Yesterday when I awoke the first thing that I did was to look out of the window and even pop my head out of the front door to assess how much snow we have had. The evening before, we had certainly had a fall of snow but it did not look very thick and I suspect that cars would be able to navigate it fairly easily. I was delighted last night to receive a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend who realised that pushing Meg out in her wheelchair in present conditions was not really an option for us and so he said that he would call round to see us at 10.30 in the morning which is of course always more than welcome. Normally the day after the Christmas tree has been cleared away, our hall has a very stark appearance – indeed, it was the absence of light in the corner of the hall that led me a year or so ago to install a very low wattage lamp in the corner to take the place of the lights of the Christmas tree. This is all now reinstalled and I must say I am glad to return the hall to its normal furnishings and a feeling of normality. Last night when I looked around our Music Lounge, I was somewhat overwhelmed by great feelings of sadness when I contemplated that all of the refurnishing that I have put into effect in the last year was all done to benefit Meg in the remaining stages of her illness. But then an inner voice spoke to me and I had a strange conversation with myself along the following lines. My inner voice told me that although I was indeed pushing Meg when I could down the hill for a coffee, this was as much for my own benefit of fresh and exercise as it was for Meg’s. And as for the population of the Music Lounge with selected pieces of furnishing starting off with the captain’s chairs and finishing off with what I call the ‘carers’ sofa’ was absolutely as much for own benefit as for Meg’s. My inner voice told me that whilst Meg had always acquiesced and normally approved of each of our purchases, I was actually indulging myself so I should not delude myself into thinking that it was exclusively done for Meg’s benefit rather than my own. I was forced to agree to my inner voice and in a strange way it helped me gain a better sense of perspective of our current situation and the prospects for the weeks and months ahead. The snow fall that had occurred overnight was no real threat to any of us and it was a simple task to brush it off the car’s windscreen and to make a paid trip down the hill to pick up our copy of the Sunday newspaper from a nearly deserted store. Meg was very fast asleep (as she is nearly all of the time now) and then after I got back and did a few tidying up jobs, our University of Birmingham friend called round, as he phoned to say that he would. Neither of us wanted to pursue personal troubles in any depth so we spent the time discussing educational issues until the carers arrived some time after midday. We managed to get half a beakerful of tepid tea into a very sleepy Meg until it was time for them to go and I started to prepare lunch of chicken thighs, carrot and swede mash and some green beans. To be honest I am scarcely at all hungry and am going to have to force myself to east something approaching a proper meal. But when the meal was completely prepared, then the chicken thighs in the creamy tomato sauce seemed pretty tasty so I ate my half of the meal with some enjoyment. I had very slowly fed Meg with her portion of the meal and although it took a long time, I was determined to get some good food inside her and I was delighted that she actually managed the portion of food that I put before her. Then we had a small portion of yogurt and finished off with a little warmed fruit juice. One way or another this was the most food+ drink I have managed to get Meg to ingest for a day or so now, so I am hopeful that the combination of the food and the medication will help to haul Meg up the slope of recovery so we can resume a more ‘normal’ sort of existence.

A remarkable falling out is occurring on the right of the political spectrum. Elon Musk has said Reform UK needs a ‘new leader’ because Nigel Farage ‘does not have what it takes’. The X owner posted the tweet on Sunday following days of headlines over his comments about the historical grooming scandal that took place across UK towns and cities more than a decade ago. Although Mr Musk is in agreement with Mr Farage and the Conservatives that there should be another national inquiry, a dividing line has emerged between the tech billionaire and the Reform leader over the former’s support for jailed activist Tommy Robinson. Shortly after Musk’s post, Mr Farage said: ‘Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.’ On the Laura Kuennsberg programme this morning, ex Labour Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, was remarking how anyone could take Elon Musk seriously when he is arguing that Labour Minister Jess Phillips should be in gaol and Tommy Robinson (extremist right wing populist)should be freed. The fact that the world’s richest man who is directing the world’s largest social media company in a vitriolic campaign against Labour government leaders should be massive concern to all of us. But even Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative party rump cannot resist the temptation to come in on the side of Musk who is making as direct an intervention into UK politics as it is possible to make.

Before I came to bed, I had long, long video call with my long-standing University of Winchester friend whom I had arranged to call at 9.00pm. We used to Skype but today used the videolink in WhatsApp which activated within seconds and proved to be mega reliable for both of us. Of course we had a lot to communicate with each with the Christmas comings and goings as well as the events of the past two days and altogether we chatted for a couple of hours we had so much to say to each other. But I slept very much better so perhaps the long call had a soporific effect. Today, there are amber weather alerts over much of the country and we are getting ourselves prepared for a huge dump of snow which will start to arrive at about 8.00pm this evening, According to the weather maps we appear to be just within the border between an amber and non amber alert zone so we have a warning of both snow and ice. This primarily affects our carers, of course, and many of them come from Redditch which has a higher elevation than Bromsgrove so may catch more of the really bad weather, The elevation of Bromsgrove is generally between 200 and 300 feet above sea level, while the elevation of Redditch is 430 feet.

On a more technical note, I am now using Microsoft’s Outlook email client much more than previously. This is principally because since I bought my new Amazon tablet, Outlook is made available on that machine so that means that if I save a draft of anything in Outlook, then the same draft is available on either of my two laptops (one in each lounge) or on my main desktop computer as well as the tablet. Moreover, Outlook underlines typos with a little red wavy line which makes them easier to spot and correct. A particularly good feature is that the program automatically saves whatever you are working on every 30 seconds but you can also do a manual save with Ctrl-S. Now many application programs contain what are called undocumented features. These features may be documented somewhere deep in the manuals of the programme if you happen to discover it and some are genuinely undocumented. I discovered that when you load Outlook if you type a ? symbol completely on its own that Outlook loads up a screen of keyboard shortcuts which are incredibly useful and many of them hardly known about. Knowing (from somewhere) that Ctrl-S saves a draft, I wondered if this was documented anyway and this took me into a User forum which is very often the place where undocumented or little known features are shared between users. The most extreme example of this is that very early in my computing career when I had a Commodore 64 and was just getting to grips with one of the first word processing programs made available, I read a tip in a computer magazine to press a particular combination of keys as the word processor program was loading (slowly) from a tape. This accessed musical code which played something like ‘Greensleeves’ but in four part harmony exploiting every possibility of the sound chip built into the C64. There was a machine at the time called an Amiga that had an astoundingly good sound chip against which the C64 chip could not really compete – but to the uninitiated user, one really looked at one’s machine with amazement. I think the programmers call these ‘gang sheets’ and they were sometimes smuggled passed one’s superiors to find its way into a program. Searching online, though, I discovered the following: ‘Outlook was released over 25 years ago at a time when there was fierce competition in the email client space. Over the years, Microsoft stole every good idea from the competition, incorporated customer’s requests, and continually refined the client. This resulted in Outlook becoming the most capable/powerful email client available.’ The same set of posts went to complain that having made a very good program there were several good features in earlier iterations of the program not carried over into updated (improved?) versions of the programs but this is quite common as well.

When Meg seemed well and truly asleep, I judged my moment when to make a quick visit down to Waitrose, which I managed. There I picked up my copy of my daily newspaper and was also fortunate to just bump into two of the Waitrose regulars who were going to have a coffee in the penultimate day of the cafeteria being open. I quickly explained to both of them the scenario with Meg which might have come as a source of sorrow but not a great surprise as they could see Meg deteriorating in the recent past. More importantly, the three of us have decided to transfer our affections to the coffee lounge in a nearby Wetherspoons pub (which atmosphere I must admit I quite enjoy) so all being well we all meet there next Tuesday (and I earnestly hope Meg will be well enough by then for the trip) One of the young staff who typically used to man the cafeteria gave us a couple of vouchers so that Meg and I can have a free coffee and cake on the occasion of the cafeteria’s permanent closure but if was explained that if Meg couldn’t make it but I could, they would find a way of giving us some coffee and cake to consume at home. This is all very sad but perhaps it is a case of one door opening whilst another one closes. The memories of the cafeteria will stay with us forever and a day, though.

Just before Meg and I attempted a spot of lunch, I thought I would make a start on undressing the Christmas tree and putting away the decorations. This task proceeded little more quickly than anticipated so I got the Christmas tree disassembled it and put its box, the baubles and decorations in another container and all of the tinsel and related stuff in a third. Then I transported all of this upstairs ready for a journey into the loft and I cleaned up the floor and put the furniture back to rights. My son had phoned up saying they could call around and whilst I printed off a large document that they needed, my son and his wife got things put away in the loft. So that is all the Christmas things put away and I am mighty pleased to see the back of things but at the cost of a slightly aching back. I did not want to have all of the Christmas decorations hanging around for another week and I imagine many people across the country are taking the opportunity, whilst snowbound, to put their Christmas things away and restore their houses to a degree of normality (although things always look a little stark for a day or so)

Fairly late last night, I got some fairly devastating news by text from one of our Waitrose friends. This is that the cafe in the Waitrose store down at the bottom of the hill was due to close for good next Sunday. This is a considerable blow to myself and Meg as we have been frequenting this particular establishment for at least the last seven years but the decision has apparently been made by Head Office or a regional office and taken out of the hands of the actual branch itself. As I am the cafe’s oldest (i.e. longest attending) customer, I cannot start to explain how good this cafe has been to myself and my friends. As well as our regular meeting place for the last seven years (with the exception of the Covid years), the staff have treated us so kindly, joining in on our regular jokes and pleasantries, showering us with out-of-date flowers rather than them being thrown away, occasional bits of food gratis if they cannot find it on the system and so on. It is true that there are other cafes in the town but they do not have the same ambience and, of course, are not yet the repository of many happy memories for us. I am about to text our ‘inveterate hill walker’ friend to see if there are cafes on the High Street that are accessible to her motorised scooter and where she leads, the rest of us will no doubt follow. The weather is a somewhat complicating factor at the moment because there may be a hard snow starting on Saturday and wiping out Sunday but where there is a will there is a way and the manner in which we have been determined to stay loyal to each other will stand us in good stead for when we transfer our allegiances elsewhere. Whatever happens, though, I am fairly confident that we can find a new meeting place but it does involve a longer walk for myself and exposure to the elements for Meg. It is an open question whether I attempt to get Meg down in the wheelchair tomorrow before the snow arrives because I suspect that she needs to be kept warm to help her chest infection subside. In the morning our domestic help arrived and as well as her normal domestic duties, she is providing a great rock of emotional support for me at this more difficult time. I had rather hoped that she would undress the Christmas tree this morning but I think this may have to wait a day or so and I may have to do it in little bits and pieces over the next day or so.

On the TV this afternoon, there has been a very entertaining black comedy called ‘Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War’ in which one of the residents organises a mass break out from a repressive and exploitative residential home for the aged. Even though I have only seen this film in fragments (as I have been doing some other domestic duties during the afternoon) it seems bleakly apposite to our times. The residential home in which my mother first lodged some decades ago had a Catholic matron who tried and did run the home on very humane principles. But the owners were dissatisfied with the rate of return that they wee getting from the ‘granny farming’ business and going to turn the home over to the care of disturbed adolescents on the grounds that they made much more money out of the Home Office than they did providing residential care for the elderly. On the subject of affordability and costs within this sector, there is some news emanating from government last night which is disturbing in the extreme. This is that the Labour government are planning to delay their reform of the Care Sector by some three years, until the end of 2028. The intention is to provide time for an informed and careful assessment of needs and costs but this is the merest figleaf of an argument as it is completely evident that the can is being kicked fairly and squarely down the road. In ‘The Times‘ today, it is reported that there has been at least three decades of delays and broken promises and governments of every political colour have refused to face up to the costs involved in funding the system. A Department of Health report indicates that 1 in 7 people will face costs of more than £100,000 in funding their own care package. In the meantime, it is pretty self evident that the problems in the NHS will remain acute until the problems of the social care system are fixed. One wonders whether the enormous costs involved will ever find a solution but the eventual solution may well involve some judicious mix of the elements of clawing back some of the capital (bit nit all of it) in people’s homes as well as, perhaps, a more specialised tax to fund the social care system as I believe happens in Germany.

In the mid afternoon, I had a long and very welcome phone chat with our University of Birmingham friend. He has been appraised of the situation regarding Meg’s health and had texted through offering his support. As he himself lost his wife some five or so yeas ago, he can empathise with our situation. It is always wonderful to receive advice and support from our friends and, as we often meet each Sunday in the Waitrose cafeteria, this too was a shock and disappointment to him as well. In view of the bad weather, our friend enquired whether here was anything we needed but actually we are well stocked up with provisions. Later on this evening, I have a WhatsApp chat scheduled with our University of Winchester friend who had replied to an earlier email of mine offering support and friendship. These relationships really do help to sustain me over these difficult periods and I feel that I am in a situation where I can never fully repay the kindness offered.

As I awoke yesterday morning, I went through my normal morning routines on my laptop only to discover a three day heavy snow warning that will cover most of the UK from Saturday until Monday. Although I have not been looking forward to the arrival of snow, at least with sufficient warning, I may well be able to make sure that I have sufficient supplies in the house foodwise and plan whether a journey out of the house with Meg in a wheelchair is feasible or foolhardy. I suspect the answer is the latter but we will have to see what eventually falls out of the sky and how much it settles. A major activity is to get the doctor contacted and hope (pray?) for a home visit so that Meg’s condition can be properly medically assessed. After treating myself non-stop with Cold and Relief powders, I think that my heavy cold/flu is starting to battled back but in the evening, I gave a whole packet of these powders to my young Asian male carer (who calls nearly every day) as he was starting to suffer and I need to keep him on his feet so that he can continue to care for us. This raises the interesting question of not only ‘Who cares for the carers?’ but now ‘Who cares for the carers of the carers’? Today has turned out not as I expected. As soon as our GP’s website opened at 7.30am this morning, I filled in a form requesting an urgent visit by a doctor to assess Meg’s condition but I happened to mention at the start of the message that one of yesterday’s care workers had found Meg ‘unresponsive’ and thought I ought to call either 111 or 999. This word proved to be my undoing, unwittingly, because the person called a ‘Healthcare Navigator’ read the word ‘unresponsive’ and suggested that I immediately call an ambulance. To some healthcare professionals, and perhaps to all, unresponsive equates to unconscious and then all kinds of new protocols swing into play. I tried to get a little breakfast into Meg and got phoned up by a very sympathetic nurse from the group that specialises in Meg’s condition and I explained some of the dilemmas I was having in treating Meg appropriately. I needed to curtail the conversation, though as Meg was left in the care of one of our trusty sitters whilst I went off to do the first proper shopping I have done for two weeks. When I got back, though, I was dismayed to see the message from the surgery suggestion I call an ambulance which was the last place Meg needed to be. The midday sitter came along and helped me to give Meg some soup which I think revived her and gave me some emotional support and comfort as well. I was not in the mood for lunch so had a couple of mince pies enhanced by a hunk of cheese and then fortunately I got another telephone call from the nurse with whom I had spoken in the morning. She was absolutely brilliant but took some of Meg’s symptoms and then negotiated a visit from a doctor which happened mid afternoon. It is a sad fact of life that sometimes the GP’s surgeries respond more to a request from fellow professionals than they do to us, the immediate carers of their patients. But the nurse had said all the right things, persuaded the surgery that going to hospital was not appropriate and got a doctor’s visit scheduled for us. The doctor discovered some rumblings in Meg’s chest indicating perhaps a deep seated chest infection and was going to prescribe some penicillin for her. But her blood pressure and oxygen levels and temperature seemed OK so perhaps the infection that Meg has is not rampaging as it were but is has knocked her sideways for two or three days. The doctor and I spent some time completing the Respect (and DNR) forms so that we are decided that Meg does not want to get carted off to hospital unnecessarily but would prefer any treatment regime to be at home. The doctor reinforced the point which I already knew that often what kills dementia patients is not the dementia itself but an infection which the body’s natural defences cannot cope with and so the patient gets overwhelmed by, and killed by, the infection. In the case of a fracture, for example, a hospital visit would still be indicated but otherwise the ambulance staff would act in accordance with the wishes on the Respect form. I am afraid this made the frailty of Meg and her prospects for the rest of her life come very sharply into relief for me and I must admit to some very emotional moments when I thought things through. But when the carers arrived for Meg’ afternoon call, I talked them through things and they were incredibly sympathetic and supportive, even promising to come out at other times in the day if here was something that they could do to help.

In the late morning, though, I got some much better news from Yorkshire where my niece’s husband had been taken into hospital with a suspected second stroke. But two specialist consultants have concluded that it was probably another neurological condition rather than a stroke although the symptoms can appear very similar. Sp my niece’s husband is now back at home and my niece is feeling pretty relieved. If it had been a second stroke then it would have impacted on her life considerably trying to carry on teaching and caring for a disabled husband at the same time. So I expressed my delight that the news was not anything like as bad as first we feared and we all live to fight another day. At least my sister after her two bouts in hospital is in a residential home and the move into this seems providential and was put into effect just when needed.

Last night as soon as Meg had been put to bed, I did my customary washing up and then went to bed myself at 8.30 as I was feeling pretty rough with this heavy cold/flu from which I am suffering. I slept fitfully for a few hours and then got up to see the New Year in in which I toasted myself and the rest of the world with a few sips of Fino sherry (all I had to hand) before I took to my bed again. I slept fairly fitfully and awoke at about 5.15 at which time I did not want to drift off to sleep again as I needed to get up at 6.00am as the carers were scheduled for 7.00am. When the carers arrived, Meg was pretty unresponsive and I think the carers were very concerned about her. We decided to get Meg up and sitting in her special chair in the Music Lounge where she is warm and comfortable and I find it easier to care for her than if she were actually to stay in bed. I had a quick consultation with my son about the appropriate courses if action – the evident thing, if course is to call a doctor to have Meg checked over but New Year’s Day is a Bank Holiday and our quite large practice does not have an out-of-hours service. The system is to fill in a form on the practice web site but of course, this was not made available and the only advice was to call 111 or to call 999 to get an ambulance. As Meg is so excessively sleepy, it may be that the dementia is advancing inexorably or it may be that the very bad cold/flu I have has also infected Meg but she is not in a position to report any of her symptoms. However, having got Meg into her chair I did manage to get a beakerful of porridge inside her and she showed some signs of coming round very slightly. I did consult the Alzheimer’s Society website to check for end-of-life symptoms because I knew already that excessive sleeping may just be due to the body progressively shutting down. But the website itself indicated that end-of-life symptoms are very difficult to discern and we could be talking about days or even months but looking at the list of items that the society details, I would not be surprised if Meg were to be in this state – not to be overly dramatic about it. I have written an email to the Admiral Nurses (who specialise in Meg’s condition) but they like GP’s practices are not open/available on Bank Holidays.

After I had got some breakfast inside Meg I FaceTimed my sister in Yorkshire who has a couple of spells in hospital (an initial visit followed by a discharge and an almost equally rapid readmission which I fear is all too common these days) I received the bad news that the husband of one of my nieces has had a couple of strokes – one of which seemed comparatively mild and from which it appeared that he was recovering and a second where I still have to receive some up-to-date news as he still in a specialised stroke unit in Leeds. I have tried to get into contact with my niece and no doubt we will talk in the hours ahead but it seems that other parts of our extended family are having their travails. I got a reasonable amount of lunch into Meg (quiche accompanied by some Cavolo Nero kale) but after that Meg seemed to relapse into her by now customary sleep. When I had telephoned my son this morning, he indicated that he and his wife would journey back from Watford to be with Meg this afternoon and they came around at 2.30 and stayed for the major part of the afternoon. Naturally, I am always pleased to see my son and daughter-in-law and we had some pleasant chats about family matters, retirement plans, past colleagues and a lot else besides. Meg was largely asleep during most of their stay and we had a quick family consultation about Meg’s illness and what the short term and medium term prognosis is likely to be.

There is an amazing story about how our commercial world operates breaking today. A consortium of banks and building societies are to be approached by the Post Office which is going to try to raise the £100 million in a fees hike. These fees are payable when banks and building societies use Post Office services (for example low cost banking) and this money will then give existing sun postmasters a better pay deal. No doubt, this is a spin-off from the recent Post Office scandal but I cannot see the big banks playing ball with this proposal. I am a great aficionado of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures but I missed last nights which was the last in the series of three. But my son and daughter-in-law informed me that the last one in the series was the best of all three but I missed it last night as I went to bed early. So after I get Meg to bed this evening, this will be something I will catch up on and apparently the themes are largely those in the book ‘Ultra-Processed People’. On the subject of food, one of my New Year resolutions is to confine myself to only two pieces of chocolate per day. But there is some evidence that the high quality, dark chocolate can actually be quite good for you so like many things in life I suspect that a bit of what you fancy does you good whereas a lot of what you fancy is undoubtedly harmful to you. I have a bit of a dilemma in that I have quite a lot of Christmas food left over (mince pies, stollen, Christmas puddings and so on) but it is all of the high carbohydrate variety too much of which cannot do you good in the long term.

A report hit the media headlines yesterday on the impact of cigarette smoking on life expectancy. Each cigarette a person smokes could shorten their life by 20 minutes, according to new estimates. The new figures are an increase on previous estimates, which suggested a cigarette shortens a smoker’s life by 11 minutes. The data suggests if a 10-a-day smoker quits on 1 January, then by 8 January they could prevent loss of a full day of life. By 20 February, their lives could be extended by a whole week. If their quitting is successful until 5 August, they will likely live for a whole month longer than if they had continued to smoke. The figures come from analysis commissioned by the Department for Health and Social Care and carried out by researchers from University College London (UCL). The timing for the release of this report is interesting. It is published at just the time when the population as a whole might be thinking of New Year resolutions to be put into effect from Wednesday onwards which is, of course, 1st January. I suppose it might be interesting to see how many start and how many relapse from cigarette smoking but at a cost of more than £15 for a packet of 20 there is a massive financial incentive to quit smoking in any case.

Today has been one of the most curious of days. Last night, before I went to bed, it seemed that I was developing classic flu symptoms (feeling cold and shivery) so I dosed myself up on a sachet of Cold and Flue Relief powders which I keep handy in our kitchen medicines drawer. This morning when I woke up I felt no better and, if anything, a tad worse and felt that I was moving through treacle as everything was so much effort. So I decided fairly early on that I would not risk a walk outside to see our friends in Waitrose which is our normal Tuesday routine but, to be honest, I thought that I might be foolhardy to push myself on in this way. First thing in the morning, I gave myself a further dose of the Cold and Flu Relief but because of the paracetemol loading one should not more than four doses in the day so I timetabled myself to have further does at 12.00noon, 6pm and before I go to bed. Most of this morning, I dozed in my armchair and fortunately so did Meg who, fortunately or not, seems to have been asleep most of the day. I don’t know if the same virus or bug is afflicting both of us but in the case of Meg she would not be able to describe her symptoms to me in any case. The young carer with whom we get on particularly well was detailed to come and do Meg’s sit for her so I entertained her for a little showing some of the classic Live Aid concerts that were put on in Wembley I think and for which Bob Geldorf cajoled/ harangued or otherwise persuaded all of the major pop stars of the era (Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury etc.) to come along and perform for no fee. I think the pop fraternity really played its part and I suspect that they an hour’s rehearsal at the most, a sheet with the words and music was thrust into their hands and off they went. Of course to the younger generation (our carer being born in about 2007) all of this was a complete revelation and I think she was quite amazed by it. The previous evening I had seen the film of Maria Callas’s life and as I was full of this, I told the young carer some salient aspects of the life of Maria Callas ands then found one or two classic recordings on ‘YouTube’ so that she could experience one of the finest voices the world has ever known. After the carers had left, it was time to think about lunch but I had no inclination to think about food today. So I baked a potato and then added a tin of thick soup which I think is all that both I and Meg needed for the day. Meg has continued sleeping for most of the day but to provide a bit of a change to the Sky News on in the background, I played the Mozart Piano Concerto No 21 which is always a favourite of ours.

Tonight is going to be a bit of a dilemma – do I go to bed early and try to knock this ‘flu on the head or so I stay up and watch in the New Year as I have done so often in the past (more and more often on my own) Because of the forecast high winds and rain, the celebrations in Edinburgh have been cancelled leading to massive disappointment amongst the market traders who were relying upon the celebrations to sell their wares. Already today, via Sky news, I have seen some shots of the celebrations in New Zealand and Tokyo for whom, of course, it is already January 1st. I have dusted off my set of New Year resolutions which are exactly the same as last year and I wonder how long they will survive into the New Year. Without wishing to sound curmudgeonly (what a word!) I think the pleasures to be derived from Christmas are far outweighed by the extra running around that is called for. Our domestic help is calling around tomorrow and I might try to persuade her that even in advance of 12th Night, this is a good opportunity to put away the decorations for another year.

Sky’s Ed Conway often produces some outstandingly revealing graphs and diagrams. Whilst not being a ‘new’ fact per se, Conway revealed that the massive majority won by the Labor Party was by no means as dramatic as the results might suggest. Despite a huge majority in seats, the Labour Party only gained 40% of the popular vote which was one of the lowest proportions won by a governing party for some years. This helps to explain why the government as lost popularity so quickly in the first few months.

After Meg was safely in bed, I treat myself to a bit of TV and last night was the first of the annual series of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures (on science) for young people. This year there is a series of three on the subject of ‘Food’ and the presenter was the doctor and medical journalist, Chris van Tullekan. I have actually bought his latest book ‘Ultra -Processed People’ (on the subject of the ills of the junk food that we eat to which he argues we are addicted ) but I have only the opportunity to dip into it for the first few pages so far. Last night’s lecture was on the subject of the progress of food through the alimentary canal and was very well done with excellent little bits of apparatus and evidently good audience participation. So I shall look forward to the next few nights with pleasure. The other bit of news was just breaking as I flipped over to see the news headlines and this was the headline that ex-President USA president, Jimmy Carter, had died at the age of 100. He achieved far more as an ex-President than he ever did in his one four year term as president and at the age of 100 had survived both a brain tumour and an aggressive form of skin cancer. He acted as a roving emissary once retired as President and did his bit on conflict spots throughout the world. I would imagine that he is regarded after his death with a great deal of affection and respect on both sides of the political divide even in a society as polarised as the contemporary USA. Now immediately after his death, even his presidency is being reassessed. Because of the capture of Americans by the then Iraqi regime and a failed attempt to free them some would say that the American presidency was doomed – America only likes winners and not those defined as losers. But as his biographer has pointed out, he brought a peace treaty to the Middle East and put in train the development of sophisticated weaponry for which Reagan reaped the benefits. Carter’s greatest accomplishment as chief executive was getting the government out of Americans’ lives in myriad ways. His deregulation of home brewing, for example, helped usher in the modern craft beer movement, and that has created jobs at brewpubs in every city and town in the country. Carter’s deregulation of the interstate trucking and freight rail industries injected new competition into cartels that had long operated under government protection. Similar changes to federal rules governing commercial airfare made it cheaper and easier for Americans to travel long distances to see friends and family (which makes it fitting that Carter passed away during the busiest travel season ever). It is even said that Carter was one of the greatest one-term presidents ever.

One of the interesting quirks to this end of year period is the fact that the BBC’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme gives over its platform to a range of different guest editors for this week between Christmas and the New Year and for Monday of this week it was Baroness Floella Benjamin.After being awarded the BAFTA fellowship this year for her contribution to television, Baroness Floella Benjamin OM DBE will focus on the importance of childhood on 30 December. Her guest edit will also look at the impact of children moving away from consuming content from public service broadcasters to unregulated online platforms. Children’s TV legend Baroness Floella Benjamin has said a ‘crisis’ in dedicated programming for youngsters is pushing them to adult material on YouTube ‘detrimental to their wellbeing’. Ten years ago children used to watch two hours of TV on average but the rise of streaming services and video sharing sites like YouTube has seen that figure decrease by 70% in a decade. Baroness Benjamin argues that unless there was a push towards improving offerings for children the knock of effect on their welfare could be seismic. She said: ‘I feel that children’s programs as know them are in crisis because children are migrating to online platforms and watching mainly adult material which for some could be detrimental to their wellbeing.

On Monday morning, we were expecting a couple of workers at 8.00am but nobody turned up on cue. Looking at my phone messages last night, I was informed to expect a single carer this morning but no time slot was mentioned so I imagine that Meg’s getting up will be delayed by an hour. What eventually happened is that I did get two carers but delayed by three quarters of an hour with no explanation and under these circumstances, Meg is always a bit more difficult to get up as she has been awake for hours and needs some breakfast to function adequately. I am going to document these events more fully from now on as I rather let things slide over the Christmas period but I am finding that I am acting as a second carer.

Meg and I went down into town and collected our newspaper before returning and then I made a special lunch of bits and pieces involving onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, apple, sultanas in a kind of stir-fry. Our major treat this afternoon was a viewing of the film shown last night on the life of Maria Callas which was fascinating. There were several very rare clips of film of Callas at her absolute best as well as the documenting, in great detail, how the singer’s career collapsed after a bout (she claimed) of bronchitis. The point about Callas is that you felt that she was not just acting but almost becoming the character she was portraying. Her biography is certainly a complex one and I suppose history will judge her as ‘the diva of all divas’ given her reputation as temperamental and, indeed, tempestuous. Although thought of as being Greek, Maria Callas was actually born in Brooklyn, New York and then taken to Greece as a teenager by her Greek parents. She indicates in her biography that she was very much pushed into opera singing by her mother and by her first husband but she accepted that as ‘her destiny’ There were several interviews of her in French in which she was not only exceptionally fluent but animated as well and I think Paris was her favourite city. One is always somewhat surprised to see good French coming out of the mouths of those born in America. Maria Callas learned to speak French from her personal assistant, Mezzadri, who followed her to Paris.

Yesterday being a Sunday morning, we know that the care workers arrive at 7.00am rather than 8.00am but one of them was 20 minutes late this morning which actually, in view of the personalities involved, I did not really mind. As I was getting ready I was starting to think ahead to the New Year and to New Year resolutions which I do make (generally the same ones) every way. In the meanwhile, I thought I would keep myself going with a ‘Thought for the Day’ which always used to be the province of Radio4 but on a Sunday tends to be religious in nature. So I trawled the web and came up with the following for today: ‘The first step is clearly defining what it is you’re after, because without knowing that, you’ll never get it.'(Halle Berry) which will do for the sake of anything better. Then I started to wonder whether instead of looking at other people’s quotes it might be a better idea to think of your own slogans for the day. One thought that occurred to me which I thought might be useful to me throughout the New Year and beyond is the simple exhortation (to myself, that is) ‘Accumulate less, appreciate more’ so as these thoughts occur to me, I might just jot them down.

After we had got Meg up, washed and breakfasted, it was time for us to make our trip down to Waitrose to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend, which is part of our normal routine for a Sunday morning. We discussed an enormous range of subjects including the experiences that we had at the hands of the Jesuits (who actually introduced Meg and I to each other way back in 1965) and then it was time to make progress up the hill again. We had an especially friendly carer to see to Meg in the middle of the day who had tried to make it to our party but had not quite managed it. As there was quite a lot of time ‘free’ in our session, the carer folded an enormous pile of washing for me, for which I was very grateful. As it happened, we had more than our normal share of washing because yesterday I had twice fallen asleep in cups of tea in my hand spilling it all over myself and so this was two pairs of trousers destined for the washing machine. As I tend to fall asleep regularly under these circumstances, I am resolved never just to have a cup of tea/coffee in my hand but also to put it in a safe place before I invariably nod off. We lunched on ham, sprouts and a baked potato and very tasty it was, too. After lunch, there were several TV programmes that we intended to catch up upon and the first of these was a film devoted to the life and career of Maggie Smith who died recently, giving the BBC a magnificent opportunity to make a biopic of the famous actress. Of her many, many roles, I most vividly remember the way she played ‘Miss Smith’, the vagrant occupying a van at the bottom to Alan Bennett’s drive for 15 years which has been shown twice on TV recently. In the late afternoon, we received a telephone call from one of the young set of Meg’s carers. Her call had been badly scheduled for an hour later than would have been ideal so the couple of young carers had some time spare and unofficially rescheduled Meg’s teatime call which turned out to be a very good thing all in all. This couple of young people have a great sense of humour so we all have a joke and laugh and we encourage Meg to join in if she is not too tired at this stage in the afternoon. As I have mentioned before, I am particularly impressed by the skill set and attitudes of the young carers and it does help the caring transactions run more smoothly. Our University of Birmingham friend this morning and I were saying to each other that we cannot wait until we get back to a more ‘normal’ set of routines which the Christmas festivities have disrupted.

Labour would lose almost 200 seats in ‘highly unstable’ parliament if election held today, a new poll suggests. The poll predicts Labour would come out on top – but with barely a third of the total number of seats – making forming a government difficult. Of course, the Labour government has a massive majority at the moment and could well still come out on top as the governing party. But the electorate are in a volatile mood at the moment. It is fairly evident why the mood of the public wanted the Conservatives out at almost any price but the Labour government was not elected with any real degree of enthusiasm on the part of the electorate. It looks as though swathes of voters in the former ‘red wall’ seats captured by the Conservatives in the last but one election was unhappy with the last Conservative administration and now may be almost equally as unhappy with the present Labour administration. So the support for the Reform (extreme right wing party) is growing and snapping at the heels of the Conservative party being only 5% votes behind them. We do not need to be reminded that Hitler came to power democratically and then swept democracy away (and Trump has hinted that he may not do the same as he promised his voters that they may never ‘need to vote again’ whatever that is supposed to mean) I expect the New Year’s Honours list to be announced shortly. This traditionally was scheduled for 1st January but I think the powers-that-be brought it forward a little so that the lucky recipients could celebrate with family and friends at New Year parties. Some Honours are undoubtedly deserved but those awarded to big donors of political parties reeks of political corruption and threatens to underline the legitimacy of the whole Honours system.

As readers of yesterday’s blog will now know, I have put a link in my page such that interested viewers can click on it to see what all the fuss about ‘Comic Sans MS’ is all about. I do not intend to carry on any more discussions about this font here as the topic already occupies masses of space out there on the web but there is an interesting spin-off to this debate. I have started to wonder how many other artefacts are out there for which the designers had one purpose but for which every day users have another. The world of industrial products is full of examples of products invented for one purpose that ends up with another use (we might cite play-doh (children’s plasticine), superglue, WD40 to mention a few. But there are some objects in widespread use that would not be invented today and I am thinking of the old-fashioned tin opener (the kind that leaves jagged edges) but is still retained in kitchen drawers for other purposes. I use one of these to make a prick in each end of an egg to release the bubble of air before I boil eggs for example. The other two things that I use for other purposes, the first of which are women’s hair bobbles which I buy for about £1 and use in place of conventional elastic bands because they are less fragile. I would also mention the spring-loaded clothes pegs which I actually use to close half opened food packets and I am sure that there are many other well known products that people use for their non-intended purpose. I thought I would ask my Waitrose friends when I see them later on today to see what they come up with (if anything). Two more things occur to me, however. One of them is that the well-known drug Viagra started off as a treatment for high blood pressure and for angina but has since been repurposed with a generally elevating effect. The interesting way in which artefacts have been used in the regulation of the landmark, Big Ben. It is adjusted using pre-decimal pennies, which in turn regulate the clock mechanism. Adding one penny causes the clock to gain two-fifths of a second in 24 hours. Outside pressure like the wind on the clock hands can affect the clock’s accuracy. I doubt that the makers of the currency had any thought that it might be used in this way.

After breakfast, Meg and I walked down the hill to Waitrose and we were delighted to meet up with our three friends for coffee. One of our number had been visited with her family who had passed on a whole series of family photographs so we regaled ourselves with looking how our friend looked from the age of about five onwards. We bought some much needed supplies of milk and then made our way home but the weather conditions were somewhat cold so we were delighted to make ourselves some soup as soon as we got indoors. The carers made their midday call and this was soon accomplished and then I went ahead preparing a meal of beef from Christmas Day, baked potato and some Cavolo Nero kale that needed eating up. Our son phoned up to ask if he and our daughter-in-law could call around this afternoon and obviously we are always pleased to see them. We had a jolly cup of tea and chitchat some IT things (how one appends an electronic signature, specifically). We had started watching ‘Death on the Nile’ for the umpteenth time but then the carers called around for the teatime calls so this needed to be abandoned. The carers were a couple of young people with whom we get on very well and when they have performed their tasks in making Meg comfortable, they always leave Meg in a relaxed and happy state which is always appreciated.

I have a subscription to ‘The Times‘ and I collect my newspaper religiously every day, as part of our daily rituals. Having said that, I find the occasion to read it grows less and less each day but I do always rescue the ‘T2’ section which contains details of the Radio and TV programmes for the day. At the weekend, a special colour magazine is published and this does not contain a great of interest to me personally as it might be a feature of a personality in the news. But at the end of the year, the Magazine devotes most of the issue to the resident Times cartoonist, Peter Brookes. So what is published in this special end-of-year edition of the magazine are the most noteworthy of the cartoons that have been published over the year, usually selecting the 2-3 best from each month. The cartoons are rather special because Peter Brookes, the cartoonist, often pulls to current stories together into one cartoon. If you follow the news assiduously, then it is fairly easy to spot the two conjoined themes but sometimes it is not so easy. So what the cartoonist does is to add a commentary to each of the cartoons in this end-of-year edition which helps the reader to decode the cartoons in question. I always look forward to these cartoons which are both witty and acerbic so it is a magazine that can be read over and over again and each cartoon can be savoured as little details on the cartoon are revealed.

The Sky News political correspondent is making the telling point this weekend that both Keir Starmer and Liz Truss were desperate to pursue a growth agenda – and many of their utterances appear identical to the casual observer. Many of the noises the current government is making on growth and regulation are not so different to the ones that emanated from our shortest ever serving prime minister – a politician most in the Labour Party view as the antithesis of everything this administration stands for. Both prime minister were desperate to secure economic growth to cure the nation’s problems – but in the case of Liz Truss there were unfunded tax cuts which took the City by fright where after all we are at the mercy of ‘the kindness of strangers’ who do not have to invest in the economy if it appears less than sound. The Labour government’s increase in taxes via raising employer’s NI contributions is not helping the growth agenda one iota and hence both prime ministers are prone to making pro-growth statements that do not seem to differ radically from each other.

The two days of Christmas and Boxing Day have left me feeling pretty tired, if not exhausted, so I for one am happy that these two days are over. New Year is another matter because it always feels like a fresh start and the days are getting that little smidgeon longer. So I intended to get to bed early last night but could not resist watching the second half (again) of ‘The Queen’ portraying how Tony Blair exerted his new found authority as the successful winner of a landslide election to get the Queen to leave Balmoral and come back to London to mourn the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. This was so excellently portrayed it was almost hypnotic not to watch again with Helen Mirren playing the queen superbly. Meanwhile I am reserving the newly made edition of ‘Outnumbered’ to be accessed on iPlayer later on in the day.

When I wish to look at the current state of a popular debate, I sometimes stumble across the pages of ‘Quora’ and these I accessed recently to assess the latest received opinion on the use of the ‘Comic Sans MS’ font which is widely available thanks to MicroSoft. Professional graphic designers hate this font for all kinds of technical reasons and feel that its use should either be banned or severely restricted – on the other hand, there are those who (like myself) feel that under the right circumstances, the font serves a legitimate purpose. One has to say that this is a very informal font and its prime use, for example, is to compose invitations to a child’s birthday party written as though by the child rather than the parent. But the font should never be used (as it occasionally is) for serious documents such as any kind of legal work or document for public consumption. There is an interesting twist to the debate, though, that it is said that the font is particularly liked by and useful to dyslexics, perhaps because the characters are drawn in such a way that a ‘b’ and a ‘d’ cannot be confused with each other. There is no hard scientific research to demonstrate that this is in fact the case but from a website designed to give practical advice to dyslexics: (DyslexicHelp), I gleaned the following: ‘So, how does Comic Sans help people with dyslexia? Research has shown that it reduces cognitive load and visual processing issues, which are common challenges for people with dyslexia. The irregular shapes and varying sizes of letters in other fonts can cause confusion and make it difficult to distinguish between letters. Comic Sans, on the other hand, has a more uniform shape and size, which makes it easier to read …In a study conducted by the British Dyslexia Association, participants were found to read faster and more accurately in Comic Sans than in Arial or Times New Roman. This is just one example of how Comic Sans can be a helpful tool for people with dyslexia.’ Once I have found a way to embed the correct code into a WordPress page, I shall attempt to illustrate this for you but I have to find a way to do it first.

Comic demo

This morning, I was happily chugging along getting dressed and preparing for the care workers to turn up at 8.15 when the doorbell rang half an hour earlier with one of the managers and another care assistant. When I expressed my surprise at seeing them, they informed me that the schedules had changed at 11.00pm last night but nobody hd actually informed me (This type of occurrence is rather too common these days) Meg and I breakfasted as normal and then made our way down the hill in not particularly pleasant weather. There we met up with one of our regulars and had a pleasant coffee before I made a purchase of a commodity of which I had run out (sweeteners) and then we got home. It was not too long before the care workers arrived for the lunch time call, and after they had departed I got busy poaching some mackerel fillets in milk (which I do to avoid fishy smells permeating the house) and then using up some sprouts together with a baked potato. One of the best bits of our afternoon TV showing was a by now traditional viewing of ‘The Boy, the Mole, The Fox and the Horse’ which is a delightfully illustrated cartoon film derived from a little book of the same name and first shown (and repeated) last year. After this we watched a little of ‘Jurassic Park’ before the teatime carer called around. This is quite a young, college student carer but we get on very well with her (and she with us) so caring for Meg together is quite a pleasure. In the late afternoon, we noticed that we were about two thirds of the way through Martin Clunes in ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’ which Meg and I watched about a month or so ago. However, we did not recognise some of the dramatic final scenes which were well worth watching so perhaps our earlier viewing had been truncated for whatever reason.

Meanwhile, although Christmas is a sort of closed system for politics, a delicious row has erupted between the leaders of the Conservative and the Reform party. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, has threatened to take legal action against Tory leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologise for accusing him of publishing a ‘fake’ ticker showing Reform UK’s membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives. The Reform UK leader has reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch’s assertion that he was ‘manipulating [his] own supporters’ with a ticker that is ‘coded to tick up automatically’ after it showed the insurgent right-wing party had gone past 131,680 members – the number of eligible Conservative Party members in its leadership election in the autumn. Whatever the truth or falsity of these various assertions, those of us of a non-conservative political persuasion can only take the kind of delight in the discomfiture of right wing parties that he Germans well describe in the word ‘schadenfreude’ for which there is no exact translation apart from ‘a malicious delight in the misfortune of others’