Now the Bank Holiday is over, Meg and I are looking forward to meeting up with our Waitrose friends in the cafeteria. What is interesting is this venue is not particularly easy for us to visit (one of us in a motorised scooter, another a 90 year old who has to judge what distance she can safely walk and, of course, Meg has to be pushed down (and up) the hill in her wheelchair.) But perhaps it is because the visit takes some commitment that we all make a great effort to see each other. If we have a fine autumn, then our various journeys can continue but if the weather suddenly turns very bad then this is, as the Spanish say ‘otra causa’ i.e. another thing altogether and we may have to rethink our plans. The staff who we have known for years always make us welcome and it is not uncommon for bunches of (soon to be out-of-date) flowers to be tossed in our direction.

After the hobby of model making with the Keil Kraft range of balsa wood aircraft, I developed a new interest when I was aged about 15 but I honestly cannot remember how I got this into the first place which was the breeding of hamsters. Together with a school friend, we developed our interest in common and were fortunate in that there was a friendly and eminent breeder of hamsters that we used to visit regularly in Harrogate. Hamsters are interesting little creatures but have some strange breeding habits. The females come into oestrus every fourth night on which occasions the female will mate but on the other three nights she and whatever male is in the vicinity will fight to the death. The gestation period is also incredibly short at about 16 days. After a litter has been produced, each hamster will require its own cage and at one stage, I was producing cage after cage – I think the grand total that I achieved was about 14. In the railway sidings of the suburb of Harrogate in which I lived, there seemed to be quite a supply of abandoned (or easily liberated) soda water syphon cases which were inevitably just about the right size. The only difficulty is that hamsters being rodents would easily chew their way through a normal wooden cage so each cafe needed protecting with a kind of tin strip. This was produced by taking the top and the bottom of a tin can, cutting it open with a pair of garden shears and then after some unrolling and re shaping cutting the result ‘tin’ into strips which were then tacked onto the relevant area of the cage. Although the keeping of hamsters does not sound an incredibly exciting activity in itself, my friend and I used to visit many of the small towns in the vicinity where we could take our hamsters along to be entered into a show. The show facilities were nearly always draughty Methodist halls with long rows of trestle tables inside. As a condition of entry into the show, the hamsters had to be housed within a standard show cage that were so designed that a judge could put two or three of such cages together in order to make comparisons of the animals within. The show cages themselves were housed in a special travelling box which would hold exactly two cages facing each other and this gave rise to an incident on a local train which sticks in our memory. The train conductor who inspected our tickets asked what was inside the boxes was told that they contained hamsters said they would have a special train ticket bought for them. My friend and I thought this was a tremendous joke and laughed and laughed until the ticket inspector wandered away. On his next journey down the train, the ticket inspector again requested payment and, once again, assuming that this was the most ridiculous joke we laughed and laughed until the inspector gave up. It was only afterwards that we came to appreciate that this was not intended to be a joke at all and he was absolutely in his rights to demand payment for their carriage but evidently felt he was no position to enforce the payment request. I was not very successful at hamster breeding and the most I ever achieved might have been a ‘third class’ or perhaps a ‘Highly Commended’ but that was the total amount of my success. My friend, though, visited the breeder on his own and secured an animal for about £2 which then went to secure a ‘Best in Show’ I felt at the time that this was not quite in the spirit of the show events but at least my friend and I got to explore some of the little towns in the vicinity of Harrogate and Leeds. The hamster breeding phase of my life only lasted a year or so and then I think GCSE ‘O’ levels intervened. We did have a sort of brick built shed at the rear of our house which housed the hamster cages in their heydey and I did branch out and acquire either one or two pigeons which I keep on the roof of the aforementioned shed. The father of a neighbouring boy had some racing pigeons but I do not think the pair I acquired showed that kind of class and I soon tired of them. I also acquired a rabbit that had the most beautiful purply-browny fur but the most vicious temper it is possible to imagine. When my sister’s then boyfriend exclaimed that I had got a rare ‘Australian Blue’ or something similar, I generously made a gift of the rabbit to him and I was heartily glad to be shot of it as cuddly it most certainly was not. My mother and sister tolerated my animal husbandry with a sort of bemused indifference but I do remember that my mother was not best pleased that I insisted that my hamsters be fed an extremely expensive wheat germ mixture called ‘BeMax’ which I insisted was necessary to increase the fertility of my hamster collection. Wheat germ and an associated chemical called Spermidine do have manifest health benefits. Spermidine stimulates autophagy, enabling the body to clean out and recycle any unnecessary or damaged cells. This process has been linked to multiple potential health benefits, including fighting against cancer, Type 2 Diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease and is suggested to display anti-aging effects.

Yesterday, Meg entered our Sunday morning rituals which starts off with the carers making an earlier than normal than visit on Sundays, after which we breakfast and watch the Politics programs on Sunday mornings. The Labour Party is bound to come under scrutiny for the policy of withdrawing the winter fuel allowance just when prices are destined to rise. Our friend who calls around from the parish is away on holiday this week so we go down into town to pick up our copy of the Sunday newspaper and then come back via a visit to the park where we normally bump into acquaintances. We were especially pleased to see our University of Birmingham friend and, later on we bumped into our Italian friend whilst I was pushing Meg back up the hill. Whilst I am prepared the Sunday lunch, Meg followed the ‘Pilgrims’ series which we to reserve for just time slot on a Sunday morning. As today is a Bank Holiday, we have changed our plans and are visiting Waitrose which we have checked is probably going to have ‘Sunday hours’ trading on the Bank Holiday. The care workers came an hour earlier today so we had a bit of a rush around to get ready for them.

Recently, I wrote about the experiences of pre-teenage lads building ourselves go-carts. I checked out with our University of Winchester friend and he did the same at a similar age but he and his friend appeared to be even more ambitious by utilising tricycle wheels, but not always successfully. Out family did not start to rent a TV until I was about 15 but before our TV days I did have a hobby in common with many lads of a similar age. There was a firm called ‘Keil Kraft’ and they produce model kits from which you could construct an aircraft. The kits were incredibly simple and consisted of designs printed onto thin sheets of balsa wood. With a craft knife, you cut out the essential 2-D shapes and then set about modelling into a 3-D shape, for example an aircraft. My first craft was a Hurricane which did not figure so much in the public collective memory and affection as the Spitfire. The Hurricane was slightly slower than the Spitfire, but it was robust, stable, and had impressive firepower. It played a critical role in defending Britain against German bombers. The Spitfire was more advanced, faster, and more manoeuvrable. However, it was also more complex and less easy to repair than the Hurricane. The construction process started off with two or three bulkheads with little notches cut along the top and the sides. Into these notches, one then glued the ‘stays’ of the fuselage which were in effect only thin strips of balsa wood. I remember that there was an awful lot of gluing involved as well as a fair degree of patience because each stay had to be held in position for about 15 minutes until the glue had set. After the fuselage came the wings and the tail assembly and then the whole was glued together. At this stage, you were left with essentially what looked like a wire model (although it was actually in balsa wood) and thus then had to be covered in a type of tissue paper and something called ‘dope’ which shrunk the tissue paper and made it cling to the frame like a skin. Finally, one followed the instructions by painting it up in the relevant colours and if you were bold you could even flit a propeller, powered by a wound up large piece of elastic band. These models took weeks to construct but it was the pre-TV era so whiled away the hours. I think the model construction process taught one a degree of patience and, of course, you had something tangible afterwards to show off to one family and friends. After the Hurricane, I bought myself a glider which was on a much bigger scale. Just out of interest, I did manage to locate on the web some cine film that had been shot within the Keil Kraft factory dating back to the 1950’s. The video showed an operative with several layers of balsa wood being shaped by a revolving band saw and in which the operative’s fingers only seemed to be a matter of millimetres away from the bandsaw. There was an amusing strap line that had been added to the cine film either originally of when it was made into a file to be displayed on the internet but the strap line read ‘No fingers were lost in the making of this film’ When my son was of the appropriate age, I seem to remember that the original Keil Kraft concept had evolved somewhat and now the current model making kits consisted of parts made of plastic that one had to detach from their containing frame and then clip together to make a battleship or what have you. But I think Keil Kraft (‘the greatest name in model kits’) is no longer still in existence but a company known as ‘The Vintage Model Company’ still produce replicas of the original balsa wood models. I wonder, though, whether the materials deployed today are considerably more advanced than the simple balsa wood of the late 1950’s.

The government has withdrawn the winter fuel payments for pensioners but retained a much more restrictive version for those who are in receipt of Pension Credits which is a very much smaller number. This has come when the Gas regulator is going to allow prices to increase by 10% this winter and so the interest on the Labour back benches is palpable. I can see that some sort of back down or way of refining the policy might be on the cards but it looks as though a massive backbench revolt may be imminent. The government could decide to tough it all to show who is boss but the danger is that once backbenchers have the taste of rebellion in their faces then they might be tempted to keep on rebelling over a whole host of related issues.

The Guardian is reporting that even some of Donald Trump’s supporters are now asking the question that was the undoing of Joe Biden: is the former president fit for office? But while Biden’s run for re-election was largely sunk by a single disastrous televised debate before a national audience, Trump is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country. While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths by suddenly finding himself running against Kamala Harris a month ago.

Yesterday, Meg and I went down the hill after breakfast and enjoyed the company of our Saturday friends. Upon our return, we cooked the second half of a chicken, leek and ham pie that we had left in the freezer. Then we started watched the classic film of ‘Casablanca’ which we watched until the carers came for Meg’s late afternoon comfort call. When it looked as though the weather was set fair, I washed our new purchased throw on the coolest of washes and rigged up a clothes line – fortunately, I had some spare clothes lines in places waiting until I had need of them. Then I put the throw out on the line to have a blow for about 3-4 hours after which it was nearly dry so I spread it out in our airing room so that is can get truly dried off before I bring it into use.

The Summer Bank Holiday beckons next Monday and I do not look forward to these with any degree of enthusiasm. As it is the last Bank Holiday of the year, many families take it as an opportunity to get their last little taste of a summer vacation as the school children will return to schools in early September and the long hard grind over the Autumn period commences. These days, half term breaks become quite important but these are generally towards the end of October which seems a fair way off. The next few days have to be ‘tunnelled through’ in many ways. Many friends are taking the last opportunity to have a break with their own wider families and there is a general sense of turmoil even amongst the cadre of care workers who we have grown to know over the last few months. Turnover in the care industry is high but at this time of year there seem to be an unprecedentedly large number who are leaving the agency. This is either because they are starting more permanent and secure positions within schools in a variety of roles or because the agency does not give them sufficient hours on their zero hours contracts and they seek a greater continuity of hours of work. Many of the college pupils/university student sections of the agency staff will be returning to their colleges shortly so it is a time of great change. The Paralympic games are due to start next week but as the opening ceremony is not until Wednesday, the actual events will not commence until the following day. We have always found these games to be entertaining and the UK has traditionally done very well in these sports. The proximity of Paris no doubt bodes quite well as many families and friends will find it easier to make the trips to support their athletes. It looks as though Paris is going to make a distinctive set of games by having events in the locations that show off Paris to its very best and therefore, like the main Olympic Games themselves, the opening ceremony is not going to be in a stadium. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, which will take place between 28 August and 8 September, will see more than 4,000 athletes from around the world competing in 549 medal events and will showcase 22 sports, including both individual and team events.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech of the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination Thursday beat MAGA to the political punch and captured a key voting bloc in the process, according to a former Republican spokesperson. Tara Setmayer, Seneca Project co-founder and former GOP communications director, argued during a CNN Friday morning that Harris positioned herself as a potential commander-in-chief before former President Donald Trump could define her as a threat. ‘If you don’t think it was effective, all you have to do is look at how Donald Trump and his surrogates were responding to her speech: there was a meltdown.’ Republican commentators have already conceded that the Harris stance on abortion rights is going to be a critical factor in the Democrat’s favour in the forthcoming election. Paul Begala, co-panelist and onetime campaign adviser to former President Bill Clinton, concurred that Harris had the upper hand when it came to unifying a political party ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. Begala pointed to Harris’ promise to be a president for all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, as a crucial moment in her speech when it came to unifying her base. I have also just come an extraordinary story concerning Trump’s finances. Trump himself has been the biggest spender, both this year and over the last decade. Between his three presidential campaigns, Trump and associated political groups have funnelled more than $28 million in campaign donations to his businesses – helping convert the enthusiasm of his political supporters into personal profit. Other Republicans have followed suit, spending millions at Trump’s properties in an apparent attempt to curry favour with the former president and signal their allegiance to him to GOP voters. An even more extraordinary Trump ‘happening’ was reported by the liberal MSNBC network. Former President Donald J. Trump was watching television on Thursday night and he did not like what he saw. His newly minted Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, had just accused him of grovelling to dictators, imperilling democracy, betraying American values and, to top it off, deemed him ‘an unserious man.’ So Trump picked up the telephone and called Fox News. It can be appreciated why the network worked quickly to get the Republican candidate on the air, albeit by telephone. Trump is, after all, the Republican nominee, and it stood to reason that he’d have something notable to say in response to his Democratic rival’s remarks. What Fox might not have realised, however, is that Harris’ convention speech had apparently caused a meltdown. Trump appeared on the air for about 10 minutes, during which time he not only raged incoherently, he also accidentally pushed random buttons on his phone. The interview might have gone on longer, but the Fox anchors effectively cut off the former president mid-rant so that the network could move on to other programming. For Fox News, one of most right wing and Trump-friendly channels to cut him off in this way is extraordinary. So the term that the Republicans are using to describe Trump’s behaviour i.e. ‘meltdown’ might not be hyperbole after all.

Yesterday morning, we awoke to a day when winds and storms had swept through the country and we hoped that the storms had well passed over the Midlands before we were due to go down into the town. We did pay a by now traditional visit to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ cafe and enjoyed a bacon butty but our friend who joined us last week, we passed on a level crossing whilst she was dashing off in the opposite direction, but we shall see her tomorrow in any case. As the cafe is quite near the AgeUk furniture and charity store, we could not resist a quick whizz around and liberated a couple of really fine looking little cushions in a kind of silvery bluey-grey colour and decorated with a good frill. I am not sure whether this colour is described as best described as ‘Eau de Nile’ and I have a seen a description of it as a lightish caste of green, blue and grey. Anyway, I like the subtlety of the colour and I use them in pairs when I can. As I am buying them, the assistant who works in the store exclaimed what beautiful cushions they were and what good value they were when sold in their store (with both of which judgements I agree) I also espied a throw in just the kind of shade I was looking for so this too became a purchase making it a productive morning for us. I popped by another recently opened charity shop and they had a collection of soft toys from which I selected a couple of small cuddly bears to add to Meg’s collection. The naming of bears always calls for a bit of imagination but the larger one we are going to call ‘Franky’ as there is an attached label saying the bear is a ‘Franklin T Bear’ made for American Airlines and presumably given away to their youngest passengers. The second bear we are going to call ‘Pru’ as there is a fair possibility that the bear is a cousin of Paddington Bear who, as we all know by now, hails from ‘darkest Peru’ and ‘Peru’ is quickly corrupted to ‘Pru’. We then returned home in time for the carers to give Meg a check over and then got on with cooking the Friday lunch of a bought haddock pie.

Quite by accident, I came across on my iPhone a clip of Michelle Obama’s conference speech to the Democrats convention in Chicago. If you were of a cynical frame of mind, you could say that the speech was all ‘motherhood and apple pie’ but I was very impressed by its content, delivery and emotional appeal. In truth, the speech was as much about herself as it was about Kerala Harris but a principal theme was the impact of both their (black) mothers in giving them an enduring set of values. This was an interesting way to underline the collectivism inherent in the Democratic message rather than the rampant individualism which pervades the speeches of Donald Trump. Michelle Obama does not regard herself as a politician but there is an irony in the fact that she easily made the best and most compelling speech in a political convention, even outshining the oratorical gifts of her husband. The speech is quite easily findable on the web so I will treat myself to a more extended listening of it – it contained some interesting lines that would well have merited an airing on UK terrestrial TV but instead the media has been obsessed for hours and hours with the seven rich folk who have lost their lives after the overwhelming of their luxury yacht near Sicily.

I suspect that I am not alone in keeping a watchful eye on my weight these days and if I have put on a couple of pounds, then I attempt to take some remedial action in the next few days to remedy the situation. Although it is a somewhat discredited measure these days, it is still common in any medical monitoring to measure one’s BMI or Body Mass Index. This is calculated by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by your height measured in metres squared. The resultant figure should fall within the range of 20-25 but the crudeness of this measure is often the subject of comment. If we were to take a Turkish weight lifter who has a very small stature but is a mass of quite heavy muscle then an extremely healthy Olympic athlete, for example, could have BMI in excess of 30. Conversely, when I used to get some of the students that I used to teach to calculate their BMIs as a computing/statistical exercise, then some of the very slight Asian female students who were absolutely healthy could have a BMI of 18. Now why I am mentioning this is because the other day when I went for a routine medical monitoring, the nursing assistant measured my height as well as my weight and since the last time I attempted to measure my height about a year, I seem to have lost about 2″.Incidentally, measuring your own height can be quite difficult as you are a different height standing up compared with lying down. When you are standing up, each of the 33 vertebrae in your spine will compress a minute amount but there could be a difference of 0.5″ or so. Now in the biological and social sciences, data often takes the shape of an ‘S’ shaped curve i.e. a straight line in the middle but which ‘flattens’ a little at the bottom end and the top end. Students of statistics will know that you should not make projections for any distance which is much below or above the trend line you may have plotted. But I am going to break this principle just to show the absurd conclusions to which it is possible to arrive. I have calculated that if I continue to lose height at the rate of 2 inches per year, then when I am aged 90+, I will basically be 1 metre in height which is approximately the size of a hobbitt. According to Tolkien’s descriptions, the average height of a Hobbit ranges from 2 to 4 feet tall (60-120 cm), with most hobbits standing around 3 to 3.5 feet tall (90-107 cm). So at just over 1 metre (100 cm) in height, I will certainly be in the ‘hobbit’ height range and I am not sure that this a future to which I am particularly looking forward. Consulting the web, I see that men, on average, lose 1.2 inches between ages 30 and 70, and a total of two inches by 80. So by subtraction, most men lose 0.8″ during their 70’s and it is a biological fact that height loss accelerates as you age.

Today, we anticipate paying a visit to our new found little cafe, ‘The Lemon Tree‘ despite the fact that local roadworks are making a visit to it a little awkward. Although it does involve a somewhat longer venture out than is our usual trip, it does have the advantage of a trip down our local High Street where we can pop into the occasional charity shop and/or buy things such as cosmetics which are not available in our local supermarket. The centre of the town is being remodelled yet again and goodness knows what is going to emerge at the end of the day. I suspect that some of the money coming to pay for improvements is part of the ‘levelling up’ process which was a policy of the outgoing Conservative administration. I think that quite a lot of money was channeled towards traditionally Conservative areas to help to keep them loyal. But one of the local roads through the town has been made one-way whilst various schemes are under way and there is quite a degree of scepticism that anything really tangible is to result. According to the local newspaper, workers will begin upgrading the paving, planting trees, installing cycle racks and benches and improving the drainage. This hardly sounds like dramatic improvements to the town centre which seems to be dominated by charity shops, coffee outlets and vape shops without very many of the traditional businesses one would want to see in a town centre. I am pretty sure that Bromsgrove town centre is not unique in the paucity of shops that it currently boasts and the prevalence of large outdoor retail parks as well as the prevalence of online shopping does nothing in particular to help the town centre. Some of the long established residents of Bromsgrove fondly remember the days when there used to be quality retail outlets in the town but it does not surprise me that many of the existing shops find it difficult to keep going. The one thing that does help to bring a bit of excitement to the shopping experience are the street markets that are held each Tuesday and Saturday – for example, I have traditionally used one stall which used to do quite a brisk trade in watches, watch batteries, and handbags and other stalls sell some interesting food products. But even here the stalls are not what they used to be. I used to use one stall that sold a whole range and variety of hardware and gardening implements and from another, there was always a good range of plants sold but these stall holders have moved off to other pitches such as Kidderminster down the road where I suspect that the weekly rents for the stalls are lower and the footfall more substantial. It must be a sign of the times but there always seems quite a brisk trade in the charity shops and I must confess that I frequent them myself where in the past I have bought cushions and the occasional kitchen bric-a-brac. But this does seem to be a fragile base for the local economy and I sometimes do wonder how much income goes across the tills on a typical weekday for many of the shops. Having said that, I am conscious of what are called ‘biased statistics’ because on Saturdays there always seems to be a flood of local people walking the High Street but as I tend to avoid the town centre on these busy days, I am probably not getting an accurate impression of the level of economic activity in the town. But shops cannot survive on their Saturday trade alone and it is hard to know what the local authority can do to stimulate more actual trade within the town.

There is the usual media interest in US presidential politics as the Democrats are meeting for their convention in Chicago (always a Democrat stronghold). Apparently one ‘Obama’ made an absolutely stunning and empowering speech at the Convention but it was not the speech from the lips of Barack Obama, the former president but his wife, Michelle. The convention was set alive and inspired by the speech that encouraged the Democrats to rekindle their hopes for a better future. There is almost no doubt that if Michelle Obama had ever been in a competition with Trump she would beaten him very easily. But even though her endorsement of Kamala Harris came somewhat late in the day, no doubt there was a lot of crude political realpolitik in recognising that a split Democratic party was no way to take on the challenge of Trump and Trumpism. One wonders what future political role might lie in store for Michelle Obama given her undoubted intellectual and political gifts. There are such jobs such as Ambassador to the United Nations or even to London as a suitable post but I am sure she is absolutely focused on getting Kamala Harris elected. Weever she visited London, Michelle Obama would make for schools generally in the East end of London with a high black population and inspired the school pupils with the message that she started off life coming from a poor black area of Chicago and there was nothing to stop them from aiming equally high. Tonight, we shall see the much anticipated keynote of Kamala Harris herself and no doubt this will be much scrutinised as I think it is fair to say that the Democrats campaign has been ‘policy light’ so far. The latest opinion polls out her about 3% ahead of Trump but a key portion of the electorate, the white working class male with minimal college education, naturally gravitate towards Trump and will take a fair bit of convincing before they will vote for a mixed heritage, female candidate.

In this country, all eyes at the moment are fixed upon Rachel Reeves, the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer who will be presenting a budget in October. Many have argued that the UK’s finances are not in a good state but the most recent data is giving rather mixed messages as economic growth seems a smidgeon higher than was predicted but the anticipated tax revenues somewhat less. Reeves may well do what George Osborne did and introduce a regime of tax rises, blaming it all on her predecessor. On the other hand, she may be playing a more skilful political game by making the population fear that tremendous economic pain is on the way but, having softened up the public, produce a budget which is not quite so painful after all.

Yesterday was the day when our domestic help calls around. As Meg had not been out for a trip to Waitrose the day before and will probably not do so on our shopping day on Thursday, we took the opportunity to visit Waitrose for our elevenses even though we did not anticipate meeting any of our friends. But we did take the opportunity to get some much needed provisions of which we had run out before we do the main shopping later on in the week. In the mid afternoon, we received a visit of a nurse from our local community hospital who act as an organising hub for our GP practice. The nurse’s visit appears to have been activated by the Admiral (specialist) nurse and she had called around to ensure that Meg had all of the necessary requisites to keep her comfortable. Naturally I had to update her regarding the possibility of a hospital ‘floor’ bed which might be arriving in a few days and she was going to make some recommendations of supplies (creams and the like) to keep Meg comfortable and, hopefully, to keep her asleep at night.

When I consulted my iPhone this morning, the BBC were giving prominence to an article written by an expert they had commissioned and the article was entitled ‘Riots show how the UK’s far right has changed’ The article is long, complex and detailed but the gist of it is as follows: ‘Right wing extremism can be thought of as a spectrum, rather than a coherent whole. It includes genocidal neo-Nazis treated as terrorists by the state… but the term is also used to describe people who stand in democratic elections, engage in public campaigns and put forward policy platforms’ The author of the article suggests that the term ‘extreme right’ should be used for the first group and ‘far right’ for the latter. To complicate this mosaic even further, some of the rioters were simply drunk whilst others were rampant opportunists who engaged in the fact that under the guise of the riot some shops could be looted. The article concludes with the observation that ‘far right narratives are now more mainstream than many would like to think. Is there now a far right culture that is more prevalent in society and which transcends the need to organise in political groups?’ The response from the government and the rest of us in what might be termed mainstream culture is not necessarily a simple one. I happen to believe that almost instant arrest, trial and fairly stiff fines and prison sentences was probably the right response in the short term and helped to quell what could have turned out to be a summer of rioting. On the other hand, we need a more measured analysis of the problem (which the article provides) and therefore more considered solutions. Without attempting to be too simplistic, i think there are two observations that are in order at this point. The first is that a succession of right wing governments that have constantly tacked to the right of the political spectrum which has helped to foster a climate in which such far right movements have grown in strength and influence. As a case in point, I used to have fairly neutral attitudes towards Teresa May when she turned out to be one of our longest serving Home Secretaries before she herself became Prime Minister. Whilst at the Home Office, a report had been commissioned on the economic costs and benefits of long run immigration into the UK. May sent the report back to its authors indicating to them that any reference to economic benefits should be discounted, minimised or removed leaving only the material on costs. There is a very powerful argument that whatever the short term costs of immigration, because migrants tend to be young and healthy they tend to contribute more in the taxes that they pay than they receive back in benefits than the indigenous population largely because the costs of old age such as old age pensions and health benefits are not immediately needed. The argument can therefore be made that migrants therefore subsidise the rest of the population at least for a few decades to come but needless to say this argument is rarely heard and does not see the light of day. Another important observation is that with the prevalence of social media, there is no need for far right political groups to mobilise and indeed incite the population. Instead, we can rely on social media particularly ‘X’ (the successor to Twitter) whose owner Elon Musk to argue that the UK is heading for an inevitable civil war and who will not take resolute and immediate action to remove fake and erroneous reports to circulate. One could argue that right wing governments have helped to create the climate of opinion into which mix the impact of social media provides ‘the spark’ as it were. A very old political expression is that ‘a lie gets half way around the world before truth has had a chance to put its boots again’. So one could argue that governments themselves, although they cannot censor social media, can actively engage in a far more direct rebuttal of evidently fake reports. For example, they could constantly reiterate the message that ‘complex problems need even more complex (and well thought through) solutions’ rather than engaging in the simplistic messages such as ‘Stop the Boats’ which fitted the right wing agenda.

Interesting news that has emerged from the other side of ‘the pond’. Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary took the stage at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night and shared the brutal one-word message from Melania in the wake of the January 6 insurrection that caused her to quit and she is one of several Republican figures invited to the convention in Chicago to denounce the extremism of the former president and his campaign. On Tuesday night, as she endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris for president, Grisham shared the brief text exchange, which finally convinced her to leave the post. She had apparently received a word one text from Melania, ex-President’s wife, indicating that ‘while peaceful protest is the right of every American, there’s no place for lawlessness or violence’ and that she, Melania, could not endorse that action. On the face of it, this sounds quite a dramatic coup for the Democrats to persuade prominent ex-Republicans to repudiate the Trump’s actions but of course it will cut no ice with the dedicated, not to say fanatical supporters of the ex-President. I wonder how much of this will be reported on this side of the Atlantic?

Yesterday I attended our local GP’s surgery for a planned routine health monitoring appointment. I knew the nursing assistant from my dealings with her in years gone by and a range of tests were undertaken (blood samples and the like) for which the results will be available next week. Today I had needed to arrange for a special ‘sit’ session to care for Meg whilst I attended the surgery and would normally have needed to attend next week for the results. However, the nursing assistant indicated I could have these results over the phone which option I actually chose as it will help to make life a little easier for us next week. As lunchtime would have been somewhat delayed, I changed plans and cooked a quicker lunch and was quite surprised by how tasty it turned out to be even though it was odds and ends left over from the weekend joint. After we had lunched, the weather seemed to have improved considerably over this morning so we decided to have a quick walk down into the park. This was quite beneficial for the two of us in terms of getting some good fresh air into our lungs but at that time in the afternoon, there were none of the usual park friends or acquaintances with whom it would have been nice for a chat. When the care worker called in the late afternoon for Meg’s comfort call, as I know him pretty well by now I asked him to give me an estimate in round terms of how many of his clients tend to get out and about (as Meg and I do) and how many are confined to their own homes. After some thought, the care worker thought that only about 40% of the people for whom he cared managed to get out of the house (where they were capable of it) and to enjoy some of the walks to which Meg and I have become accustomed. It might be the case that Meg sleeps a bit more soundly if she had a walk in the afternoon but this is only the slightest of impressions at this stage. In the middle of the day we received a phone call from the OT (Occupational Therapist) who had called around last week and she needed to check some of the access arrangements if a new hospital-style ‘floor bed’ is to be delivered. We conjecture that this might mean that the request for a floor bed has been granted but neither of us are certain of this at this stage.

After viewing some ‘vox pop’ with some American voters, my interest has been rekindled into why there seems to be such a resurgence in populist and extreme right wing leaders (Farage in the UK, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey and evidently Trump in the USA) and it did not take me too long to find an interesting piece of research published in the Harvard Business Review, which was written mainly from a social psychological perspective. The authors argue that there are two paths to leadership which they term the dominance model (assertive, controlling, dominating and intimidating) and the prestige model (individuals who are respected, admired and held in high esteem) We could almost think of this as ‘traditional patrician Conservative’ (Macmillan) versus the populist (Johnson, Farage). The gist of the article is that dominant leaders achieve their appeal when the socioeconomic environment is riddled with uncertainty and people experience a lack of personal control, The argument is supported by three empirical studies, two of which relate to the US (with sample sizes of 700 and 1400) and the final one derived from the World Attitudes Survey (with a sample size of 138,000) These findings are hardly new as the roots of fascism are well known to be associated with deep economic uncertainties. Although I found the argument appealing, I also thought that it was somewhat simplistic and was in need of some refinement. I would point out that in today’s society, the role of social media cannot be ignored and in particular the techniques deployed by the extreme right to offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. We are finding this in the British political scene and, in particular the way in which connection is made with the voting public by extremely simplistic three word slogans (‘Get Brexit Done’ ‘Stop the Boats’) Perhaps it goes without saying that I personally feel that the answer to complex problems must needs be complex and not the reduction to a simplistic three word slogan.

In the American Democratic Congress, Joe Biden is handing over the reins to the next generation in the form of Kamala Harris. I heard one pithy American commentator explain ‘now we can move onto real policies and not talking about Biden’s age and Trump’s dementia’) What will be interesting is to ascertain what degree of ‘political bounce’ Kamala Harris will receive in the polls after a few days of generally favourable TV and press coverage. I suspect that one of the keys in the American presidential election will be the attitudes taken to abortion. In the USA, state after state has made access to abortion progressively much more difficult and practically impossible in some states. There is a particular irony in all of this in that the American right who are responsible for much of the shift in abortion policies across the USA are generally committed to reducing the role of government in the private lives of citizens except in the case of abortion where in effect the power of the state to dictate the outcome of women’s lives is increasing. In the meanwhile, Trump is engaging in even more bizarre personal attacks (‘I am better looking than she is’ being one of the latest outbursts)

In general, I only scan the business pages of the newspapers with hardly much attention but one issue caught my attention. Apparently two of our supermarket chains (Asda, Morrisons) are in deep trouble recently and the root cause appears to be in the role of private equity firms who have increased their stake in these two firms. As a result, customers are being asked to pay the price for the fact that the private equity firms are extracting massive profits from what they perceive to be cash cows. I am undoubtedly over simplifying the nature of the economic analysis here but we have seen the role of private equity firms before in our High Streets (for example Boots the Chemist) and I try to make my own little protest about this by not shopping in Boots if I have the choice.

Last night, Meg and I had a much better night’s sleep which was very welcome to us both after the disturbed night’s sleep that we had the night before. Today is going to be a departure from our normal Tuesday routine as I have to attend an annual medical monitoring in my local doctor’s surgery. I have had to arrange with the care agency that the normal ‘sit’ arrangement we have with Meg on a Tuesday be advanced so that I can keep my appointment. The same thing will have to be done next week when there is a follow up appointment to discuss the results. Today is rather a wet and miserable day so I am not too unhappy that we are having to change the normal rhythm of our routine. But if the weather brightens up this afternoon, there is always the park to which I can take us both so that we have a breath of fresh air in our lungs.

After the reminiscences of my childhood, I started to think about some of the activities that engaged me when I was aged about 9-11. The family had moved to a very small village in Yorkshire outside Harrogate and the village as a whole was only 200+ souls so naturally all of the children knew each other. One activity which we did together was the construction of what we called go-carts (the American version is go-Kart and was motorised) This venture was started off by going to the local municipal tip which in those days anyone could wander around. The essential component was a discarded pram from which one could wrench off the wheels, preferably with the axle intact. Once having got these home, construction could start in earnest. One started off with planks of wood that were somewhere nailed or screwed together and then one longer and narrower projected piece rather like the vertical part of a ‘T’ Onto this we affixed a cross-bar onto which were screwed one set of wheels and evidently this had to be steerable. From somewhere we acquired a bolt which had to affix the cross member to the chassis but where young boys with access to only the most rudimentary of hand tools could make a hole large enough to receive the bolt. The other village boys taught me the skills and this is what we did. First a nail was hammered in slightly and then removed – into the hole left by the nail we screwed in a small screw to be replaced by a somewhat larger one. Eventually the hole was made the right size by making the poker used to poke the coal fire red hot (this was 1955!) and then running downstairs with it to plunge it into the hole in the cross member to make it the right size. To the cross member, one attached some stout string (in fact, in the fields of a rural community one often found baling twine) and this provided the steering mechanism. If you were really fortunate in finding a fifth wheel, this could always be utilised as a real steering wheel with the twine wrapped around the wheel and held in place by a tyre. Almost finally, one persuaded one’s mother to let you have some spare remnants of carpet and this was then tacked into place to provide a degree of comfort and to save one from splinters in the wood. As a final finishing touch, in the Yorkshire village we used to visit the yard of the village pub and find some discarded crown corks that could then be tacked into place to provide for a degree of decoration. To drive one’s go-cart, one generally knelt on it using the spare leg to kick the card into motion and then finally lie flat on it, particularly if one was fortunate enough to have a degree of slope in one’s local road down which you could travel. Brakes were generally frowned upon but of course the toes of shoes often served this purpose. One achieved a degree of street credibility if having whooshed down the slope of one’s local road or pavement there was a natural ginnel or opening in which one could steer one’s craft. As I remember it, girls and younger children were allowed to sit on the go-cart as passengers but they were not generally involved in the construction process ‘per se’ Naturally, one was always falling off and crashes were frequent so there were always running repairs to be undertaken. Having had this experience when I was young, when my son was of the appropriate age and living in Leicestershire, I built a go-cart for my son built upon the tried and tested principles. The other lads and dads in the immediate vicinity thought this was a great idea so I had inadvertently started a trend. The fathers generally looked on indulgently and evidently lent their sons some hand tools (it was the age before electric screwdrivers and the like) and they generally let their sons get on with their construction jobs, probably quite happy for them to learn construction skills on their own and to teach and occasionally help each other. In case my recollections seem excessively romantic, I did go on the internet to see how far my recollections were rooted in reality. Everything I remembered was documented on the web and I think that the go-cart construction thing was a 1950’s-1960’s thing as there was less traffic on the roads/pavements, pram wheels were easier to come by and the commercial ethic of the 1970’s and 1980’s had yet to take a hold. Incidentally, what I have termed ‘go-carts’ were known by the local name of ‘trollies’ in Leicestershire and my welsh neighbour with whom I discussed this subject at one time called them ‘gambos’ which I have found out is the traditional Welsh word for a farm cart.

Ukraine has put Vladimir Putin ‘into a position he never dreamt in his worst nightmares’, former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has told Sky News. But there is a report in the news media that the Russians were totally unprepared for the Ukrainian counter offensive and the elite Ukrainian troops were met by conscripts whose officers just ran away. This last sentiment has more than a hint of Western propaganda about it but there is probably a germ of truth in it. The move by Ukraine was a massive gamble and very risky but seems to have paid off not least in the propaganda war. The story is told in the early days of the war that the Ukrainians took their young captive conscript soldiers into custody, gave each of them a cheap mobile phone and told them to phone their mothers to tell the truth about where they were and what they were doing. This was an excellent propaganda move at the time given the misinformation that the Russian authorities were feeding their population.

Yesterday afternoon after we had lunched on ham, baked potato and some fine beans, Meg and I set ourselves to watch for probably the third time ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ which is both a love story and a war film of which we never tire. There are superb performances by the Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz as well as Nicholas Cage who plays Captain Corelli and John Hurt as the world weary but sagacious doctor village doctor. After we had enjoyed this film, we went into the back garden for about 20-30 minutes and was the opportunity for me to cut the back lawn which had been neglected for a couple of weeks. It goes without saying that our efforts were supervised by Miggles, our adopted cat, who is fed an occasional meal of Aldi’s finest premium fish based cat food. Unfortunately, Aldi have stopped stocking this so I had to buy an alternative which turned out to be more expensive but Miggles’ taste are such that he/she rejected the salmon and just about tolerated the cod version of the food when it was offered. Last night, Meg seemed to go off to sleep fairly rapidly but then had a rather disturbed night which involved me spending at least half an hour in the middle of the night attempting to keep her comfortable. This is rather difficult as Meg is such a dead weight and because of the lost sleep, she is sleeping on this morning and I am letting her so until the carers make an appearance.

Following on the reminiscences about my ‘Uncle Jim’ and the fact that he portrayed his Geordie origins as always referring to my sister and I as ‘hinny’, I started to wonder about the localised terms of endearment that are typically used even by strangers to each other, for example in the markets or on the buses. In Nottinghamshire/Leicester, the term ‘me Duck’ is used quite regularly but there is a slight linguistic shift between Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire which I cannot quite recall. Going up the country, the love ‘love’ was used quite a lot even by male bus conductors to their male passengers, as in ‘Come on, move down the bus love’ and we have referred to ‘hinny’ that the Geordies use. By the time one gets to Edinburgh, this has become ‘hen’ and the Scots are bound to have lots more expressions. Here in the West Midlands, the term ‘Bab’ is very well known in the Black Country and one of our carers was addressed as ‘cocka’ by her future mother-in-law. Although not a regionalised expression, our family use the term ‘sunshine’ quite frequently from each other and this term was popularised by Eric Morecombe (of ‘Morecombe and Wise’ fame). What I not fully appreciated was that the term ‘sunshine’ could be used both affectionately and sarcastically. When we say it sarcastically, we’re trying to refer to someone as a bubbly and warm person when it is clear that they are not. In fact, my wife and I used to use the term ‘Little Ray of Sunshine’ to refer to Meg’s mother whilst she was alive (but not to her face) and it was certainly used sarcastically but as a shorthand code between the two of us, we appreciated it to ‘LRS’.

This morning being a Monday, we are make a longer sally forth to our new found little cafe which greets us warmly. Whether we will actually get there is a little problematic because the little square off the High Street in which it is located has a sign indicting road works so I am wondering whether access to the businesses around the square is to be allowed or not. We used to attend the Methodist Centre when we could travel by car but this is just a little stretch beyond us now that we can only travel to places accessible by wheelchair. When we got to the square, though. access to businesses were still allowed but the work was due to proceed for another twelve weeks. After our pot of tea and toasted teacake, I popped into the nearby AgeUK furniture and charity shop where I bought a throw and some cushion covers. The latter are a subtle colour which will match much of our furniture but I will have to find some suitable filling materials. We made our way up the hill and in plenty of time for the carers. After they had left, I proceeded with our lunch of ham, broccoli and some bought carrot and swede mash just to make a change. This afternoon, we anticipate watching a film on the life and times of William Wordsworth that we just happened to flash by when I was accessing YouTube this morning.

Today is the first day of the Democrats national convention in Chicago, USA. All of the major networks will be capturing this event (as indeed they did the Republican convention about a month ago now) The convention will give the Democrats a lot free publicity with which both to ‘wow’ the audience to persuade the non-committed so it would not be surprising if there a positive bounce in the polls for the Democrats. Meanwhile, there are indications that even Republican ad fairly right wing sources are now indicating that Trump may have a real fight on his hands and may well lose in November. Having said that, there are some fairly blood-curdling predictions in the American media to the effect that Trump’s supporters will not actually allow him to lose the election. Many Trump supporters have got themselves into positions such hay are supervising and/or regulating the elections in key states and therefore would be very open to the suggestion that the Democrats if they happen to be ahead are actually ‘stealing’ the election. I have a foreboding that after the November election there will be weeks if not months of Republican challenge and prevarication to ensure that if the Democrats have actually technically ‘won’ the election, the Trump storm troopers will just not allow the Democrats to take over. The Americans are a litigious nation in the best of things so I perceive that if there as a projected Democratic victory in the election, the Republicans will utilise every legal and organisational trick known to them to ensure that the Democrats do not assume office. It goes without staying that America will become the laughing stock of the world and the American desire to lead the ‘free’ world as a model of democratic probity will be completely trashed. From all of this only Putin’s Russia will benefit and the consequences for the rest of us somewhat terrible for us to witness.

This morning being a Sunday, the care workers turn up half an hour earlier than the norm so I have to ensure that everything is in place for when they come. For a start, bed-linen, clothing, towels, flannels and washing materials have to be in place before the workers arrive so it takes part of 15 minutes to ensure that everything that they might need is at hand. After that we breakfasted and it seemed no time at all until our friendly Eucharistic minister calls around from church. She and her husband are taking a much needed break after a succession of funerals which has befallen them over the last week or so they are quite keen to get a break and we shall resume contact in September. We received a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend and were absolutely delighted that he was back into the country after his little break in Switzerland which is a country he knows well. We met in Waitrose, as much to save time as anything as we had quite a lot to impart to us as he told us about the walks he and his ‘amante’ had done in Switzerland whilst I communicated the results of the exchange of photographs with my niece over the last day or so.

Yesterday turned out to be quite an emotional day for myself and my sister. After reading in ‘The Times’ a proposal in Weston-super-Mare a plan to remove the donkeys who have donkey rides on the beach and have been doing for decades. This triggered yesterday’s blog in which I spoke about our ‘Uncle Jim’ and I trawled the internet to see if the faintest trace did remain of him, even though he died in 1960. What I did find fairly quickly was his tombstone in Scarborough so I transmitted this as a message both to my sister and one of my nieces. As I was recounting the story of the one day at the seaside we used to enjoy, I had more than one tear in my eye and, as it happened, the minute my sister received the photo of the tombstone, she too burst into tears. Now my niece just happened to be visiting her mother (my sister) and she immediately located in what the family call their ‘Black Magic’ box which is an old Black Magic chocolate box stuffed full of family photos. During an extended stay with my mother, my niece and my mother had gone through some of these photos trying to identity the people in the photo and the approximate date it would have been taken. My niece located six family photos on which two were me on a donkey about six, one sitting on my Uncle Jim’s knee and the others being seaside snaps of myself, my sister, my mother and occasionally Uncle Jim himself. Now the photos were taken half a century ago and I have not seen them for decades and decades so it was a completely emotional experience for me (and the wider family) to see these images from my past. Just to recap a little from yesterday’s blog – our ‘Uncle Jim’ was the nearest thing to a father that my sister and I have ever known even though we only saw him for a few hours on one day a year. But he always seemed to be ‘there’ even though he died at almost the same time as my grandmother and before either of them knew what results I had achieved in my GCSEs (‘O’-levels) which I obtained in 1961. So the tears I shed yesterday were not really of sadness because I am taking some delight in the photos that are now in my possession, but perhaps thoughts about what might have been but never was.

Yesterday, Meg and I really enjoyed the rendition that we saw on YouTube of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (‘Elvia Madigan’ which was, I believe a Swedish film where this formed the film score) But three things struck me about the performers and the performances and I am going to ask these questions of the Eucharistic minister who calls around each Sunday and is herself both a cellist and a pianist and still performs regularly. The first question relates to the clothing worn by the performers. Nearly all of the male performers are dressed in what looks like a black suit but I wonder if it is made of the finest silk or even a special glazed cotton so that the musicians can perform with hindrance in their garments. The second question relates to the young pianist we say yesterday for not only did he have no score in front of him but a lot of the time his eyes were either closed, semi-closed or fixed on the orchestra and therefore not on his own hands. So he question I ask myself is whether renowned pianists know exactly where each key and note are on their piano keyboards without needing to look at it. The third question relates to the ‘cadenza’ or section where a performer can show off their virtuosity playing solo without orchestral accompaniment and whilst composers such as Mozart and Beethoven probably improvised extensively, I wonder how many of these cadenzas are written down or whether each individual performer develops their own cadenza? I hope that some are all of these questions will be answered for me later on this morning.

An American columnist has written that in the US Presidential election it looks as though the personal attacks against Kamala Harris are going to get really vicious and persona. Donald Trump has said this week he thinks he is entitled to make those personal attacks after the warfare that the Democrats have waged against him in the US court system. It does not help that this week, Time magazine basically deified Kamala Harris’ candidacy by putting an illustration of her on the cover that made her look like Joan of Arc. It is always a sign of desperation when political candidates start to ‘play the man rather than the ball’ to use a sporting analogy and I am reminded of the wonderful riposte, repeated by some British politicians but first coined by an American in the 18th century about his political opponents that ‘I shall stop telling the truth about them if they stop telling lies about us’ Personal attacks on politicians is what alienates the public the most on both sides of the Atlantic from what we can tell – In British culture there is often a degree of humour involved which can be appreciated on both sides of the political divide but the American political system seems to lack that particular finesse by just engaging in frontal assaults upon each other.