Yesterday morning I woke up a little earlier than usual whilst the two care workers were scheduled for three quarters of an hour later than normal. So I composed a little Christmas ‘party’ (or should I say ‘festive event’) email inviting all of the care staff to drop in and meet us informally two weeks next Monday on December 23rd. The care managers will probably circulate this news to all of the care staff who look after Meg on their own internal system but it is already something to which we can look forward. Because of shift working and other commitments, I would be surprised if any more than five care workers could turn up at any one time and the invite was clear that if they only popped in for a few minutes, we would still be glad to see them. By way of preparation, I have already ordered some disposable wine glasses for any liquid beverages, not that I intend to ply them with too much booze. But I did ask Alexa to play some ‘classical Christmas music’ and was served up with a selection of Christmassy type offerings often served up by operatic stores like Andrea Bocelli so I think this would fit the bill perfectly for some festive Christmas music which avoided the more naff contributions at this time of year. Preparing for these mini-celebrations puts me in mind of the last time I organised celebrations to commemorate our 50th wedding anniversary in La Coruna and Santiago (Northern Spain).I had arranged a pre-anniversary lunch time dates for friends and relatives in a good hotel Meg and I know well. The restaurant has a little ante-room and I had commandeered this to set up a display of wedding photographs and music and for a pre-dinner aperitif and welcome. I informed the staff that it was part of my 50th wedding anniversary celebrations and we were drinking Cava (Spanish champagne) and I informed the staff that whenever a bottle was empty just go and get one or two more. The staff really joined in the spirit of the celebrations and when a waitress appeared with a new bottle of Cava, she got a hug and a kiss (quite common in Spain) This led one of my oldest friends to remark ‘Mike, the whole of this anniversary is just set up as an excuse for to kiss as many Spanish women as possible!’ and there was certainly a lot of kissing going on that day.

Now returning to the severely mundane. The workers were scheduled to arrive three quarters of an hour later than usual but in the event were an hour on top of this so we did not get Meg out of bed until 9.45. She was getting a bit agitated and not in the best of moods as a result of all of this but my domestic help helped to calm her a little and I gave her some sustenance and tea before the workers actually arrived as Meg had not breakfasted and was not feeling of her best. When the workers did arrive, I got the excuse that they had a new client who needed two carers but only one was scheduled so a half visit took an hour. But I still could have got an explanatory text from the agency and was not a happy bunny as a result. Immediately after breakfast, our Eucharistic minister arrived by appointment and she brought along some of the Order of Service leaflets for our previous parish priest who had just died of colon cancer. I was somewhat amazed to learn from the particulars of his life that he was actually two years younger than I am when he died. After a rather messed up morning, I pushed Meg down the hill to pick up our newspaper and got ready for the (much delayed) two carers who were due to arrive to give Meg her lunch time call. We lunched on some pea soup kindly provided for us by our domestic help and supplemented this with some ham and cheese toasties.

After lunch, we entertained ourselves with ‘Question Time’ first broadcast the previous evening. One of the panelists was Nigel Farage whose politics I detest but whose communication skills I respect. As the audience was in Lincoln and therefore more susceptible to his stance of immigration he managed to disparage both of the efforts of the Tory and Labour administration and to claim (quite falsely) that all of the ills of modern society could be laid at the door of immigration, both legal and illegal. Even a challenge on Brexit was brushed away as ‘yesterday’s story – move on’ (which saves him answering embarrassing questions such as why our GNP is 5% lower than it should have been as a direct result of Brexit) This was followed up by a further instalment of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ which Meg and I are viewing in bits. Hardy seems to have the facility to have quite dramatic twist of the plot in the last quarter or so of the entire work and this is no exception. We will probably conclude our viewing of this tomorrow as no doubt a denouement will ensue.

As the Christmas festive season looms, I am reminding myself what needs to be done to assist in the celebrations. On Monday morning, I have arranged with my son that between us, we shall reach into the loft to bring down the Christmas decorations. We have a little system going that has served us well over the years which is to keep all of the Christmas decorations and artefacts together in a large pile easily accessible from the loft door. This way avoids excessive hunting around in the loft but it does tend to be a two man job i.e. one of us to locate the actual package who then hands it down to the other. All being well, we hope to have everything in place so that our domestic help can assist with the Christmas tree and other decorations when she calls around next Friday. I have in the past taken the view that any decorations around the house should take no more than 2 minutes and 40 seconds working on the principle that the less you put up, the less you have to put away on or before Twelfth Night. But I feel that the carers are rather anticipating a nice Christmas tree in the hall for when the party happens in just over two weeks time so here is a certain degree of moral pressure at work here.

Yesterday was my shopping day and things bode well when one of the carers detailed to get Meg up in the morning was also scheduled to stay after her stint to be Meg’s sit whilst I did the shopping. This carer is a young Psychology graduate with an incredibly sunny disposition who always seems cheerful whatever adversities in life comes her way. So I was relieved that Meg would probably be safe in her hands and so it proved as I left them both watching archive film of Joan Baez (the Mexican-American folk singer who sprang to prominence in the 1960’s and still alive and performing today) The other carer was a sister of one of the other carers and has only worked for the company for about three weeks so it was disappointing to learn that she had decided to leave. Having said that, she intimated that she really enjoyed coming to our house and caring for Meg (which sentiment I have heard expressed, incidentally, by some of the other carers) so it was a great shame to have to say goodbye to her. The shopping went relatively painlessly apart from the fact that Morrisons had run out of ‘The Times‘ so I needed to call in at Waitrose to pick up my copy of it. But when I got back, it was time for me to wheel Meg in her wheelchair into the kitchen so that we can chat whilst I unpack the shopping and put everything away, a procedure that seems to take as long as the shopping itself.By way of entertainment, I got Alexa to play Berlioz: ‘A Shepherd’s lament’ which is actually one of my favourite pieces of Christmas music. After that and when I was starting to think about cooking the lunch, we got Alexa to play J.S.Bach’s ‘A Christmas Oratorio’ which always starts off in such a joyous way. Within the oratorio are several cantatas which I am pretty sure that Bach lifted wholesale from his ‘Matthew Passion’ although it is possible that an odd grace note has been tweaked here and there. During the course of the morning, an idea grew in my mind which I discussed with the young care workers who attended to Meg both at the end of the sit and at Meg’s lunchtime call. Christmas Day this year actually falls upon a Wednesday and it occurred to me that probably the Monday of that week would be a good opportunity to put on a little festive fare for all of the care workers. What I had in mind was to extend an invitation for any care worker who could spare the time or was in between shifts could drop in to see us at any time between 1.00am and 5.00pm in the afternoon. It would be easy enough to purchase some mince pies and Christmas ‘eats’ from our local Waitrose store and entertaining should be quite a breeze as I cannot ply any potential callers with too much alcohol as they are all drivers. So I discussed with the two carers, the ways in which I might get the invitation promulgated throughout the care company and we decided that I should write this in an email which the company managers can then extract and circulate on their own internal message system.

This afternoon, we were wondering what TV entertainment we could view and I trawled through the various offerings of Prime when we discovered ‘Shakespeare in Love’ This we have seen on at least two previous occasions but it is always worth another viewing and is stuffed full of memorable faces from the British theatre – in fact, I wonder if they queued up in order to participate in it. The film as well as following the rivalry between Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, the other great Elizabethan playwright, follows the story of the first production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ The film is carefully constructed so that the plot lines of Romeo and Juliet are mirrored but not exactly duplicated in real life and the culmination of the play is that Romeo is played by Shakespeare himself and Juliet by a young actress with whom he becomes enamoured but is married off to a local nobleman. But on her wedding day, she evades the attention of her new husband whom she does not love to attend the theatre and finishes off playing the part of Juliet herself. Unbeknown to anyone, Queen Elizabeth is in attendance for this first performance and there are some interesting dramatic twists before the end of the film. The thing about the play is that it really is full of some of the most superb poetry in the English language and much of this finds expression in the play. I am delighted to say that Meg and I were absolutely absorbed by the whole of it.

Thursday is the long designated day when Keir Starmer is due to initiate what many commentators are calling a ‘reset’ for the government. Sir Keir Starmer has outlined six targets for his government to meet by the next general election in his ‘plan for change’ – including 1.5 million new homes and slashing NHS waiting lists to levels not seen for a decade. The new government has got off to the most faltering of starts and the combination of slashing winter fuel payments to pensioners, raising Employers NI contributions and alienating the farming community smacks of political ineptness. It is almost unprecedented how quickly a government can go from a massive majority (which will see it safe for the next five years) to a big negative dip in the opinion polls. The problem about setting very specific targets like this, even for the NHS, is that other things get neglected. One of the things crying out for attention is to manage to get a doctors appointment quickly when necessary but post COVID, one often has a tortuous process of a telephone conversation in a few days time rather than the appointment on the same day which many have rather grown to expect over the years. Governments of the centre and left generally promise better public services but they attempt to do this without the prospect of increasing taxation which is an almost impossible ask. The public if asked say they would prefer to pay more taxes to get guaranteed better public services but although the level of increased tax might be certain, whether there will be an improvement in public services is difficult to measure. There is a feeling that to campaign on a slogan of higher taxes, whatever has been said in opinion polls, will probably bring defeat at the polls.

Meg and I had rather a hectic start to our day yesterday morning. The manager of the care agency who regularly puts himself ‘on shift’ turned up with two shadowing workers. One of them was his own son who he was introducing to the business with selected clients. The other care worker was new to the agency but not to the care world and had previously worked as a psychiatrist nurse and evidently knew what he was about – for example, he immediately identified the weighted blanket for what it was. The prospect of three males getting Meg ready in the morning was potentially, and sometimes on occasion, overwhelming but Meg coped with it all fairly well. I intimated to the second shadow worker that I thought he had done a very good job and he evidently had the right skill set, eg by talking to Meg whenever he was going to perform a particular procedure and explaining what was taking place. Then, as you might imagine, illness had struck the agency and they were short staffed again so I was asked if I could be the second double-up worker for the lunchtime and the tea-time calls today to which I agreed, as these are somewhat lighter than the getting up/putting to bed calls at the beginning and end of the day. As we were eating breakfast this morning, our senses were assailed by the events unfolding in South Korea.South Korea’s president faces impeachment after his shock declaration of martial law unleashed a political crisis Protesters are rallying in Seoul calling for President Yoon to step down The president had said martial law was needed to guard against ‘pro-North Korea forces’ – but analysts say move was in response to political pressure He backtracked last night after clashes between protesters and soldiers and a rushed vote by MPs to block the order. So we witnessed the extraordinary sight of a quasi-coup that lasted only a few hours. Once the South Korean President had imposed martial law, then troops arrived to occupy the parliament building. But one way or another they were resisted both by Opposition MPs and by members of the public who effectively caused the military units to depart. So we witnessed the way in which ‘people power’ can work in practice and with the odd sight of the military first occupying the parliament building and then leaving to go home. It looks as though the South Korean president, who is enormously unpopular, may be impeached within the day and possibly he will be gaoled and/or forced to flee.

After we had breakfasted, Meg and I got muffled up and we made our way onto the High Street, picking up our newspaper en route. Although I am rather sceptic about buying vitamins if you have a good healthy diet and get outdoors, nonetheless I felt some Vitamin might be handy. The official Government advice is that everyone should consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement during the autumn and winter whereas one can rely upon sunlight in the Spring and Summer seasons. So we popped into two outlets that sell health related products and cosmetics to see what they had to offer in the Vitamin D line. This is where the story becomes really confusing. The advice I have gleaned from the web is that elderly adults should be taking 20 micrograms of Vitamin D per day but I finished off buying two plastic containers of pills. The first contained Vitamin D of the strength of 75 micrograms which is three and three quarter times the recommended dose – 100 micrograms being the level at which excessive use of Vitamin D is contra-indicated. The other container, though, had Vitamin D combined with calcium and each tablet here contains 2.5 micrograms which is one eight of the recommended dose. Even more disturbing to the uninitiated is that the fact that one container of Vitamin D tablets was offering pills that were formulated as being 30 times the strength of the other. I am not surprised that doctors are very often skeptical about the value of vitamin supplements and I how well informed are members of the public who buy these products? I did a modicum of research and found the following which I reproduce below. ‘To summarise, current evidence suggests that nutritional supplements do not improve health. Despite there being clear regulation preventing a manufacturer from making false claims, people are still being grossly mislead and duped in to spending absurd amounts of money on nutritional supplements. This is achieved through a combination of clever marketing, unethical advertising, and the wide spread of online misinformation. There appears to be a general lack of desire or interest in regulating online misinformation, and so the responsibility is now on exercise professionals to ensure that their clients receive accurate and reliable information. We must question whether a supplement really is effective before buying it, and better educate ourselves and our clients on how to spot misinformation online. Finally, we must call out companies who are breaching industry regulation standards and deliberately misleading people for simple profit.’ So I have learnt something today, after all. Whilst out on the road, I also bought two fine (i.e. not chunky) long sleeved jumpers of the kind that I particularly like. One of these is to be worn as a normal jumper but the other as night wear to help to supplement my normal pyjamas, particularly when the nights are cold. These have been put into a 30 degree wash and I shall see if my experimental jumper works as intended when I get to bed later in the evening.

I have read that levels of influenza are rising rapidly across the UK and particularly amongst school children. Why this is of interest to us is that this will directly impact the families of the carers who, when they report ion as sick, are more than likely reporting upon the illnesses of their own children. Meg and I have are vaccinated up to the hilt and will always continue to be so but I suspect that I detect in the culture a certain weariness and almost cynicism about the necessity to be vaccinated and there is the concept of ‘herd immunity’ which in the case of measles is about 95% but as a general rule-of-thumb should be above 70%. The medical epidemiologists have to make an educated guess as to which variant of the flu virus one should be vaccinated against and there are indications from the other side of the world (Australia) that the efficacy of this year’s vaccination might have declined from the 50% of last year to the 35% of this year. But even if one is infected with the virus, the symptoms should probably be a lot less severe and the risk of complications so much the less.

Today we stared off fairly bright and early as the two care workers were scheduled to arrive 15 minutes earlier this morning and they arrived on time. After Meg and I had breakfasted, we received a most welcome telephone call from our University of Birmingham friend, discussing our availability for coffee. Tuesday is our regular coffee day anyway so the group of us met discussing things relating to Christmas. I was reminded of a story that I was told some time ago that often the younger male members of couples would go out and buy either black or red underwear for the objects of their affections and to be given as Christmas presents. However, a goodly number of these presents were always taken back to the store and exchanged for either a more virginal white or certainly a more utilitarian version of the underwear in question. To add a degree of veracity to this story, one of our number announced that exactly that had happened in their own family over the festive season. Our University of Birmingham friend had, in the past, expressed a wish to read my PhD thesis so this morning I pulled off my bookshelves both a collected version of a dozen papers underpinning the PhD and also a rather battered final draft of the work which I used to brandish in front of students, principally to show them how to reference correctly, what to do about extended quotations particularly if quoted by one author citing the work of another and the sorts of problems that can create dilemmas for students when writing their final year projects. I have asked my friend to pull no punches in his evaluation of what I wrote nearLy thirty years ago now but also intimated that he had no fear of suffering from insomnia as a reading of the thesis might prove to be so boring that he would be asleep within minutes. We had to rather dash up the hill after our extended coffee session to ensure that we met with the care worker due to undertake her Tuesday morning sit and, having got Meg settled from a period of agitation, showed her some of our 50th wedding anniversary pictures if only to show a picture of Jo, my very old and dear friend who passed away in her mid 90’s before I had the chance to say a proper goodbye to her. However, I seem to remember that I did play her a little piece on my keyboard on the very last occasion that we spoke.

Today I poached some haddock in milk as our midday meal. served with a baked potato and some green beans. As my cooking coincided with the visits of the carers, I think I left the fish cooking for too long and my desire not to smell the kitchen and the rest of the house out with a fishy smell did not succeed. Nonetheless, the meal was delicious and delivers a lot more worthwhile protein than would be the case of fish fingers or even a bought fish pie, so I need to refine my cooking methods for next week. This afternoon, we started to watch the concluding part of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ which was a little slow moving compared with other Hardy novels but we left our viewing at a point of suitable dramatic tension ready for us to conclude tomorrow no doubt. I have in one on or two locations throughout the house and principally by the side of laptops any my main computer some cheap computer specs bought from the aisles of Poundland and elsewhere. But one of my favourite pairs had unaccountably gone missing so I went on the internet and purchased a box of four which seemed well designed and of the relevant quality. But what turned up, courtesy of Amazon, actually amazed me. Complete in a little presentation cardboard box were four pairs of spectacles, each in their own little plastic case and with a pair of cleaning cloths and an instruction leaflet to boot. The manufacturers of these spectacles make the claim that they have 20 million satisfied customers and offer a guarantee of quality with their product. They also claim that the spectacles have an ‘anti-blue light’ treatment which features heavily in their marketing and which may well be a bit of scientific over-stretch as a brief visit to the internet indicate that anti-blue light claims are rarely justified. But I must say that my first impressions are very favourable and as I was rather expecting four pairs of Chinese made units to turn up in a little plastic bag, it could well be that I have stumbled upon a real find. I must say, though, that to have four pairs to hand (although in reality I only needed one) is a facility which is going to prove very useful to me.

Something rather strange politically is happening before our very eyes which is the resurgence of Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Since Reform’s leader made a surprise return to frontline politics, he has leant even harder into anti-establishment rhetoric. The political elite do not want Nigel Farage to succeed, is his mantra. The problem Reform UK faces is that it now has five MPs, giving it a presence on the green benches alongside the very establishment it rails against. Its next job is to try to professionalise the party beyond the cult of Nigel and widen its supporter base. While most of its supporters are still older white men, according to YouGov’s post-election analysis, Reform was the third most popular party with men aged 50-64 – just one point shy of the Tories. But there are signs of growing support among younger age groups, including young men aged 18-24, where Reform was the third most popular choice, alongside the Green Party. Surprisingly, Mr Farage’s party was as popular as Labour among young men in that age group, according to a poll by JL Partners in the week of the general election.

More scandals left behind by the last government are just starting to be revealed. The latest is that the last government spent £50m on Rwanda deportation flights that never took off, new figures reveal. This included the cost of securing the flights, escorts to force migrants onto the planes and preparing and securing the airfields, Home Office documents show. Spending on the asylum scheme overall reached £715m before it was scrapped by Labour after the general election in July. Other costs outlined include £290m paid to Rwanda’s government, £95m on detention and reception centres and £280m on IT, staffing and legal fees.

Meg and I had a couple of really cheery care workers this morning, which certainly helps to start the week. I have asked Alexa the weather forecast for the next seven days ahead so it appears that we may be in for a spell of fairly settled weather to which we can surely look forward. After we had breakfasted, although I felt fairly tired this morning, we thought we would pop down the hill and possible along the High Street if the spirit moved us. On our way down the hill we bumped into our Italian friend and exchanged some current news. She had just been to visit a friend around the corner whose husband has just been diagnosed with dementia and I told our friend what was happening to my sister. We carried down as far as Waitrose and picked up our newspaper, bumping into one of our Tuesday friends whilst we inside the store but if we had been tempted to have a coffee, the cafeteria was closed for urgent repairs to its hot water system (not for the first time) I wanted to take the opportunity to buy some Christmas cards from one of the numerous charity shop outlets and they all seem to have Christmas cards in stock. I like to buy cards with a religious theme for the committed Christians on our Christmas card list, cards with a kind of internationalist and/or peace motif for those of our friends and relatives who would appreciate them and a choice of other cards for those who could not care one way or the other. In the end, I did buy some cards both from Cancer Relief which always has a huge selection and supplemented these with some from the British Heart foundation who had some of the cards in stock that matched my criteria. On our journey down the hill, I play an app that I have on my iPhone which has quite a huge selection of Mozart on it. One of the tracks to which we were listening is one that Mozart composed perhaps as an extended joke but more likely as a ‘show off’ piece. This starts with the very simple nursery rhyme that we know in England as ‘Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star’ but which is actually a French carol, ‘Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman’ which translates as ‘Oh! Shall I tell you, Mama’ Once the simple tune has been laid out for the listeners, Mozart then goes on to compose sets of variations which become increasingly complex with variations upon the variations up to about a dozen in total. I imagine it takes a pianist of quite considerable skill to play all of these variations straight off although Meg and I did hear a performance of these variations performed by a local musician as part of the Bromsgrove Festival of music. When we returned home, I made Meg some chicken soup and then a couple of carers made their late morning call and got Meg hoisted into her specialist chair. Then, as time was getting on, I heated up the special pasta meal that had been given to us by one of our (Asian) male carers who enjoys cooking. This pasta meal was absolutely delicious and so Meg and I enjoyed it tremendously – I may do a trade with some of our left over risotto as an exchange.

Channel 4 can always be relied upon to give us some alternative presentations at Christmastime and now we are into the month of December and ClassicFM has started to broadcast some Christmas carols, I suppose you can see the festive season is upon us. Broadcast yesterday was a contribution which I particularly wanted to see which was an animated carton of ‘Mog’s Christmas’, Mog being a favourite character in a book read by generations of schoolchildren and also as it happens, my family nickname. But I was feeling very flue-laden when the programme was originally broadcast but unfortunately slept all the way through it. However, we looked at ‘catch up’ TV for Channel 4 and viewed the animated film made of Judith Kerr’s famous children’s book ‘The Tiger who came to tea’ This I enjoyed tremendously and looked forward to its sequel which also happened to a replay of ‘Mog’s Christmas’ but was asleep during some of this as well. To round off this afternoon’s series of animations, we did watch (again) the Raymond Brigg’s story of ‘The Snowman’ so what with one thing or another, we have had an afternoon full of entertainment originally designed for children but I suspect enjoyed by some adults as well.

In the Unites States, it is quite traditional for the outgoing president to issue Presidential pardons, particularly if there is a deep suspicion that a miscarriage of justice has taken place. But Joe Biden has chosen to pardon his own son, Hunter, who undoubtedly has had a troubled past but was convicted of illegal possession of a gun. This has caused some misquiet even on the Democratic side of the political divide and the Republicans are seizing every opportunity to show that there is really a dual justice system at work in the United States. But the anger expressed by the Republicans may be somewhat synthetic because Trump, in particular, may be secretly delighted that Joe Biden has chosen to extend Presidential pardons in this way. It opens the door wide open for Trump, the minute that he takes office, to immediately pardon all of those who were rightfully convicted of storming the United States Capitol building nearly four years ago and who Trump maintains were the victims of a miscarriage of justice and a Democratic witch hunt. But there is no real equivalence between the pardoning of one errant son (which Hunter Biden undoubtedly is) and the scores of MAGA and Trump supporters who, with firearms, forced their way into the Capitol building in order to try prevent the formal declaration of the results of the presidential election which Joe Biden won fairly and squarely. It also looks as though Trump through his appointment of an ultra loyalist Kash Patel to FBI director will visit retribution across the US’s top law enforcement agency and the Department of Justice, who have sought to investigate the president-elect on a litany of criminal charges, now dropped or on hold due to the impermissibility of prosecuting a sitting president. ‘Government gangsters’ is how the 40-year-old Patel has termed them, the name of a book he has written on what he perceives to be Deep State corruption at the heart of the agency he will be tasked with running and beyond.

Just as I had got Meg safely in bed on Saturday evening and was doing some of my routine evening jobs, I received the news from my niece that my sister, who is two and a half years older than me, is in hospital. Although she is now in a residential home, it appeared that her COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) had worsened necessitating a stay in hospital. She is receiving oxygen via what I think is called the Venturi system (although the NHS might have another name for it) where a flow of oxygen is fed into the lungs via a mask and this takes a bit of pressure off the diaphragm. Because it is difficult to communicate with a face mask in place, it may be that I cannot FaceTime my sister but will await updates from my niece. But if there were any doubts concerning whether my sister had entered a residential home too early, these doubts must be dispelled by now as with this little episode, my sister’s capacity for self care must have diminished a notch. So I have had one of my family members (our son) discharged from hospital about three days ago and now my sister is in for a stint so I hope the hospital do a good job in turning her around, which they surely will.

As yesterday was the first of the month, I am allowing my thoughts to turn to the next few weeks ahead. Having felt terrible all yesterday, I got up feeling a lot better after a regime of taking Flue and Cold sachets and generally taking care of myself. Meg and I undertake a visit down the hill to Waitrose as we both are need of a breath of fresh air, which we shall surely get. Perhaps because I thinking of some of our care staff, I reminded myself of two principles that were current in my career as a teacher of sociology before I moved onto other things. One principle of organisational functioning was promulgated in an article entitled ‘The Protection of the Inept’ , whose whole thesis was that all organisations kept inept people deliberately within their ranks. This was because the other organisational members could say to themselves that however badly they were felt to be performing, they were still doing better than ‘X’ who the organisation would surely sack first (but this does not always happen) The second principle is known as the ‘Peter principle’ and it goes like this. If a person at the very bottom of an organisation is supremely competent in their job, then the best thing to do is to promote them. The more they display competence when promoted, then the individual will be promoted to the point where they are barely competent and only just managing to cope. The author of the principle, Lawrence Peter, a Canadian author and educator expressed it thus: ‘In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.’ The jury is out whether this principle works out in practice or was meant as an extended joke but nonetheless it is interesting to observe organisations in this particular way.

As it is the 1st of the month, I am filled with good intentions a little similar to New Year Resolutions. Conscious of what had happened to my son recently and also of the fact that my sister is currently hospitalised with COPD symptoms, I thought I had better started taking care of my own health and lung functions. So when I got up this morning, even though it was quite early at just after 6.00am I went outside into the garden and took a dozen deep breathfuls of air to get myself well oxygenated for the day ahead. Actually there is a fair amount of preparation to do before the carers arrive at 8.00am but fortunately I was all ready in time today. When I went on the internet to research good lung health recently, I discovered an elementary fact of human physiology of which I was ignorant. I know that health professionals often state that one needs to drink at least two litres of water to stay healthy. Many of us believe we should drink at least eight glasses of water a day. Fuelling this appetite for water is the ‘8×8 rule’: the unofficial advice recommending we drink eight 240ml glasses of water per day, totalling just under two litres, on top of any other drinks. That ‘rule’ however, is not backed by scientific findings – nor do UK or EU official guidelines say we should be drinking this much. It looks as though this unclear information about how much water comes from misinterpretation of a piece of guidance from decades ago. In 1945 the US Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council advised adults to consume one millilitre of liquid for every recommended calorie of food, which equates to two litres for women on a 2,000-calorie diet and two-and-a-half for men eating 2,500 calories. Not just water, that included most types of drinks – as well as fruits and vegetables, which can contain up to 98% water. I now more fully appreciate, though, that the water transported through the body helps in the more efficient transport of oxygen to all of our vital organs and that it why a certain level of hydration is so important, particularly for those with an impaired heart and lung function.

As soon as we had viewed the political programmes, I made a phone call to our University of Birmingham friend and, as we normally do, we spent a very happy three quarters of an hour in his company. Then we made our way home and I engaged in my normal late Sunday morning dash around the kitchen whilst I was preparing a dinner of ham cooked in the slow cooker, broccoli and a baked potato. We had intended to watch the finals of ‘Young Chorister of the Year’ to be broadcast as part of the ‘Songs of Praise’ series. Instead, we tuned into the next episode of ‘Pilgrimage’ which was following the route of St Colomba who brought the Christian faith from Ireland to the Scottish highlands and islands. In the late afternoon, as it now officially the Christmas season, Channel 4 broadcast ‘Mog at Christmas’ which I was particularly looking forward to watching (a Mog is my nickname within the household) However I slept through this but afterwards we were treated to a re-run of the Raymond Briggs version of ‘The Snowman’ which is a very famous story of the little boy who builds a snowman and he two of them embark on a series of adventures both within and outside the family home. I always thought it was Aled Jones who sang the famous theme song of ‘Walking Through the Air’ but I was only half right. The full story is that it was a choir boy called Peter Auty who sang at St Paul’s Cathedral at the age of 13 who recorded the theme song of the 1982 animated film, The Snowman, but in the rush to finish the film his name was omitted from the credits until the film was remastered for its 20th anniversary in 2002. The composer, Howard Blake, decided to re-record the song for a commercial for Toys ‘R’ Us in 1985. Aled Jones was chosen instead and the song became a hit single. Many people assumed that Jones, rather than Auty, was the singer in the version used in the film.

After my successful installation of the Amazon Dot the other day, I was tempted to buy its cheaper cousin which is called the Amazon Pop. This has one or two features which I will never miss such as a temperature sensor and a touch control but the software driving Alexa is identical and the speakers are of comparable quality. I ordered a white model which will blend into our kitchen and it was very easy to install. I think, though, that having two devices I am enrolled in a more expensive ‘Family Plan’ so I found a way to cheapen this by threaten to leave whereupon the system delays your cancellation and gives you an extra three months ‘gratis’ to encourage you to stay on that particular subscription. But to my ears the quality of the sound playing orchestral pieces is the same although some of the cognoscenti in the more specialised reviews of the two products compared with each other feel that there may be a difference in the rendition of the bass at high volume levels which is hardly going to bother me.

Late on Friday evening and by prior arrangement, I contact into contact with my University of Winchester friend – we generally have an extended chat at least once a month and swap stories about the condition of our respective wives, which seem to parallel each other. On this occasion we used the videolink available via WhatsApp and after one or two initial glitches we spent our customary hour and a half chatting with each other. This almost most welcome and then I feel into my bed with alacrity. But this morning, when I woke up, I felt absolutely dire with classic cold and flu symptoms of feeling cold, shivering, feeling a tremendously lassitude and generally the feeling of walking through treacle. I dosed myself up on the proprietary ‘Cold and Flue’ relief sachets of which I always have some in stock for occasions such as this and started to feel a smidgeon less bad as a result. I made a double portion of porridge so that Meg could have one half and myself the other and then made a lightning visit to collect my copy of the Saturday newspaper which I felt I needed as it gives a guide to the week ahead. So I spent a very quiet in the armchair all this morning, whilst Meg herself seemed comfortable enough in her newly installed specialist chair into which she had placed by the carers as we were evidently not going to go anywhere with me feeling like this. About lunchtime, I got a phone call from our friend who lives down the road who used to make up all of the flowers for our local church. She still is an expert in making Christmas wreaths at a very reasonable price and she was phoning up to enquire whether I should like to have a couple this year to decorate our porch. I did immediately assent to this suggestion although, in all honesty, I am trying not to utter the dreaded Christmas word until tomorrow which happens to be 1st December.

I cooked a risotto for lunch yesterday but succeeded in cooking too much of it, even though I made efforts to keep the quantity down. But I have stored the excess in the freezer and will make a present of it to the young Asian care worker who enjoys cooking and has promised me some of the pasta he is preparing for himself. After lunch, we watched a film on Prime TV on the life of Manet and the rest of the French impressionists. After that, Prime took us into a type of American romantic comedy which I dozed almost all the way through (still feeling rough) so couldn’t cast an opinion on it one way or the other. When the two young carers (whose company we really enjoy) turned up this afternoon, I showed them the book which I had accidentally stumbled across in the bookshelf in the Living Room. This was a book entitled ‘The 100 – a ranking of the most influential persons in History’ and the author was one Michael Hart. I managed to persuade one of them for about a second that I was the actual author of this book and the reason why it was sitting on my bookshelves is that I evidently could not resist buying it when I must have seen it in a bookshop decades earlier. Just before they left, I showed them my newly installed Amazon Echo Pop smart speaker and they, in their turn, showed mr a photo of how Miggles, our adopted cat, had taken up position on the bonnet of my car and was sitting patently for the carers to arrive in the late afternoon. Meg and I still have the second half of the Thomas Hardy ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ to view when we get around to it on BBC catchup but in the late afternoons we often have a quiet contemplative time, drinking a cup of tea and indulging in a little dark chocolate whilst listening to some good music on the Amazon Echo Dot system or YouTube. As I write I am actually enjoying the Beethoven ‘Moonlight’ sonata which is calming in the extreme. Then we are contemplating a specialist rice pudding for our tea and then an early night for me, once the blog is completed.

On the international scene, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested to Sky News that he might consent to Russia temporarily holding on to occupied Ukrainian territory as part of a ceasefire deal. This would involve membership of NATO including the occupied parts of Ukraine but I do not think this would prove acceptable to all of the other NATO countries. As the war is going against him. I think Zelenskyy is arguing from a position of weakness rather than strength but perhaps he has a feeling that Trump may enforce this deal once he takes office in January. I suspect that Putin just has to keep making small incremental advances before the Ukrainians trade territory for peace. But there was a report that Russia had a loss of 200 soldiers in the last week so the war must be taking its toll. Tomorrow, I am sure that there will be pages of analysis of the implementation of the Assisted Dying bill which passed through the House of Commons with a majority of 55. I can foresee even more tightening up to take place at the committee stages and, of course, we still have the House of Lords and the ultimate possibility of a ‘ping pong’ between the Lords and the Commons. We have grown used to this over the years but an issue of this importance and magnitude and no real democratic mandate from the House of Commons (not being part of an election manifesto) then this may take the best part of a couple of years to fully resolve.

The day started off to the peals of rolling thunder but this was not outside but an option available under the Alexa suite of programs to help to induce sleep. I selected this on a whim and it must have worked in the middle of the night because I did not stay awake for very long. I was up quite bright and early, ready to greet our two carers one of whom was both new to us and fairly new in the job as well. I suspect she was a little nervous but anxious to please but had she arrived slightly in advance of the other carer, I took the opportunity to introduce her to our little systems with which she will no doubt familiarise herself were she to become a regular carer. I had been expecting our son to come over fairly early in the morning and he would have done were it not for the fact that the battery in his car had gone flat and even the first aid supplied from the garage who supplied him with the car did not do much to resolve the problem so a new battery needed to be installed. But the new battery was of a higher capacity to the one that it replaced so one wonders whether the battery supplied when the car was new was somewhat under-specified. When our son did call around, I was eager to get all of his news after his recent hospital stay and he now seems to be on the mend but he realises (and I keep nagging him) to the effect that he really does have to take it easily and ease himself back into work which will no doubt be horrendous once he is back in harness. I am relieved, though, that he is to have a meeting with his line manager early on next week and no doubt a somewhat lighter scheduLe of work might be heLpful until his long function is more fully restored.

As it was quite a beautiful fine and clear day with just a hint of winter warmth, I pushed Meg down the hill to take a coffee in Waitrose. We dod not expect to see any of our regulars on a Friday but we did get into conversation with a couple who lived in an avenue round the corner from us in which there is a field (soon to be built on) separating our respective roads. They recognised me by sight and said that they had often observed me pushing Meg up and down the hill. Later we had a few words with a gentleman who we know quite well by sight and have, on occasion, shared a joke with him. I just got the feeling that he might be a retired schoolteacher from Bromsgrove School as he had that kind of bearing. So I pluck up my courage and approached him asking if he was a retired academic. He explained that he had been a GP and then moved into a role where he was engaged in some medical research and even advised the courts on occasion. We ascertained that we had both acquired our PhD’s late in life (i.e. in our 50’s and not our 20’s) and then swapped some observations about the distinctions between and appropriateness of parametric vs. non-parametric tests of significance in statistical research. But we could not prolong the conversation because Meg was getting a little cold and impatient to be off so we made our way home. We were expecting a visit from the Occupational Therapist some time after 1.00pm and he turned up, together with a student on attachment and the sole carer all at the same time. We thought that we might have to hoist Meg into her new chair so that the OT could check that all was well but we explained that we were very satisfied (in fact, delighted) with it all and I acquired an email address so that I could write a note to his superiors commending him for a superb service, given that the chair arrived n about three weeks. in the early afternoon, we got the vote for the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons and the Bill was approve in the second reading by a majority of 55. The debate proved to be the House of Commons at its best with each side respecting the firmly held convictions of the other side and allowing interventions when necessary to clarify or to reinforce particular points. Of course it was a free vote as the bill was a Private Member’s bill and was an issue of conscience like the Abortion Law Reform bill sponsored by David Steele in the 1960’s. The Bill now goes into committee where it will be argued over line by line and it is possible that amendments might be made which would then have to be approved in further votes in the House of Commons before the eventual Third Reading. A majority of 55 was perhaps a little more that might have been expected but it appears that a majority of Tories voted against the bill, a majority of Labour MPs for it with significant exceptions on both sides. I would be amazed, though if the House of Lords were not to amend it or throw it out completely. Although a Private Members Bill, the government will now be involved in severely practical details such as can the NHS cope with the increased demand on its resources and a parallel argument applies to the judiciary as well.

On the news, there were some clips of video of Notre Dame in Paris after its restoration. The French President, Emmanuel Macron was being given a preview but I think the formal reopening ceremony is due in about a week’s time. I understand that the French ecclesiastical authorities were keen for the Pope to perform a reopening ceremony but the Vatican was not playing ball on this one, using the excuse that France was too secular a society nowadays. But the restoration work seemed stunning. When Meg and I went round it approximately ten years ago its was a bit grimy but the whole cathedral has been restored to its former glory. I think a lot of oak trees had to be felled in France to replace the originals destroyed in the fire but the French have managed a restoration in about 5 years which is remarkable. But being one of the national symbols of French art and culture, I think that the restoration went ahead whatever the cost.

Yesterday the two carers turned up on cue starting at 8.10 and I was pleased to see them if only because the icy weather (about -3 degrees) meant that a delay in getting to us because of car starting difficulties was absolutely on the cards. But we always suspected that today might prove to be a rather difficult day to organise because although it was my normal shopping day, it was also the day when the delivery of Meg’s new specialist chair was scheduled. We had been given a time slot of anywhere between 9.00am and 12.00am but in the event the chair was delivered at 8.45 as our call had been made the first drop in the morning. We knew what the chair was to look like as a sample chair had been brought along by a representative of the firm that supplies it to ensure that the correct model and fitments were supplied. The chair is actually manually operated rather than having electric controls. I am quite happy with this because once we have the adjustment just right for Meg, there is actually little need to alter anything. We knew that a certain degree of reorganisation of the furniture was due to take place but to our pleasant surprise Meg’s new chair and her existing, quite wide, leather armchair would live quite happily next to each other. We realised that various little tables used for plates, cups of tea, books and the like would need to be placed adjacent to the new chair and this was performed quite expeditiously. Meg’s specialist chair actually sits quite high off the ground but she is gently tilted backwards and with excellent leg and foot supports so when she is sitting in it, she is very comfortable and is starting to live up to the title of ‘Queen Meg’ which the younger care workers have bestowed upon her. But I did need something upon which I can sit so that I can administer both food and drink to Meg and, fortunately, I happened to one high kitchen stool which used to be part of a set but which was soon pressed into service. This turned out to be just the right height for us and I was delighted that we were in luck once again. Now that Meg was safely enthroned, all we needed to do was to give Meg her usual breakfast and then await the arrival of the carer scheduled to do a ‘sit’ with Meg whilst I go off and do my weekly shopping. On previous occasions,Meg has exhibited some separation anxiety symptoms but today when I returned with the shopping, the carer informed me that Meg had a very pleasant time. We had starting to listen to a selection of Fauré courtesy of Alexa and finished up watching a Jeremy Clarkson programme which involved him making a real pig’s ear of a ploughing job on his recently acquired farm. As we had a fairly full morning, we were not tempted to make any trips out which was perhaps just as well because the temperatures have been pretty low all day and we are hopeful that they may improve by tomorrow.

Immigration has been an explosive issue in British politics for about a decade now and all kinds of political debates are shortly to be re-opened following the publication of the most recent set of official statistics. Net migration stood at an estimated 728,000 in the year to June, a 20% decrease compared to the year before. But that was down from a record high of 906,000, which the PM said showed the Tories had run an ‘open borders experiment’ Keir Starmer said the UK had become ‘hopelessly reliant on immigration’ and vowed to turn the page by boosting skills training for British youngsters and taking action against employers who are over-dependent on migrants. But despite an up tick in processing asylum claims, spending has hit a record £5.38bn and there are thousands of migrants in hotels. As was pointed in the excellent couple of programmes recently broadcast by the BBC, there is a lot of confusion in the public mind between legal migration, not-legal migration often for economic reasons and ‘asylum seekers’ many in the infamous small boats crossing the English Channel. Whilst the last government directed much of its attention and energies to a policy of ‘Stop the Boats’, legal migration was hitting higher and higher levels, much of it necessary to fuel the demands of the care sector. As the weather conditions have worsened and the nights have become longer so the dangers attached to crossing the Channel in boats has increased and perhaps some of the pent-up demand decreased. We know that attempts at illegal migration increase rapidly in the summer months when there are calm conditions so perhaps the reverse applies now. The new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has made a statement admitting that the Tories ‘got it all wrong’ on immigration and one suspects that she was forewarned as to what today’s figures might reveal. I am not at all sure that Badenoch exactly spells out why and how the Tories got it all wrong on immigration but I suspect that she means that concentrating all of the public attention and political energies on illegal migration meant that the Tories had taken their eye off the ball when it came to legal migration. This same official release of migration data reveals that the Home Office spent a record £5.38bn over the last year on asylum – more than a third higher than the previous year. Figures just released showed spending on asylum rose by £1.43bn in the 2023/24 financial year to £5.38bn – 36% higher than in 2022/24 when £3.95bn was spent. The latest figure, covering the Conservatives’ final year in government, is the highest amount since comparable data began in 2010/11.

The critical vote on the Assisted Dying bill will be held on Friday and the latest suggestions are that it will receive a small Commons majority. But I still have a shrewd feeling that even a narrow vote in the Commons will be insufficient to persuade the House of Lords as presently constituted. But a factor that seems to inform the debate is not the usual Left-Right divide in British politics but rather those who have had recent experience of the death of a family member or loved one and wish to see a dignified end. One powerful expression that is doing the rounds that the Bill is not designed to shorten lives but to shorten deaths i.e. the dying process. David Cameron, ex PM, has experienced the death of a young child in his family (although the legislation does not apply to children) and had recently changed from an ‘anti’ to a ‘pro’ position and it may well be that his intervention, at this stage in the debate, may help some MPs to come to a final decision.

Meg and I must have been more tired than we realised yesterday as we practically both overslept this morning and it was a bit of a rush around to get ourselves ready before the carers arrived. This morning our trusty domestic help turned up switching her days this week as she has a very busy week in her normal place of work and was trying to ease the pressure a little. The day started off gloomy and raining but after breakfast we make a trip down the hill to pick up our newspaper and give ourselves some lungfuls of fresh air. As it was quite a fine day, we made a venture down our local High Street, purchasing a soft toy for Meg in our Local Salvation Army charity shop. Nothing else really took our fancy so we made our way home to coincide with the lunchtime call of the carers. Both they and myself have rather horrendous problems just getting into and out of our access road because a new gas main is being installed on the distributor road which we have to utilise to get onto the main Kidderminster Road. The contractors are just at the point where they are digging a trench immediately opposite our drive and basically all traffic on the road is closed in both directions.So to take the car out of the road, and even to get past the vehicles that block the road, we have to look pitifully at the contractors

We are still experimenting with ‘Alexa’ and have tried giving it a variety of commands. If you try to ask Alexa about Donald Trump however, you do not get any real answers. As a joke, I asked Alexa ‘Tell me about Donald Trump’s sexual peccadillos’ followed by ‘Tell me about Donald Trump’s convictions’ to which you only get the bland answer that Alexa cannot help with that particular query or does not understand the question. But since the 1970s, at least 26 women have publicly accused Donald Trump, of rape, kissing, and groping without consent; looking under women’s skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants but Trump has denied all of the allegations.He has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media and has made lewd comments, disparaged women’s physical appearance, and referred to them using derogatory epithets.But only a cursory scan of the web reveals an article (courtesy of ‘The Daily Beast’) which is entitled ‘A Handy Guide to (Nearly?) (Maybe?) All the Sex Scandals in Trump’s New Cabinet’ so there is a wealth of information out there. Intrigue I did a little bit of digging and discovered that Alexa uses the ‘Bing’ search engine which, if you question it directly, spills all of the dirt on Donald Trump without hesitation. But there are nuances to this question that do not pull in one direction. Some users have tried to ask Alexa why they should have voted for Donald Trump only to be informed that Alexa does not engage in political debate or endorse a particular candidate. But when asked a similar question of Kamala Harris, Alexa will reply that she is a ‘woman of colour fighting for racial justice’ When challenged about all of this, Amazon replied that it was an ‘error’ that is being quickly fixed but clearly there are algorithms at work that give very inconsistent answers to these questions.

For lunch, I was conscious that I needed to eat up some bits and pieces before my shopping day on a Thursday. I had some prepared cauliflower cheese which I had purchased from Aldi and was apparently some days out of date but I opened and microwaved it and it was fine. To give us a bit more protein, I had some fragments of beef left over from the weekend joint so I fried an onion to which added the meat fragments and then I made this a bit more exciting with some fruity sauce and a spoonful of Bovril. The end result was pretty taste so I may feel inclined to repeat this little bit of experimental cooking. After lunch, I FaceTimed our son to check on his progress after his recent spell in hospital and it appears that he is making some reasonable progress which is a source of great relief to me. Then I thought I would have a quick look at the films available on Amazon Prime and selected the first which was a sort of biopic of the famous dancer, Isadora Duncan. I was not really concentrating on the film which was playing in the background as I was intent to do a quick sort of the newspapers before the bulk of them could be binned ready for the bin collection in the morning. But the film was one of those disappointing ones where you have invested a certain amount of time in it thinking that it might improve before you realise that you would have been better off watching something else. By an Amazon delivery in the late afternoon, I received a copy of the Chris van Tulleken’s book ‘Ultra-Processed People’ which I now see is a No 1 Sunday Times bestseller and was first published last year by Penguin in 2024. It seems to be my kind of book because at first glance, it appears to be incredibly well researched with some 53 pages of references and nearly 400 pages long. Watching the documentary by van Tulleken was enough to stimulate me to buy the book but now I will have to find the time to actually read it, probably in small chunks every night after Meg has been put to bed.

When the two young carers arrived for Meg’s teatime call, we had some fascinating conversations about their belief systems. Perhaps as a result of having to meet with a variety of both clients and co-workers they were both of the opinion that they could tell almost within seconds whether they going to feel attuned or not with the people with whom they needed to interact. In the 1960’s, they used to talk a lot of ‘vibes’. When I put this term into Google, I learnt that people who give off good vibes are often described as having a positive energy that makes others feel safe, happy, and relaxed. Some signs that someone has good vibes include a smiling demeanour, open body language, an optimistic outlook, a supportive nature, expressions of gratitude and kindness and empathy. The same source indicated that a person’s energy is a combination of their past, mindset, dominant thoughts, and perception of the world. This energy can be easily felt, or it can manifest subtly and subconsciously. People can sense good or bad vibes through their nervous systems, which can pick up on chemical signals left in a physical space. These signals are based on the emotional state of the person who left them. Now these young people really believed in these principles whereas I must say that I am agnostic about this kind of material at the moment.