For a strange reason which I cannot attempt to discern, my Microsoft Outlook account was incredibly difficult to access this morning but I managed it eventually after 30 minutes of going round the houses. These mornings, I tend to wake up at about 5.15 and then I lie quietly in bed listening to the soothing collection of tracks which ClassicFM plays at this time in the morning before I get up to start the day at about 5.50. This morning the weather looks sets fair and I am contemplating making a trip to Droitwich where I want to visit a little jeweller to whom I have been recommended to get a new chain for Meg’s Mexican medallion. She wore this constantly but I want to donate it to a close family member but with constant use the existing chain broke and needs to be replaced. I don’t think that I have been to Droitwich for the past few months so I will go into the cafe that we used to frequent and acquaint them with the sad news of Meg’s passing. Also, I have one or two favourite charity shops and what used to be the old Wilkinson’s store which I think was made into a Poundland superstore if my memory serves me correct. Some of my regular routines are a little out of kilter this morning as it is approaching mid-August and people are away on holiday. For example,  the Methodist centre in town has a wonderful coffee bar and meeting area complete with a ‘chatty table’ but they close down during the month of August so that it can have a spring clean and the regular attenders go on holiday. So I think I will be pleased once this month is out of the way and normal life resumes in the early autumn. The day before when my son and daughter-in-law had called around, they helped me to sort out the interactions between my Teacher’s pension and my tax affairs. I have inherited a portion of Meg’s pension but evidently a dead person cannot be taxed and so the tax accrued to me, But HMRC system seems, although I am not sure, to have reallocated some of Meg’s personal allowance to me without any intervention on my part. I am receiving letters from the Teachers’ Pension Agency in which none of the stated amounts match up at all with the previous information they sent me only a week or so ago and meanwhile the Inland Revenue are sending me communications which are as clear as mud. I think I am going to sit back and do nothing and see what income flows actually occur during the month of August so that I can keep track of things which seem to have been more complicated since Meg’s death three months ago now than they were before. Whilst I was with the family yesterday, we were laughing about the fact that I must have become a familiar sight across Bromsgrove and known to people who did not even know our name. After all, there are not many people with a Korean cow leather jacket sporting a hi-visibility vest and with an Australian style bush hat (minus the corks!) pushing a wife up and down in a wheelchair down to Bromsgrove several times a week. I am stopped on a fairly regular basis by people who now solicitously ask, when they see me on my own, ‘How is your wife?’ only to be a bit shocked when they learn of her death. Eventually, of course, all of this will cease but it is true that friends of friends have observed me in the past and the news actually did spread. 

One of my near neighbours posts a copy of the local newspaper and I generally give it a cursory glance but today, one particular story caught my eye. About a year or so ago now, I must have been pushing Meg up and down the Bromsgrove High Street when we espied a new coffee shop which was actual the finance producing arm of a charity for abandoned horse and other animals. We were about the only people in the shop and we engaged the owner in conversation. The shop had been very carefully and tastefully refitted at a cost of some £30k but as well serving coffee and home-made cake, there were also some selected pieces of furniture and ‘objets d’art’ all available for sale. But we were told a terrible story that the new owners of this store had only been open for about a fortnight when they were given notice to quit because another nearby charity had offered more rent to the developers so the animal charity proprietors were being turfed out. I was horrified by this story and said that I would patronise them again as soon as they found a new shop for their venture and I read in the newspaper that they have, indeed, secured some new premises just off the High Street and they are going to be opening this Friday. So I am certainly going to make a great effort to seek them out and to patronise them regularly as Meg and I had been given a wonderfully warm reception when we took our coffee there a year ago and I am always keen to exgend my range of social contacts.

I did take myself off to Droitwich down the road and succeeded in my principal objective which was to buy a new fine sterling silver chain for Meg’s medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The old broken chain made of Mexican silver was weight and they gave me £5.00 of credit for it to help defray the price of the new chain. But the rest of my visit to Droitwich – the first since Meg’s passing – was rather a bitter-sweet experience, not helped by the fact that of the three shops that I visited, none of them contained any of the items (some  as prosaic as Brillo pads) for which I was looking. So, I came home and cooked myself a meat and two veg type dinner before I do some weeding as it is ‘brown bin collection day’ this week and I need to seize the opportunity to weed when I can. I generally dispose of the tallest and most unsightly weeds at the front of the house on these occasions so the house looks inhabited and visitors do not gvain an unfavourable impression.

As is usual at the start of the week I decide to get to bed at 9.00pm in order to watch the anthropological programme on ‘Humans’ but I inevitably fall asleep after a few minutes. I am also following the Michael Mosley programs on ‘Secrets of the Super Agers’ and did discover that, up to a point, you can think yourself both younger and older than you actually are. If you attempt to have an active social life and take cate of your diet and health, particularly by walking regularly, then you actually do start to look younger and con convince others who do not know you of this fact. The reverse is equally true in that you can think of yourself as older and more frail than you actually are and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, I had often suspected that this might be the case but the fascinating thing about the Michael Mosley approach was that he was always striving to find some hard science behind his observations. What a tragic irony it was that after writing so many excellent books on diet, exercise, life style and the ageing process with the aim of stimulating all of us to lead happier, healthier and longer lives that he himself would die about a year ago by inexplicably making a journey back to his hotel under a full blazing Greek son and succumbing (and dying) from the subsequent heat exhaustion. I still have many of his books on my bookshelves and they evoke a tinge of sadness on each occasion that I look at them. The morning is quite a busy one as I have to fit a routine lumbar x-ray in our local hospital amongst other things. I am also looking forward to a flying visit from one of my nieces who is calling in following a summer camp sojourn in the West Country and, like last year, as her route home lies so near our house she is taking the opportunity for a visit.

On the Sky News website, there is a compilation of the death of every single Palestinian since the start of the conflict with Israel. Sky News claims that they have verified each of the deaths which now stands at over 60,000 the majority being women and children.  The graphics and analysis are of exceptional quality and make for a sobering read but the Israelis insist that they only ever target Hamas fighters. When video clips do get shown of Gaza then the whole society seems to have been reduced to rubble and one has to wonder what there is left to bomb or destroy because it is hard to find a building left standing or undamaged.

This morning, after I picked up my newspaper, I made a fairly quick visit to the local Wetherspoons where I met a couple pf my usual Tuesday morning friends. But I knew that I would have to depart after only a few minutes as I needed to go off to my local community hospital for a routine X-ray of my pelvis. This was all very straightforward and as soon as I returned home and watched a little TV, I thought I go ahead and prepare a risotto lunch. My niece was calling in on her journey home from the West Country and my son and daughter-in-law were calling round to see her so we enjoyed the risotto together whilst my niece and daughter-in-law both teachers, but in the process of either retiring or winding down, swapped notes with other about the retirement process. Then I took my niece to one side and offered he special medal that Meg wore constantly and a depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, given to Meg by our son’s Mexican ‘parents’ when he undertook his scholarship in Mexico nearly 40 years ago. Meg wore this medal every day for years and years and was very special to her but the silver chain upon which it hung had broken with constant use so I am going to get this special silver chain replaced.  My niece was incredibly emotional when I offered her the medal but I said that I would get the chain replaced before I finally offer it to her when we go up to Harrogate in about three weeks’ time. I also discussed with my niece which of her sisters should receive which pieces of Meg’s remaining jewellery as a personal memento. I also had a very special brass cross (religious artefact) which Meg and I had bought for my mother when we were in Rome on holiday decades ago and it had passed back into possession after my mother’s death. Again, my niece was delighted to accept this and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to gradually dispose of some of Meg’s possessions amongst family members who really appreciate them. After my niece had left to continue her long journey back up to Yorkshire, I took the opportunity to ask my son and daughter-in-law about their observations of the last few months of Meg’s life. One perpetual question and is one that I am asking myself is the following : do dementia patients realise that they are dying? The short answer is that we really do not know but we can infer a great deal. As we know that as dementia advances, patients may be aware that all is not quite right. But then their body is shutting down and, as happened with Meg, they are asleep for much of the time. So, the consensus view is that dementia patients do not really have an awareness of what is happening around them as they lack the cognitive processes of a non-demented person. All that I can say is Meg seemed to o a pretty contented death, surrounded by family and friends and with few signs, if any, of any evident distress. This I find comforting, reinforced by the fact that I did as much for Meg as was possible and I think her quality of life, even in the final months, was relatively high surrounded as we were by a lot of music which I knew she had appreciated and enjoyed over her lifetime. We seemed to have a huge helping of Mozart (of course), Beethoven, Bach and composers such as Fauré.  I suspect that Meg really enjoyed and remembered some of the Joan Baez (Mexican-American folk-singer and at one time lover of Bob Dylan) tracks when I played them only a few weeks before Meg left us in May.

Two nice events occurred the evening before yesterday to put me in some good spirits. Firstly, my good Irish friends from down the road have asked me round for a coffee this morning and this is always a welcome event. There are a few things I wish to share with them so this is something to brighten up the start of the week. Secondly, my good friend from the University of Winchester phoned up in the late evening and we spent a long time on the phone to each other as we are wont to do. He visits his wife every day who is in long term residential care in a nursing home and we have often swapped notes and try to be mutually supportive of each other including links to parts of the NHS which might be helpful to us but are hard to locate.

A rather terrible event is unfolding before our eyes which is the famine in Gaza. Video footage has been released of an Israeli hostage who appears skeletal as he has evidently been short of food for a long time. The Israelis are appalled and are pointing to the evident lack of humanity of the Hamas captors but in the meanwhile Gaza’s health ministry has said that six more people have died of starvation or malnutrition in the enclave in the past 24 hours – increasing the total to 175 since the war began, including 93 children. And the health ministry reports that another 80 people died yesterday after Israeli air attack strikes. The whole world appears to be standing by watching this tragedy unfold before our eyes but Israel as the occupying power are telling the world that starvation does not occur routinely but if any instances occur it must be because Hamas are keeping all of the food resources to feed themselves and are starving the rest of the population. 

The day started off as gloomy and somewhat overcast and a storm is expected to sweep across the country later on in the day and will perhaps hit the Midlands in the  afternoon. By then, I will have got my morning walks out of the way but I have a lightweight waterproof now permanently in my rucksack so that I do not get caught in a sudden shower or downburst. I am spending a certain amount of time each morning keeping track of my finances which are now, thankfully, settling down. The last few months have been a bit of a turmoil until the Teachers Pensions Agency got their act sorted out. When you at work, you have one day/date on which salaries get paid in but in retirement things are a little more complicated. I am juggling with the payment dates of my own pension, the remnants of Meg’s pension and my own retirement pension so my spreadsheet has to detail these anticipated in-payments and out-payments quite carefully. I think that things are settling down now but it has been a little complicated with some payments ‘on account’ and then subsequently subtracted, tax taken off here and there and so on. But everything does look quite stable from this point on from which I am grateful. At this time in the morning, I often ‘message ping’ my Droitwich friend as we both seem to be our computers at the same hour in the morning and we sort of check up on each other (which is rather nice, I must say).

In the late morning, I called in to collect a copy of ‘The Times‘ which was in rather a tatty condition as it was the last remaining copy but beggars cannot be choosers. Then I called in at my Irish friends who had invited me in for coffee and we were joined by their next-door neighbour who is the French lady who is shortly to move away from us after her house has been sold. We told each other stories about neighbours that we had known and I regaled our friends about the ‘neighbour’ from hell who we knew from a previous house in another part of the world. I explained how years after we had moved away, we met the husband by accident whilst we were on holiday and he said to us, with the broadest possible smile, that his wife had now died. She made his life hell on earth making him clean every window in the house every day apart from other things and I told several other stories to which our friends listened with a sort of fascinated horror.  Then after I returned home, I made myself a ‘meat and two veg’ meal for the first time in days, after which I promptly fell asleep. I was awakened by the ringing of the doorbell from our domestic help who brought me up-to-date with all of the news about her son who had been injured in an industrial accident at work. I had assembled some books and materials that I hoped would help to occupy him during his period of recovery. Then I texted a friend and started to think about my priorities for the next day or so ahead. Whilst I was having coffee with our friends, the news came through about the narrow England defeat/India victory in the final Test Match which has resulted in the series being drawn. Whilst I would have liked to see England hang on (and I think they lost  by only about 8 runs) in truth the two sides were very equally balanced and a think a draw between the two sides for the series is probably a very fair result.
 
The storm that had swept over the country has fortunately, for us, passed us by and we only experienced the fringes of it. But I think Scotland and the North of England were badly it and a lot of rail services in Scotland were actually cancelled until the storm had passed us by.  The storm was of the type that was quite common in the winter months but quite rare in the summer months but with climate change very much in evidence, we can expect spells of good or bad weather at almost any time these days. Tomorrow might prove to be quite a busy day so I may have an early night to ensure that I awake up refreshed in the morning. 

Yesterday, the weather was rather cloudy, not to say gloomy and I think that a large storm is going to sweep over the country from the Atlantic in the next day or so. Today is a rather different Sunday as some of my usual contacts are busy with other things so after a walk down the hill to collect my Sunday newspaper (if they have sufficient stock which is sometimes a little problematic later in the day), I might busy myself with a tidying job to do. Actually, the day before I found my desk drawer a little difficult to shut because of quite important papers that I store there so I took the opportunity for some spring cleaning and reorganising. Even little things can be difficult to dispose of as I discovered when I found a brand new but unused cheque book with both my own and Meg’s name upon it as we used to share a joint account. So this had to be carefully disposed of via cutting out IDs and getting them shredded and, of course, the shredder had not been emptied for goodness how long so this was another job. As I was having breakfast, there was a long and extended account of the horrific injuries suffered by Palestinians in Gaza where a lot of the victims were children and were supposedly on a safe transit road i.e. declared safe by the Israelis. When the various well researched and documented accounts were put to the Israeli Defence Force, the response nearly always the same to the effect that the IDF took its responsibilities very seriously, that casualties might occur to civilians if they were in a conflict zone (which appears to be the whole of Gaza) and that each incident would be investigated by the competent authorities but, of course, we never hear the result.

After I had breakfasted, I thought I would revert to an earlier pattern fo a Sunday morning so I walked down the hill and then collected my Sunday newspaper. Then and almost on the spur of the moment, I decided to make a detour from the direct way home and, instead, make a journey through the park following the route along which I used to push Meg in her wheelchair. I then espied the park bench upon which Meg and I have sat for literally years (about five in any case) and then sat down on it. I have to say the memory of Meg and I sitting on this bench evoked some of the most powerful emotions of grief I have experienced in the last three months since Meg died. Feeling very sorry for myself, I texted my vey good ex-University of Winchester friend who responded very quickly with a comforting phone call and we have agreed to have a longer chat this evening. Then I looked sideways and saw on an adjacent bench a gentleman who I know is himself widowed and has the most magnificent and sweet-natured labradoodle dog he calls ‘Alfred the Great’ The thing is that my park friend and I always have a host of jokes to tell each other, some a little male-oriented, but after we had exchanged some joke and stories, my mood lightened somewhat and I struck out for home. On the way back, I was delighted to bump into our French friend who is a widow but moving out of the area shortly to be nearer to her daughter. I can fully appreciate the reasons for all of this but I hate losing close friends I have made over the years like this. Nonetheless, I think it is a week or so before she actually moves but she has been very busy both selling her house and the furniture within it.  We are going to have a farewell get-together before she goes and I would not be surprised, knowing our friend like I do, that she throws a ‘farewell to you all’ party in her house before she actually does leave. Then I busied myself making some lunch where I actually cheated a little. I took one large carrot and one half of a potato which I them cut into bite size chunks and then boiled until tender. I then added one of these thicker ‘beef and vegetable’ soups to create a sort of instant stew. My mother-in-law used to call this ‘lobby’ and the internet source does call this ‘Staffordshire lobby’ which is basically a beef stew, traditionally eaten by poorly paid potters in the region, using cheaper cuts of meat along with root vegetables and pearl barley.

These days, I find that I have to keep an eye on the weather so that I can find the most appropriate day for lawn-cutting, general gardening or car washing activities. The old-fashioned gardening books tat I consulted extensively when I was growing a lot of vegetables often started off a chapter with ‘Choose a fine day..’ as though one could.  I am trying to keep my newly acquired car in good condition but my efforts, as well f those of my neighbours, is hampered by the extensive building wok that seems to be going all around us. Before the building proper starts, there seems to be an enormous amount of landscaping, earth moving and drain-laying activities and consequently a fine dust seems to be distributed quite liberally on all of the neighbouring houses, gardens and of course cars. The builders themselves are using a sort of spray mechanism to attempt to alleviate the nuisance caused by the dust problems but this seems to be a drop in the ocean for all the good that it does. As a treat for myself if I do decide to wash the car, I will treat myself to a special program on Sky Arts on the famous tenor, Andrea Bocelli undertaking pilgrimage type journeys and singing appropriate contributions en route. I suspect this is a repeat of a programme I saw some time ago but the programme transmitted on Sky Arts is two hours long so I should be able to find something to enjoy (whilst reading the Sunday newspapers at the same time). There is also ‘Today at the Test’ but I fear that England will certainly be outplayed and will lose the final test but draw the series as a whole.

The evening before yesterday as it was the start of a new month, I spent a certain amount of team doing some financial updating only to discover that I could not get through to my bank account details via the usual credentials on the website. So I was just reconciling myself to hours on the phone when I thought I would try things again in the morning when everything worked just the way it should. I reckon the creaky old system could not cope with updates just after midnight, end of the month and so on. As I was wide awake trying to access my system and not quite in the mood for sleep, I did stay up late and finished off reading the Fiona Phillips book (‘Remember When’) which is an account of her life with Alzheimers. Now I know that the experience of every sufferer is unique but I was struck by the different ways in which news was communicated. In the case of Fiona Phillips because of her public profile no doubt she had the news conveyed to her by a top neurosurgeon personally and after things like lumbar puncture tests. But in the case of Meg, she was initially given an assessment of ‘Mild Cognitive Impairment’ and only much later was the diagnosis of Alzheimers given in the most round-about way and via an undated letter. The Phillips family seemed, according to the book, obsessing about things whereas Meg and I just got on with it and I think with our Music Lounge and then trips out in the wheelchair made a much better fist of it by just ‘getting on with life’ Looking back, I still feel Meg’s quality of life was pretty high compared with fellow sufferers but we did have some rough times when Meg was falling constantly (up to 3-4 times a day) whereas Martin Frizzel (Fiona Phillips husband) seemed to manage to get out to work and go out for a coffee whereas the occasions on which I could leave Meg were limited to a few minutes each week whilst I dashed out to do the shopping as fast as I could leaving her with carers and Meg experiencing the consequent separation anxiety. Nonetheless, some of my friends would like to read the book now that I have finished it but I may re-read some of the critical final chapters as I think it covers events up to March, 2025 (and Meg died on May 10th, 2025). This I actually did do later in the day but I was matching up what was happening to Fiona Phillips with what was happening to Meg at the same time. In the Fiona Philipps case, she was still managing to communicate and even going off on holiday to Italy whereas this had been way beyond Meg for a long time. This led me to consult this blog for the first time that I felt that I needed to utilise a wheelchair (which I had just purchased) and the actual date turned out to be a Sunday, 13th August which is, of course nearly two years ago now. In many ways, the sufferers and carers of dementia patients just have to ‘get on with it’ and Martin Frizzel, the husband of Fiona Phillips, declaims in the book how little is done for dementia patients compared with, for example, cancer patients. He also points out that even the diagnostic pen-and-paper tests for the diagnosis are still the same as 50 years ago. But dementia is more likely to strike as one gets older with the risk, according to the Alzheimer’s Society being about 1 in 4 for general population rising to about 1 in 6 for the over 80’s. Coupled with the fact that a history of migraines can increase the risk for women about six times  plus a history of higher blood pressure in her early 70’s  and the fact that women seem more disposed to develop Alzheimer’s than men then the odds were well and truly stacked against Meg probably many years ago.

Yesterday afternoon, I was hoping that my Droitwich friend might call round but she was feeling under the weather so texted me late in the afternoon to say we might meet later in the weekend. I went to church and got into conversation with an elderly Irish parishioner who I know pretty well. His brother had just died (at a ripe old age, I think) and he had just attended his funeral in Manchester. I mentioned to him that Meg and I had got married in the ‘Holy Name’ church in Oxford Road, Manchester and my parishioner friend told me he had often worshipped in that church in the past. When we got married, the church had bee cleaned up and years of accumulated grime had revealed some glorious coloured stonework but it has probably got all grimy again by now. When I came home and saw a magnificent performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the Proms. We used to play the finale to this in the school orchestra when  I attended Thornleigh College, Bolton in the 1950’s but the actual performance at the Proms was played at a much faster pace than we could achieve and I was only aged about 14 at the time. Then I watched a delayed ‘Today at the Test’  where India undoubtedly had the upper hand and will probably go on to win this final Test at the Oval to draw the series, which is probably a fair overall result.

I recently renewed my Senior Person’s Railcard which gives me a third off fares – at £80.00 for three years, I feel this is actually very good value for money because it is possible to reclaim the cost after only about 1-2 journeys. Of course, I am thinking ahead to my trip up to Yorkshire to see my sister for her birthday at the end of the month. When I renewed my card I was informed that it would take about ten days to deliver but I got an email the other day to say that it is actually on its way. In theory, the ticket inspector ought to examine this every time your ticket is checked but I found that in practice if you evidently look over 65 they actually do not bother very often but you do get the occasional ‘jobs-worth’ who does. You can order a version that just lodges on the ‘Wallet’ app of your phone but I actually do prefer a bit of plastic if ever my phone was mislaid and I can always take a photo of it. 

As the month changes to August, it gave me a certain degree of pleasure to flick our calendars over showing 1^st of the month. We have several of those calendars here you turn blocks over to reveal the correct time and date or ‘perpetual’ calendars. After years of not keeping them up-to-date it is now part of my daily routine (or is a ritual?)  It is not that July was a particularly bad month but the 1^st of a month is always a new ‘accounting’ period for me even though money flows in (and particularly out) at various points throughout the month. I needed to write two or three texts this morning which delayed things a little and I am always anxious to receive news of the injured son of our domestic help who is now out of hospital but has a long period of rehabilitation in front of him. He seems to be receiving well-directed care at the moment but as with things like this, one has to love one day at a time. I have made offers of whatever I can do to help which I fear is precious little at the moment but I may be able to offer a little respite care (which I found so valuable when I was looking after Meg). 

Donald Trump is shouting his mouth off revealing how much money the USA is making from the imposition of tariffs and those on Canada are  now at the level of 35%. Of course, this is economic illiteracy of the highest order because the US government does not make any money from the imposition of tariffs – the importers have to add this to their costs and then pass it on to the consumer who eventually pay the price. If the USA can avoid importing a product in the first place and then manufacture a reasonable substitute, then the tariff can be said to have worked. But this ignores the modern realities of manufacturing life where components may cross e,g, the America-Canada several times before being assembled in to the final product such as a car or a. Truck. It is said that car makers in America are distraught at the moment and the new tariffs can only add to the selling price of their vehicles as well as contributing a further twist to inflation but a few months down the line. I keep on telling myself that surely all of this blow up in Trump’s face (as it were) but the moment never seems to come. Whether you like it or not, Keir Starmer seems to have done a pretty good job in limiting the tariff increases for 10% for the UK as opposed to 35% for Canada and 15% for the EU as a trading block. Trump is nakedly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy and is ‘punishing’ Canada by daring to suggest that they may recognise Palestine as a state in September (together with the UK, France and several other countries) As it turned out, I spent a really interesting morning but it was just a chapter of happy accidents, actually. Before I went out this morning, I treated myself to watching one of the many versions of the Handel aria ‘Waft her, angels, through the skies‘ and really enjoyed one particular version about which more later. Then YouTube deploys an algorithm whereby it ‘knows’ your favourites so what followed this were a couple of Mozart pieces followed by a favourite piece of Bach. This was so enjoyable,  could not resist the temptation for a little mid-morning concert which really elevated my spirit (not that I was feeling depressed or morose).

To avoid the humidity problem, I folded the small light waterproof into a small compartment in my rucksack and then wandered slowly down the hill. I came across my very good Irish friend and we spent quite a lot of time in deep conversation – he is recovering well from a recent operation which pleases me greatly and we always have things to share with each other. Then I made my way towards Waitrose which was practically deserted and treated myself t the ‘free’ coffee available to card holders. I noticed one of the staff who I know pretty well packing provisions into large brown paper bags and I asked her to talk me through the system. It was, apparently, part of an ‘Uber’ scheme where online orders come into the store which are then selected by the staff and put into a holding area from whence they are collected by Uber staff. I was delighted to have all of this explained to me and the staff were more than willing to let me know how it all worked – a form of ‘Click and Collect’ really. I then made my way slowly up the hill and three quarters of the hill noticed a lady walking her dog who I knew by sight. So I tentatively engaged ger in conversation and of course she had often seen me walking Meg up and down in her wheelchair and we were ‘nodding’ acquaintances. As often happens these days, people see me on my own and make a guess – correctly – at recent events and then extend their condolences before they ask mw how. I am coping with things. She was going off on holiday to celebrate her 50^th birthday so I extended my good wishes and struck off for home. Then I noticed my very good next-door neighbour working in his garden so when and had a chat with him if only to let him know that I was still in the land of the living. I then started to concentrate upon my lunch where I serve myself a portion of ‘oily’ fish (mackerel) which I heat up by the simple expedient of immersing in their packaging in some boiling water and then serve on a bed of salad, coleslaw and some baby tomatoes. Finally, I tried something this afternoon which worked well at the time so I thought I would try again. I have a subscription to ‘The Times‘ and the ‘Sunday Times‘ and I telephoned them to cancel my subscription. When I was asked the reason why, I indicated that I was very happy with the paper but after my wife’s death and reduced family income, I would reluctantly have to cancel my subscription. I was then offered a discount of 50% for the next three months which I readily accepted (as I suspected that such an offer might be on the cards) and in a few months’ time, I shall review my subscriptions all over again.

Yesterday the day dawned with one of those days which may develop a few thunderstorms which, I must admit, I would rather fancy to clear the air somewhat. We do not seem to have the thunderstorms or the torrential downpours of rain that many of us, and particularly the gardeners amongst us, would really enjoy. I have shopping duties and a haircut to which to look forward today. There is a lot of talk in the domestic media that Keir Starmer has been ‘bowing to pressure’ in the change of stance towards Gaza when the PM announced that Palestine would be recognised as a state at the United Nations General Assembly in September. But given the horrendous, not to say apocalyptic situation in Gaza, one could equally say that Keir Starmer was correctly interpreting the mood of the elected Labour government and of the country in trying to engineer a solution to the Gaza crisis in this way. Perhaps it is forgotten that Britain used to have a mandate to govern in that region before the state of Israel and was itself subject to attacks between 1940-48 as what are now called terrorist group (of ‘freedom fighters’ if you will) were fighting for the state of Israel to be brought into existence. The Israeli government, despite denials is itself shifting its own position by allowing air drops of food into Gaza although it denies that any starvation is taking place. In the same way that international journalists, including the BBC, are not allowed into Gaza to report first hand on the suffering in that troubled region, then the aircrews of the planes giving relief supplies have also been told that they are not allowed to film the destruction on the ground. Nonetheless, film crews embedded into the relief flights have shown us glimpses of the terrain over which they are flying as the cargo doors are open to release the parachuted supplies of aid.. They themselves have reported, and we have seen in a few seconds of video footage, how the whole of Gaza seems to have been reduced to a pile of concrete rubble as the Israeli Defence Force has been bombing Gaza continuously for some 21 months now.

I am always rather pleased to be getting towards the end of one month and towards another one as August is now upon us. At the end of the month, I need to organise a flying visit to Yorkshire to attend a birthday party for my sister at the very end of the month but I am seeing one of her daughters (i.e. my niece) when she is breaking her journey back from the West Country to see me next Tuesday so we can firm up practical arrangements then. Although quite a distance still separates us, it can only be a good thing that I can be in more regular contact with the Yorkshire branch of the family and I can see them so much regularly than has been possible over the years. But I still more than a little sad that an elderly French neighbour of us is certainly moving out of the area to live near her daughter in Cheshire but she had been a good friend to me and her neighbours and often thrown some memorable ‘street’ parties that we have all enjoyed.

My son called around first this morning after his restorative swim. We needed to discuss arrangements for a family meal which is going to be Meg’s four cousins, my son and daughter-in-law and myself so seven in total. We were going to book online so had some debate whether a booking for seven could be made as the relevent website specified a maximum of six. However, we agreed that my son would phone up the restaurant as soon as they opened and, as I suspected, they were quite happy to accept a booking for seven. My Droitwich friend and I have had some communication by text and telephone and we are trying to sort out a time over the weekend when we might meet, albeit briefly. After all, I bottled some damson gin  for her last weekend but forgot to give her a bottle of it. I went off to do my shopping which was unproblematic and after it was all put away, I sat to wait for our hairdresser to call around. Whilst I was waiting, I decided to look at the various versions on YouTube of ‘Waft her, angels, through the skies’ which was played at Meg’s funeral and is always a bit weepy. When the hairdresser arrived, I asked her to indulge me by viewing a minute or of it and she confessed to me that she, too, had had a very weepy morning. Her brother had died as long ago as last December but now having got over the hurdle of probate she was having to sort through hr brother’s clothes and arrange for this disposal. So we consoled each other in our joint weepiness as we both know where the other is coming from. I displayed some of the remains jewellery on the settee and asked the hairdresser if she would like to select a piece. In fact, she selected a necklace that Meg often wore and she could picture Meg wearing it so was very touched to be given it as a present. But I, too,  am delighted because it is far nicer to have these pieces of jewellery in the hands of someone who will remember Meg each time that she wears it instead of it being stuck in the back of a drawer or taken to a charity shop, In the late afternoon, I cut the back lawn but had to dispose of one or two enormous brambles that were invading the space over the lawn. We have a mass of black currents which the hot weather seems to have brought on very one but the cultivars that we have seem exceptionally spiky so actually picking the brambles is quite a difficult task. Tonight, I am having to get myself organised so that I can watch ‘Today at the Test’ which is the final, and deciding match, in the series. The England captain has an injured shoulder and so has ruled himself out of this game but it appears to have been the most successful of the English bowlers against the Indians in this series so this makes the outcome of this last Test match unusually difficult to predict.

Yesterday, the day dawned a little cooler than usual and I got up just after 6.00am wondering what the day was going to bring. It is quite difficult to know what outerwear to don for my morning walk. Conscious of the fact that a sudden shower might be imminent, I put on some kind of waterproof but the air is so humid at the moment that I find that after my walk up and down the hill I am quite clammy with sweat and even have to change my short and underclothes on occasion. I am sure that the secret is one of those really light but ultimately ‘breathable’ fabrics you can buy so I might need a trip to a camping shop or the men’s outfitters in Bromsgrove to get something like this. The problem does not arise when the weather is colder and sharper but we are living through quite humid days at the moment.

The Trump and Epstein story rumbles on and, from the point of view of Donald Trump, will not just go away, Donald Trump has claimed billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein ‘stole’ prominent accuser Virginia Giuffre and other young women from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Ms Giuffre (who has now dead)  became a household name after she sued Prince Andrew for sexual abuse in August 2021 – saying he had sex with her when she was 17 and had been trafficked by his friend Epstein. Prince Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement with Ms Giuffre but has repeatedly denied the claims and has not been charged with any criminal offences. Donald Trump made his remarks about Ms Giuffre as his administration has faced growing pressure in recent weeks, including from within his ‘MAGA’ base, to release files related to Epstein after he promised to do so during his 2024 presidential campaign. This story seems to get worse and worse for Trump and his MAGA base which had been promised full disclosure of the papers related to the Epstein case once Trump assumed office are now being denied the same and the movement is fracturing over the issue. I follow the latest twists and turns via some news channels available on YouTube and whilst the issue is not discussed very much on this side of the Atlantic, on the other side of ‘the pond’ there is a continuing interest in the story. The polling organisation have performed an ‘end of term’ report on the Labour government after a year in office and the figures very broadly say that about only 30% approve of the Government’s performance but 50% disapprove. The cost of living remains the biggest grumble but immigration is one issue that may drive some ex-Labour voters towards Nigel Farage’s Reform party. In all of this, the Conservative party remains in the doldrums so here we have a situation in which the electorate are not enthusiastic about either of the two major parties and we are entering a period of very fractured politics which may persist for some time.

Later in the morning I met up with old Pilates friend from years ago. The thing is that we go back a long way (probably 9-10 years) and use to lie on adjacent mats in our Pilates classes. As we had had both taught maths or statistics then we both had something in our occupational lives in common and we often joked with each other using our shared knowledge. Seven years ago, we both had to undergo surgery at about the same time and we used to speculate with each other whether our we pass each other on a hospital trolley at some time. We did give each other a lot of mutual support at the time. mainly by text message and we both recovered from our problems. When my friend needed to move to a class on a different day so when we did meet up with each it was like ‘ships passing in the night’ At he height of COVID, though, she discovered a public footpath which ran near the bottom of our garden so  she came along to help me celebrate with a glass of champagne – I needed to serve it to her across a barbed wire fence in a seed tray attached to a long pole which is the nearest we could get to each other. But since then, we have both lost our spouses, my friend about five years go and me some eleven+ weeks ago. So, we had a lot of practical, social and emotional things to talk to each other about and we stayed chatting over our cup of coffee for over two hours. My friend is going to off to the Sidcup folk festival next week and is engaged in a lot of things when she returns but we will try and squeeze in another coffee. On my home I stopped off at a charity shop and bought a covered coffee container which I may use to give me a supply of cold drinks during the night. Then I bumped into my Italian friend and we spent a good 20 minutes chatting in the sunshine on her garden seat. She is trying to sell her house and then intends to move away to live near to her daughter which is a source of some sadness for me. I was so late when I got back as it was about 2.30 so I made myself an omelette filled with onions and tomatoes and served on some salad. Then I very virtuously cut the grass on the front greened area although to be honest it had hardly grown an inch. To my very pleasant surprise, I have a plum tree in the front which had one long prominent branch sticking out and practically touching the ground. It was laden with plums and I picked fifteen really big, ripe and juicy specimens and I estimate it is about 2lb of fruit. And not a single had been attacked by wasps which very often happens with particularly ripe and juicy fruit. Amazingly enough, there dd not seem to any more fruit on any other part of the tree but I am glad about this year’s crop – I seem to remember I did not get anything last year but fruit trees are like that sometimes. I also have a few apples coming along but bot as many as a few years ago.

The day before yesterday, I gave myself a sort of early night by getting to bed at 9.00pm and then starting to watch the program on the origins of humanity called ‘Human’ which, in this episode, was concerned to restore the reputation of the Neanderthals which was another branch off the evolutionary tree and from whom we still possess a few of the genes in our DNA. Having fallen asleep, I then awoke and thought that I would watch ‘NewsNight’ which turned out to be an extraordinary programme. Donald Trump was in Scotland and perhaps, therefore, not surrounded by his usual Washington côterie. But what was so amazing was that he chose to criticise and even to contradict the Israeli leader, Netanyahu, about the starvation happening in Gaza. Normally as has been pointed out by commentators, you could not put a cigarette paper of difference between the American and the Israeli positions but it does appear that the images of starvation of children is starting to ‘get’ to Trump and he feels as though he must act.  One factor is that two Israeli human rights organisations have said the country is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In reports published on Monday, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said Israel was carrying out ‘coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip’. The two groups are the first major voices within Israeli society to make such accusations against the state during nearly 22 months of war against Hamas. Keir Starmer is calling a Cabinet meeting (unusual for this time of year) and is working on a peace plan within Gaza and it looks as though Starmer might be working with the tacit approval of Trump which is fascinating. At the same time, Trump has announced that he is losing patience with Russia and has reduced the amount of time he has ‘given’ Russia to end the war in the Ukraine from 50 days to 10. So it looks as though some of the tectonic plates in world geopolitics may be moving. There was another extraordinary story in last night’s NewsNight. Under the impact of AI (Artificial Intelligence) it appears that a sizeable chunk of the student body is using ChatGPT to write their assignments and even their online exams. Since COVID online examinations have become the norm, then it is child’s play to use tools such as these and it means that any originality in the thought process is being lost. But the universities are having to cope with this situation as they cannot discipline the majority of their students. And even a most casual search in Google reveals the existence of software which is itself designed to detect AI generated content. So one example is and advert for ZeroGPT which claims to be  a free and highly accurate GPTZero detector tool designed for AI-generated content to detect any text generated by ChatGPT. I must say that I am glad not to be a university in today’s climate caught up in these AI wars where one large language model (to use the terminology) is used to detect the output of another. Even in my teaching days we always knew that badly written and grammatically incorrect assignments were more likely to be original than a more polished product written by a fellow student.

Later I the morning, I walked down the hill in order to meet up with my two sets of (quite unrelated) friends in Wetherspoons. This all worked out as planned but after my coffee dates, I went to a local ‘health and beauty’ type store where I bought a special inhaler type mask and some Olbas oil as I had been advised to do by the physician associate I saw yesterday, But I did not have a  great deal of time after I had walked home and then had to prepare for my Pilates class. This was as jolly as usual and I always go to my Pilates class by car to save some time. When I arrived back home, I was delighted to see that my son and daughter-in-law had paid me a visit and had let themselves in and were busying doing some hoovering. As our domestic help will be so preoccupied not to mention being busy looking after her son who is in hospital, we thought it would be a case of ‘all hands on deck’ to try to keep the house looking clean and tidy in the absence of our domestic help for a week or so. My daughter-in-law has only a few days ago finally retired from her teaching post and we had a lot of things to catch up on. We discussed Mandy’s retirement events in some detail and then some of the dilemmas that are facing our domestic help in her new position at the residential home where she works for most of the week. One thing that we needed to sort out in our diaries was a day when my cousins (actually Meg’s) could visit from Cheltenham and we have found a mutually agreeable date in mid August which being a Wednesday will suit us all and we will probably go out to a local gastropub/restaurant which has a good reputation. I was also the recipient of some good news earlier in the day. One of my nieces from Yorkshire had  texted me earlier in the day as she was off to a week-long Christian convention in the West country and wondered whether she could pop into see me in a week’s time when she was on her way back. Evidently,  I am always delighted to see my niece whenever the opportunity arises so we have a ‘date’ for next Tuesday where I can prepare some risotto for us both. She called in last year to see us and evidently, Meg was still with us at that stage but I can take the opportunity to make some advance arrangements for my next trip up to Yorkshire. It is my sister’s birthday at the end of August so I and the rest of the family are making some plans for a birthday celebration for my sister which conveniently happens to fall on a Sunday. It will be great to see the rest of the family again and then I may be able to start to make some plans for a tentative holiday in September, probably in Spain, although I realise that as August is nearly upon us, I had better put my skates on.

Yesterday was, of course, the finals of the Women’s European Cup in which England were playing Spain. Spain scored the first goal mid-way through the first half and England equalised in the second half. Then, even after extra time, the scores remained 1:1 and so we came to penalties. England missed their first but the Spanish sent one wide and two were brilliantly saved by Hannah Hampton who is almost a local girl as she was brought up in Studley, neat Redditch. Studley is best known for a local stately home. Coughton Court around whose grounds Meg and I could stroll even in the times of the pandemic and we passed through it on the way to Alcester which we visit for its charity shops and general ‘villagey’ feel. So returning to the football, England won the match and the Cup on penalties but in truth, the Spanish were the better team and the most dominant throughout the match. It was one of those occasions when the best team actually lost but not many UK commentators would dare to say that. As the Spanish team members came up to receive their losers’ medals, not even one of them could manage a half smile and they had their (quite natural) disappointment etched on their faces. So at least, life returns to normal now the football competition is over. As opposed to last week, this week seems pretty empty on the planning calendar although I am looking forward to the end of the month and the new month when financial things ought to happen. If the weather is fine, there will be no excuse for not mowing the grass and doing some other gardening jobs that are crying out to be done.

On the diplomatic front, it is said that Keir Starmer is to try to persuade Trump when he is over here for a golfing trip that something dramatic needs to be done over the dire starvation situation in Gaza (which the Israelis either deny or claim is the fault of Hamas, unlikely though that is) The clue to unravelling some of the conflict may be related to the time that the Israeli parliament goes into excess. If Netanyahu were to concede an inch at the moment, then the extreme nationalists in his coalition government would withdraw their support and bring down the government and Netanyahu with it. But once the Israeli parliament is in recess for the summer, then the Israeli premier has somewhat more room for manoeuvre so the next few days may prove to be critical. Some of the same considerations might apply to the UK parliament as well because the long holidays are starting and the government is left in the hands of fairly junior ministers whilst their senior bosses go off to enjoy several weeks of vacation. August is sometimes known as the ‘silly season’ because fairly trivial events can dominate the headlines whilst other events (protests outside the hotels that accommodate illegal immigrants) could come to the fore again as they did last summer.

The day today seems to have flown by. I walked slowly down into town but stopped to have a lengthy chat with my Irish friend who, very virtuously, was tending his front garden. I had a fairly lengthy chat if only because I had just received the very unwelcome news that one of the sons of our domestic help had experienced a bad industrial accident wand was recovering in hospital. I texted her to the effect that she take as much off from her duties towards us as was needed so that she could concentrate upon her son. But I am anxiously awaiting more up-to-date news as you might imagine. I had a coffee in Waitrose but they had no copies of ‘The Times’ left in store so I ventured out onto the High Street to get a newspaper, get some money out of an ATM and make a flying visit around the local Salvation Army charity shop. On my way home, my Irish friend was still tending his garden so we had another chat on the way home. Whilst I was with my friend, I received a telephone call from a Physician Associate because when she heard of my fairly mild but grumbling symptoms she thought I needed a physical examination. To this I agreed but I undertook the journey by car and I think I may have a blocked eustachian tube complaint which is probably treated with some Olbas oil which is basically eucalyptus oil with a few additives and, I was told, readily available. When I get down into town tomorrow, I will purchase some and there is Amazon as a fall back but I am sure it will be cheaper on the High Street. Then I made myself a light lunch which was basically some lentil rice cakes which I am now purchasing as they are so low in carbohydrate and, in particular salt. I followed this up with a quickly improvised fruit salad and ice-cream and then tidied up some photos. I have an ‘old’ Pilates friend who used to share the mat adjacent to mine but she has moved her class to a different day so I do not see her as much as I used to do. But we have arranged a meeting over coffee for next Wednesday. She lost her husband in the last year so we not only have a lot in common but there are all kinds of practical information that we might share with each other (and there are some questions I want to ask her as well) We need to have our coffee date quickly because she is off to a folk-singing singing festival where she performs regularly each year as part of a ukulele band.

There is a quite a rich programme of TV watching on this evening starting at about 6.30 and carrying on until 10.00 so I need to ensure that various domestic jobs are fitted in beforehand. Monday night is often quite a good night on the TV and I suspect that the TV schedulers realise that the watching audience are not going out on a Monday evening and therefore give us somewhat better offerings than is available on other nights. I also have a theory that the 8.00-9.00 slot is not filled generally with quality offerings (because middle class BBC and ITV executives realise that many parents of a similar ilk are busy putting their children at this time?)