The striking image that greeted us this morning was that of illegal migrants int the US shackled together and being led onto a military plane before they were deported. Two plane loads of would-be migrants took off or Guatemala and there were plans for a third one to arrive in Mexico but the Mexicans’ refuted to allow it to land on their territory. This, of course, is exactly the image that many people in the US would like to see and possibly the same is true for the UK as well. There is a certain schizophrenia at work here because whilst on the one hand, the US decries the entrance of thousands of illegal migrants, on the other hand it relies heavily upon them to work in the fields picking agricultural produce as well as a range of associated jobs in the food preparation industries. It may be that such scenes become so common place that they cease to be considered newsworthy but until the Trump presidency has altered all of that, Trump in his first day in office declared illegal immigration a national emergency, tasking the US military with aiding border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum and taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on American soil.

Some of us might have hoped that some of Trump’s nominees for the principal posts in his administration would not survive the scrutiny of the Senate which is charged to agree the nominations for each post. The most controversial was Trump’s choice of Defence secretary. Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s controversial choice for US defence secretary, has been confirmed for the job. The 44-year-old ex-veteran and former Fox News host narrowly secured the top Pentagon post with vice president JD Vance casting the 51-50 tie-breaking vote. It is only the second time in history a vice president has broken a tie for a cabinet nominee. In 2017, then vice president Mike Pence was called in to break a tie to confirm Mr Trump’s previous pick of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. However, during the confirmation hearing, which was disrupted by three protesters, Mr Hegseth was accused of lacking the competence for the job. Hours before the vote, Democrat after Democrat took to the Senate floor to object. One senator said during the debate there are few Trump nominees as ‘dangerously and woefully unqualified as Hegseth’. Nonetheless, he has evidently scraped through by the skin of his teeth and we now have to see how energetically he is engaged on one of first tasks which is to use the military resources at his disposal to engage in the forced removal of potentially millions of illegal migrants (some of whom have been in the USA having been in employment for years and paid their taxes for decades).

On Saturday morning, it was a very bright and clear day but somewhat cold. I wrapped up Meg well in her blankets and pushed her down the hill as far as Wetherspoons where we met up with our three regular cafe friends. The road was a little icy in places particularly when the road or footpath lay in shade so I had to be especially careful not to slip. On our way back up the hill, I wondered if I might see the first signs of any snowdrops or even crocuses but I was not sufficiently close to any one’s garden to ascertain whether this was the case. I needed to home just after 12.00pm because the partner of one of Meg’s carers was due to call around to have a look over our roof. There are quite a few little repair jobs that need to be done on it but he has a mate who has been a roofer for thirty years so between them I am sure they will do a reasonable job. The pair worked as a team to give the garden a bit of a blitz in the autumn so they have worked on the property before and put in a solid day’s work.
This afternoon, I watched a Lucy Worsley programme on Queen Mary, often known as ‘Bloody Mary’ The programme was interesting because like a previous programme on Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot, Lucy Worley seems to make it a speciality of hers to go against the popular ‘received wisdom’ and to regress the balance if she feels that history has not dealt with them kindly. She makes the valid point as a historian that often a particular view of history is promulgated because it suits the political interests of the current elite and this is particularly true of the conflict between the Tudors and the Stuarts where Richard III tends to be vilified (with even Shakespeare joining in on the act). I quite enjoy her presentations, but I can imagine that there are always some who do not wish to have their preconceptions challenged in such a way.

News from the commercial world is that WH Smith is in secret talks to sell its entire high street business in Britain more than 230 years after it opened its first shop in central London. Sky News has revealed that the listed retail group, which has a market capitalisation of almost £1.5bn, has been in negotiations with a number of prospective buyers of the division for several weeks. WH Smith will confirm the plan to the London Stock Exchange on Monday morning. The company’s high street arm comprises roughly 500 stores, employing about 5,000 people across the country. The thing about W H Smiths is that has been such a feature of the British High Street for so many years, it is very difficult to imagine life without it. It was always an excellent source of all items of stationery but had grown increasing expensive over the years. In Bromsgrove, it now houses the Post Office which was another venerable High Street institution and one can imagine that if it meets its demise, it will be one more blow to the British High Street which is now dominated by charity shop, coffee bars and little else.

At the moment, the whole world seems to be working out how to deal with Donald Trump now that he has hit the ground running with his presidency, mark 2.0. In particular, Keir Starmer is angling for an early opportunity to meet with the incoming president but this is unlikely to be granted. The British, in particular, often speak of the ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the USA but the Americans hardly ever do so unless prompted by the British which probably means that we are growing less and less relevant in American eyes. According to ‘The Independent‘, sources in the Trump campaign suggest that the President-elect is considering rejecting Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, an almost unprecedented move that would be a huge diplomatic insult. Peter Mandelson has been suggested by Keir Starmer because of his vast experience in international affairs, not least being at one time the European Commissioner for Trade between 2004 and 2008 but this fact alone may him look suspicious in the eyes of Donald Trump who was recently warning the Europeans about the tariffs he intends to impose. Trump addressed the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland by a special video link. One reporter has said that he was in a packed hall but that the mood in the hall went from laughter to silence within seconds as Trump enunciated his America First policy with his typical ebullience. If carried out as threatened, this will be one of the biggest disruptions to global world trade for years.

I am engaged in a domestic experiment at the moment. Following some advice on websites, I have turned down the thermostatic valves in the rooms in the house that we are not using to their frost setting and also tweaked the timings that the central heating runs in the house from 9 hours day to 6 hours a day. In theory, this simple move may save me £50-£70 a month or so. Apart from the desire to save unnecessary expenditure, the lifestyles that Meg and I are following these days have altered and so the changes to our central heating should reflect this. Meg is put to bed by her carers at 7.00 each evening and as I get up at 6.00am I am going to bed an hour earlier, starting at 9.00pm so there is no point in heating the whole house for an hour between 9.00pm-10pm in the evening. Of course, times have changed and, for decades, Meg used to start to go to bed at 10.00pm and listen to the news, and sometimes Newsnight, as we were getting ready for bed. But out circumstances have changed so it makes a lot of sense to do a ‘reset’ of our central heating timings for time to time. I seem to remember that in the past, we always had the. central heating turn off at 9.00am in the morning or even earlier as we were both leaving the house to go to work well before 9.00am. Our preferred energy supplier, Octopus, has an informative website that allows you to monitor and adjust settings and tariffs so the effects of my changes should be easy to assess. I may know even know the results within a day and certainly within the week. I have built up a small reserve with the energy supplier so that if we were to have another particularly cold blast, we would have the reserve to cater for this but in the meantime, the temperature this morning has risen to 10° Celsius which is quite a lift but we have a huge transatlantic storm about to batter the northerly regions of the country and even a rare red warning (danger to life) has been issued by the weather authorities for those living in Northern Ireland and Scotland. In view of all of this, I asked the advice of the two care workers who were attending Meg this morning whether it was or not to venture outside with the wheelchair. Although the temperature was markedly higher than a few days it was so gusty and with threats of squally rain that I took the care workers’ advice and decided not to make out a trip today. Instead, my son and I got my EE accounts in full view by using the app (I had been using the website which gave me a very incomplete picture) Then I made a phone call to EE to pay off the remaining balance on my newish iPhone 16 which although it took a chunk out of my savings did have the advantage of reducing my monthly bill quite substantially which is the name of the game these days.

In the late morning, I got a call from one of the District nurses to take another blood sample from Meg. I suspect that our doctor is worried about Meg’s hydration levels and I too share this concern but it is quite difficult to get Meg to take fluids these days. I am using a wide-brimmed cup rather than a feeding beaker and also make sure that Meg has sufficient yogurts, mousses and similar preparations which is one way I use to get minimal amounts of fluid into Meg. If I had not specified otherwise, I am pretty sure the doctor would have had Meg in hospital to administer some fluids intravenously but we have collectively ruled out visits to hospital A&E departments under the present circumstances. This afternoon, we are listening to Thursday night’s ‘Question Time’ where the audience attention is devoted both to the sequelae of the conviction of the murderer of three young schoolgirls in Southport during the summer as well as the utterings of Trump mark 2.0. The Met Police Chief Constable Sir Mark Rowley is reported as saying that ‘There are thousands of young men online who are obsessing about violence. …They are bouncing between videos of school shootings, other gruesome acts – some of it by terrorist groups, some of it nothing at all to do with terrorist groups – and it is the obsession with violence that is driving some young men to do horrific matters…. If you are lost in your bedroom and you are grazing on a diet of American school shooting materials, ISIS beheadings, extreme right-wing propaganda… material that gives you tactics for use of knives and building explosives, it is horrific and that should not be in kids bedrooms, but it is,’ he said.

Yesterday, and for the last few days, I have decided to give myself a sort of financial makeover now that Christmas is well and truly behind us and whilst the winter is certainly not over, the month of January seems to be proceeding apace and there are just a few hints that Spring might be in the air. For example, I notice that in Waitrose when I go into collect my newspaper, the Valentine’s day cards are starting to appear although this event is still three weeks away. As an old friend of mine who I used to see when he was out walking his Jack Russell terriers, he confided to me the name of his first girlfriend so I used to send him a Valentine card each year, with disguised writing, and the message that the memory was still strong of days of passion spent together (one did not have the opportunity for nights of passion in those days in the late 1950’s) So in the spirit of looking forward and doing some planning for the months ahead, I thought I would treat February as a special case and avoid spending any money whatsoever on either Amazon or eBay which I have been wont to do over the months. I think there are some items which are certainly worth buying more cheaply through Amazon (and eBay) providing it is done cheaply and judiciously and therefore save the shoe leather trailing round shops but more particularly the petrol in getting to the store in the first place. It is also probably the case that some things are more expensive in Amazon who trade on the fact that there is a general assumption that they will be cheaper, which is not always the case. It is also true that particularly if one has taken out a Prime membership where delivery costs are reduced to zero, there can be a temptation to impulse buy. So as we are approaching February, this will be an interesting case as I will keep meticulous financial records for that month to see if any expenditures can be pruned. I would not say that I spent great amounts on Amazon and always feel a touch of regret when I do but the amount spent on Amazon by the great British public is amazing. When I did some research, I discovered that in 2023, about three in ten online shoppers in the United Kingdom (UK) spent 50 to 100 British pounds on Amazon.co.uk on average every month. 26 percent of surveyed UK consumers spent over 200 British pounds, on average. These are quite extraordinary figures and I have often wondered whether an ‘online sales tax’ would be a source of much needed revenue for the government, even if it was confined to just a token contribution of 50p or £1 spent on each ‘delivery’ made. Comparable figures for eBay are hard to come by and the picture is muddied as there are a large tranche of costumers who probably sell as much as they buy, making their expenditure in this direction essentially neutral. Nor can we ignore Facebook’s Market Place where only global figures are available but these are staggering. Up to 40% of Facebook’s 3.07 billion monthly active users shop on Marketplace and estimated 491 million or 16% of active users log in to Facebook for the sole purpose of shopping on Facebook Marketplace. But personally, I do not use (or ever intend to use) Facebook in any case.

The day proceeded in a fairly chaotic way as I had received a text last night (to which I assented) whether I could assist a single carer when they were scheduled to turn up at 8.50 – an hour later than usual. In fact the young Asian male worker who we often use turned up about 25 minutes late because the previous call had turned out to be much more complicated and time consuming than the 30 minutes allowed. I had given Meg some little pots of yogurt to sustain her as she was a bit inclined to be agitated first thing in the morning and I suspected that she needed some food inside her. When the carer arrived, we got Meg ready between us and then I fed her some porridge and set off to do my weekly shopping whilst the care worker undertook his ‘sitting’ duties (Meg fortunately being asleep) I was assiduous in my shopping to only buy the things I absolutely knew that I needed and was delighted both to half my shopping bill and get it home and unpacked with the assistance of the carer. Meg was very sleepy the whole of the day but I took delivery of the new air-controlled mattresses that had been ordered for us. Then I phoned the District Nurse team and a few hours later, a couple from the team came and fixed up the new (air-flow) mattress for me. I took the opportunity to take the former mattress and install it on my camp bed which I have next to Meg. I need to phone them up and ask them to take it away but in the meantime with my back in a rather parlous condition having picked Meg off the floor countless times, I think I have a good use for it. Then later in the afternoon, we had a call from a company that specialises in pest control as we have a firm suspicion that the leak we had a fortnight ago was caused by squirrel damage and we also suspect that we know the place in the roof where they gained access – so this needs fixing as well.

There is news that Sainsbury’s is going to cut thousands of jobs and is getting rid of their in-store cafes and also that Santander (which happens to the bank I bank with) is thinking of quitting the High Street. Whether this means they just concentrate on online banking or pull out of the UK is a detail that I will have to try to discern. So the British economy is showing all the signs of bumping along the bottom and although not quite in a death spiral, the gloomy economic news always seems to be outweighing the good.

Yesterday, there was still a lot of concern being expressed in the media about the apparent failure o the authorities to prevent the murder of the three young schoolchildren in Southport during the summer by a deranged teenager. This unhappy individual was well known to several agencies including the anti-terrorism programme called ‘Prevent’ as it looked as though none of the dots had been joined up. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has announced a wide ranging review from which, no doubt, and belatedly some governmental policy will emerge to deal with this problem. The root of the problem seems to be both we think about and actually define ‘terrorism’ as the young adolescent concerned, despite using the internet for a range of malevolent ends including the manufacture of the nerve poison ricin was not the adherent of a particular ideology and therefore well outside the definition of ‘terrorist’ The governmental bodies are trying to hastily rectify this omission but disturbed adolescent boys sitting in front of their computer do not fall within the way that we normally think of as ‘terrorist’. If we defined ‘terrorist’ as any individual who for whatever reason is contemplating or committing acts that terrorise, then we might get a bit nearer to the nub of the problem but as several newspapers have been pointing out, extending the definition of ‘terrorist’ in this way brings perhaps thousands of disturbed male adolescents with access to the internet within the purview of the authorities and as well as raising the questions of what practically can be done about it by police and judicial authorities. Just in passing, I might point out that Donald Trump in his recent outpourings and a slew of judicial orders is now defining the drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia as terrorist organisations and if we were to accept this nee elasticity of the term, then ‘terrorism’ become anything pf which the government forcefully disapproves which is quite a challenge to the concepts that lie at the heart of a liberal democracy. Incidentally, I do not think Trump was necessarily wrong in this respect but, by the same token, it is a bit of a stretch, to define the USA as a liberal democracy these days. The pardoning of the 1500 Capitol invaders by Donald Trump which is conflating some bystanders with those armed with weapons inflicting real harm to police officers is even causing concern to some Republicans. It remains an interesting question whether any of these 1500 cases of an official pardon will be challenged in the courts and who will bring the challenge in any case? No doubt, this will play out in the weeks ahead. My quick research on this subject reveals that for those with pending charges, it means the Department of Justice has to drop the charges. For those who had already been convicted, a pardon will not erase their criminal record — only expungement does that. The pardoned individual still has to ask the court to expunge their record. The pardon does restore rights, like voting or holding public office or having access to firearms.

A bit of a counter blast to the Trump presidency went viral today. In a post inauguration church service, a female bishop called Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded with Trump thus from the pulpit:
‘In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in democratic, republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.’ Turning her attention to asylum seekers she continued to explain ‘the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings and those who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals..I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. …And that you help those who are fleeing war and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here…Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.’ Her comments came after Mr Trump promised to carry out the biggest deportation in US history and his executive order stating the government will recognise only two sexes. Trump looked at the floor, scowled and his face was like thunder as he muttered to his aides. Afterwards we got the Trump counter blast which was as vituperative as they come. In a late-night post on his social media platform Truth Social, he called Bishop Budde a ‘radical left hardline Trump hater’ and said she was ‘nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart… She brought her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way… Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job. She and her church owe the public an apology.’ And to cap it all, Republican congressman Mike Collins shared a video of the sermon on X (where else?) writing: ‘The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.’

Today, I wheeled Meg down into town so that I could pick up my copy of the newspaper. Our domestic help had called around instead of Friday and she was pleased to see that Meg seemed to be recovering from her chest infection and was coming out of herself a little. I received a phone call from the SALT team wanting to make an appointment to see Meg to see if they help with her swallowing of fluids but this clashed with the time I have my shopping ‘slot’ tomorrow so I had to ask them to make a reappointment time. I also received a message coming round to service Meg’s hospital bed next week. We are looking forward to the delivery of a new specialised mattress tomorrow which may help prevent the development of bed sores, so this is truly to be welcomed. So at the moment, lots of services seem to be activated the only frustrating thing people that when people ring, they only give it about 4-5 rings and by the time I get to the relevant phone the caller has not remained on the line.

Yesterday, Trump issued a slew of executive orders as he promised that h would. One was an order to rescind many of Joe Biden’s own executive orders. Some of the most noteworthy are the following:
-Pardoning the January 6th protestors who led the attack on the Capital Building 4 years ago ( and some 1500 o them at that, including some sentenced to more than 15 years for a ‘seditious attack’)
-Many foreign policy announcements such as ‘pardoning’ Israeli citizens who have committed acts of violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank
-Restoring the death penalty
-Reinstating TikTok
-Government and federal workers ordered back to work in the office
-Cost of living to be made a priority
-Gender and equality- only two sexes are recognised
-Drug cartels declared to be terrorist organisations
-World Health Organisation- intention to withdraw
-Paris Climate Change agreement – America to withdraw

No doubt, there are many details that have been missed but that is quite enough to be going on with. Trump himself promised that he would be ‘A dictator on Day 1’ and has lived up to his promise. Many of the executive orders are of the type ‘intention to’ e.g., withdrawing from the WHO but when this is going to actually take effect will. no doubt unwinds in the hours and days ahead. I noticed with a degree of pleasure that Matthew Parris in ‘The Times’ has come out with both guns blazing, in effect saying that Donald Trump was the equivalent of dog excrement on one’s shoe and should never be trusted. Meanwhile politicians of every hue including our own Foreign Secretary, David Lammie. are creeping up to Trump in a manner which suggests they are completely unprincipled and are subjecting themselves to American hegemony. In the meanwhile, Elon Musk has been condemned in the liberal media for giving what might be interpreted as a sort of Nazi salute, which admittedly is susceptible to a degree of interpretation. But Musk has allied himself with extremely right ring groups, individual (such as Tommy Robinson) and parties (such as Alternative to Democracy in Germany) Naturally this is dismissed as a liberal witch hunt against him but we are only on Day 1 of the Trump presidency and what else is to follow?

Today has been what you might call an ‘itsy-bitsy’ kind of day. The weather was fairly mild, even for January, and so I managed to get Meg down the hill and into Wetherspoons. There I indulged in an egg, cheese and bacon breakfast muffin with refillable drinks of hot chocolate – all for £3.77 which is about what we paid for one cup of coffee in Waitrose. Then after we got Meg back up the hlll there was a phone call from the doctor who was worried about Meg’s sodium levels after her blood test yesterday. This is an indication that Meg needs hydration but I find it quite difficult to get fluids into Meg these days. However, the SALT (Speech and Language Therapist) gave me a very good tip yesterday which i think is working and that is to use a wide brimmed mug (of which just happen to have one) instead of. feeding beaker as she thought that this might be easier. My first efforts in this direction have been more encouraging. Then I took delivery of a collection of Horlicks which I had ordered over the internet as I cannot obtain in either Aldi or Waitrose. The principal thing for which we were geared up this afternoon who eventually turned up at about 3.00pm.He took all o the detailed measurements and indicated that the job would be handed over to the insurance company designated repairers(s) as it is going to need a plaster skim in our dining room ceiling and practically the whole of the bottom half of our hall to be redecorated. The bad news from our point of view is that the leak might have been caused by the gnawing of a rodent and I did see a squirrel bouncing about on the roof in the autumn so we we are going to have to get a Pest Control firm to assess and get rid of any unwanted visitors before we have the roof checked over to see that there are no remaining points of ingress. My son and I think we might have a clue where an animal might have entered but I am having the partner of one of our carers and his mate who is a roofer by trade check over things. Before my son left his office we spent a certain amount of time accessing legacy accounts to see if we had any money left in them (which we don’t). Finally the carers came 15 minutes earlier than they were scheduled so the whole afternoon was a bit messed up. I had made Meg a sort of kedgeree without meaning to but I may repeat the experiment. I poached some smoked haddock fillets in milk for 7 minutes and then removed the fish before adding some parsley sauce mixtures and bulking it up with powdered potato. I then returned the fish to the pot and broke it up into much smaller pieces (for Meg’s benefit) before serving it up late in the afternoon with a baked potato and some green beans.

Th political debate has centred this afternoon over the sequelae of the court appearance of the very disturbed adolescent responsible for the killing of three schoolgirls and wounding even more which happened in Southport in the summer. As the disturbed adolescent was known to several agencies, the question is raised whether the public should have been warned about this dangerous individual. But the government counter argument is that any prior release of information would have prejudiced a fair trial (and Keir Starmer as an ex Director of Public Prosecutions would have been very alert of the difficulties and dangers here) The government is now of the mind that a lone but evidently disturbed adolescent should be regarded as a ‘terrorist’ and treated as one. There are tremendously difficult areas of public policy involved here but I wonder if one practical suggestion would be if all of the concerned parties to put their fears and submissions before a judge who would then decide what kind of information should be released to the general public (informing them of potential dangers) without prejudicing a trial.

Yesterday when I looked at the calendar on getting up, I noticed it was Martin Luther King day in the United States. By a cruel twist of fate, the date happened to coincide with the day when Donald Trump is due to be inaugurated for the second time. Trump also promised to sign close to 100 executive orders on his first day in office and said he would ensure that ‘the curtain closes on four long years of American decline’ adding: ‘We are going to give them the best first day, the biggest first week and the most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history.’ It seems that the whole MAGA movement is now mainstream American and has lost the toxic feel which it used to have. I wondered why the date of January 20th had been chosen for Martin Luther King day and the explanation is that it is actually a movable feast and is celebrated in the third Monday in each January on the date which falls closest to his actual birthday. I wondered if the date had been chosen to celebrate his famous ‘I have a Dream’ speech but this was actually delivered on a day in April. I have awoken to a temperature of 0° Celsius but it is anticipated to rise to 5° later in the day. We had no real plans in prospect for today but as the temperature today was not too cold and there was no biting wind to speak of, we walked down the hill later in the morning to collect our newspaper. When we got back, we had just finished the cup of soup that we had to warm ourselves up when a nurse turned up from our local GP practice. She was here for the sole purpose of obtaining a blood sample from Meg which the doctor had ordered and what was on order was a full blood analysis in which, no doubt, they might be looking at liver and kidney function as well as checking that Meg’s chest infection has been successfully treated. Yesterday, I received a telephone nurse from the District Nurse who had called around to make an assessment of the pressure sore that had been developing around Meg’s heel. As she was in the house, she asked if she could assess the type of mattress that Meg has on her hospital bed which is now in our downstairs lounge. When she viewed this, she was of the view that Meg probably needed a more specialist mattress that would help prevent the build up of pressure sores and when she got back to her base, she was going to explore the options and make a recommendation for an enhanced mattress. The upshot of the telephone message that I received was that a new mattress would be delivered to us this Thursday and, once delivered, I then needed to phone the District Nursing team would then install it and commission it, no doubt. This was very good news for us indeed and I was very pleased that the District Nursing team had acted so promptly. Having said that, pressure sores can be so problematic if neglected so it is pleasing that this potential problem is being treated seriously and addressed by a new mattress. I think the new mattress will be an AirFlow mattress and will have a unit attached to it to keep air blowing through it. The care agency manager had put himself on duty this morning and, as they were short staffed, I was acting as his helper this morning (as I helped the care worker last night put Meg to bed) The manager informed me that the majority of his ‘service users’ had these mattresses deployed for them so he was not surprised that one was forthcoming. Just before lunch, the two care workers arrived to make Meg comfortable and one of them helped me to get some food inside Meg (which I finished off afterwards, complete with some mousse). To complete the round up of medical services, just as the care workers arrived I got a phone call from the SALT (‘Speech and Language Therapist’) professional who was collecting up-to-date details of Meg’s condition. The phone call was quite long and detailed and it appears that I am already doing most of what the specialist is recommending. She indicated that one of her colleagues would try to get to see Meg either this week or next week so that they could make their own assessment of Meg’s swallowing reflexes. As it stands, it seems that I can get soft liquid type foodstuffs into Meg (such as yogurts, mousses and ice-creams) but more normal liquids such as tea are a bit more problematic. But, again, I am relieved that this problem is being addressed and taken seriously.

The afternoon built up to the climax of the inauguration of Donald Trump (for the second time).To the actual ceremony itself, I can scarcely bring myself to watch the razzmatazz and it sometimes seems a little corny compared with British ceremonial. But no doubt attention till focus on two issues immediately after the swearing in. First there will be the inaugural address and Trump will probably make the most bloodcurdling threats which is his trademark. Then he has promised to sign 100 executive orders ‘on his very first day in office’ which could mean either today or tomorrow. These we will have to see but will probably involve trade sanctions against all and sundry plus the intention to deport millions of ‘illegal’ migrants. These number about 14 million at the moment and are they all to be deported practically overnight? In the next few days, we shall see how the rhetoric matches up with practical reality. Immigrant workers are a crucial part of the agricultural workforce, putting food on our tables and supporting our communities. Nationwide, 54.3% of graders and sorters of agricultural products are immigrants, as are 25.3% of workers in the agriculture industry overall. So one wonders what happens if the Trump regime fulfils its promises to deport these millions of essential workers.

Today I have continued to receive supportive emails from family and friends to whom I sent an email message last week detailing how I felt that Meg was slipping away from us. But for the last few days, Meg has seen a bit connected with the world and whilst still in a deep doze is not as fast asleep as was the pattern of a few days ago. These emails I have received are of an incredibly supportive nature and I am truly appreciative of them. In the meantime, I am quite relieved that various services seem to be falling into place.

Yesterday was the day when the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza. Given the complexities of the situation, I wondered if there were last minute discussions of a technical nature, n what language the two sides would basically communicate? I found the answer in this blog – ‘The Arabs that I have met know either basic Hebrew and/or English. It seems that for some Palestinian Arabs knowing Hebrew (at least basic) opens up more job prospects. Also depends on social class since religious private schools (many of them for Christian Arabs but that many Muslims attend) have good English level. So there are more than a few ways, except Israelis learning Arabic which is still exceedingly rare (albeit not impossible)’ So this is what more or less what I suspected. If you are an Arab living in Israel, for example the West Bank, you would have taught yourself some Hebrew but, as I suspected, the Israelis would hardly ever be inclined to speak Arabic. The fallback situation, which I also suspected, is that English is used when all else fails. English is considered the current global ‘lingua franca’. A lingua franca is a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. English has become the lingua franca in many fields, including business, science, technology, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy.

As the carers are coming an hour earlier today, I actually got up at 5.0am and managed to write some emails giving details of Meg’s current condition to family and friends with whom I had communicated the other day when I thought she might have drifted away for good. But ‘the boat bobbed a little bit back yesterday’ which is good and I have to tell myself that a bad day might be followed by a better one and vice versa. After the carers had departed this morning, I got some porridge into Meg followed by a strawberry mousse – fortunately, for me, Aldi seems to have a good supply of things like mouse and tiny little pots of fromage frais which are ideal bits of food I can get into Meg these days. I had just finished breakfast, when I received a text from my sister in her residential home in Knaresborough and immediately gave her a FaceTime call. I thought she looked pretty well and she had, indeed, just had her hairdresser last week. We were mainly talking about Meg and I was pleased to tell her that after my experience of a couple of days ago, Meg seems a bit more connected with the world this morning. I had started to watch some interesting Sunday morning TV when our University of Birmingham friend phoned and he is going to pop round for a chat later in the day which is always very welcome. I had started watching the Alan Titchmarsh programme on ITV called ‘Love your Weekend’ and found some interesting gardening tips. First looking at the kind of waterbut arrangements that enable you to get clear rainwater from your drainpipes, the other thing that took my attention (so something no doubt stocked in gardening centres) was called a gutter snake. Imagine a bottle brush on a much larger scale and available in lengths of several metres. Once the gutters have been cleaned out, then you place the appropriate length of ‘gutter snake’ in the gutter and whilst rain water falls through the bristles into the containing gutter, any leaves that would otherwise end up in the gutter get caught on the bristles, eventually dry out (if we have a few hard cold days of frost later in the year) and then just blow away. This is such a simple idea that one wonders why it has never been thought of before (which it may have been, but not marketed). I was so tempted by this that after the winter clean out of the gutters, I might be tempted to install such a system before the leaf fall of next autumn.

I continue to receive helpful and inspirational emails from one of my nieces who showed me a poem to which she had been introduced by my mother (my nieces’s grandmother) called ‘Footprints in the Sand’ which is comforting in times of trouble. When the two carers came to see to Meg in the late morning, they were both in some distress, the elder one being concerned that her car had in effect broken down with the engine management system limiting her speed to 20 mph. Meanwhile, the far younger carer only a week or so out of shadowing was being called upon to undertake tasks that should really have taken two carers but as so many staff had phoned in sick was asked to do jobs single handed and she doubted that she had the experience or ability to cope. My sympathies extended to them both but there was nothing I could do to alleviate either situation. I managed to get a fair quantity of lunch inside Meg (ham, baked potato and broccoli followed by some yogurt for afters) after which I promised Meg an opera for which she could allow the music to sweep over her even if she did not follow the plot. I chose ‘La Traviata’ principally because of the quality of the singers (Renée Fleming, Rolando Villazon) but the theme was not the most suitable given current circumstances (basically, the heroine is dying probably of consumption from practically the first scene of the opera and spends the rest of the opera tragically fading away, albeit with beautiful singing).

The media attention this afternoon is focused on the release of some of the hostages from both sides in the Gaza conflict. The Israelis are keen to avoid anything that looks like Palestinian rejoicing and are therefore controlling the news media as tightly as they can but after an initial hitch, it now looks as though this release if proceeding as it should on both sides. But the destruction in Gaza is terrible to behold as the ceasefire agreement comes after more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed and 93% of homes in the Gaza Strip damaged. One cannot see the Israelis wanting to rebuild Gaza whereas the other Arab states (and Arab money) will not invest in rebuilding Gaza without a solution such as the ‘Two States’ solution firmly rejected by Israel so will Gaza ever be rebuilt, one wonders?

Yesterday, Meg appeared to be in quite a deep sleep practically all of the day. I was sufficiently concerned to send off a series of emails to friends and relatives detailing Meg’s current state of health and my friend from University of Winchester days immediately sent me a supportive email, sensing by feelings of concern. We had a wonderful WhatsApp chat for a couple of hours during which I could unburden myself a little but we were largely discussing items in the media and on YouTube that had attracted our attention. Before I actually crawled into my bed, I learnt of the death of Denis Law who was one of Manchester United’s most prolific strikers. He is remembered by a statue, I believe, along side others to George Best and Bobby Charlton. George Best’s quotes are remembered to this day. Perhaps the best known is ‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.’ But another, almost equally memorable is this one ‘In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.’

The background to the peace agreement in the Gaza war is now becoming clear. The overall framework of the agreement reached on 15 January was broadly the same as the proposal set out by President Joe Biden during a White House address last May. It uses the same three-phase approach and will see a ceasefire, Israeli hostages released in return for Palestinian prisoners, and the Israeli military’s gradual withdrawal from Gaza. But sources familiar with the discussions agreed the dynamics of the talks shifted decisively in mid-December and the pace changed. Hamas, already reeling from Israel’s killing of its leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza two months earlier, had become increasingly isolated. Its Lebanon-based ally Hezbollah had been decimated and had agreed to a truce with Israel. Bashar al-Assad’s Iran-backed government in Syria had also been swept away. The view in Washington is that Hamas was forced to abandon the idea that ‘the cavalry was coming to save it’, as one US official put it. ‘It is hard to overstate how fundamentally the equation changed and what that [did] for Hamas’s calculus,’ says a senior Biden administration official familiar with the talks. We now await the inauguration next Monday which has moved inside the Capitol building as the normal venue is predicted to be too cold for the participants.

In the morning, although Meg was dozing most of the time, we went to see our friends in the establishments of Wetherspoons where I indulged in a breakfast muffin (fried egg, bacon and sausage including a free refillable drink for £3.99) Meg was largely dozing throughout but at least we made contact with two of our regular friends and then, as we on the High Street, made off in the direction of a cosmetics shop to buy some soap. After that, it seemed a shame not to make a minimal tour of one or two of the charity shops but we saw nothing that took our fancy. But it made quite a long morning for us and the journey up the hill seemed a little more arduous than usual. The minute we got home, I prepared some pea and mint soup for Meg and myself and we were followed shortly by the mid morning carers. Then, whilst the carers were here, the District Nurse showed up which was very valuable because we were able to discuss how to treat the pressure sore that is developing in Meg’s heel. This is not going to be dressed at this stage but the District Nurse will keep it under careful review, having photographed it. Whilst in the house, she wondered if we had the most appropriate mattress on the bed for Meg and was going to recommend once she got back to base whether another mattress might be better for Meg at this stage so that pressure sores do not develop. When everyone had departed, I cooked a quiche with some stir-fry vegetables and even managed to get a portion into Meg which is quite something. This is going to be complemented by a mousse or something similar.

Today, I have received several replies to the several emails which I despatched yesterday. One of my nieces has sent me some very helpful suggestions regarding Meg’s diet at this stage in her illness whilst another, ex-De Montfort University friend of ours was bringing us up to date with their own afflictions. Our friend did make a tentative suggestion of a face-to-face meeting but in view of the health status of our respective spouses, we probably need to confine ourselves to some videocalls. I must say that I have been very appreciative of the messages of support and encouragement that I am being given in these difficult times. One has to live one day at a time but I don’t know what life would be like without the benefit of email and the occasional video call.

Some of us are watching with a certain wry amusement the fact that the social app TikTok may well ‘go dark’ on Sunday morning, The US Supreme Court has ruled that the app or at least that part used in the USA needs to be sold so that the app does not remain under Chinese (government) control. It has been left to Donald Trump to find a solution to the problem but whether a US based buyer can be found at such short notice is problematic. Whether national governments can ever effectively regulate these enormous media companies (such as FaceBook and Instagram) is one of the big stories of our time, as the revenue streams could well give them a financial worth that is more than the GNP (Gross National Product) of many of the poorer countries of the United Nations. So far, the way that the UK government have approached media companies to tighten up their operations insofar as they may adversely affect young people has been very much the ‘kid glove’ approach and the social media companies have not proved to be very amenable to whatever legislation has been passed to harness their undoubted power.

Yesterday, Meg appeared to be in a deep doze and/or sleeping for most of the day. But then sometime after 4.00pm the two young care workers arrived, and a Physician Associate arrived from the GP practice. She quickly diagnosed a pressure sore and said she would make onward reference to a District Nurse which would be extremely valuable. We do know that bedsores (or pressure sores as they are more properly called) can be managed if treated very promptly but can be nasty if left to fester, as it were. The care workers and the PA agreed that we could put leg’s ankle on a little neck pillow that we have in such a way that her heel might not rub on the bed. The whole of this syndrome has its origins in the fact that Meg finds it very difficult to bend her knees, particularly on the right as they are in a fixed position in her chair all day long and she is not using her legs to walk. The interesting thing is that in the presence of the two young car workers with whom she is always incredibly relaxed, she seemed to wake up a little and even managed a smile and some minimal communication. I managed to get the whole of a 200g pot of some Protein Chocolate mousse inside her and then for tea, she had a fair proportion of apple crumble, yogurt and ice-cream so I was relieved to get some food inside her (although her needs were low) but getting her to drink fluids is still a little problematic. The Speech and Language Therapist (SALT) person, if and when they arrive, may be able to recommend a thickening agent to enable Meg to swallow fluids a bit more easily. The care workers are coming an hour earlier at 7.00am rather than 8.00am which always makes life a bit of a rush around first thing in the morning.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a deal to return Hamas-held hostages in the Gaza Strip has been reached. It now looks as though the deal will now be approved by the Israeli War Cabinet and, eventually, the full Israeli Cabinet. But at least one of the far-right ultra nationalist members of the Israeli coalition government is probably poised to resign whereas another is threatening to vote for a resumption of hostilities as soon as the first phase has been completed. There are still a lot of negotiations to be undertaken before the second and third phases of the agreement can be implemented but, focusing on the short term, there should be a cease fire in effect from Sunday and we should the release of at least some of the Israeli hostages (women, children and the infirm) as well as the release of some Palestinian Hamas fighters. Two days before Israel and Hamas reached a long-awaited cease-fire and hostage-release deal, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a rebellious far-right Israeli minister, issued a video statement calling on another far-right coalition partner to join forces and scupper the agreement by quitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Mr. Ben-Gvir also asserted that these far-right coalition parties had used their political leverage to thwart a similar deal ‘time after time’ over the past year, causing an uproar. Critics of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, including many of the families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, have repeatedly accused the prime minister of sabotaging past efforts to reach a deal in order to preserve his coalition — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history — and remain in power. Mr. Netanyahu and his loyalists have blamed Hamas for past failures to reach a deal. The current agreement was expected to gain government approval even without the support of the two far-right parties, since a majority of cabinet members are in favour of it. But the fracas caused by Mr. Ben Gvir’s comments underscored the resurgent fissures in Israeli politics and society following the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which prompted the war, and the widening fault lines within the Israeli government. Another far-right cabinet member, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, called the agreement ‘bad and dangerous to Israel’s national security’ and said he absolutely opposed it. But he did not explicitly threaten to leave the government. Describing the emerging deal as an Israeli ‘surrender’ to Hamas, Mr. Ben-Gvir played on Israeli emotions in his statement, saying that the terms of the agreement would erase the achievements of the war in Gaza that were gained with the blood of Israeli soldiers. But the narrative being broadcast by Mr. Netanyahu and his aides says the opposite. An Israeli government official contradicted Mr. Ben-Gvir’s assertions this week, saying Hamas had only put on a façade of negotiating in the past rounds of talks and had engaged seriously this time largely because of Israel’s military achievements.

Our domestic help called around today and was as helpful as always. But Meg was asleep during all of the morning and only managed the briefest of smiles and reactions when our help came to say goodbye to Meg at the end of the morning. This I found particularly upsetting but the carers who were present were very kindly and supportive of me. I had a pasta type lunch which I did not really enjoy and threw most of it away – nor did I manage to get any of it down Meg. Later in the afternoon, I did get Meg to ingest a small chocolate mousse and a very small fromage fraiche but drinks have so far proved illusive. This morning was Meg was asleep I took the reply to one my oldest Spanish friends and forwarded it to another of our friends (these two friends being Erasmus students of ours in decades long gone by and are now our life long friends) This latter friend had married her tutor (who, incidentally, was very good to when I spent a term teaching Information Technology to Public Administration students in the Complutense University of Madrid) but he had died over the last year. So I know we both understand the pain and grief of separation from a life partner and at some time again we may well meet up again in Spain.

The day did not start particularly well as I hit some kind of wrong key and removed (irretrievably) the blog for the current day so had to start all over again. Yesterday, I watched some of the Senate hearings to confirm some of the members of the proposed Trump administration before they take up their appointments. Some of the appointments appeared to neutral commentators to be bizarre such as the nominee for the Defence Secretary who had the reputation as a wife beater, an alcoholic and a denier of human rights issues and was currently employed as a Fox News journalist (Fox News is a rabidly right wing and Trump supporting news media) A sharp contrast has to be drawn between the UK Select Committees where the questioning of ministers is sharply focused, detailed and forensic. The American committee system by contrast is long winded and members of the committee (and those they are supposed to be interrogating) given to long, grandstanding speeches. Such is the hold of Trump over the current Republican party (and they, in turn over their electorates) than these Senate hearings may well turn out to be a formality and even the ‘wackiest’ members of the incoming administration receive approval.

The airways and news media are full of the peace deal announced last night between Hamas and the Israelis in the Gaza war. But Netanyahu’s security cabinet and then full cabinet have yet to approve the deal and may feel inclined to quibble unless the Americans jump on them hard. It is said that the incoming Trump envoys and the outgoing Biden envoys worked as one team on the American side to get the deal over the line and they say and Trump, in particular, is anxious to get the deal in place before Inauguration Day next Monday. Both Democrats and Republicans are claiming credit for the deal, but the truth is that the Biden regime no doubt did the ‘heavy lifting’ over the months whilst the Trump team indicated to the Israelis that ‘all hell would break loose’ if they did not accede to the American pressure. Of course, Netanyahu has nowhere to go as he cannot appeal beyond, the right of an incredibly right-wing administration (as is his own) There are many details still to be worked out in the forthcoming hours and days such as the identities of the hostages to be released and even now, Netanyahu is claiming that that Hamas is breaking the agreement so there is still quite a tense time ahead of us. Of course, it is quite possible that when the peace deal is eventually put into effect, that Netanyahu may be forced out. There is a sizeable part of Israeli public opinion who blame him for not prosecuting the war in such a way that the hostages, their family members, are released, And it is said that Netanyahu’s unpreparedness for the war in Gaza and manifest security failings may result in him being a scapegoat. Those of a long political memory may remember that Churchill was heavily defeated in the 1945 election which was a landslide for the Labour party. My mother when she was alive, always maintained that it was he vote of the soldiers who voted to come home instead of being held in the theatre of war as Churchill wanted, that was the decisive factor in this election and not, therefore, a mass conversion to a left wing political agenda. But WWII had a massive democratising effect upon the population and hence the housebuilding programme just after the way with the slogan ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’ And the 1944 Education Act was groundbreaking as well as the foundation of the NHS in 1948 in which Nye Bevan, the ‘father’ of the NHS was said to remark that ‘if a bedpan was dropped in an NHS hospital, its clatter would be heard in Westminster’. Times, as they say, have changed.

Yesterday was my shopping day and the care workers were scheduled to arrive one hour later than normal. But then I got a text today they would be here half an hour earlier than planned and I was not fully dressed when they called. Then the sit call for me to go and do the shopping was delayed by an hour so the normal constant re-timings of the day’s visits continue. One of the care workers noticed a bruise on Meg’s heel which seems to have got worse overnight. This was photographed and transmitted to me via WhatsApp and I filled in the webform which is the way by which a GP appointment is made these days. Later in the day there should be a telephone consultation and I have to upload the image of Meg’s hotel for the doctor. The fact that she is on a blood thinning medication may be relevant but we will see what a doctor makes of it. I did get a phone call from a physician associate who informed me that bruises of this type are not uncommon on those taking blood thinning medication but, nonetheless, she was going to make a call on Meg later on in the day. Then we received a most extraordinary request from the doctor who had seen Meg recently asking if I could take her down to the surgery to have her weighed (clearly impossible) or could I provide a current and up-to-measurement of her weight in kilograms. I pointed out that this was clearly impossible as Meg has not been able to stand since last May and surely this was appreciated from the notes on her file. Later on in the morning, I managed to get the shopping done and I managed to buy a fair number of mousses, fromage fraiche and similar sweets which I hope will provide her with a little sustenance as it is so difficult to get food and drink inside her at the moment.

The Gaza peace deal is currently in jeopardy as the Israelis are claiming that Hamas has reneged on the deal, a claim which is being vehemently denied. The Israelis say they will not put the plan before their cabinet until final re-negotiations have taken place – this may have been anticipated as both sides jockey for the best possible deal before it is signed, sealed and delivered but I would not be surprised if the Israelis take a lot to be appeased and it is always possible that the deal collapses in complete acrimony.