This morning, the workers were scheduled to arrive a quarter of an hour earlier than is normal, so we made a fairly early start. I was buoyed up by the news that I had received the evening before that our son had been released from hospital but it was going to be later on in the day that we were to receive a full update of what had been going on. After breakfast, it was the most beautiful day so we gladly trundled down the hill and met up with two of our regular Waitrose gang, which is normal for a Tuesday. I bought some last minute supplies and then we got back in plenty of time for our Tuesday ‘sit’ session. I had decided to cook a rather different Tuesday lunch today and to avoid the fish fingers/fish pie which seems so deficient in actual fish these days. I had looked at the contents of our freezer and located some haddock fillets which were to provide the midday meal.

When Meg was safely tucked up in bed and I had done my round of ‘evening’ jobs, I sat down to watch a stunning documentary on BBC2 presented by Dr Chris van Tulleken, a well known and savyy presenter of medical programs. The program was entitled ‘Irresistible – why we can’t stop eating’ and the thesis was startling in its stark simplicity. This was simply that most of the nation was now addicted to ‘junk’ food or more technically, ‘ultra-processed food’ The program revealed how the large tobacco companies communicated the techniques that they used to get people to be hooked onto their products to the food technologists in large corporations who got to work on the size, shape, taste and even sound of food (think ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ for Rice Crispies) to make us want to consume more and more of their product. Moreover this ultra-processed food is so cheap compared with the natural alternatives so it is no wonder that those on restricted incomes are such heavy consumers of it. To quote from a ‘Times‘ article devoted to the subject in the T2 section ‘We are facing a health catastrophe of obesity and other diseases caused by what we consume..our diet related disease statistics are as bad as the worst in the world. ..the pandemic of diet-related disease – primarily obesity but also lots of other problems including cancers and metabolic disease like type 2 diabetes is driven by the marketing, availability and consumption of industrially prepared and products that are high in energy, salt, sugar and fat’ The program actually has a disturbing, not to mention sinister, ending. There are evidently powerful people in the food industry who would rather like Chris van Tulleken to shut up. One food company offered him £20,000 after the publication of the book ‘Ultra-Processed Food’ on condition that he would not say anything that would damage the reputation of the company – van Tulleken immediately declined the offer. McDonalds explored the idea of him becoming an ambassador and offered to fly him to Chicago to meet board. He said that he would to meet them but to pay his own way and not accept the offer of a free flight. The invitation to meet the board was then withdrawn. This was such a powerful programme that I intend to watch it again and with Meg in the next day or so – and I am sure it will probably affect the way I buy and prepare food in the future (although to be fair, we hardly ever eat what is currently regarded as ultra-processed food).

Normally I would wrap the smoked haddock fillets in some tinfoil and baked in the oven but even though I try to wrap the fish assiduously, the smell still seems to permeate the kitchen. So today, I reverted to a method I used to deploy and that is to poach the fish in milk, also taking the opportunity to make some parsley sauce with the poaching milk. As both the ‘sit’ carer and the normal lunch time carer were here when the food was ready, I decided to dish up the dinner straight away and I served up some little bits of the poached fish in two little side dishes for the carers to try whilst Meg and I ate our main meal of the day. In fact, the result was so pleasing and I really enjoyed the fish cooked in this way so the next time I go shopping, I must remember to replenish my stock of smoked haddock fillets. After lunch, as the ‘sit’ carer was still here, I took the opportunity to visit or off-centre AgeUK shop which I commonly do on a Tuesday and I finished up buying some wood design necklace for Meg and a long sleeved jumper for myself. After the washing up was done, I was keen to have a FaceTime chat with our son released from hospital the previous evening. He managed to give me a full briefing about the things that had been happening to him. As I cold recall my own inpatient experience of some six years ago and was looking after Meg when she was in hospital last May, we had quite a lot of notes to compare. In particular, we remarked to each other than when you are in hospital, you find out who your true friends were. Actually, a lot of Martin’s rail enthusiast friends had contacted him with their best wishes for his recovery and his best friend who actually lives in Malvern had a colleague deputise for him at a meeting in Bristol whilst he himself came to see our son in hospital. Hospitals are the arenas of all kinds of social interactions which is one of the reasons why they are beloved of sociologists who have hospital as a ready source of fieldwork experience. When I was researching health service quality management, I read a long and detailed book by a Scandinavian author which was stuffed full of metrics and indicators but was pretty boring. But actually, the best part of the book came at the very end where the author had sustained an accident to his elbow which necessitated a hospital stay. What emerged as the final chapter was an ethnographic account of quality processes which was as fascinating as the rest of the book was boring. We anticipate seeing our son in a couple of days time whilst he continues his recuperation in the comfort and safety of his own home. I had managed to locate two good sources of information about how best to restore good lung function, one of them from the Leicestershire hospital which is a regional leader in the field. I was pleased to see that our son was receptive to some of this advice and was actually following some of it already.

Although Meg had a somewhat disturbed start to her sleep with a period of some agitation shortly after we put her to bed, I utilised the technique of lying on the camp bed beside her and she was more or less settled after about three quarters of an hour. This morning, though, Meg seemed sleepy but more sanguine and the two workers arrived at their scheduled time of 8.10 but it was practically 9.00am by the time we were ready to breakfast. But it seemed to be a beautiful day and Meg seemed quite keen to get down into town so we made our way to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ cafe where we had tea and toast. En route, we picked up a white cable stitch jumper which may be a little too large for Meg but will certainly prove easier to get on. We also bumped into two people we know well, the first being our Irish friend from down the road and the second being one of my Pilates class mates. We arrived home about five minutes before the carers were due to call for their late morning call and after they had left, I immediately set to work preparing our lunch of beef (from yesterday), a baked potato, broccoli and a tomato/peppers/onion/garlic mixture I was sort of experimenting with. This afternoon, we treated ourselves to a film called ‘Interlude in Prague’ and was the story of an affair that Mozart had with a young soprano with whom he was enamoured whilst his wife was away in a spa in Germany. The plot of the film, which may or may have some historical veracity, depicted various characters and scenarios some of which are represented in the opera ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and others of which subsequently did find expression in ‘Don Giovanni’ which received its premier in Prague to great critical acclaim, something that did not necessarily happen when Mozart was ’employed’ in the archbishopric of Salzberg where he was treated as though he was an ordinary servant. In both of the Mozart operas just mentioned, servants were often portrayed as scheming to get the better of their masters who often abused them and one does not have to delve too deeply into Mozart’s biography to see where all of this came from.

Storm ‘Bert’ has done its worst throughout the country and, fortunately, the West Midlands has escaped its worst ravages. But the people of the Rhondda valley in South Wales, and particularly Pontypridd are having a massive clean up job to do and the news is reporting that in Northampton shire, Billing Aquadome holiday park in Northamptonshire is being evacuated after heavy flooding caused by Storm Bert. Billing Aquadrome flood sirens have sounded and the holiday park is being evacuated by the management with assistance from Northamptonshire Search and Rescue and Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service. This particular park since we lived in the East Midlands has been developed so the site contains a goodly number of holiday homes which, as they are single storey, do not give people the option of retreating upstairs so they all have to wait to be rescued. Here in our own locality the little town of Bewdley has been hit but despite massive flood defences put in place over the years, these never seem to be quite sufficient as flood increase in severity and a ‘1 in a 100 years’ event becomes ‘1 every 10 years’ as the impact of climate change is manifest.

The press have been indicating that this is going to be a critically important week for the private member’s bill, popularly called the ‘assisted dying’ bill. One might have thought that with such a large majority of Labour MPs many of whom may not have the religious convictions of the Tories that might have been quite a large majority in favour of the bill in the Commons. But the Cabinet Members seem to be quite split on the issue and many political commentators are observing that the outcome of the vote to be held on Friday (to approve the principle of the Bill) is very hard to predict. Many MPs have still to make up their minds, some are changing from an anti to a pro position and vice versa and new arguments are being deployed all of the time. Speaking absolutely personally, I think the way the legislation is framed seems quite sensible (six months left to live, two independent doctors to agree the decision as well as a High Court judge) In the broadest of terms, I think it is probably acceptable to legislate in this way and to ensure what as a teenager in a Catholic school I was taught to be a ‘good’ death i.e. peaceable, not in pain, surrounded by relatives, one’s affairs put in order and so on. However, I think that in practice I would feel inclined to vote against the Bill until I received cast iron assurances that the hospice movement was so well funded that no one was denied end-of-life hospice care should it be desired. It is quite possible to conceive of scenarios not where relatives are putting undue pressure, or any kind of pressure, or their loved one to end their life bit rather the person themselves may wish not to be a burden to their relatives and in the absence of good hospice care might think that assisted dying is the least worst option. But to argue against myself, for a moment, it might be that if we were to wait for the hospice movement to be properly funded, we might have to wait for a very long time and the proposed legislation would never be enacted. So that might induce one to vote for the bill. If, though, I was an MP I might vote for the bill knowing (and perhaps even hoping) what the House of Lords would reject the legislation which by the time all of the bishops and other faith leaders have had their say might well be the case. Another consideration to give pause for thought is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ or the ‘slippery slope’ argument. In other words once on the statute book, the legislation might be ‘liberalised’ within about 10 years time as indeed the legislation on abortion proved to be. People are looking at the Canadian situation in which some 3% of all deaths are covered by their ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ legislation and here the medical criteria have been loosened and the social criteria widened so the end of life might be considered just because there is no suitable provision to care for the terminally ill person. At this stage, all we can say is that the ‘antis’ seem to have much more voice than the ‘pros’ but we will have to wait until Friday to see which arguments have actually held the most sway.

Yesterday morning, I was experimenting much more with our newly installed Echo Dot smart speaker, purchased the other day. I have found that if I give Alexa a command such as ‘Alexa, play a selection of the work of Mozart’ then a random selection will be made of the most popular tracks of Mozart, most of which admittedly I have come to know and love over the years. This is excellent for Meg and I in many ways, not least because when Meg is put to bed she can have a selection of Mozart playing indefinitely. I have also discovered that I can send a ‘pause’ and a ‘resume’ instruction to Alexa by a voice command, as well as a volume instruction to get just the volume level we desire. When I read one or two reviews of the Echo Dot smart speaker, most of the reviewers had the more expensive model where the time (and presumably other information) in flashed onto I what suspect is an LED screen hidden behind the mesh but as this nearly doubles the cost I am not unhappy with the cheaper version I have actually purchased. The sound quality of this little speaker is superb for the price but the speaker size has got to be an improvement upon the speakers built into the typical laptop which has been squeezed to make it thinner and thinner and is now an average of about 1 inch over the years with consequences for the size of speaker that can actually be fitted. The latest generation of Echo Dot has pushed up the speaker size from 1.6″ to 1.73″ which according to the reviews I have read makes quite a dramatic difference. And according to some of the blurb I have read, there’s an upward-firing midrange speaker in addition to two side-facing ones, which makes the Echo Studio capable of playing 3D audio codecs like Dolby Atmos. In fact, the speaker automatically ‘upmixes’ your music from standard stereo to better fill your space. I have also discovered that if you particularly want to see which track is being played (as in my selection of Mozart pieces, detailed above) than the app on your mobile phone will give up to date and current information about the track that is actually being played and much more than you get on the rolling display of the typical DAB radio as well. Now that I am so much more familiar with Alexa, I am starting to use it so much more on the Toshiba smart TV which I have in our Music Lounge. Although we have always had access to Alexa in this way, I have typically used YouTube to which I had taken out a subscription which gives the video as well as the audio for any music of our choice. So now I finding that if there is no bit of TV that I particularly want to view at any one time, I have the option to deploy Alexa to play choice selections from Mozart.

After we had breakfasted this morning, we watched the political programs after which we contemplated a walk down the hill. We phoned up our University of Birmingham friend who readily agreed that we meet for our normal Sunday morning coffee. We arranged a time but it took me quite a long time to get Meg ready for the journey if only putting gloves on a demented patient is so difficult. I seem to remember a trick tried with very young children where you put the glove half on yourself and then pull half of it off so to expose the finger holes. I will try this in the morning as an experiment and might have to go onto the internet to buy some mittens to mitigate this situation. We had a very pleasant three quarters of an hour with our friend to whom I quickly explained the nature of Martin’s illness. As is quite usual we had an interesting discussion about some of the moral imperatives surroundings things like inheritance tax. My friend and I quite like these discussions if only because having to think about, articulate and then defend a particular point of view leads one to clarify the exact nature of your own stance on the issue. For example today, we were trying to mediate between the extreme libertarian position (the state has no right to take any of your inheritance) to the more common position (that tax is the price that we pay for living in a civilised society). If the very rich who we try to tax do not like it, then they always go off to another society with ultra low taxes, no social services or health service provision and rampant crime on the streets as the underpaid police are riddled with corruption. We were fortunate that the weather had moderated on the way home so we walked home in quite mild conditions.

Once lunch was over, we watched the second half of ‘The Way’ in which the group of pilgrims approach Santiago de Compostela with various incidents en route. The shots that were played of Santiago were emotional in the extreme for me as it showed the pilgrims ascending the steps to the cathedral (which is something that Meg and I have done many times but on the very last occasion had to help her up the steps) Then, of course, there were exceptionally emotional shots of the inside of the cathedral including the pilgrims putting their hands in the finger holds in the marble below the statue of St James (which is something that Meg and I have done many times before) And, of course, there were shots of the Botafumeiro which is a huge incense burner of immense proportions swung high over the crowds of the congregation along a transept of the cathedral by two teams of about a dozen strong men, the original purpose of which was to fumigate the church from the stench arising from thousands of unwashed pilgrims in mediaeval times. In this day and age, it is a sort of symbolic tourist attraction and takes place at the conclusion of the Pilgrims Mass held each day at about 12.00pm.

Yesterday was a strange day in some ways. The night before, Meg had experienced one of the periods of extreme agitation to which she is prone on occasion and the only way to get her to sleep was to lie on my camp bed and attempt to hold her hand (which is not easy when she has one of these agitated episodes) She had the normal complement of pills half an hour before being put to bed, at least two of which are supposed to have sleep inducing properties but instead we had to witness some verbal aggression directed towards the carers. Fortunately, they understood all of this in dementia patients and coped with it as best they could but I find it a bit difficult to cope with when these incidents occur. Meg seemed to be all right when she first woke up this morning but then her mood suddenly darkened, as though a light switch had been turned off in her head so I wondered what kind of day might be ahead of us. It was a very dark, gloomy, wet and windy day and Meg intimated to me that she had no desire to be pushed down the hill to have coffee in Waitrose and, under the circumstances, I was inclined to agree with her. But once we had breakfasted and got washed up, I settled Meg in her chair to some music and then made a lightning visit in the car to pick up Saturday’s newspaper (which contains all the TV programs for the forthcoming week) When I returned, Meg was fast asleep and stayed asleep for the best part of the morning. When this happens, I do succumb to the adage of ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ and I wonder if all of this is a reaction to the disturbed night that she had last night. But this time when Meg was asleep was handy for me to do some tidying up and to sort through the pile of newspapers to see what can be junked and which ‘nuggets’ are to be saved. I also took the opportunity of a certain amount of ‘play time’ using the Alexa built into the Toshiba we have in our Music Room but have not really explored in very much detail. For example, I have tried the commands of ‘Alexa, play random Mozart’ and ‘Alexa, play soothing music’ I have also been exploring some of the films available to us as part of our subscription to Amazon Prime and think that we might view ‘The Way’ (account of one man’s journey along the Camino de Santiago taking the place of his son who died in the French Pyrenees at the start of the route) which is well worth another watch.

When Meg and I watched QuestionTime recently, it was remarkable to see practically everybody piling into the government over the issue of both rises in inheritance for farmers but also the cuts in the Winter Fuel Allowance.This latter policy is really going to come back and bite the government and one wonders whether in the fullness of time, there will be a backbench revolt. The government announced soon after winning the election in July that only elderly people in receipt of pension credits would receive help of up to £300 this winter, instead of every pensioner as before, with the aim of saving £1.5bn a year. But figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) this week found 100,000 extra pensioners could be in poverty by 2027 because of the decision. As a result of those figures, the cross-party Work and Pensions Committee launched a review on Friday into the challenges and mitigations of pensioner poverty. It will look into how pensioner poverty differs across the UK’s regions and communities, how it affects different groups’ lifespans and to what extent the state pension and other benefits for older people prevent poverty. It was pointed out in the QuestionTime program that the government knows that several categories of pensioners will be left much worse off but their official answer is that up to about 700,000 should claim Pension Credit. As Pension Credit is worth nearly 4,000 per year and 700,000 who should be claiming do not, then the theoretical total cost to the government if all entitled were to claim would be of the order of about ££2.8 billion. So we have the ridiculous situation where the government knows that not many will claim but were they to do so, then the total cost would exceed the amount saved by cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance in the first place. In other words, the government are relying upon claims not being made to make the savings anticipated. The claim form for Pension Credit is long and complicated and older people are having to fill out a 243-question form to access pension credit and winter fuel payments – a task that will be ‘daunting’ for some, charities have said. So the way to ensure that everyone gets the credit is to pay it in the first place as a flat rate increase to pensions and then claw some of it back by taxing more those who do not need it, thus making the effect neutral for the better off pensioners.

With the two young carers who often put Meg to bed at the weekend, we often have a bit of a laugh and a joke with each other. Tonight, we somehow got onto the discussion of party clothes and I was having to explain to them what a kaftan was. These were quite popular in the 1970’s and although they were generally associated with those of a hippy disposition they were quite often worn as casual wear. I had a couple of quite interesting designs, as I remember, and I wore them particularly at the Open University Summer Schools where I was a module leader in the mid 1970’s at Nottingham University. The partying at these summer schools often went on into the wee small hours (and beyond) and I think that many of the OU students wanted to feel that they were ‘proper students’ so there was extensive drinking and then partifying. These were the periods when we had long hot summer evenings which aided the holding of impromptu parties in any case and although you would not turn up with a kaftan during the day, it was a sort of a signal that you were off-duty as it were after 9.00pm. All members of staff had to give some specialist guest lectures on subjects of their own choosing between 8.00pm and 9.00pm so as the Summer Schools started at 9.00am we were working 12 hour days as tutors in any case.

Yesterday started off in the most interesting of ways. The day before, I had been tempted by the Amazon ‘Black Friday’ offers into buying one of the latest generation of ‘smart’ speakers, activated by voice commands, which Amazon were discounting by 50% By the time I took into account the fact that I had not been spending money on coffee and cakes at Waitrose during the bad weather, the speaker was already two thirds paid for and Amazon had even promised same day delivery before 7.00pm (and it was duly delivered) I waited evidently until Meg was in bed to install it and it needed one to download the Alexa app onto one’s phone which I did. But then the app on my phone would not recognise the device but I knew that iPhone 16 had some BlueTooth troubles in this respect. So I downloaded the app onto my old iPhone which I still have in use with a TescoMobile Sim card inside it and it installed perfectly. Last night, I could do only the most limited of trials and I have only tried music so far but from what I have both seen and heard it is a really impressive piece of kit with, to my ears, superb sound quality to boot. In the morning, I experimented a little more and am truly impressed by the quality. The only downside I can see at the moment if that, for example, one asks Alexa to play a Mozart concerto, Amazon will consult its bank of music and play the first in the list, which may only be one movement. So one really knows to know exactly which recording Amazon has in its library to get the full work and the recording that one wants so a certain amount of research using the Amazon Music app is required.

This morning, as is often the case, I was called upon to act as No. 2 to the single care worker but this individual I know well and we work well with each other. I joke with the staff that I dare not get too good at the job of assisting as I feel in danger of being recruited by the care agency itself. Friday is the day when our domestic help calls around and we always keen to welcome her and she helped me get Meg for a visit down the road. We have not been out because of the weather practically the whole of the week so we were keen to get out today if we could. As we set out, the weather was quite sunny and almost pleasant but after we had our coffee in Waitrose and started our journey back up the hill, a huge black cloud appeared so we had a somewhat icily windy and unpleasant journey home. When we got in, I regaled Meg with a cup of soup and our domestic help rushed into the fray with a hot water bottle to help to warm up Meg’s hands. Then I pressed on with our lunch with a supermarket fish pie which we had with ‘Mange Tout’ peas followed by yogurt. As soon as we got cleared up for the afternoon and a telephone call had been made, we got busy watching last night’s ‘Question Time’ where practically half of the discussion was taken up with the vexed question of small family farms having to pay inheritance tax. I did discover, though, something in the course of this debate that I did not know i.e. that many medium to large firms are owned by private equity trusts or large financial conglomerates who do not pay inheritance tax anyway.

The care agency are really badly hit by the cold weather induced sickness at the moment. For example, this morning I was assisting the sole carer and practically the same thing happened with Meg’s lunchtime call, although in this latter case it was the lack of access the to the road serving our access road when a large delivery vehicle was delivering a load of aggregate for the roadworks in the immediate proximity of our house. Then the afternoon call was one of the carers rather than the anticipated two as the other had gone off sick. Even the young lad who called round this afternoon was feeling pretty rough so I dosed him up with some ‘Cold and Flu Relief’ powder and gave him a couple of sachets for later. Exactly the same thing happened yesterday and so I was glad that when I did my weekly shop up at the supermarket, I bought another packet of the medicinal compound, suspecting that we might need a lot of it. So I am in the rather strange situation where, apart from the perpetual tiredness which afflicts me these days for understandable reasons, I am actually helping to care for the carers to provide a tolerable service for Meg. Some of the problem may be a Monday morning problem (sickness built up over the weekend) whilst there is the Friday syndrome (worn down by the demands of the rest of the week) As I suspected when I asked this morning’s care assistant, when staff report in as sick it might not be them but their children who are sick and, of course, children are mutually infecting each other with god knows what all the time they are at school. I think the care agency staff really do struggle in to work where they can and are very conscious that when they do not turn up then they have clients who are potentially disadvantaged as well as adding to their work pressures of their colleagues. But, personally, I am happy to help out where I can and am praying for the spell of milder weather which is due to move over us on Sunday in a day or so’s time. However, to help to alleviate the universal gloom, it has been a case of ‘boys and their toys’ because as the care workers have struggled to get in, I ask them for their favourite track of music and am then have Alexa play it for them. Having said that, they all seem to have had Alexa themselves for years so it is hardly a complete novelty for them. It seems they have often asked for this piece of kit as a birthday or Christmas present and that is how they have managed to afford it on the very low wages endemic in the care industry.

CNN is reporting tonight that the sentencing of Donald Trump after his conviction in a New York court might be delayed indefinitely The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial has adjourned his sentencing, which was set for next week. Judge Juan Merchan also agreed to hold off on issuing his decision on presidential immunity until after he reviews the parties’ filings. Merchan granted Trump’s request to file a motion to dismiss the case, ordering his legal team to submit their papers by December 2, and prosecutors have a week to respond. Trump’s team wanted to have until December 20 to file their paperwork. The judge did not set a new sentencing date or make any further statements about the delay. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, called Mechan’s decision a ‘decisive win’ for the president-elect. So it looks as though the power of delay, a convicted felon in Donald Trump is allowed to get away with no sentence after his election as President-elect. What this says for the rule of law in America needs no further comment.

Today has been an unusual kind of day. When I looked at the weather forecast, it seems that the West Midlands was about the coldest place in the country with an overnight temperature of -5 degrees but Meg and I were warm enough even in our downstairs bedroom. I got up this morning just after 6.00am and prepared for the workers to arrive some time after 8.00am but as so often happens these days, things changed at the last moment. The young Asian carer turned up rather than the scheduled carer but the other one was due to arrive later. In the meantime, I helped the young Asian carer but he was feeling below par so got him a Flue and Cold Relief preparation to make him feel better. I also gave him a supply of several of these sachets so that he could dose himself up later – I think he is intending to take one day off to help him recover from these cold and flue symptoms to minimise the amount of time he has to take off work. I had also prepared quite a large saucepanful of porridge which I was going to offer to the workers the minute they arrived. In the event, this offer was declined so Meg and I had it ourselves. In the meanwhile, the young Asian carer was substituted so that he stay on and do ‘the sit’ whilst I went off to do the normal Thursday shopping. I had already two of the anti-anxiety pills so that Meg would be a bit more stable but they did not appear to work so I had to try something different. We started off with YouTube and some sitar music (as I wanted to remind Meg of how she had gone to see Ravi Shankar perform, if my memory serves me correctly, when she went off with a flatmate to see perform in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1965. This seemed to perk Meg up a bit and then I resurrected a Joan Baez concert available on YouTube and Meg seemed to be enjoying this so I decided to go off and do the shopping. I raced around the shop as fast as I possibly could, thinking that it was quite likely that Meg was having an agitated session. I popped into Morrison’s to pick up a copy of ‘The Times‘ but none were available. Having done the shopping, I called in at Waitrose on the way home and, again, it looked as the newspaper had not printed that day. But when I got home, the young carer informed me that Meg and he had experienced quite a jolly time and there was also a certain amount of singing along with the music. This was a great relief to me so I unpacked the shopping and then started to think about lunch. We dined on the last bit of the roast chicken left over from the weekend and complemented with a roast potato and some broccoli. Having eaten my dinner, though, I actually fell fast asleep and was awakened only by the carers coming into do Meg’s (delayed) lunchtime call, after which I reheated Meg’s dinner in the microwave and fed it to her. This afternoon, after a quick FaceTime call with our son (who is still suffering from his severe bronchitis), I got Meg in front of the TV to watch the second half of ‘Don Giovanni’ which seemed to be proceeding satisfactorily up the point at which the program ‘freezes’ This happens quite a lot with YouTube presentations and I have a theory it is a buffering problem so Meg and I needed to find something else to watch which happened the be the concluding part of the programme on Immigration broadcast on Monday evening.

After Meg is in bed this evening, I hope to bring into use a smart speaker I have just impulsed purchased from Amazon. I was tempted into this purchase because there was a ‘Black Friday’ offer where a good model of Amazon’s own smart speaker was heavily discounted. I worked out that I had saved about two thirds of the cost anyway by not having coffee with Meg in Waitrose over the last few days whilst the weather has been so poor. I will need a certain amount of uninterrupted time to bring this into operation but in the meantime I have been reliant upon falling to sleep with the strains of Brahms ‘A German Requiem’ playing on my old iPhone which still has YouTube access.

What with the Post Office scandal enquiry and the American election, I think we had all rather forgotten about the COVID enquiry which is now taking evidence again. Today it was the turn of Matt Hancock the Health Secretary in the early days of the pandemic who was on our screens practically daily. Mat Hancock had to resign, of course, because he was seen as embracing his new found love (‘bit on the side’)in clear contravention of all of the rules on social distancing. Matt Hancock’s evidence to the COVID enquiry was interesting because there were multiple facets of the decisions he was making at the time that are now worthy of examination. I suspect he knew he would be subject to a fair degree of hostile questioning and therefore probably decided to make a concession early on in his evidence try to allay further lines of criticism. The concession given today was that in the difficult circumstances of how many would be allowed at funerals and what degree of contact could be had between mourners, the ex Secretary of State for Health admitted that the guidance had probably been drawn up too severely. This will be of no comfort to the hundreds if not thousands who lost family members and loved ones during the pandemic and could not give them a proper farewell. I do remember when Meg and I used to walk down the Kidderminster Road every day seeing on more than occasion tearful relatives as an elderly person was bundled into the back of an ambulance as the relatives probably knew they would never see their family member again. Hancock also admitted that the UK came ‘within hours’ of running out of hospital gowns and of the course the supply of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) on fast-track applications handed out to those with known Tory Party links is a national scandal in its own right. I doubt any of the mis-spent monies were ever reclaimed and certainly none of the ‘dodgy’ suppliers were ever prosecuted but that is just one of the many scandals surroundings UK’s response to the pandemic as a whole.

Last night, I did something which I have not done for years and that is to go to bed with a hot water bottle. Normally, one relies upon wives/partners and electric blankets to provide a bit of warmth when you first hit the sheets in the middle of winter but my present sleeping arrangements preclude this. I quickly located our two hot water bottles and had one at my feet when I went to sleep on the camp bed which I have beside the hospital bed occupied by Meg. It made a dramatic difference and I fell asleep with the aid of it in no time at all. Today we had two carers in the morning including the manager who puts himself ‘on shift’ occasionally. The day before there had been an open day at the day centre which the care agency is opening in Redditch and, other things being equal, we would have liked to been there. But the transport arrangements fell over much to the care manager’s annoyance and the weather did not help but nonetheless the open day went ahead but with a somewhat depleted attendance. In theory the mayor and the press were going to turn up to this event but it was a day of some mishaps as the care manager’s partner fell over and broke his hand which necessitated a visit to the hospital. On the advice of the care workers, we decided not to venture out this morning because although the skies had cleared and indeed were blue and sunny at one point, it was exceptionally cold and icy and we all felt that the pavements would have been a too risky to have pushed Meg out in. So we stayed in all the morning but ‘Politics Today’ was screened an hour earlier to make way for Prime Minister’s Questions so we entertained ourself in this way throughout the morning. We lunched on chicken, baked potato and sprouts just finishing before the late morning (now early afternoon) visit from the two care workers. In the afternoon, there was no clear candidate in the film world to be watched so Meg and I put on a performance of Don Giovanni (Mozart) which was a superb production but is somewhat long so we will probably watch it in two halves. The singing and performances were of a very high order and we enjoyed the production which occupied us for most of the afternoon.

There is a report in today’s ‘The Times‘ headlined ‘Life Expectancy in the UK is worst in western Europe’ Now we know that there are a host of factors which underlie life expectancy some of them being genetic. But the greatest cluster of factors are environmental and are composed of factors such as climate, diet, exercise, income distribution, social security benefits, efficiency of the health services and so on. But according to the OECD report, although life expectancy is just 81 years, this puts the UK behind the 81.5 average for the 27 countries of the European Union and last in western Europe. Life expectancy improvements in Britain stagnated in the decade leading up the pandemic and have fallen since. The British data shows the life expectancy. for men at 79 and for women at 83 in the period from 2021 to 2013. This is about six months and three months shorter, respectively, than the ages measured between 2017 and 2019 which were the highest on record. The significance of all of this is that this type of demographic data really does show the cumulative impact of government policy, whichever political party happens to be in power. As if to underline this point dramatically, there is also a report in the same edition of the newspaper that indicates that cutting winter fuel payments is going to push 100,000 into poverty and this fact is acknowledged by government ministers. Official estimates of the decision to strip more than 10 million pensioners of the winter fuel payments have concluded that it will result in about 50,000 older people being in poverty at any one time. To make matters even worse, Labour did not carry out a formal impact assessment of the policy before making the decision. Some Labour MPs are very upset but the risks associated with rebellion are high, such as deselection. Meanwhile Scottish Labour have threatened to restore these payments were they to be returned to power. One does get the feeing that of the £1.5 billion that cutting winter fuel payments is meant to save, by the time various factors have been costed out, the savings might be very much less and (hints of the farmers’ dispute) be not worth the political pain that the policy causes.

There is a report this evening that Mohamed al Fayed may have assaulted 290 women pursuing Harrods compensation over alleged assaults and one suggested figure is 420 individuals who have contacted the ‘Justice for Harrods Survivors’ group regarding allegations against Fayed. If this scale of abuse is confirmed, then this may approach the figure of 500 which is said to be the total number of period abused by Jimmy Saville before his death. When abuse on this scale emerges, then it almost defies imagination that one individual can commit abuse on this scale without significant others being aware at least dimly aware of the scale of it all. In the case of al Fayed, then there must have been security guards who protected his premises from the ingress and exit of young women and therefore they must share a degree of culpability. There are some lawyers who argue that such individuals as security guards could themselves be charged with assisting a rape but of course obtaining proof and then a conviction probably means that these individuals get away with things scot free, as it were. To my knowledge, the police are busy pursuing the cases of those actually assaulted by al Fayed and have not yet turned their attention to his accomplices of which circumstantial evidence that there must be some. The wider question, of course, is how the rich and powerful have the attitude that the force of law is to be applied to the ‘little people’ and they themselves feel free to be immune from the legal processes that seem to apply to the rest of he population.

Suddenly, the world seems a much more dangerous place tonight as there are reports that British made Storm Shadows have been fired at targets within Russia for the first time. I have a terrible feeling that for the sake of one or two missiles, costing about £1 million each that may or may not be shot down and may not cause any damage, the amount of harm that Russia could wreak on the UK (such as by cutting underwater cables) is horrendous. I hope this has been properly modelled and thought about within the British defence establishment but I am personally most unhappy about the steps that the UK has made by following the American policy of the Biden regime in its final days.

When I got up this morning, I noticed with a certain degree of dismay a show shower that evidently been blown over Bromsgrove. I had a quick look outside and was somewhat relieved to see that I think the shower could be described as light snow and as always the grassed areas of our garden had received their full share but the roadways did not seem so badly affected which meant that vehicles (ie the carers) can gain access to us without too much difficulty. However, the precipitation that we did have looked as though it could probably turn to ice which would make things treacherous. I quickly looked at the local BBC weather forecast that indicated ‘sleet’ but I suspect that we are going to have 2-3 unpleasant days before milder air takes over. The weather forecasters are saying that this is the type of weather to be expected in mid winter and not in late Autumn and therefore this amount if snowfall in mid November is rather unusual. We have had a few years with hardly any snow so this does come as a bit of a shock to the system but, of course, in the past I could transport Meg to places by car but now that she can only be moved in a wheelchair, the actual weather conditions have become a lot more critical for us. The snow shower seems to have abated by 7.00am so I am earnestly hoping it will stay that way. The snow actually petered out to a slight sleet for most of the morning when Meg and I stayed in – however, I did manage a quick dash in the car and back (whilst Meg was dozing and listening to some soothing music) to collect our copy of the newspaper from down the road.

The day has continued to be a very strange one, in lots of ways. Evidently, we had to stay in because of the inclement weather but I managed to snatch a few minutes whilst Meg was dozing to pay a lightning visit to Waitrose. One of our favourite carers came in the middle of the day to do the Tuesday ‘sit’ and we spent a lot of time exploring our respective attitudes to religion (the young carer being brought up as a Muslim but not really a believer as such) Then in the middle of the day, we received a most welcome telephone call to tell us that the special Riser-Recliner chair had been supplied by the manufacturer to the relevant depot and we needed to settle upon a delivery date. The first available to them was a week on Thursday but although it is normally my ‘shopping’ day, I did not want to put them off as I hope that the chair will be worth its weight in gold when we get it into use. Then we had the hairdresser arrive by appointment and although I had my haircut, Meg was not sitting in her wheelchair by this stage so we had to give it a miss. But our hairdresser is very understanding and we gave Meg’s hair a miss on this occasion but she will have it done just before Christmas.

In the middle part of the afternoon, Meg and I settled down to watch the second of two programmes on immigration broadcast on BBC1 on Monday nights. These were two excellent programmes and explored how politicians on both sides of the political divide (but mainly the Tories) coped or rather did not cope with immigration. We knew that the Home Office had instituted a policy of a ‘hostile environment’ to try to sweep up illegal migration but we ended with the Kafka-esqe scenario in which people who had been here for decades were classified as illegal an subject to deportation. Many people who arrived from the Caribbean as children had not kept their parent’s passports (which were issued to them as British citizens with an indefinite right to remain) but the children of those who arrived on the ‘WindRush’ in 1949 and their descendants could not necessarily ‘prove’ they were British. So we had the massive injustice that some people who had worked and lived in this country for decades and paid taxes all. of this time were now swept up under the ‘hostile environment’ policy and were access to jobs, houses and social security benefits. It took the Home Office a long time to very belatedly recognise what a pig’s ear it had made of the whole of this policy and the programme reported that only about 17% have to date received the compensation that they were promised. But I remember the closing days of the ‘Brexit’ debate quite clearly and practically all of the arguments were about levels of immigration and not about European issues ‘per se’ Nigel Farage realised that immigration was a wonderful way in which to weaponise the debates promulgated by UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party)that uncontrolled migration from Europe (and those countries that might enter the EC) were poised to enter the UK under the ‘Mobility of Labour’ provisions. At one time it was argued that the entire population of Bulgaria and Romania had the right to enter Britain and, on another occasion and the subject of a scurrilous poster entitled ‘Breaking Point’ the entire population of Turkey could enter. The fact that these were the most evident of misrepresentations (in other words, downright lies) did not really matter because although it was pointed out that the numbers it was claimed who could enter was greater than the populations of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey respectively, the argument had a powerful emotive force for many and the damage was done. It reminds one of the expression well known in political circles that ‘a lie gets half around the world before truth has a chance to pull its pants on’) On the programme, Nigel Farage was frank that they key to winning the whole of the Brexit debate lay in raising the emotive subject of immigration and the slogan ‘Take Back Control’

The day was rounded off by three pleasant events.First I had a FaceTime call from my son whose deep seated bronchitis is now being treated with steroids which I hope will have the appropriate impact. We watched a rendition of Mozart Piano Concerto No 23 on YouTube after an episode of a classic Alf Garnett. Finally, Meg was put by bed by the two young male carers with whom Meg always has a laugh and a joke and ensures that she goes bed in a relaxed state which is good to see.

Monday mornings are not meant to be very good and yesterday was true to form.It did not start well as when Meg woke up she seemed to be in a very agitated condition and took some calming down. The two carers were due to arrive at 8.10 but at 7.55 and before I was ready, one carer turned up, the other reporting sick (which is not an uncommon occurrence) So between us we got Meg up and as the carer was leaving, she intimated that the next call would be at 2.00pm which is in 5 and half hours time which is too long an interval. So we are going to make representations to the care agency who may, or may not, be able to do anything about it but I do get the feeling that things start to go wrong on a Monday morning, they do not correct themselves. My son is still poorly and confining himself to his own home although I had hope to be looking after him this week. Whilst Meg was taking a doze, I downloaded the BlueSky app to my phone which I have recently joined and become about their 18 millionth subscriber. Whilst browsing BlueSky, I also signed a petition that the UK rejoin the EU as soon as possible because the predictions of the absence of economic growth, now from official sources such as the governor of the Bank of England, are all pretty dire. A variety of economists are saying that the consequences of Brexit are getting worse and worse. According to Aston University Business School, the value of UK goods exported to the EU was 27% lower – and imported goods 32% lower – compared to what the economy may have looked like if Brexit had not happened. Leaving the single market officially in January 2021 has had a ‘profound and ongoing’ impact on Britain’s trade with the EU, according to the economists’ modelling. The variety of exported goods has also declined, with 1,645 fewer types of British products sent to every EU country and many manufacturers no longer sending their produce to the bloc.

The morning was quite dull and cold but without being too icy. Both Meg and I felt somewhat dozy this morning so we confined ourselves to a quick trip down to Waitrose to collect our newspaper and then straight home, regaling ourselves with a cup of chicken soup. We dined on the remains of the chicken from yesterday and just needed to heat up some of the veg from yesterday in the microwave. We had just about finished this when our carers turned up at the scheduled time of 2.00pm which I had wanted to bring forward but there were no staff available. The carers had some difficulty in getting to the house because they have theoretically closed off the whole of the circular road which runs around the town as a de facto ring road. In practice, though, it is possible to evade or ignore the barriers if you know your way around the system but it all adds to the confusion. No sooner had the carers arrived, then so did our chiropodist whose appointment was on our planning board but which I forgot to consult this morning. In the midst of all of this, our daughter-in-law phoned up with the unpleasant news that our son was in A&E with bronchitis-related breathing difficulty for the second time in less than five days. I am awaiting a progress report how long he is likely to be in the queue at A&E but we are thinking it will be at least six hours before some kind of resolution. No doubt he is being ‘triaged’ and I hope they can provide him with some oxygen whilst waiting so that his condition does not deteriorate.

In the dying days of the Biden presidency, a decision has been taken to allow the Ukrainians to deploy missiles against Russian military installations rather than just against the Russians who are occupying parts of Ukraine. There are some who think we might be on the edge of World War III at this stage but there is a bit of ‘game of chicken’ going on. Putin would no doubt label any hostile action taken against the Russian territory as ‘proof’ that NATO had long wanted a conflict and there is no doubt that the rhetoric will be nudged up several levels. But of course Putin knows that Trump will take over in a manner of weeks and Trump would like to think to think of himself as a ‘deal maker’ who, together with Putin, could bring the war rapidly (but certainly not within a day as Trump has claimed) The Europeans are in a real bind over this because if the Americans withdraw all support, does Europe have the money or the military capacity to fill whatever holes are left in Ukraine’s defences after a military withdrawal? The Ukrainians may be tempted to use their weapons if only as a bargaining counter when it comes to negotiations but one does the horrible feeling that one way or another, the Ukrainians will be abandoned and will be forced into a situation where they sacrifice territory for peace.

The weather forecasters are full of dire warnings tonight about what may befall us tomorrow. The blast of arctic air that we are experiencing does mean that much of the North of England may receive some show showers whilst the South appears to be subject to icy winds. I am hopeful that here in the Midlands, we will escape the worst of the weather and I hope we avoid snow which is going to make any journeying out of the house problematic. On the campus of the University of Winchester which was my last place of employment, I remarked to some of the locals that the university built on the slopes of West Hill and therefore with lots of slopes and steps must be murder to negotiate when there was snow. But I was met with an astonished look and I was informed that it never snowed just there. I think that any storms raging up the English channel hit the Isle of Wight first and then Southampton but had petered out when they got to Winchester 20 miles to the north. Similarly, bad weather sweeping in from the Bristol Channel hit towns like Basingstoke before they arrived in Winchester so I suspect that the whole university was located in a local zone whether the weather systems had already done their worst. But in all of my ten years there, admittedly experiencing a succession of mild winters, I think I can only remember it snowing mildly for about half a day only.

Our day started with us waking at just after 6.00am and the two care worker (not the most friendly or communicative, unfortunately) turning up just after 8.00am. Why I mention this is because if the care workers chat in a friendly fashion with Meg, it helps to set her up for the day but if they only chat with other about the clients they are going to meet later on that day, this is not the best of starts. We would normally have expected to meet with our University of Birmingham friend today but he has a cold that he does not wish to communicate to us so the morning’s coffee has to be given a miss. It was a cold but brilliantly sunny day so Meg and I make a trip down the hill, collect our newspaper and then come straight home again to see what the rest of the day has in store. The carers are coming quite late for the lunchtime call so Meg looked at the previous evenings offerings and eventually selected Alice Robert’s trip through the Ottoman empire (modern day Turkey) by train which is a very good travelogue. For lunch, we have one of those chicken crowns that you just pop into the oven complete in their tinfoil tin (which is a bit of a cheat, for which one pays) but it does make life easier. I tried a complete experiment with the vegetables to accompany the chicken. As well as a baked potato which does by itself in the microwave, I am trying a little experiment. I had a couple of quite large leeks left over which needed eating up so I have parboiled them and then thrown a couple of whole tomatoes. Then the whole lot is going to go into the oven to give me some baked vegetables which I really enjoy. It rather puts me in mind of when Meg and I used to fly to Murcia which was very accessible from our local airport when we lived in Southampton. In Murcia and its surrounding region, there is a speciality of baked vegetables so we had these every morning for breakfast as they were the standard fare of the hotel in which we stayed. As the oven was on for the chicken, I thought the experiment was worth while and I have just liberated from a charity shop some of those really old fashioned thick glass old Pyrex dishes that cook vegetables to perfection.

The highlight of the afternoon is going to be ‘The Jungle Book’ where the young Asian Actor who plays Mowgli is superb (despite the American accent)and the CGI for the animals is excellent as well. My mother in her cub mistress days used to have the cubs sitting around a campfire in the basement of the building where the Cub pack meeting was held and used to keep the group of approx. 8 year olds enthralled as she read out portions of ‘The Jungle Book’ week by week. I presume having engaged in this activity before she went to College to train to be a teacher late in life would have enhanced her application process no end, as she was desperate to train to teacher and it was a rare event for mature students in 1956 to attend Teacher Training College as it was in those days.

The big row over inheritance tax and its impact upon the farming community is an interesting little case study. At the outset, it must be said that whilst inheritance tax is a tax that only the dead pay, in practice it is their relatives. But in the case of a smallish family farm to pay the tax means actually selling some of the farm to pay the bill which lessens its overall viability. Although special rules apply, as well as particular rates, farmland is evidently in a very different category to the normal type of inheritance and although the figure of £1 million is often mentioned, sometimes inflated to £3 million if split between members of the family, the amount of political capital that has been lost on this issue is enormous. Th question has to be asked whether these consequences were thought about or modelled because the Labour government had long enough to contemplate the issue. If an ‘oversight’ had been committed because an emergency budget was undertaken a week after the election, one could understand the error if indeed there was one. But now one has the feeling that there is a complete stand-off with the government refusing to countenance whether it had made any errors of judgement at all. But we are now faced with the prospect of queues of tractors throughout London, as well as North Wales over the weekend and perhaps even the prospect of supermarkets running out of fresh produce (but not, paradoxically, junk food). It appears that Starmer in particular does not wish to appear ‘weak’ or to be pushed around by special interests but the political fallout is considerable and could have easily been averted by a formula to look at the issue again. There are various techniques that could be used so the government could save face and claim not to have been faced down but it could, for example, delay the legislation relating to farmers for a year or so, more technically, allow elderly farmers to give away heir assets and not have to wait seven years but only about two years for example. Like the whole row about winter fuel payments being withdrawn, a tremendous amount of political capital is being wasted for hardly any money being realised in savings. One would have thought it would have been politically sensible to have a quick change of policy and move the agenda onto other issues but, once again, the new government has shown itself to be not at all adept at anticipating problems and taking steps to avoid or mitigate them.

As the weather is getting colder, the phrase ‘winter draws on’ comes to mind. But at one time the BBC had a little Green Book for the benefit of producers which stipulated that among jokes banned were those concerning lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind, suggestive references to honeymoon couples, chambermaids, fig-leaves, ladies’ underwear (such as ‘winter draws on’ and so on), lodgers and commercial travellers. It has been observed that if these rules had been strictly followed a great many of the BBC’s most successful comedy shows since, such as ‘Beyond Our Ken’, ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ and ‘Steptoe and Son’ would never have been aired.