car washed with the minimum of effort these days.

In the morning after breakfast, I walked down into town picking up my newspaper and one or two things from Waitrose before meeting up with my Saturday morning friends in Wetherspoons. We were joined by my University of Birmingham friend who I normally see each Sunday morning but he had sought me out because he is otherwise engaged this week. We had a long and interesting chat and after my friend had left, I moved to a different part of the pub where another of my friends – Seasoned World Traveller – generally takes up residence. We had an interesting chat on health-related issues (what else?) and then I wandered slowly down the High Street where I needed to purchase some cosmetic items which I did from a couple of stores. Then I made my way quite slowly up the hill as it was quite a hot and humid walk after which I had a cold drink and a good rest when I got home. This afternoon, I have a real cultural dilemma because BBC2 were showing the film, Dr. Zhivago which was the favourite film of Meg and I (not least because when Meg wore her Russian style hat, she had a passing resemblance to Geraldine Chapman who played the part of Tonya) As it is three months today since Meg died, I honestly could not bring myself to watch it although we must have seen it a dozen times over the years. We first saw it in a Leicester Square cinema in 1967 just before we got married so we are going back some 58 years. I did allow myself a little peek towards the end of the film, though, and saw one of the most poignant moments in the film. Throughout the film Zhivago is torn between the blonde Lara and the brunette Tonia and is eventually separated by the events of war from them both But whilst on a Moscow tram, Zhivago thinks that he sees one of his lifelong loves, Lara, walking along a Moscow Street. Zhivago struggles to get off the tram but his heart is in a poor condition and whilst racing to catch up with one of the loves of his life, whilst about 100 yards short or less of catching up with Lara, the exertion of his running gives him a massive heart attack from which he died, with Lara walking ahead unaware of the drama unfolding behind her.  If you wanted to be moralistic, you could say that is what happens when middle aged men are having relationships with two women at about the same time and he only got his just desserts. But the relationships with both women were deep and intense and the poignancy remains, for me at least. On a somewhat personal note, Omar Sharif who played the part of Zhivago was a bridge player of international renown and I seem to remember a story that an aunt Dorothy of mine who I only met on or two occasions might have played in a bridge match with him.

Later on in the day, I will attend the Saturday evening church service which is perhaps more than appropriate as it is three months to the day since Meg left us. Our priest is shortly to leave us to return to India and I look forward to his replacement who is a much younger man and currently based in Coventry, although my spies tell me that he has already made a couple of visits to our church to become acquainted with it.

Yesterday, I awoke to quite a bright and cheerful morning having had a pretty decent night’s sleep the night before. I was very pleased to receive in the mail yesterday my renewed Senior Rail Card which discounts rail fares by one third and I always buy the version that has a life of three years because this gives one extraordinarily good value. I am going to bring this into use quite soon as I plan a trip up to Yorkshire to see my sister and the rest of the family on the occasion of her birthday. This is still some three weeks away but the really cheap rail fares tend to get snapped up very quickly unless you buy them some weeks in advance.  The same applies to hotel rooms as well so I probably need to get all of this organised in the next day or so. I got a payment from the Teachers’ Pension Agency which was less than my usual amount but in a paradoxical sense, this may presage good news rather than bad. It could be that I am now paying more tax which might indicate an increased payment elsewhere but I am in the rather frustrating situation of having to wait until the end of the month to finally know what the portion of pension inherited from Meg will turn out to be. I think I will probably have to wait until the September payments are made to ascertain how things are going to be because the short-term payments and the tax considerations should have worked themselves out by then. I do not think that my situation is very unusual because talking with friends and relatives, it seems that these short-term perturbations in finances are quite common after the death of a spouse. In the evening before yesterday, I was in receipt of another welcome text. My very good friend, the French lady who lives down the road, is shortly to move to live near to her daughter in Cheshire which I well understand. But her immediate neighbours on each side who I know very well (the Irish couple and some Church friends) have invited me to join with them for a celebratory ‘send-off’ meal in a local very well-known Thai restaurant where we will have a meal for the six of us on Sunday evening. I must confess I was not aware that the restaurant was open on a Sunday evening but if nowhere is else is open perhaps this is their little ‘niche’ in the market. The ultimate little niche in the market I experienced in the farewell evening that I spent with students in Madrid after I had done my term’s sabbatical over there in the 1980’s. As I remember it, we went from bar to bar and sometimes even visited the same bar twice but I was told that it was now ‘different’ because the second time around the clientele had changed and the style of music changed accordingly. But for the hardened drinkers and party-goers, there was one particular bar that opened at either 3.00am or 4.00am in the morning (I cannot remember which) and the market niche was that the bar opened at just the time that all of the other bars were closing. As I remember it, we formed a sort of swaying queue outside and staggered inside and eventually I made my way home on the Madrid metro. I remember that at that hour in the morning, the metro was so deserted that there was no one available to collect one’s fare – however, I am trying to recollect events of probably more than thirty years ago now.

This morning, after I had breakfasted I popped down into town by car and picked up a copy of the newspaper I then re-parked the car in another car park and went in search of ‘The Donkey Sanctuary’ venue which was opening today. After a certain amount of fishing about, I managed to find the new venue and it just happens to be next door to the ‘Lemon Tree’ cafe which I used to frequent and to which I took Meg on several occasions.  The new venue is a fair bit smaller than their previous one and there is not really the space for a cafe as such but they have a couple of tables at which one can sit and they will make you a tea or a coffee and serve you with a cupcake all in exchange for a donation to the animal charity which is really intended to offset the costs of looking after abandoned horses.  I was remembered from last year and made very welcome – whilst I was there, the mayor came along to perform an official opening. The proprietor also took a selfie of herself and myself together and this was transmitted to my own phone using the WhatsApp app on our phones. The new venture has a little upstairs room in which there are some high quality ‘pre-loved’ items for sale. They did have a couple of antique wooden chairs in which I was not tempted as I probably have too much furniture as it is but a year ago, I would almost certainly have bought them. I did buy a brand-new Kenwood mini-chopper kitchen aid for £2 although it retails at £25 and, although small, it might be ideal for little bits of food preparation for myself. I think I will always go along each Friday from mow on because I can probably have a friendly chat with the people within the store and the charity is probably worthy of support after they were so badly treated and evicted from their store on the High Street last year.

In the afternoon, my son called around an d we had an extended catching up on a range of issues, some concerned with family finances and some concerned with health issues. The interesting thing is that now that as my son has recently retired, some of his life-interests are converging with mine. We are facing similar concerns with a variety of income flows to be balanced against commitments and, of course, we are both trying to keep ourselves fit and healthy. My son swims getting on for 30 lengths every other day and I try to maintain my 20 minutes of Pilates exercises as well as a certain amount of walking up and down into town. There was a fascinating research study reported in ‘The Times’ today. The researchers were trying to discover the secrets of why certain 80+ study participants seem to fare so much better on menory tests than their contemporaries. What was discovered amazed the researchers as it was so unanticipated. One group in the study took care of their diet, exercise and sleep patterns whilst a second group ignored these factors altogether. But the memory scores were remarkably similar and it appears that they had one characteristic in common which is that both groups put a lot of effort into maintaining social relationships and keeping their intellectual interests finely-tuned. So, the intriguing hypothesis has arisen that a critical factor to avoid the onset of dementia and related conditions is to maintain and keep social relationships at the highest possible level.  There is still a lot of evidence that diet, exercise and sleep patterns are important on staving off dementia but the finding about the importance of maintaining social relationships is intriguing.

Late yesterday afternoon, I was engaged in some weeding in our front garden when my next-door neighbour turned up and we finished up having quite a long chat over the garden fence. As well as collecting period juke boxes, my neighbour is incredibly well informed about the genre of singers that we had in the late 1950’s and early 1060’s (when we were both teenagers) So we were reminiscing about singers like Connie Francis (who had a PhD in Mathematics, incidentally), Johnny Mathis and Harry Belafonte. I think that Connie Francis died only recently and was in her 90’s. Harry Belafonte died two years ago but he did achieve the age of 96. Later In the evening, me neighbour called around with some potatoes freshly harvested from his allotment. Having consulted the web, I think that parboiling followed by some frying or roasting with herbs is the best way to enhance their flavour and enjoy theM to the utmost. Actually, when my neighbour called around, I was in the middle of a video call to my sister who is in a residential home in Knaresborough and we took the opportunity to discuss the arrangements we are going to make for some birthday celebrations at the end of the month. She has decided that she does not want a fuss in her residential home but will spend the day at one of her daughters when other family members can drop in as and when they are able. I think this arrangement can work quite well because it gives me a better opportunity to chat with family members and to pass on some articles of Meg’s jewellery. Last night, I was at a bit of a loss what to view on the TV but eventually chose a program on Pompeii and Herculaneum which was fascinating. I have seen programs of a similar type before but the theme of the program were the modern theories as to why some of the victims of the eruption of Vesuvius were found in a strange orientation with their arms outstretched. It had been thought for decades, if not centuries, that the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum may have been smothered to death in volcanic ash. It is now believed, according to the latest application of scientific evidence, that they may have perished as a result of a blast of super-heated air (up to 600 degrees) when the ash column ejected from Vesuvius descended some hours later and they would have died within a second. The outstretched arms are caused by an automatic contraction of the muscles and is known as a ‘pugilistic attitude’ but has been observed by other instances when victims have been caught in the middle of an explosion or huge fireball. I awoke this morning to one of those grey sorts of mornings but as I have not been beset by technical problems as I was yesterday, I may well be able to make a good early start on my shopping which I traditionally do on a Thursday (Fridays even busier and the weekends even more so).

By the morning post, I received the most pleasant surprise which was a refund by way of a cheque from BT. I was not really expecting this refund as initially I was told that it would be credited to my account but a cheque is always very welcome. After I done my routine weekly shopping, I made haste to my bank to get the cheque deposited. My bank has one of those automated ‘do everything’ sorts of machines and I cannot remember the last time I deposited a cheque certainly unaided.  But this worked like clockwork, even showing you an image of the cheque you have just deposited and when I returned home, it was a welcome addition to my balance. I now have my attention turning to the next couple of days ahead to see if the right amount of (my own) Teachers’ Pension will be deposited. In the course of my shopping, I decided to buy some rosemary which is the only herb I did not appear to have in my little herb carousel.  As my neighbour had very kindly supplied me with some of the potatoes that he had grown in his allotment and only harvested that day, I had looked up a good way to enjoy the flavour of potatoes when they are freshly harvested. I followed some advice I had read on the web and scrubbed the potatoes before cutting them into fairly quick slices. I then parboiled them until tender and then sprinkled them quite liberally with some good olive oil (also purchased today) and the rosemary. For the protein part of my meal, I  fried an onion and then added some little cubes of ham, left over from the weekend joint, made a little cup of onion gravy and complemented the whole mixture with some petit-pois. The whole meal was very tasty and I shall repeat the experiment but having made too much for myself in the first instance, I now have the meal sorted out for two days ahead. Tonight I am going to try an experiment of anchovies on rice cakes which I may come to regret but Aldi are not very good in the tinned fish department as I would have preferred sild or brisling. In the early afternoon, I caught up on the BBC i-Player on the episode of ‘Human’ through which I slept last Monday evening although I am sure the narrative of the hour long programme could easily have been done within thirty minutes.

The Russia -Ukraine conflict may be approaching some kind of resolution although I am sure that Putin is playing for time as usual and thinks he is winning he ground war (although the figure of 1 million Russian soldiers has been mentioned but I am sure this is hard to verify) Trump is sanctioning India for buying Russian oil but I am not convinced this will be be enough to bring Putin to heel unless the policy were sustained for several months. And, in the last analysis, the Chinese will always buy up some Russian oil to cone to the assistance of a very old ally. So, we live in a world dominated by geo-politics at the moment and uncertainties face us each and every way that we look.