Today was a cold but bright day but first thing I had to get the weekly shopping done, postponed from yesterday. I had always assumed that in my regular supermarket, Thursday mornings would prove quieter than Friday mornings but this morning I found far less traffic on the way there and the store was pretty quiet when it opened at 8am this morning. Once the shopping was done, I collected our newspaper on the way home and then had a leisurely unpack once I had got home and cooked our normal poached egg for breakfast. As the day seemed fine, we suspected that some of our normal park friends would be lurking around and indeed one of them was. Whilst we were busy having a chat we were joined by our Lickey friends who proved a mine of useful information. This is because the ‘husband’ part of our friend has probably forgotten more electrical and audio knowledge that I ever possessed in the first place so I managed to tap his brains about one or two little audio/electrical things in which I have been engaged. It is always good to chat with people more knowledgeable than yourself so that you can pick up tips and hints about things that you could never sort out on your own. After a pleasant chat we struck for home and after watching a little of the ‘Politics’ catchup on the week’s happenings, I cooked our normal Friday meal of sea-bass served on a bed of salad and this worked out as tasty as always. Whilst I was cooking the meal and as we were eating it, we treated ourelf to a listen of Bach’s ‘B-Minor Mass’ which just arrived on a CD through the post this morning. This was part of a boxed set with the Matthew Passion, John Passion and the Christmas Oratorio all under the baton of John Eliot Gardiner, one of the foremost conducters of baroque music. This is the last of my current ‘splurge’ of buying really cut-price CDs but the boxed set of nine quality CDs (Deutsche Grammophon)was offered at a price that I felt I could not afford to ignore.

A seasonal item is reported on the Sky News website which is quoted below.
The average cost of a Christmas dinner for four people comes in at £34.28 – based on an average of ingredients across five supermarkets (Aldi, M&S, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Morrison’s). Ingredients included: Turkey, potatoes, pigs in blanket, stuffing, gravy, brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots, cranberry sauce, peas. For all of the above, M&S came in as the most expensive, at £58.60 – with Aldi the cheapest at £23.53. But as data also found that Brits waste around 27% of their food, and with 73% of the UK enjoying a Christmas dinner last year, this means UK households are spending £107,024,533 on wasted food.

As might be expected, there is still a massive amount of comment and discussion about some of th economic pain inflicted upon the population in yesterday’s Autumn Statement. Real disposal income is due to drop by 4.3% in the next 12 months, followed by a further cut of 2.8% the year after that. So there should be an average cut of over 7% in the next two years which will wipe out the increase in living standards that has occurred over the last eight years. The government itself is arguing that the recession should be shallower by postponing some of the cuts in public expenditure until after the next election (itself, as massive ‘elephant trap’ for any incoming Labour government) What is very uncertain at this stage is how the various public sector unions will react, given that many of them have strike plans in place for the autumn. The mood of the country at the moment is quite understanding as the real pay of personnel working in the public sector is lagging behind the private sector and indeed there has been a cut in real wages dating from the ‘austerity’ years of George Osborne. So it is not inconceivable that that there might be a ‘de facto’ type of general strike if many of the public sector unions decide to strike at the same time. It is fairly evident that Christmas is going to be grim time for many and the New Year even more grim for most of the population. The Institute of Fiscal Studies is of the view that the UK has entered a ‘new era’ of higher taxes. One might think that the current drop on living standards might be as temporary as a couple of years. But Paul Johnson of the IFS is saying that ‘The truth is we just got a lot poorer. We are in for a long, hard, unpleasant journey; a journey that has been made more arduous than it might have been by a series of economic own goals’ It is no wonder that we have arrived at this point when a combination of the damage done by Brexit (according to the OBR), the costs of the pandemic,the dramatic rise in energy costs following Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and the disastrous consequences of ‘Liz Truss’ economics are all combined together.

Today was another early start but fortunately not quite as early as yesterday. Nonetheless, I was up with the lark and set off for a neighbouring hospital an hour before my appointment time, knowing that the rush hour could be terrible at this hour of departure. But my fears were a little groundless because I arrived at my appointment slot for a routine scan half an hour before my allocated slot. The ward clerk informed me that I would not be seen for quite some time so I went off in search of some reading matter as I had not picked up today’s newspaper on the way out. I found in the hospital’s coffee bar a bookcase of donated books. In the midst of the usual trashy novels, I did find a James Herriott ‘All Creatures Great and Small‘ which was a book full of episodes each only a few pages long and where you could dip into and out of it quite easily. This suited my purposes very well and eventually I was seen a little before my appointment time. I have had several of these scans before so I am well used to the routine by now and it seemed over and done with pretty quickly. So I shared a quick joke with the radiologists and was then on my way home, collecting my daily newspaper en route. When I got home and had a mini-breakfast, we learned that it was going to be the Autumn (ie. Financial) Statement at 11.30 so we did a few emails and things before it was time for the broadcast. So much of this had been leaked in dribs and drabs there there were hardly any announcements that were in, in fact,new. But the data analysts evidently looked at the published OBR press releases which, in its way, tells its own story despite what political spin the politicians manage to deploy. What was revealed was that ‘Household Disposable Incomes’ are heading for their biggest fall on record. Also it appears that the long-awaited analysis of the public finances by the OBR suggests it will be 2028 before incomes recover to their 2021-22 level. So the country as a whole is in for a couple of really hard years. To ‘sugar the pill’ a little, both pensioners and benefit recipients, should be getting increases next April which are raised in accordance with the current inflation rate which of the order of 10.1%. So we are in the position where some people might appear in money terms to be getting better off whilst in real terms inflation means that real incomes are falling for many. So in just eight weeks, the government has shifted from wanting to roll out the biggest tax cuts in 50 years to taking the country’s tax burden to its highest level since the Second World War. The point being made by some commentators is that the Budget appears to be more like a Labour budget than a Conservative one but the the £55 billion budget ‘hole’ is being paid for by tax increases (largely financed by allowances being held steady which actually increases the tax rate as inflation takes hold) and spending cuts. A bit of extra money (in money terms, not in real terms), is being found for both the education and the health budgets.

We had a fairly early lunch and then I walked down to the doctor’s surgery to play my part in the education of medical students. I was ‘interviewed’, if that is the right word, by a couple of young female medical students, both in their first year of their studies. They were meant to be taking a sort of social history but I think the intention is to get them used to real patients before they actually have to treat them. We chatted for more than half an hour about some of the things in which I been engaged since my own retirement and some of this entailed me going down memory lane about our pleasurable experiences, both working and on holiday, in various parts of Spain. The senior family doctor came in after about half an hour in order to bring our session to an end – I hope the students got out of it that which was intended by the session and I trusted that they would give a good report to their supervising doctor of our discussions. When I got home, I found the house deserted which worried me not a little before I realised that Meg was probably next door with a neighbour. So it proved to be, so I stayed next door chatting with our very kindly neighbour before returning Meg to our own home.

Returning to the Autumn Statement which is monopolising the news headlines this afernoon, there is a jaw-dropping change of tack. There are big immediate tax rises that many including Tory backbenchers will hate (£7.4bn worth in the next financial year, for example). But this is offset by an incredible £9.4bn of additional spending on energy help, school budgets, social care and the NHS. But at the same time an enormous ‘elephant trap’ is being placed before a potential, incoming Labour government. Many of the really savage cuts are scheduled for a date immediately after the next election so the global figures for cuts may help to reassure the money markets. But will an incoming Labour party feel obliged to honour these huge spending cuts or not – if not upheld, then a Labour party may be crippled by the financial markets before it even starts to put its own policies into effect.

Today was the day, twice postponed because of rail strikes, when the collection of former colleagues known as ‘The Old Fogies’ met for a meal in Winchester. Meg and I got up early and left the house at 7.45, prepared to zoom around the M42 motorway to get to Birmingham International railway station. Because the motorway can so congested first thing in the morning, we left an extra haf an hour to cope with the anticipated crawl due to motorway congestion. In the event, we got there about 40 minutes early which was time enough to get the car parked and ourselves into the system ready for our train at 9.30. We found our allocated seats and had to turf out some people who were occupying them but hadn’t made a booking. The journey was very straightforward and the weather and countryside looked beautiful in the late morning. Towards the end of our journey, we got into conversation with a young man whose job was computer security and had a fascinating little chat – our only regret was that we had not started chatting to him earlier rather than the last 15 minutes or so. When we got to Winchester, we were an hour in advance of our booked meal time so Meg and I strolled down the hill into town and the restaurant proved quite easy to find on the High Street. We got there half an hour early and instead of hunting for a another coffee bar nearby, we stayed in the brasserie and drank coffee until the rest of our party arrived. We turned out to be nine in number all in all and we were delighted to see our friends after an absence of about three years. We had a decent meal and as were dividing up the bill at the end of the meal some of us were reaching for cash but the whole brasserie was cashless so we paid on credit card (which I must say made life a lot easier) Towards the end of the meal, at my suggestion, we each took the floor to explain in a few minutes what significant event had taken place in our lives. For example, one of my previous colleagues had sold his house and was moving into a flat to be much nearer to children and grandchilden in South London. Others mentioned things like pacemakers being fitted (three of us, as it happened) and as you might expect, the years had taken a certain toll of several of us over the years but none of us had had a serious illness but just enough to slow us down somewhat. After the main meal, Meg and I and two other colleagues departed to a local Wetherspoons which has the advantage of nice round tables around which it is so much easier to have a conversation where we can all take part and without too much ambient noise but with a noggin of some nice ale to make the conversation flow. We drank and chatted until half an hour before our train was due to depart and so we took our leave and walked back to the station, although by this stage the weather had turned a little squally. As we approached Birmingham International and we standing around in the vestibule ready to alight from the train, we stopped at an intermediate suburban station. After a halt we crept along at an incredibly slow pace and the train manager informed us over the intercom that we were experiencing severe speed restriction (for an unspecified reason) After these halts and creeping along, we took about half an hour to limp into Birmingham International all in all. By the time we did get out, it was raining cats and dogs which meant locating the car in an ill-lit carpark an unpleasant experience. The heavy rain persisted all the way home and fortunately we did not make a wrong turn around a roundabout which is not a difficult thing to do when the weather conditions and visibility were so poor. So we were very pleased to get home and enjoyed a nine tin of mushroom soup which always seems appropriate on occasions like this.

Tomorrow is going to be quite a full day as I cannot afford the luxury of a lie-in but need to get up early to go for a (routine) scan in one of our local hospitals. Again, the road system between Bromsgrove and Redditch is bound to be quite congested. After that, I am going to postpone my normal weekly shopping for a day as in the early afternoon I am due to go down to our local GP practice to play the part of a ‘patient’ in a practical session designed to allow medical students in training interact with with some actual patients before they have to do it for real once they are in post. Tomorrow, of course, the Budget is due to be presented to Parliament but most of the major elements of this seem to have been systematically leaked in order to prepare public opinion that I doubt we will be surprised by very much. First thing in the morning, I heard that Donald Trump had decided to stand again but it will be interesting to see what the reaction to this is going to be in the USA as the recent elections leave Trump no reason to celebrate as most of his endorsed candidates fared less well in the elections than their unendorsed counterparts.

Today started off as a dull, miserable day with a smattering of rain which by now we have come to expect. Nonetheless, we knew that today was the day when we generally bump into people that we know when we pop into Waitrose, once we had picked up our newspaper. It was raining pretty heavily by the time we got to the car park but nonetheless we made our way indoors when, in no time at all, we were joined by one of our park friends and another of our pre-pandemic Waitrose friends. We spent a pleasant half an hour chatting and then saw one of our Irish friends who lives down the road and pops into Waitrose as though it were a local corner shop. We got updated about some building work that our friend was having done and true to form, the builder seems to have started his job and then shot off to attend to several other jobs that he seemed to have on the go. For some reason I have yet to discern, builders typically display this manner of working – I suppose it is sensible if you anticipate a delay in getting some much needed supplies or materials but it seems to make an apparently simple job much more drawn out than you thought it was going to be. Whilst in the Waitrose coffee bar, I received a very interesting telephone call from one of the senior doctors in our local medical practice. He quickly reassured me that there was nothing wrong but was seeking to enlist my help in the training of young medical students. Students have to be exposed to ‘real’ patients at some time in the later stages of their training and my role is to act as ‘the patient’ whilst they get a history of medical and attendant social conditions. I did this some years ago before the pandemic and, on that occasion, it was a long telephone conversation with, I think, a female medical student. Although I volunteered to do a session over the telephone or on the web, I shall actually be paying a visit to the practice premises where I will be ‘interviewed’ by one or more students. Actually, I remember the senior doctor very well because when I was recovering from an operation some years ago, he paid me a house visit and dressed the operation wound for me. I remember this well because I often think that doctors do not have a lot of these hands-on skills themselves as things like wound dressing are performed by nurses rather than doctors themselves. I remain poised to spring into action next Thursday afternoon when is the time for the scheduled session.

I have spent some time this afternoon messing about with a Pure DAB radio which seems to be playing up recently – it seems to get stuck on one station and nothing you can do will switch it to another station. Although it sounds hard to believe, the radio does not actually have an off-off switch but a Power switch (labelled ‘Bluetooth’ just to confuse the average user even more, even though the Bluetooth function which I have not tested out is actually accessed through another button ‘Source’) The Pure H4 power switch actually switches the radio into a very low power ‘Standby’ mode which displays the date and time whilst the radio part itself is switched off. By some experimentation and consulting the manual (the original having been lost but it was fairly easy to locate on the web), it now does appear that the Power Switch is not what you might think of as a normal on-off switch so I have resorted to unplugging the power lead from the back of the unit and looping around the aerial when the radio is not in use. Although as the American computer scientists might say this is a ‘kludge’, of which the official definition is ‘a software or hardware configuration that, while inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together, succeeds in solving a specific problem or performing a particular task.’ Actually, whilst being very wordy this is an exact description of what I have performed but at least it worked for a time before finally going wrong again.

Every so often, there is a news story the impact of which might turn out to be enormous. A case was being discussed today of a two-year old who had died and the coroner had stated that an important contributory cause of his death was the black mould found throughout the flat where the child lives. The TV pictures made the mould problem appear to be enormously bad but this is not an uncommon problem in badly built and madly maintained housing, some of it in the public sector. So the impact of this coroner’s report may mean that literally thousands of families throughout the land can argue much more strongly with their landlords that the mould problems that they may be experiencing really do need to be remedied and, presumably, there is now a good legal precedent to reinforce the tenant’s right to live in a mould-free house or flat.

Today was one of those horrible misty type days in which the rain seems to be constantly hanging in the air but not actively raining. My morning was brightened up, though, by the arrival of a present to myself which I could not resist, courtesy of Ebay. After I had made an offer and accepted a counter offer, I purchased a set of the complete works of J S Bach on 160 CDs for £29. In order to make sure this was not inordinately bulky, the publishers had put each CD into a simple slip sleeve and then grouped the works into boxes : Orchestral/Keyboard/Cantata 1/Cantata 2/Vocal/Organ. This then takes up 45cm of space in a storage cabinet but stored in the conventional jewel cases, it would have been so much more. Fortunately, I have managed to find quite a long review on the web which details how, and how well, the publishers went about their task. They have tried, where possible to record on period instruments or on instruments as near to a period instrument as can be found. Much of the Cantatas have been especially recorded for this collection and the orchestras and performers are generally well known and not obscure in the extreme. In a collection as large as this, there are bound to be some ‘turkeys’ but the review I have found does an extremely good job in signposting the excellent, good and just satisfactory parts of this collection. Well, the long autumn and winter evenings might seem less gloomy now that I have plenty to which to listen.

Meg and I had a bit of a run round this morning. After we had picked up our newspaper, we popped into Waitrose for some essential supplies – then it was onwards to the railway station to pick up the tickets for our journey to Winchester next Wednesday. These I have still to check but I would be surprised if they were not all OK. When we got home, we watched a little of the Politics program which is always aired on BBC2 at midday and then I went off to prepare lunch. Whilst I was preparing this, I decided to play the next CD along in the little collection I have just filed and catalogued – and, in addition, I am still glorying in the excellent quality of reproduction in the BoomBox I have just purchased. The CD that fell into my hands was a special one celebrating the 400th anniversary of the death of Palestrina and when I played it, I was transported by both the beauty and the quality of it. I remember my music master at school telling us that Palestrina was the father of modern music or at least the father of polyphony but in one’s mind’s eyes, it would have been easy to have imagined yourself inside a cathedral whilst the sound reverberated around you. This I will especially remember if I want a CD to play which is completely relaxing. We must have had this particular CD for years but I do not remember actually playing it before. Possibly it was one of a ‘job lot’ that we often buy in a charity shop which we shop in regularly when we visit Harrogate but it was an absolute find for us, in any case.

This afternoon after lunch, I started to tackle the pile of junk mail which had built up rather in the last week or so – it is certainly a good habit to throw away junk mail day by day if you get into the good habit. Quite a lot of it, I need to open if only to make sure that the pre-printed name and address inside are cut off the enclosure and then shredded and I finished off the afternoon with two piles of paper. The much smaller and leaner one is the bundle of things that definitely need to be filed whilst the larger, fortunately, is just for the outside paper bin which is due to be emptied shortly.

I cannot resist an occasional consultation with the CNN website to discover the latest election update in the US elections. Quite amazingly, the gap between Republican and Democrats is only 8 seats as the Democrats have 204 and the Republicans 212. So the Republicans are only 6 seats away from the ‘magic’ number of 218 which would give them control of the House of Representatives but I suspect that a week ago nobody would have predicted a result as close as this. Normally, there is a big swing against the governing party in the mid term elections but the ‘big swing’ has not materialised this year as it appears that voters have recoiled from the prospect of electing Republicans, avid Trump supporters, who are still denying the validity of the last Presidential election which was won fair and square by Joe Biden.

The British and French have signed an agreement that will allow British border officials into French control roooms (and, presumably, vice versa) in an attempt to reduce the impact of asylum seekers crossing the channel in a variety of dinghies. Nobody thinks that this will prove to be a ‘magic bullet’ but with the addition of more UK cash and the impact of worsening seasonal weather, the flow across the Channel might be slowed somewhat.

Today being a Sunday I got up early and walked down into town to pick up our Sunday newspaper before returning for the Laura Kuennsberg show at 9.00am. This contained an interview with Jeremy Hunt who evidently could not speak in great detail about his forthcoming budget, due to be delivered in the House of Commons on Thursday next. Meg and I took the opportunity to visit the park and the weather turned out to be beautiful – the effect of the warm sunshine was complemented by the glowing colours that the leaves are starting to exhibit just before they fall. There seemed to be a wonderful and relaxed atmosphere in the park today – I suppose that unusually clement weather was making people feel relaxed and at peace with the world. We noticed that one mother was playing with her child (who looked about 3) by getting hold of bundles of leaves and throwing them into the air so that they fell on the child like a snowstorm. After this had been repeated a number of times the child got the idea and started trying it out on their own. We generally have in our rucksack a sponge and some spare kitchen paper which we use to wipe excess moisture off the park bench before we sit down. In the spirit of bonhomie, a lady saw us wiping the bench down and offered us her own ‘Marks and Spencer’ bag which she reckoned that she typically used if the park bench was wet. Ths was a kind gesture and I wondered why I had not thought of this solution before.

The day was not very old before the Nevada result came through in the race for the US Senate. Here the Democrats held off a challenge from the Republicans as the latter had been predicted to gain the seat. In practice, although the Republicans were hanging onto a 0.1% lead with only about 3% of the vote yet to be counted, most of the to-be-counted votes came from Las Vegas and other urban areas which seemed likely to deliver their votes disproportionately in favour of the Democrats which enabled them to retain the seat. According to CNN, the Republicans anticipated that they were heading for defeat and the mood in the Republican camp turned sullen and hostile as the recriminations started. This result, together with the Arkansas result yesterday meant that the Democrats had gained control of the Senate as in the event of a tie, the (Democratic) vice president always has a casting note. If Georgia goes Democrat when they have their run-off election in early December, then the Democrats will have a 2 seat majority in the Senate which means that they may be able to block Republican generated measures. But the Republicans are currently 7 seats ahead and are inching towards a very small majority in the House of Representatives and even a majority of 1 means that they will be in a position to block any further investigation into the insurrection and invasion of the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden will have important decisions to make in the days ahead. Donald Trump had pencilled in next Tuesday as a day for a ‘great announcement’ but whether he will decide to pull this in the face of many of his endorsed candidates performing badly is a moot point. The Democrats have equally severe problems as Joe Biden is very unpopular and many are arguing too old for a further attempt on the White House. One informed American commentator was suggesting that Joe Biden’s wife may well be a critical influence upon his decision making and she may urge him to ‘quit whilst he was ahead’ This decision would be easier if a clear successor was apparent but at this stage, the Democrats appear in some disarray. But there are two years left for a candidate to emerge and build some support, not to mention to garner the enormous amounts of money involved in a presidential bid.

Today, the English men’s cricket team were in the T20 final with Pakistan. I think that the game was due to start at about 8.00am but as this game would take several hours to complete, I did not attempt to watch it as I had the Women’s Rugby yesterday morning. England eventually won by 5 wickets and although the match in Melbourne looked set for a tight finish, Stokes hit a flurry of late boundaries, including a six, to break Pakistan’s hearts and to win the match. I assumed that some of the highlights would be shown in at least some of the news bulletins. However, the news items did eventually show a five second clip of Ben Stokes scoring some of the winning runs but most of the report was on exuberant fans both before and after the match. I suppose that there must have been TV rights involved which prohibited any showing of the match even as a news item but given that this was England’s first victory since 2010, you would have thought that we have been given more than just a snatch of it.

Our day started off early this morning because at 6.30am, there was a live broadcast of the Women’s Rugby Union final between England and New Zealand. England were coming to this match with 30 straight wins behind them but New Zealand had beaten them on four previous occasions. The England team played pretty well and their rolling maul from a lineout was superb and resulted in at least two tries. However, an English player was red-carded half way through the first half so England were generally playing with 14 rather than 15 and it showed on one or two critical occasions. England were leading by two points some nine minutes before the end of the match and then New Zealand scored a try (not converted) which put them three points in the lead. The clock turned red and England won a lineout only a few metres from the try line. All they had to do was to catch the ball, push on with another successful rolling maul at which they had excelled all during the match, score a try and victory would be theirs. But New Zealand poached the ball and therefore won the match, leaving the English players so distraught as they had been so near but in the event failed.

Meg and I collected our newspaper and coincided in the park for a minute or so with our University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller. The former had to motor off to Lichfield on a Rugby connected event so we said ‘hello’and ‘goodbye’ but thought that we might meet in the park tomorrow. Our stay in the park was absolutely wonderful today – there were hints of autumn sun and the park was starting to look at its best. Whilst sitting on the park bench, we chatted with a near neighbour who was walking her little dog and then, on the path on the way home, we were overtaken by one of my Pilates classmates (and we think that we go back in the same class about eight years) We chatted with our friend and her husband who we had not met before. He said to me archly ‘I have head a lot about you’ which does make me wonder what possible reputation I have that has been spread abroad. They were there with their two greyhound dogs, one of whom was friendly but the other of a somewhat more nervous disposition. Not for the first time, we were immensely grateful for the pleasure that the park provides for us.

I have been following the last three states in the race for the Senate in the US elections. The three left to decide are Arkansas, Nevada and Georgia. In the course of the day, the Democrats edged sufficiently far ahead for CNN to ‘call’ the state of Arkansas which has the status of an extremely confident prediction. The situation in Nevada is much more on a knife edge – the Republicans are leading by about 0.1% and the Democrats need to find that little bit extra to win the race. It may well be that the counties yet to report are Democrat inclined and there is quite a huge postal vote to be counted – one election official has even ventured that a result might not be known for another six days at the current rate of progress. Meanwhile, Georgia has to wait for a run-off vote between Republican and Democrat in the first week of December so the nexy day or so will be an anxious one for election watchers.

This afternoon, a long awaited parcel was eventually delivered which was a reconditioned Polaroid BoomBox integrated CD/radio once my own Grundig had been consigned to the bin. I got this this at an unmissable price and quickly brought it into use. The CD function plays correctly and immediately with no errors but with outstanding sound as the speakers are so relatively large. The FM radio is subject to the normal FM background ‘hiss’ which I can live with as I shall hardly be playing the radio in any case. It has a Bluetooth function on it as well so tomorrow when I have a bit more time I will experiment with sending the output from my trusty old iPhone (with its 200+ tracks). This afternoon, I decided to do some soup and so I spent a fair amount of the afternoon chopping up parsnip, carrot, swede and celery to form a ‘winter vegetables’ soup. To this mixture in the soupmaker, I added some almond milk (in the absence of coconut milk), some tomato pasta sauce and a goodly dollop of some sauce which is called ‘Chip Shop curry’ sauce to add a little bit of spice. This ought to keep hot in the soupmaker until we get back from church at about 7.00pm this evening and we generally serve it with a good dollop of yogurt and some croutons. To cut down on my carbohydrate count, whilst Meg has a slice of toast to make her croutons, I make do with a couple of cream crackers which are very low in calories. Tomorrow we have the T20 cricket final to which to look forward and I trust we shall not lose two finals in two days.

Today dawned as a gloomy day and, indeed, it was gloomy all day but not actually raining. Meg and I got ourselves going by degrees and eventually got to the park, but a little later than we had planned. However, we were fortunate to bump into our University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller who were just on the point of departing just as we were arriving. Nonetheless, we took the opportunity to sit down on a bench and have a natter, not talking about politics for a change. Then it was a case of getting home and cooking our normal (for us) lunch on a Friday which is sea-bass pan fried and then served on a bed of lettuce. This afternoon was quiet and I spent some time reading The Times in some depth, allowing myself a quick burst of Sudoku ( a ‘difficult’ one which proved rather too easy) and finally a computer session in which I get all of my financial accounts up-to-date.

Most of the media this afternoon has been dominated by news of the Russian withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson. Whilst there have been scenes of locals ‘liberated’ and celebrating by allowing the Ukrainian flag to fly again, the actual military are being a lot more cautious. On the one hand, they fear that the Russian withdrawal might be designed to lure them into a trap. On the other hand, there will almost certainly be mines and booby traps all over the place making the city itself quite a dangerous place to enter. Some of the journalistic accounts from the moving front line are quite illuminating but not surprising. The Russian soldiers by all accounts were tired and hungry and looted almost at will from Ukrainian households. There are accounts of Russian soldiers begging for food from the locals and indicating that were it not for their commanders they would have deserted by now. There are also reports of ‘many’ Russian soldiers drowning whilst they were attempting to retreat across the River Dnipro (the river can be as much as 1km wide in places) Meanwhile, Kherson might be quite a dangerous place in the days and weeks ahead. Firstly, Russian saboteurs trained to work behind enemy lines may be doing their worst to disrupt the life of the city getting back to normal. But now the Russians are no longer a military presence in the city, there will be a certain amount of reprisals in prospect where some of the citizenry who collaborated with the Russians meet some rough justice handed out by loyal Ukrainians. Once the Russians have retreated to the east of the River Dnipro, they will be well dug in and reasonably secure but they have the armaments to shell the parts of Kherson at will, knowing all of the coordinates of critical locations within the city. It is rumoured that Putin may be unwilling to make any foreign trips abroad lest a putsch is organised against him whilst he is out of the way.

At home, the news is that we are about to enter a recession that will last about 8 quarters (two full years) and we are being told it may be the longest recession since records began. The population as a whole are being ‘softened up’ for the budget announcements next week in which there is the prospect of tax increases for almost everybody, a massive cut back in public services (which were already cut to the bone) and general misery all round. The country as a whole is suffering from the cumulative effects of Brexit, the pandemic and paying for the furlough scheme which cost £69 billion, the energy crisis and the tremendous rises in the costs of fuel after Europe disengages from dependence on Russian oil supplies. Any one of these would be a significant cost in itself but in the case of the UK economy these various factors are almost reinforcing each other. After some years of recession it is almost possible that we become similar to the Japanese economy where the GNP has been stuck at the same level since the 1990’s. I heard a statistic this morning that the UK alone amongst the G7 nations is the only country where economic activity has failed to return to pre-pandemic levels.

There is a big sporting weekend to which to look forward. The England women’s rugby team are in a final against New Zealand and I believe that it might start at 6.00am in the morning if one wants to watch it live. This is going to be shown on ITV so I may wake up to watch the 2nd half of it. On Sunday, there will be a final of the the cricket T20 match in which England are taking on Pakistan. This too may prove to quite an exciting contest as the Pakistan bowlers (best in the world) take on the English batsmen (best in the world?) I believe this is scheduled to start at 8.00am on Sunday morning (better than 6.00am the day before) but two finals within 24 hours is quite unusual.

Thursday is my shopping day and for some reason, things seemed very quiet this morning so I got my money out of an ATM and whizzed around the supermarket in record time. After I had got home, breakfasted and unpacked, Meg and I treated ourselves to another little mini-concert on our newly resurrected CD player and then decided to make a trip to the park. The weather was a little indeterminate but we thought that a breath of fresh air would do us good, which I am sure that it did. Upon our return, I noticed that a little bundle of CDs had arrived, all courtesy of Ebay. One of these was Vladimir Askenazy set of the five most popular Mozart piano concertos which came on 2 CDs and for which I paid less than £3.00. The bigger bundle was a 12 disk set of Murray Perahia playing almost every piano concerto that Mozart ever wrote (1-27 but missing Nos. 7 and 10 for some reason) and this bundle came in at less than 40p a disk. I cannot say how much these would have cost when they were just released but, for whatever reason, they are now being sold at almost give away prices, particularly once you subtract the cost of the postage. We have played some of the Asknenazy disks and the quality seems fine but evidently it will take me many hours of listening pleasure to work my way through the entire collection to see if they are all play as they should.

The American election results continue to fascinate but some of the final votes seem to be incredibly slow to declare. This may be because postal votes are not counted until the day after the election and are counted by hand rather than by machine but the final results are better than the Democrats had dared hoped and worse than the Republicans had come to expect. The latest estimate from NBC News has the Republicans winning 222 House seats compared with the Democrats’ 213, meaning they would still take control but with much less authority. And a Democrat win is still within the margin of error. As I write, the latest estimate from NBC News has the Republicans winning 222 House seats compared with the Democrats 213, meaning they would still take control but with much less authority than the 40+ gains anticipated by some pollsters. A majority of 9 is still sufficient for the Republicans to follow much of their own agenda but in today’s climate, how many independently minded Republicans are left who may defy how the rest of the party are voting? The race for the Senate is also very much in the balance, with just three seats left to declare. Georgia’s race is set for a run-off on 6 December so we may have to wait until then for the final result. Whichever party wins two of the three outstanding contests in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada will control the Senate. With about 70 percent of the vote tallied in Arizona, incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly maintains a 5-point lead over Republican challenger Blake Masters. But election officials in Democrat-heavy Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county, have said it could take until at least Friday to tally the hundreds of thousands of remaining votes. About 80 percent of the vote has been tallied in Nevada, where Republican Adam Laxalt has a slight edge over Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. But late-arriving mail-in ballots, especially in Democratic strongholds of Clark and Washoe Counties, that have yet to be counted could still tip the scales in the incumbent’s favor. Election officials are saying that the results of these votes might not be known until Friday. The US newspapers owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch make brutal reading for Donald Trump today. Once again, the two flagship Murdoch titles – the upscale conservative-leaning Wall St Journal (WSJ), which is influential with deep pocketed Republican donors, and the tabloid New York Post – have united to tell their collective readership that it is time for Republicans to move beyond Donald Trump. New York Post columnist John Podhoretz wrote a blistering editorial, saying: ‘After three straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it is time for even his fans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.’ While Republican lawmakers are so far loyal to the former president in public, the debate emerging from the Murdoch-owned press reflects the conversations Republicans are having in private.

In the Ukraine, the fact that the Russians seem to be abandoning Kherson might appear to be good news for the Ukraine but the military command is being very cautious. It may be that several ‘traps’ have been laid by the retreating troops. The fact that they are retreating to the east bank of a river means that they can still shell Kherson at will and may be difficult to attack. But it does appear that the Russians had little choice but to abandon the city as their supply lines had been so successfully disrupted by the Ukrainians seeking to liberate their own territory.

Meg and I look forward to Wednesday because it is the day when our domestic help comes round to work her magic and after a cup of tea first thing, we exchange news of each other’s week. I showed her the improvements that we had made to our little music corner and, in particular, how I had interfaced my old iphone (with about 200 tracks on it) to an external Bluetooth speaker. We knew that Prime Minister’s Questions would be especially good today after the resignation last night of Gavin Williamson (who had previously been sacked as one of the most incompetent Education Secretaries of all time) We enjoyed our coffee in the park and just got back in time, having bought some essential supplies in Waitrose, to make us all a nice cup of coffee and settled down to PMQ. In this, Keir Starmer had some excellent attack lines which he delivered in a fashion described by some as ‘brutal’. For example, Keir Starmer referred to Sir Gavin as ‘a sad middle manager getting off on intimidating those beneath him’ and a ‘cartoon bully with a pet spider’. Williamson, I think it is fair to say, was known across the House of Commons as a ‘nasty piece of work’. As an ex-Chief Whip and a record of incompetence as a defence and latterly education secretary he had practically no friends amongst fellow Conservative MPs. It could be that Sunak employed him as a type of enforcer over recalcitrant MPs but eventually the costs of keeping him far exceeded the costs of letting him go. Once the tirade of foul epithets with the Conservative chief whip became public as well as other damning remarks to a senior civil servant that he ‘should slit his own throat’ then it was only a question of time before he had to go. Indeed, Sunak did not even have to sack him because other parts of the Tory party indicated him that it was time to go and his future is bound to be oblivion (and it would not surprise me if he left politics at the next general election).

After lunch, we knew that I had to go to a routine annual monitoring after my operation of a few years ago and for this, we needed to make a trip to the local hospital some 11 miles distant. Compared with the last time I visited, I now needed to take a ticket to gain access to the car park and when we got to the outpatient clinic a wait of some 45 minutes ensured. I had taken Meg with me so that she was not left on her own for too long and when we left, having paid a £4 fee for an hour’s visit, the barriers were open so the £4 payment proved not to be necessary after all. Then it was home and a quick tea before we caught up with the news.

The Channel 4 analysis of the American election results was illuminating in the extreme. The Republicans had been predicted to do incredibly well as inflation is hitting American society hard and Trump was on the rampage. But the ‘red wave’ turned out to be a ‘red trickle’ and although the Republicans will take the House of Representatives, it should be by a much smaller margin than was predicted. This still means that the enquiry into the insurrection and invasion of the Capitol building will be called off, however, as they go after Jo Biden’s son. But the Senate race is still far too hard to call. There are three more results to be declared but one of the most critical is Georgia. In this state, there is a third candidate who will take away sufficient votes for either Republican or Democrat to cross the 50% line, so it appears that there will be a run off election between these two top candidates in the first week of December. So the ultimate result may not be known for several weeks. In the meantime. the Democrats have even taken the state of Pennsylvania from red (Republican) to blue (Democrat) But of much more significance is the fact that the especially endorsed Trump candidates seem to have fared less well than those not so endorsed- in other words, Trump’s influence has been negative. He is reportedly livid about this and is ‘throwing his toys out of his pram’ There is no great love for the Democrats but the abortion issue has harmed rather than helped the Republicans. Also the American electorate seem to have failed to have voted for the mediocrity of some of the Trump candidates. This may play into the hands of DeSantis, the Florida senator. While Republican candidates across the country met unexpectedly tight races, Mr DeSantis, 44, swept to a nearly 20-point landslide victory over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist, including a clear majority among Latino voters. Four years ago, by comparison, he won by less than half a percentage point. No doubt, there will have to much more analysis in the days ahead but it looks as though the ‘MAGA’ (Make America Great Again) brand of conservatism may just have had its day.