Last night, after we got back to our hotel, I realised that I had left a couple of crucial carrier bags round at my niece’s house so an urgent text message was quickly despatched. As she was out on the road giving her own daughter a lift to a baby-sitting session, I felt slightly less bad about her offer to bring them both round to the hotel so that we could have yet another goodbye. As her birthday and that of our son is in March, I am thinking of some plans so that we can meet for a meal in a place which is mutually accessible to both of us. I did a certain amount of packing last night by emptying the wardrobe, leaving the rest to be finished off this morning. We both had a reasonable night’s sleep, aided I think a little by the fact that I tune in the TV to ClassicFM and have it playing very softly all through the night. So we had our customary cooked breakfast – the last in a while – and then had some chats with some of the regular restaurant staff before we completed our packing and set off for home just before 9.30. We had our customary coffee break at the service station which is almost exactly at the half way point. We got home to a rather cold house but soon got ourselves more or less unpacked, the washing put in the washing machine and a bowl of soup consumed before we settled down to watch the World Cup between France and Argentina.

Before the game started, I thought I was reasonably well disposed towards the French team. As the first half progressed, though, my sympathies started to evaporate as the Argentinians played much the better football and the French team looked as though they had hardly turned up. By half time, the score was 2-0 to the Argentinians and we thought that the French would never score three goals in the second half to win the match. But 10 minutes before the end, the French striket Mbappe scored a goal and then added a second some 90 seconds later. So the game went to extra time and the scores were still level at the end of the first period of extra time. But half way through the second period of extra time, the Argentinians score a third and we all thought that was it – but towards the very end, Mbappe scored again for the French and so the score at the end of extra time was 3-3. So the match proceeded to penalties – then one of the French penalties was saved and another was missed whereas the Argentinians scored with every one of theirs. So Lionel Messi was extremely influential in scoring one of the Argentinian goals and being actively involved in the other two so at the end of a really exciting match, I was pretty pleased that the World Cup went the way of Argentina. Some of the commentators are billing this afternoon’s game as one of the ‘best’ foootball finals of all time which I suspect is a bit of an exaggeration but the final stages were certainly gripping.

Now we have one week before Christmas proper and I can start to pay some attention to what needs to be done before Christmas day itself next Sunday. For a start, I need to do the ‘hand-delivered’ Christmas cards to neighbours and friends but this ought to be relatively straightforward. On Tuesday, I need to take Meg for an optician’s appointment and also have to play Fr. Christmas which is an annual tradition for my Pilates class members. I have the supplies of damson gin/vodka bottled and all it needs is labelling and wrapping up in Christmas paper which is a job I will do tomorrow. At some stage, with having been away for several days, I will to get some food shopping done and we also tend to have a family meal some time just before the end of the week.

The weather conditions at the moment are a little bit contrary. After about a fortnight of freezing weather conditions as a result of cold air being drawn across the country from the Artic, there is forecast to be a rapid change of temperature as warmer air sweeps up the country originating from the Atlantic. But this might bring a very rapid thaw so it may be that road conditions become particularly treacherous with a lot of melting ice everywhere. Certainly, when we stoppped for our coffee break, the weather outside the service station seemed so much colder and icier than we had experienced on Harrogate which surprised us somewhat. Meanwhile, conditions on the industrial front seem to be equally glacial.There is a complete standoff between the government and various groups of workers, not least ambulance workers, border and control staff and the nurses who were on strike last week and will probably strike again next week. The government are, I think, seriously concerned about the action to be taken by ambulance workers and the army are being drafted in as well as hospital wards being emptied as rapidly as possible to try to avoid the impending chaos.

Last night, in our hotel room, Meg and I were watching the last of the Hannah Fry (= well known mathematician) series on the science that lay behind every day objects. Last night, she was exploring the history and science of the running shoe. Naturally, they started off with the utilisation of rubber and the development of rubber technology with vulcanisation. All of a sudden, up popped on the television one of my former colleagues from the University of Winchester who I will call ‘Tim’ and whose forebears had been some of the founding fathers of rubber technology. This was all absolute news to me because when ‘Tim’ pops up onto our TV screens, it is nearly always something to do with the history/archaeology of Hampton Court Palace in which is a national (or even international) expert. But here he is talking about rubber technology and there was no mistaking his voice though his countenance has changed slightly after he survived a near fatal illness a few years ago. So you never know what surprises the TV is going to reveal. This morning, we wanted to have a very gentle morning as Meg was starting to feel the strain somewhat. So we had a hearty breakfast to set us up for the day and then wandered slowly into town to our favourite Italian eating house where we made the journey up the steep stairs if only because the upper storey is so indivualistic and comfortable. There was only other couple upstairs so Meg and I ‘bagged’ the beautiful old leather settee and comfortable armchairs before settling down to enjoy our coffee and pastries (which they warm for us, by the way). I mentioned the comfortable seats because on leaving, we offered the couple on the next table to chance to enjoy our newly vacated comfortable spot and got into conversation with them – it is that time of year when people are feeling a little more relaxed and inclined to chat. It transpired that the wife came from Manchester and actually knew the two districts of Manchester in which we had lived and in the second of which, we bought a terrace house overlooking Platt Fields park. She informed us that she had worked in Owens Park which was a large residential tower block used primarily by Manchester University and the street where we lived (which she knew) was in a little block of streets of terrace housing on the other side of Wilmslow Road and facing the park. We exchanged reminiscencies about we how much we had paid for our first house (£1,995 in our case, but only a few hundreds in the case of the lady to whom we were talking)

As we left the coffee shop we espied a really convenient ATM from which we could replenish our dwindling supplies of cash and then could not resist a tour around the very large Red Cross charity shop which was nearby. We located a dress of the appropriate type but with a flowered design and ex-Edinburgh Woollen Mills which was reduced to 50% of what was actually a pretty cheap price. So we availed herself of that and Meg now has one more thing added to her wardrobe. We knew that for lunch, all we wanted was a simple bowl of soup and we intended to go into one of the little coffee shops that serve light lunches near to the hotel. But as we passed one of the large Anglican churches in the centre of Harrogate, they were advertising soup and sandwiches so we decided to partake of this whilst sitting in a area in front of the pews and below the altar – rather a strange experience. The meal was so cheap that we could make a donation to the church becaue they distribute free food to those who need it in the late afternoon so we could feed ourselves and others at the same time. Then we went back to the hotel and had a rest and a cup of tea before we set off for a family gathering at my niece’s house in the afternoon.

We had a wonderful afternoon at my niece’s. Relatives came from both my niece’s and my husbands branches of the family and we had a table groaning with Christmas food. We took the opportunity to catch up on news with lots of family members, who treated Meg very kindly and we were both made welcome. We all dispersed some time after 5.00 and Meg and I made our way back to the hotel to have a quiet evening of packing up and relaxation before we start the journey back tomorrow. I always find packing to go home so much easier than packing to go away because one’s choices are effectively very simple – everything in the room (wardrobe and cupboards) has got to find its way into the suitcase or similar. Although we missed the football this afternoon, we should be at home in time for the World Cup Final tomorrow afternoon if there are no holdups on the journey. The weather forecast is pretty nasty for first thing but there ought to be a massive improvement throughout the day.

Meg and I had a pretty comfortable night last night. What absolutely ‘saved our bacon’ was that we espied in a little space next to the wardrobe in our hotel room one of those oil-filled portable radiators which I pressed into use in the centre of the room. In a large room this certainly helped to supplement the one radiator we had in the room underneath the window and it meant that by the late evening the warm, if not hot, room was certainly warm enough to make sure that we had a pleasant night’s sleep. So we woke up just before 7.00am which is a perfect time to have a cup of tea and slowly get ourselves into gear for the day. We had our customary filling breakfast for the day and then set forth to see what the streets of Harrogate had to offer. We could not resist the lure of some of the charity shops and noted that the prices were of the order of 50% greater than we are used to in the West Midlands but perhaps that is a reflection of Harrogate life. We made our stages to a coffee shop run by Italians which is almost ‘creme-de-la-creme’ but in a more folksy way. We made our way up a very steep flight of stairs to the upstairs room but were greeted by what looked a huge television screen which was just showing the detail of a burning log fire. It certainly made you feel warm, although the effect was evidently psychological. We treated ourselves to some capucchinos and home-made pastries, served to us by an interesting Polish lady. We exchanged our observations of what it is like to feel Polish cold as opposed to Yorkshire cold but we are both relieved that better weather is on the way by Sunday. Then we found our way into a ‘Scope’ shop where we wondered which of two jumpers we might buy for Meg. Another customer and the shop assistant were extraordinarily helpful and eventually we settled on one of those jumpers which looks better on than off and which is a longer length than normal so it helps to keep one’s nether regions warm. Then we made our way to Marks and Spencer where we bought a gift voucher as a Christmas present for our loyal and hardworking domestic help. As we were making progress through the store, Meg admired the look of a jumper and it did look rather fetching but at £175.00 per item we were not unduly tempted. We did, on our peregrinations throughout the charity shops, buy one interesting item from an Oxfam shop which is going to be a surprise present and which we are sure is going to be appreciated. We made our way to a little Chinese restaurant we have have often frequented in the middle of Harrogate as we wanted just a simple, light meal as we knew we were going to have a more extensive afternoon tea this afternoon. After we had relished a simple sweet and sour pork, we started to make tracks for the hotel but on the way home, I wanted to buy one particular cosmetic item which I had forgotten to pack last Wednesday morning. Vanity prohibits my mentioning the nature of the item but when we enquired in Boots, the chemists, we were quoted a price of £27.00. When we exclaimed that this was far too much, we were directed to a cosmetics and beauty shop across the road where we bought the desired item for 69p! Then we made our back to the hotel for a swift cup of tea before we set out for the afternoon.

For my sister’s 80th birthday last August, I treated her and several other family members to a speial ‘afternoon tea’ in ‘The Crown‘ which is the hotel in which we are lodged in Harrogate. By way of a Christmas present, we thought we would repeat the afternoon tea idea and once I had secured my sister’s assent to this idea, we made a booking with the hotel. This afternoon, Meg and I set off in plenty of time to pick up my sister in our car from Knaresborough. We arrived on the dot of the appointed time and then got my sister and her ‘wheeled walker’ into the boot of the car and then set off for Harrogate. Fortunately, the reserved parking space is incredibly useful for us at the hotel and so we all sat down at the appointed time and enjoyed out tea of Earl Grey, tasty little sandwiches and an assortment of dainty pastries and sweetmeats. Munching our way though this little lot took us some time and when we had eaten our fill, it was time for us to transport my sister back to Knaresborough and for us to return to the hotel. I must say that the hotel was full of Christmas spirit as there were Christmas trees and Christmas decorations whereever one looked in each of the public rooms. I wondered whether the volume of Christms trees deployed in the hotel including those outside might approach the number of 100. Tomorrow, we will see my sister for the third day running (which must be some sort of record) as we are due to go round to one of her daughters in the afternoon where we have been invited to a family ‘at home’ of mulled wine and mince pies and we should see a lot of other other family members there as well. So the whole concept of extending our stay from three nights to four nights so that we have a complete three days of seeing family members has proved to be well worthwhile.

Today is the first full day of our holiday and we both had a reasonable night’s sleep after our journey of yesterday. Having fallen asleep, I found that the TV was still broadasting but the control did not turn it off, from which I concluded that the batteries in the control must be exhausted. I found a way to do this manually and was not, therefore, kept awake all during the night with a recalcitrant TV. So Meg and I made our way downstairs to have a breakfast before the rush although there is no way of knowing how busy the hotel actually is this week. We called in at reception with our remote who fairly promptly inserted some new batteries for us which means that now we have one tribulation of life removed. Then we had a traditional cooked breakfast, such as we have had on our previous two stays here so we know what to expect. The last time we stayed in the hotel, a Japanese guest was evidently intrigued by the toasting machine, the like of which he had never seen before. It was one of those machines where the toast makes a slow jouney under infra-red lights only to be disgorged a minute or so later in various stages of over or under-doneness. I explained to my fellow guest that whilst the Jananese culture to world culture were excellent motor vehicles and electronics, that of Great Britain is the design (if not the manufacture) of machines to make breakfast toast. After we had breakfasted and prepared to sally forth, I made a visit to the newsagents (McColls) recently taken over and saved by Morrisons and bought some iron rations (milk for our cups of tea, biscuits for the occasional nibble and so on) Then we departed to see my sister who lives in Knaresborough which, although only three miles distant, can take some time to reach if the traffic is very severe. We spent a couple of very happy hours with my sister mulling over family matters. When I was about to sit on the settee, my sister exclaimed ‘Be careful not to sit on Bruce’, Bruce being what is now in the terminology is called a ‘Remembrance bear’ of a ‘Memory bear’. I do now know how or when the concept of memory bears started but the basic idea is very simple. You send off to the firm that specialises in these products some sample of the much loved or familiar clothing associated with the loved one (spouse, child) and the firm then make suitable items of clothing for the bear. In my sister’s case, her husband’s name was embroidered onto one of the bear’s feet. The bear can then sit in a favourite armchair and part of the loved one has a visible presence. This is particular salience because it is a year and a week since my sister’s husband died and therefore the Remembrance (or Memory) Bear has a particular pride of place at this time.

After lunch, Meg and I visited an ‘eating place’ on the outskirts of Knareborough. What started as a garden centre now has a restaurant attached to it selling really good meals. We have visited this establishment once before with my sister and a niece the last time we stayed and thought we would give it another visit. As it is so popular, one often has to wait, but in our case it was only about 10 minutes and we spent some time chatting with a Geordie couple also here on a family visit I imagine. They were talking about a local cultural hero, Grace Darling, who was Victorian heroine. She achieved great fame for the part she played in the rescue of survivors from a wrecked merchant ship in 1838. Born in 1815, Grace heroically helped to rescue survivors from the Forfarshire, a vessel travelling from Hull to Dundee, which was wrecked on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland. Together with her father, who was a local lighthouse keeper, she rowed out in a tiny boat amidst the most turbulent of seas and eventually rescued nine people in total – tragically, she died of TB only about three years later. Now my first girlfriend when I was about 15 had the surname of ‘Horsley’ and she always maintained that she was a distant relative of Grace Darling. I must confess that at that age I did not pay as much as attention as I should to this story as my attention was directed elsewhere. But today, with the benefit of Wikipedia and other internet resources, I have discovered that the maiden name of Grace Darling’s mother was indeed, ‘Horsley’ and one of her brothers was given that as a middle name. However, I am now pretty certain that my first girlfriend’s recollections of the family history passed down to her was not at all fanciful but seemed rooted in a strong historical reality. I think that when I consulted the web this afternoon,my first reaction to myself was to say ‘Well, I never!’. We had a wonderful meal in the restaurant and then returned to the hotel to spend a quiet afternoon before we venture forth tomorrow morning, probably into the streets of Harrogate town itself.

Today was the day on which we were scheduled to depart for our little 4-day break in Harrogate, North Yorkshire primarily to see the members of my Yorkshire family but also for a little pre-Christmas break. We had done a certain amount of packing last night but we judged it better to get up early this morning and finish off the rest of the packing whilst we were fresh, as it were. So I set an alarm for 6.15 and immediately leapt out of bed to get washed, dressed, packed up and then a bowl of porridge prepared. Then we managed to get everything done and set off at about 10 minutes later than our intended departure time of 8.30. Then it was case of battling through the Bromsgove rush hour (to which we are not particularly accustomed), collecting our newspaper and making it onto the M40 just after 9.00am. There was quite a queue to get onto the motorway system around Birmingham but this is not unusual. Although we had given the windscreen a good dousing of hot water to free of it of ice this morning, the temperature was still -3 degrees and when I tried to give my windscreen a ‘whoosh’ to keep it clean, I only succeeded in making the windscreen a smeary mess.I soldiered on, thinking about a place where I could stop if necessary to utilise a spare bottle of water I was taking with us with which I could have got the screen clear again. Having circumnavigated the M42 travelling north to the point where it starts to link with the A42(M), I was relived when I dared use the windscreen wipers again and by this time the temperature had risen a critical 2-3 degrees and the washer bottle now functioned, to give me a good clear screen. Needless to say, I was mightily relieved by this and we hit our half-way point, the motorway services at Tibshelf which is one of our favourites. There we had a quick drink of coffee and some jaffa cakes as well as a toilet stop and then we got on our way for the second and easier half of the journey. We aim to be in the little market town of Wetherby immediately after 12.0pm and we got there by about 12.05,parking in our preferred spot incredibly fortunately as a car was just leaving the row of car parking spaces which meant that we could visit our fish restaurant shortly after its opening. As a creatures of habit, we have the pensioners ‘three course luncheon’ which a homemade soup, fish of your choice on salad which we had asked for in place of chips, a round of bread and butter, a pot of tea and finally a sweet of ginger sponge and custard – all of this for a price of less than £15 per head.

Before we left Wetherby, we did a little tour of some of the charity shops but, in general, we saw nothing that we particulrly fancied. What we did note, though, that the prices of most goods were approximately double what we would have paid in Bromsgrove or Droitwich- I suppose it is a function of the fact that Wetherby has always been quite a prosperous little market town. However, just before we left we called in at the Oxfam shop and there Meg saw a lined woollen skirt that she rather fancied. For my part, I happened to see a trio of little oak nesting tables that I think will go perfectly in our little newly equipped music room, so the shop proprietor helped me load it into the bck of the car and then we journeyed on to Harrogate. We got booked into ‘The Crown’ and are gradually getting our little hotel systems installed. The room that we have been allocated is ‘interesting’ – on the positive side, it is pretty large and warm but on the negative side, the bathroom is down a series of two little steps which I am fearful about Meg negotiating in the middle of the night on her own. So if she makes a toilet visit in the middle of the night, I have told her that she must wake me up to accompany her so that she does not have a fall in the hotel bedroom.

Some of the dangers of migrant crossings of the English Channel were vividly illustrated tonight. A local fishing boat managed to rescue 33 people from a craft in distress and by all accounts there were several people in the water screaming for help. The official estimates are that four people have died but it is actually quite likely that the death toll is larger than this. Rishi Sunak has been busy unveiling plans to rapidly return migrants back to Albania and to his end he is securing the help of the Albanian government. There is a a great volume of media noise, not least from the government, decrying ‘illegal’ immigration but all asylums seekers and/or people fleeing modern slavery are presumed innocent in law until the point at which their claim for asylum is rejected.There is a lot of playing to the ‘right wing gallery’ on this issue but whether these latest attempts to wield meaningful results will prove successful remains to be seen.

Today was the day in our diary when we were scheduled to go and see our friends in Oxfordshire for a pre-Chriustmas lunch date. We set off in time and got ourselves well prepared yesterday so that the car was filled with petrol and, as we normally do, we took along some bottles of wine and also a specialised little cactus plant in its own little mini greenhouse which rather took our fancy when we espied it yesterday. All went reasonably well on the trip but we did have a holdup on the motorway with massive congestion on the M42. We did not bother with SatNav as we were pretty sure of our route of the A34 after Oxford in the direction of our friends. In the event, we thought we had missed our turning and got of the A34 early. But after a bit of fishing round, we fortunately located our friends postcode so that the SatNav could ride to the rescue and, in the event, we got quite soon again back on track. The journey on the way back is always so much easier as the M40 being a major arterial route between the South and the Midlands is on the roadsigns from about 30 miles out, meaning that you can navigate back in your sleep. Fortunately, the weather was kind to us and although we started off at 0 degrees and it became -1 as we progressed along the route, we did not have any ice or snow to impede us, even on the country lanes in the environs of our friend’s house. We had a delicious dinner of some specialised meatballs with cranberries embedded within them. Our hosts told us that this was one of the specialist Waitrose recipes so we must go and try it some time. After a marvellous meal and a chat, it was time to go – our friends had some business with a bank so they needed to leave in time for their appointment. On our part, although we are always sorry to take leave of our friends, we were quite pleased to make some progress whilst we had some daylight left as it can start to get dark from 3.30 onwards at this time of year. We managed to get well onto the M40 before the shades of twilight started to close in on us and it is always plain sailing once we get onto this motorway and we have motorway all the way to within about three miles of home.

Before we went on our journey this morning, our son who had arrived early to work in the study he still maintains in this house, located the Christmas tree and decorations that we keep accessible in the loft and we safely rescued them. Last year, instead of a family ‘genuine’ Christmas tree, I bought a tree which is made of entirely artifical silver branches. Although this sounds a bit tacky, the overall effect is very pleasing when it is compared with thoe artificial trees that attempt, and fail abysmally, to emulate the real thing. So after we had arrived home and had our obligatory cup of tea after journey home, I decided to erect the tree and put it in a customary spot in the hall (near a power supply) At first, it did look a little straggly as one had to bend some of the branches into a particular position and then, of course, there were the lights to disentangle. When I gave the lights a cursory look, it appeared that they were unifom ‘white’ colour but upon my testing of them before I put them on the tree, I was delighted that they were actiually multicoloured. From this point, it was a simple case to drape the lights around the tree and make some adjustments to cover any evident gaps and then admire the overall effect. I must say, the overall effect was very pleasing and tree requires no more adornments (being silver anyway) to look more than respectable, particularly when illuminated. I cannot now remember whether we did actually put any more decorations on the tree as we used to do with our ‘original’ Christms trees but am sure that our domestic help, when she arrives on Wednesday, might be more than happy to give it one or two little tweaks, Incidentally, although it sounds a little killjoy, we no longer stack family presents under the tree as we did years go. We feel that to do so might be an invitation for someone to break into the house and steal them. When my son won a scholarship and spent a year in a Mexican university, the family actually did some last minute shopping in the days before Christmas and their car was broken into and all of the presents were ‘liberated’

Whilst we are getting well and truly fed up with the current spell of cold weather, it looks as things may improve for us from about Saturday onwards. Meg and I have got into the routine of wearing ‘two of everything’ and so today, for example over my norml vest and shirt I have three sets of jumpers called into use and I still feel that I am only just about warm enough.

Today I knew it was going to be a ‘crunch’ day for our Christmas cards as time is rapidly running out for us. Tomorrow we are going on a lunch-date to Oxfordshire whilst from Wednesday onwards, we shall be in Yorkshire. Thinking about all of this, I appreciated quite early on that it was an absolute priority for us to get the Christmas cards written and despached as soon as possible. Consequently, I decided to make this my major task this morning and I did thank my lucky stars that at least I had all of the materials I needed for the task. For many people,it would seem quite a simple task and I suppose it is possible that I am making it somewhat complex than it needs to be. Often though a Christmas card is the one way to keep in contact with lots of friends and neighbours and I feel the need to supply a minimal amount of information about what has been happening to us over the past year. I have one particular label which gives details of how Meg’s health is progressing and this I have done for the last year or so. Then I have another label whih gives all of those details that cannot be fitted onto a normal address label such as my mobile number, web home pages and blog addresses. Finally, I attach a simple address label that lets people have our current address details. I write an individualised little message which often runs along the lines of ‘I hope that we can meet again in 2023 as soon as the weather improves ‘or similar. There were some frustrations en-route, becase occasionally an address has not fitted in its entirety upon the gummed label and I have to rescue the missing part from an adjacent label and then cut it off with a pair of scissors and do a careful lining up and afixing job. I was delighted to get the bulk of the Christmas cards written and ready for despatch by 1.00pm but then I have to go and prepare a mega fast lunch before we are due to go out this afternoon.

This afternoon, Meg and I fulfilled an appointment with a large legal firm here in Bromsgrove in order to process some legal work that we are having done. This firm has been recommended to us but we have not used them before but nonetheless, we took along our two forms of ID which is increasingly necessary these days. We had a very fruitful appointment and were dealt with by friendly and professional staff who instilled some confidence in us. From this point on, everything will probably be handled by email and/or text message but evidently the first ever meeting has to be ‘in the flesh’ as it were. This transaction being successfully undertaken, Meg and I then joind the long (but not extraordinarily long) queue in the Post Office in order to buy our Christmas stamps. We had three Christmas cards destined for Spain and although, in theory, Saturday was the last day for guaranteed posting for them, we are pretty confident they will arrive on time (assuming that Spain dos not have the number of pending strikes that we do) In the meanwhile, we bought our quantum of stamps and were delighted to get them into the system. It is rather an off-putting, though, to hand over £10s of pounds, then stick them on a series of envelopes and finally dispose of the envelopes via the large posting bin. The number of Christmas cards that I have posted is somewhat down this year, more because of deaths and ‘lost’ addresses than any other factor but I am sure that the total number of Christmas cards in the system will be quite radically reduced by now, particularly after the last price increases making a first stamp stamp in the region of £1. Today seems to be the last ‘official’ day for the postage of Christmas cards so we are delighted to have our cards into the system as it were – hand delivered ones can now wait until a bit before Christmas Day itself.

The local news media has been filled with news of the tragedy when four boys fell through the ice in a lake in the Solihull area. It seems that one boy got this leg stuck in the ice and three friends came to his assistance. In the event, all four of then fell into the water and the extremely cold temperatures meant that they all suffered cardiac arrest, of whom three could not be revived and the fourth is still in critical care. I am just waiting to see if in the days ahead there will be calls blaming the local authority for not putting up signs warning people against the dangers of walking on thin ice in freezing conditions. This has not happened yet but I am waiting to see if this emerges in the days ahead. One has to ask whether the children in quetion were being adequately supervised by parents but more details will no doubt emerge in the days ahead.

Assiduous readers of this blog might realise that this is ‘Blog No. 1,000’ which is about two and three quarters of a year’s worth of scribbling. I have never been a diary keeper as such but when I was in Madrid, I did write a daily bulletin (‘Carta de Madrid’ or ‘Letter from Madrid’ vaguely based upon the veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke who used to write ‘Letter from America’ for a weekly broadcast on the BBC. I did a similar thing when I spent a month in Jakarta, Indonesia teaching IT on De Montfort University’s distance MBA program. Whether anybody ever read any of these documents I cannot say but as the years roll by, it can be reasonably interesting to remind oneself of the practical day-to-day concerns that you had probably decades ago. So perhaps the same will happen (or perhaps not) to this blog in the years to come.

Today being a Sunday, I get up early and make sure I am warmly attired before my walk down into town to pick up the Sunday newspaper. As I got out of the house, I checked that the couple of wreaths that we had commissioned from our friend down the road and which were delivered to the house the other day were securely in place in our porch. These are the only Christmas-like decorations that we have put up this year and some time in the next few days, I am going to make an excursion into our loft area to rescue the Christmas tree. We generally keep all of the Christmas stock in one place so that they should be quite easy to locate when the moment comes. When I returned from town, I settled down in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal to see what the politicians on the Laura Kuennsberg program have to say for themelves. When asked to justify why the Secretary of State refused to talk to the nursing union, due to go out on strike shortly, the response was to hide behind the mantra ‘It is for NHS Management to negotiate, not the Government’ which is sidestepping the issue that the Government of the day holds all of the purse strings which could be loosened if they were so inclined. By prior arrangement, we met two of our park friends in the Waitrose coffee bar – I think that we had decided that in this particularly cold spell, we were going to meet in the relative warmth and comfort of the coffee bar instead of shivering in the cold park. Naturally, we talked about last night’s football and then onto a ridiculous discussion about our little techniques in our day-to-day to save pennies (if not pounds)

After lunch, it was time to start thinking about the annual task of writing the Christmas cards. The first thing I had to do was to see if I had any of the sheets of labels of the requisite size and type and fortunately, we had enough in stock to run off this year’s supply of labels. Whilst I was at it, I ordered an extra supply of labels so that next year I will not have to beat about the bush but I will have the materials I want to hand. I also have a page of ‘news’ largely updating family nd friends about the changes in Meg’s health and finally I have yet another set of labels which extends the details on my normal address labels by showing a mobile number, web home page and blog addresses. So every card I write, particularly if I have not been in touch with people for a year, have an individual message as all as the three sets of labels mentioned above. I made a start on this quite large task because we really need to get cards into the postal system quite early on this week as we are away seeing friends the whole of Tuesday and then off to Yorkshire the first thing on Wednesday morning (weather permitting) The first tranche of cards did not go particularly well as people had moved and I did not have an up-to-date address or in the case of Meg’s uncle died. Incidentally, it is always quite a poignant moment when you come to the actual task of crossing people off your Christmas card because they have died in the last year – this does tend to happen once or twice a year at this stage in our lives.

A fairly terrible accident seems to have occurred in a local lake in Solihull. Although reports are still emerging, it looks as though people were ‘playing’ on the ice on a local lake and the ice, which could not have been very thick, had given way and several people were dumped into the freezing cold water. The emergency services have pulled various people out of the water and they required medical attention and some are reported to be in a ‘critical condition’ but whether there any fatalities at this stage has not been reported. By the way, it seems to have been a particularly foolhardy thing to do to skate on the ice which could only be of sufficient thickness to sustain people’s weight if it had been below freezing temperature for several days now.

Yesterday was the first day of the quarter-finals for the World Cup and both of them ended in penalties after extra time. During the afternoon, we watched the Brazil-Croatia match where the Croations snatched a very late equalising goal and finally won the penalty shootout at the end of extra time. This may well have been due to the fact that the Croations are used to penalty shootouts and the experience may be embedded into their collective memory whereas the Brazilians are used to winning matches (and not being taken to extra time and then penalty shootouts) It was an exciting match with genuine end-to-end stuff. The evening match was Argentina versus Holland and was a much more dour affair. The Dutch were very well organised but hardly had any shots on goal but when they did, they scored. It looked as though Brazil would sail through after they went ahead about 7 minutes before the end. But the Dutch scored in the 83rd minute and then actually equalised in the 11th minute of stoppage time. This second Dutch goal was completely extraordinary. The Netherlands were awarded a free kick in the 11th minute jut on the edge of the penalty area and the Argentinins formed a wall to prevent an easy shot on goal. Two or three Netherlands players took their place in the wall (this often happens) after which the Netherlands free kick taker rolled the ball towards his own player in the wall who promptly turned around having received possesion of the ball and then shot it into the net to equalise. Eventually, the game went through extra time and then it was onto penalties where the Netherlands players missed two of their penalties of their own and eventually the Argentinians won the entite match on penalties. The Argentinians seemed to have masses of support within the ground which may have had an impact on the penalties as the Netherlands players were subjected to a loud crescendo of boos and jeers whilst the Argentinian players took their penalties in silence. Today, it is the Morocco-Portugal in one quarter final and the big clash between France and England this evening.

As the weather is so cold at the moment, Meg and I are not in the mood for sitting on an icy cold park bench so we decided, when we met with our University of Birmingham friend yesterday, that we would meet in Waitrose cafe again this morning. There we met with two of our pre-pandemic friends who we know often frequent Waitrose on Saturday mornings. So we had nice ‘catching up on things’ chat before they departed to do their shopping and we resumed our conversations with our University of Birmingham friend who we will probably meet in the same place tomorrow. Then it was home for a lunch of quiche, after which there was more World Cup football. In this match, Morocco were playing European champions, Portugal, against whom the Moroccans scored a goal about half way through the the first half. Then the Moroccans hung on for dear life, nearly scoring a second in a breakaway and repelling the repeated assaults on their goal. So this game did not need to go to extra time and the celebrations were wild in the extreme. Morocco is the first African (or Arab) side to get through to semifinals and is probably a turning point as well established footballing nations such as Germany, Belgium, Holland, Spain have all been knockd out but small and emergent footballing nations (Croatia, Morocco) march onwards into the semi-finals. To round off this footballing section, England have just lost thir match 2-1 to France (as I thought they probably would a week or so ago) The match, though, was a little bizarre – France had the better of the first half and England the better of the second, in general. But there were some bizarre refereeing decisions throughout the game which often worked to England’s disadvantage. One example was a clear foul in the penalty area on an English forward which was initially dismissed and only the intervention of the VAR referee persuaded him to change his mind and award a penalty (which Harry Kane unfortunately missed) Also, the English forward Bukayo Saka who is a player who dribbles the ball and twists this way and that and who is often unplayable and the French players seem to kick him off the pitch whenever he had the ball without much intervention by the referee.

I have found a website often some searching which allows me to download classical and royalty free .mp3 files to put on my little thumb drive and then play in the kitchen. Having downloaded the file, I often have to tidy up (shorten) the name and then use an additional online resource to ‘stitch together’ the various movements of a concerto into the total work which can then be saved on my thumbdrive. In the last day or so, I have managed to download some of my favourite Mozart being the Clarinet Concerto and the Piano Concertos no. 20 and also 21. This means that as I write I have about 3 hours of music on my thumb drive which will prove especially useful when we go on long car journeys (which we will be doing next week, as it happens).

So we survived another cold night aided, of course, by an electric blanket, but Meg and I ensured that we had plenty of warm clothing on as we still have several more days of this really cold spell to survive. Before we breakfasted and at the most inconvenient time (I was dripping wet having just emerged from the shower) I got a call from the Fraud department of the company of the one and only credit card that I possess and only use occasionally. I was asked to verify whether the charge to the card from an organisation whose name was a jumble of letters and numbers and which turned out to be a ‘dating agency’ was genuine or not. The charge to the crdit card had been attempted at 8.29 this morning and was for £31.92 in total. This had so many ‘dodgy’ elements to it that it was no wonder that the Fraud department had managed to pick it up and refused payment. After ensuring that neither myself or anyone else in my household could have used the card to pay this organisation and for this amount, the credit card company immediately put a block on that number and are going to issue me with a new card immediately. Naturally I was both relieved and intrigued. I was pleased that the credit card company had intercepted this payment and prevented it quickly but I asked myself what kind of services one could possibly buy from a dating agency for £32, whether it included VAT or not. On the other hand, I was intrigued how it was possible for my card to be ‘scammed’ by whoever and how they managed to pick up whatever details they did possess. The last time I used the card was to pay for a Pilates group of sessions so I hope that it was nothing to do with that physiotherapy clinic where the Pilates sessions were held. However, this delayed us somewhat this morning.

After we had breakfasted, we made a quick telephone call to our University of Birmingham friend to consult where we might have our customary coffee together. We settled on the Waitrose coffee bar and had our customary friendly chat for nearly an hour, treating ourself to some discounted mince pies en route. Then it was a case of getting home and thinking about our Friday lunch – rather than having sea bass as we generally do, we had some cod in parsley sauce that was cooked in the oven for us. This afternoon we knew that it was going to be one of the first World Cup quarter-finals matches, nmely Brazil vs. Croatia. We tuned into this match about 15 minutes before the end of the first half and it seemed a pretty entertaining match – not the slow, patient build ups that we have witnessed in teams like Spain and even England but rather long range, adventurous passes upfield with plenty of brave runs at the opposition. This being so, we decided to watch the second half of the match which we did in its entirety. At the end of full time, it was a score of 0-0 so extra time was evidently called for. Brazil managed to scored quite a dramatic goal towards the end of the first period of extra time but the Croatians came to the match with a ‘never say die’ attitude and scored an equally good equaliser towards the end of the second period of extra time. And so it came to penalties in which Brazil missed their first but the Croatians missed none with the result that Croatia dumped Brazil out of the World Cup and march on towards the semi-finals. They will be a hard team to beat because in the face of adversity, they never, ever give up. The critical match for everyone here in England is the England-France game tomorrow night which starts at 7.00pm, just about the time that we return from Church but we will watch the match in any case. Tonight, we are going to watch the Netherlands-Argentina match which may well prove to be entertaining.

It is very, very rare for politicians to admit that they were absolutely wrong but that has certainly happened tonight.
The former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has admitted he and Liz Truss ‘blew it’ and got ‘carried away’ with bringing in sweeping economic reforms (from which we are suffering the pin, even now) Apparently, as soon as she became Prime Minister, Ms Truss said she did not want any opinion polling as she felt politicians were obsessed with ‘optics’. But despite advisers warning her and Mr Kwarteng that their plans would be seen as a ‘budget for the rich’, they were ignored. I do find it an extraordinary mindset to be surrounded by all kinds of intelligent, well-informed and knowledgeable people who tell you that you are mistaken but you think that you actually know better than all of them and press on regardless (with the dire consequences from which we are all now suffering) I suppose ideologues always think that they have all of the answers but the arrogance of it all still amazes me.