This morning as Meg was being cared for by a couple of older, female workers (they even go away on holiday with each other), we decided to use the new appliance that I have just bought to wash Meg’s hair whilst she was flat on the board. This is an inflatable type of bowl with a drain hole in the bottom and a type of channel in which the patient’s neck rests. The carers had seen something similar before that so made fairly light work of the task which was great – from now on, we may well incorporate this into a routine for Meg each Saturday morning. After we had breakfasted, we made our usual trip into town and met up our three regular friends with whom we generally have a good chat each Saturday morning. We had to inform them that we might not see them next Tuesday morning as I have a doctor’s appointment which is rather getting in the way of our regular meeting but there will be further occasions in the week. In fact, we were ten minutes late returning and half way up the hill received an urgent telephone call from the care agency to the effect ‘Where are you?’ Fortunately we were only a few minutes late and so did not disrupt their schedule too badly. As we lunched we listened to a beautiful rendition of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (‘Elvira Madigan’ is the popular name, and we never tire of this particular work.)

As I was flicking through the pages of ‘The Times’ yesterday, I noticed that in one seaside town, Weston-Super-Mare, there is a movement to try to remove one of the enduring attractions of the seaside, namely the donkey rides. There are local campaigns both for and against the removal of the donkeys but it did put me mind on my own family holidays from the ages of about 6 to 11. Our holiday consisted of one day at the seaside which was always Scarborough some 60 miles distant from Harrogate. We always hunted around in a kitchen drawer for the front door key because we had the notion that when we were on holiday, even for one day, we needed to lock the front door which was normally left unlocked (this was the 1950’s where I do not think that people usually locked their front doors) Then my mother, sister and I caught the bus to Scarborough which was exciting enough in itself. Once we arrived in Scarborough we were met by ‘Uncle Jim’ who was not an actual friend but a life-long friend of my mothers. I learnt subsequently that ‘Uncle Jim’ had actually proposed to my mother who had evidently turned him down – had she accepted, I might not have existed or would be a very different person. To give him his full name, James Trotter was a High Anglican vicar and was much loved in his parish and community – as we walked down the street, he would be stopped every few yards by friends and acquaintances for a chat. Then we got ourselves onto the beach where my sister and I were treated to a stick of rock and some candy floss (which my mother hated) Then the absolute highlight of the day was the donkey rise which cost about 6d (2.5 pence) and where we were walked on the donkey for about a one hundred yard stretch and then back again. In the late afternoon we either went for a meal of fish and chips or went to the vicarage, where we served a high tea by Eve who was Uncle Jim’s present wife. She was always rather a cold and aloof figure and I now appreciate why. They also had the most enormous cat because it was fed on a diet of a huge slab of fish (which I surmise might have given him by a friendly parishioner) Then in about 1960, my mother received a letter from Uncle Jim with some devastating news. He had an operation for bowel cancer and we were told that they removed 80% of his intestines after which he did not survive very long. ‘Uncle Jim’ was a very significant part of our childhood and as he hailed from the NorthEast he always called us ‘hinny’ which is the local vernacular term of endearment amongst Geordies. I wondered whether any trace of his existence might be available on the internet as he had died in 1960. A search term of ‘James Trotter Anglican priest Scarborough’ revealed just one trace of his life which was a tombstone in a graveyard in Scarborough where he was buried. None of the family went to his funeral and I am not sure if we were invited. But the tombstone had an inscription upon it which was a biblical text ‘I thank my God upon every remembrance of you’ This is apparently a very well known text from an epistle of St Paul to the Philippians in Northern Greece. On a literal level, it refers to the feeling that ministers have towards their congregation when a new parish is started but on a more generic level, it refers to the fellow feeling which we are encouraged to have with our fellow men. I even found on the internet an hour long sermon preached by an evangelical American preacher who had taken these words as his opening text but knowing how loving and loved was my Uncle Jim, I am sure that these words were chosen by him before his death. I have a vague remembrance that my sister and her then boyfriend might have visited our Uncle Jim before his death but I need to check with her that my memories are correct on this point. In reflection, even though he died some 64 years ago now, all I can say that our Uncle Jim was a fixed point in our lives and he loved my sister and I as though we were his own children. He and his wife Eve did not have children of their own whether by choice or accident I can only conjecture. But the same letter which conveyed to us the news of his terminal illness also contained the news that Eve had promptly left him. Somewhere, and I must ask my niece about all of this, we might have a photograph lurking somewhere of our Uncle Jim but it would have been taken on a little Brownie 127 camera and the figures will be minute. I must confess I heard not thought about him now for years but the ‘donkey story’ triggered all of these childhood memories.

Today we woke up a little early but not early enough to bother going back to sleep so we decided to make a fairly early start to the day. Meg’s carers came on time and we discussed when we might wash Meg’s hair as I have just purchased a special (plastic) bowl which is designed in such a way that people can lie flat on a bed but with their neck in a sort of channel – anyway, tomorrow we shall put it to the test with two of the more experienced (female) carers who may have utilised something like this before. It was a beautiful bright day today so we set off down the hill and I remembered today to put on my Hi_Viz vest which I am sure makes motorists slightly more liable to stop to allow us to cross the road. This morning we called in at Waitrose to pick up our newspaper and some ‘Arborio’ rice and then made our way to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ cafe. There we were absolutely delighted to meet up with our nonagenarian chorister who we normally meet in Waitrose each Tuesday and Saturday for whom this particular cafe might be a little easier for her to access. We had made an arrangement to meet at 10.30 and were only a minute or so late – Meg and I enjoyed the treat of a bacon butty which is a treat reserved for days like today. After we had had our elevenses and a pleasant chat, we each went on our various ways and Meg and I called in at the AgeUk furniture and charity shop to see what they had on offer. We did espy a wonderful blanket made up of squares knit by the crochet method. It is possible that this blanket is machine made but I have visions of a little old lady knitting the squares in a range of colours and then stitching them altogether. We already have two of these blankets and one of these we put on Meg’s downstairs bed when required and the other goes across Meg’s knees when we venture out by wheelchair. A third blanket will always be useful because these days, even blankets are liable to end up in the washing machine so to have a third on standby will always be useful. When we returned this morning, it was not long before one of the young Asian male carers turned up with a new colleague who as we found out had worked as a student nurse on a neurosurgical ward and therefore had quite a tremendous amount of relevant experience that can be transferred over.

As we now have four care visits a day, it is inevitable that we develop relationships with the carers that we see regularly and, just occasionally, can even help them with some of the vicissitudes of life. Yesterday, we were delighted when one of the young female carers who is a sixth form student received her examination results by text and I was absolutely delighted for her that she had received a Distinction in ‘Health and Social Care’ of what I think is a BTEC qualification. But she is off on holiday for a couple of weeks with her family so as she announced yesterday, we will not see her again until September. In the meanwhile, her fellow carer who is a young male carer who cares for Meg several times a week and has a wonderful manner told me that he had never tasted the Italian meal of risotto. So today, I decided to make a risotto which I used to make every single week but I have got out of the habit recently. So I needed to resurrect my memory of how to make it which is to fry off an onion until translucent, throw some arborio rice for a minute or so (which trick I leaned from a Chinese chef) and then gradually add some chicken stock. At the appropriate point, I threw in some smoked mackerel which I defrosted from the freezer, some petit pois and then the final finishing touches. These are to add a small glass of vermouth (of which I was amazed to discover I still had some remnants in our alcohol cupboard), a good dollop of yogurt and finally one or two tablespoons full of grated cheese (this last tip given to me by our Italian friend) This all turned OK and I have put some on one side for our young care worker to try. It is evidently a characteristic of the care industry but the turnover of staff seems tremendously high. In the nature of things, it always seem to be the most committed and/or senior of staff who leave to get other jobs probably with more secure pay and conditions. For example, a couple who are sisters and who have cared for Meg for months have left to work in a special school for which they are both very well qualified. So although I attempt to ensure good relationships with all of the care staff, it is a little sad when the ones with whom you have developed a relationship over the months actually leave for pastures new.

Ever since Bill Clinton campaigned on the slogan ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ it has become a truism that how well off people feel is a critical factor in how election campaigns fare and on the relative popularity/unpopularity of the government. Now there are some small in indications that the UK economy might be gradually improving as we have recently had an interest cut a quarter of a percentage point and as the growth figures for the last quarter seem somewhat more positive. As we are only a few weeks on from the general election, the Tories are claiming that it any signs of economic recovery are ‘theirs’ and this raises a more general point as to how and when a government should claim credit for changes in the economy. I suspect that most Labour figures would agree that any turn around in the economy is probably due to the actions of the previous government but, of course, one should not read too much into one set of figures as it is the trend over several months that should be the focus of our attention. Despite the rhetoric, most governments accept the changes in legislation passed by a previous government and hence we have the spectacle of a Labour government with a huge majority not overturning the cap on child benefits beyond the second child upon which I expected a huge backbench Labour opinion which did not happen. But a little historical perspective might be in order. The system of child credits took over a system of what was termed ‘Family Allowances’ in which payments were only made from the second child onwards. So parents who currently receive child credit for the first two of their three children are in the same position as parents a generation ago who had three children but Family Allowance only for the second and third child.

Yesterday when the OT (Occupational Therapist) turned up, it was a person who saw Meg about a year ago and was surprised by the changes that she saw in her – of course since then we have had the hospital visit and then the moving of a bed downstairs. She is going to make the case for a ‘floor’ bed rather than a hospital bed which lowers to a low position, thinking this might be safer for Meg in the long run. She is also investigating whether adaptations to the wheelchair might help to keep Meg in a more upright and less slumped position in the chair – we shall have to wait and see what happens. This morning, I was awoken at 5.00am in the morning as Meg was uncomfortable but I did what I could do singlehanded before the carers turned up at 8.00am. We got about half and hour’s extra sleep which is always welcome.

Today is the day when the ‘A’-level results are announced to students and is evidently a day of great anticipation for all, joy for some, disappointment for others and general tension all round. In Leicester Polytechnic, the admission of students through ‘clearing’ if students did not quite achieve the grades for their first choice of university/course was decentralised to each individual course or group of courses. It was stressful for us staff because we had to take enquiries over the phone, ascertain whether they had enough points at ‘A’-level to satisfy our own course requirements and then make a provisional offer of a place. So we had a pro-forma upon which we could take the essential data and give a provisional ‘Yes’ ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’ – all of which depended upon how the market was operating in that particular year. Typically, we needed to enter clearing to get the course up to its full complement and if we fell short, this meant that we had fewer students in the system, less resources and ultimately perhaps even staff redundancies. If we over-recruited then as a college we were penalised by the funding bodies – so it was almost as stressful for us as admitting tutors as it was for the students (and their parents with whom we were not supposed to deal) as it was for the students themselves. This is the background to one of the best practical jokes I have ever played. We ensured that absolutely on the stroke of 9.00am my son would phone in as a ‘fake’ student and by appearing to be busy we ensured that one of our fellow tutors, who I shall call Robert, would answer the phone. Then my son went his well-rehearsed script which ran as follows. Would the following collection of ‘A’-levels gain admission to a degree course in Public Administration – an ‘A’ in Classical Arabic, a ‘B’ in Equine Management and a ‘D’ in Catering Studies (these are fictitious ‘A’-levels by the way). Robert replied with some surprise at such a mix of ‘A’ levels that it appeared to meet the points total we were demanding and now for the name. So our son spelled out the letters of a surname ‘P’ ‘H’ ‘A’ ‘C’ ‘E’ and then the letters of a first name ‘U’ ‘D’ ‘I’ ‘Q’ – in order to fully appreciate what this name sounds like it has to read aloud, first name followed by Surname. So ‘Udiq’ was offered a place on our degree course until the rest of the tutors informed our colleague who and what he had accepted. My son won £5 for his part in this joke which was probably the easiest money he has earned in his life. Not to be outdone, the daughter of a colleague phoned up the same colleague at the same time of day with an application number which looked correct but was equally fictitious. When the application form with the erroneous number could not be located, the daughter went into a torrent of invective such as ‘Call yourselves a Department of Public Administration – I doubt you could organise a (party) in a brewery! Do I wish to take a place with as shambolic an administration such as this!’ and so on and so forth. The daughter earned herself £5.00 as well. I do not want to give the impression that these practical jokes were typical or frequent as trying to make sure that the course recruited with reasonable students was a stressful activity.

On a more serious note, after we had several cohorts of graduates, I decided to undertake a piece of statistical work to see if we could predict the class of degree earned from the admission profile. In statistical terms we were looking for a correlation between the points total at ‘A’-level and the overall average grade achieved at the end of the degree course. We found that the association was very low (of the order of 0.25 on a scale which rums from -1 to +1) but we did find that ‘O’ level grades (or more specifically the grades achieved from the best five ‘O’-levels taken at any one sitting) had a better predictive ability than ‘A’-levels. Then we went ahead and complemented this statistical analysis with a bit of what is called ‘qualitative analysis’ Now Meg as the tutor who organised work placements for the ‘sandwich’ element of the degree often had a detailed knowledge of personal circumstances which it was necessary to have to ensure that the ‘best’ students were put forward for the most suitable placements. Although no personal or confidential information was disclosed, Meg supplied the information that approximately 30% of the students that we recruited had suffered a severe trauma at some point in the lives between the ages of 15-18. This could be anything from an illness of self or a parent, to a change of school or a marital dissolution. So now we had some kind of explanation as to why many of our students had a reasonable profile at ‘O’level, had under performed in their ‘A’-level examinations and then realised some of their true potential when they eventually graduated with good degrees some years later. This process was known by some as ‘precious metal recovery’ but it did help us to refine our admission procedures in the light of our more detailed researches. I repeated the same type of analysis at the University of Winchester with broadly similar results. These two investigations did not leave to published papers as such but had a fair degree of ‘political’ impact (for example in Council for National Academic Awards submission documents) that we needed to prepare at regular intervals.

One of Meg’s carers turned up yesterday afternoon with a rather unusual request, namely did I have a paint scraper? As it happened, and quite amazingly, I managed to put my hands on a new paint scraper relatively quickly. My young carer needed to remove some tinting material from the front windows of his car and as this is not legal he intended to remove it. I assembled together a range of materials (brillo pads, cream cleaner, scouring pads etc) that I thought might assist him and he together with a fellow care worker they were going to undertake their repair work. It was only when I did some research on the internet I came to appreciate that tinting is allowed for the back windows of a car but not the front. The weather this morning is gloomy and overcast and it had evidently rained overnight. This we did not mind too much as Wednesdays are the days when our domestic help calls around and it is always good to have a chat with her. But the principal appointment this morning is with an OT (occupational therapist) who is calling round by appointment to assess a series of aids to help to manage Meg’s condition. We know that the appointment is this morning but we do not have an exact time so we need to be in for all of the morning. If the weather brightens up this afternoon which well it might then we might treat ourselves to a trip in the park later on. My niece got into contact with me to indicate that she could not get through to this blog so this is taking some investigation – for some reason, the domain name which is fully paid up and in date will not point to the relevant server so I have support tickets in place with my website provider to provide a solution to why something that has been working for months if not years has suddenly decided to go belly up. In the meanwhile, here is an address to which the domain name is meant to point and this might help readers of this blog to get through to it: https://mch-net.info/wordpress This morning, i made a lightning visit down into town to collect our newspaper and whilst in the store, I happened to notice our window cleaner who was on the top of a tall ladder cleaning the windows of a building opposite the supermarket. I was tempted to call out a greeting but restrained myself on the grounds that whilst on the top of a ladder, he could hardly turn round and wave. I am reminded that when we undertook a statistics exam at the end of our second year in university, we were given to a graph where we had to interpret the results. The graph was entitled ‘Death to Window Cleaners by Age’ and demonstrated a generally ‘U’ shaped curve with deaths being quite high when window cleaners were in their 20’s but then dropped markedly when they were in the 30’s and 40’s. Then the death rates started to rise again as taw window cleaners were in their 40’s, and 50’s reaching a peak in their 60’s. The explanation which I supplied to the examiners (together with most of the rest of the 200 of us) was that whilst they were young, the cleaners were somewhat more daring and liable to take risks with their ladders. Then as they got older and acquired wives, children and mortgages they tended to be sober up somewhat and be much more risk averse. As they aged, so almost inevitably they started to lose their grip and their balance and hence the death rates rose steadily as they aged. However, this was a totally incorrect answer. We discovered via a friendly examiner some time later that the correct answer was there was insufficient data to form any conclusions from the data that was supplied and therefore any answers that we might give were completely in the realm of speculation and not at all warranted by the data sets with which we were supplied.

There is a group of activists entitled ‘Led by Donkeys’ which likes to use bill boards and other visual methods to lampoon political figures. In their latest stunt, Liz Truss was captured storming off stage during a book promotion event, after she was interrupted by a remote-controlled banner mocking the comparisons made between her and a lettuce. The former prime minister was pledging her support for Donald Trump when the sign rolled out in the background, featuring a photo of a lettuce with googly eyes, which read: ‘I crashed the economy’. The whole point of this stunt was a comparison that was made during Lizz Truss’s ill-fated premiership between her shelf life and that of a lettuce (in point of fact, the lettuce won) Lizz Truss is trying to endear herself to the American right where her style of free-market economics might find some adherents. However, she is constantly lampooned by the British media and I suspect that she dare not show her face at venues in Britain lest even more fun be poked at her.

With the American elections approaching, I have decided to bookmark some relevant websites that I think I will find especially useful. But first, on my Thinkpad laptop, I have downloaded the DuckDuckGo browser which has very prominent for preserving online privacy and not allowing cookies or websites to have your IP details. I have used this before and its search facilities for simple items seem to be as good as Google. Once the browser was installed I did pay a subscription to the New York Times (which has a very heavily discounted price to new subscribers of only £20.00 for the first year) as its has excellent election trackers. To complement these, I am also bookmarking two other liberal-inclined websites in CNN and MSNBC so I have the three websites available to me very easily and quickly by just using the DuckDuckGo. This curiously named browser, I discover, is really named a children’s game of ‘Duck..Duck..Goose’ and I do not know whether it has been popularised in any parts of the UK. I seem to remember that at the time of the last Presidential elections in 2020 I did something similar and then got rid of all of the bookmarked websites when the elections were well and truly over. But I have the feeing that this time around, the US elections might drag for months with challenges in the courts and Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters refusing to accept the result.

There have been two particularly gruesome cases which have come to light recently in which evidently very ill and disturbed patents with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, after being in their local hospital, are then released ‘under the care of their GP’ But the individuals in question seem to have refused their medication, failed to keep appointments and then have gone on to kill by stabbing individuals in broad daylight. The acute services, and this applied equally to mental as well as to physical health concerns, do a good job but after the acute phases of their operations have been conducted they then discharge individuals ‘back into the he care of their local GP’ This is the point at which our health services completely break down. We are led to believe that a person who has had perhaps multiple instances of an acute mental illness or disorder with then fail to take their medication and are supposed to wait patiently at the end of a telephone for several minutes to try to arrange an appointment with their doctor, which in the first instance is a telephone consultation. Now this is not going to happen and typically does not, the overall problem being that we know how to treat acute episodes or conditions but problems of a more chronic nature are left to fester. We know from our own family experiences that this is the weak point in the system and it is far easier to state the problem than to attempt to resolve it. Our GP services are under such pressure that there has been talk of limiting the number of patients that can be seen in one day (say to 25 rather than the 40 which I think is more the norm). Even pay itself, although an irritant, is not the complete answer which really lies in the fact that we need many GPs in the system. The government is trying to alleviate this problem by recruiting ‘Physician Associates’ who are individuals with some biological background who are then a crash course in medicine and thrown into the front line. We have seen this before with ‘Teaching Assistants’ in schools and the thinking behind this all is eventually to attempt to cheapen the resource total as a whole by recruiting only half trained staff. Now many of these newly recruited staff no doubt do an excellent job and routine conditions may be easy to treat but there is a worry that more complex or complicated conditions will not be diagnosed or treated. The long term solution would be to rapidly expand our medical schools and of course in the short term we could recruit more from our European neighbours – but this is no longer a feasible option after Brexit. Without wishing to sound xenophobic, I read recently that approximately one half of the new jobs created in the UK recently have been filled with personnel of either Nigerian or Indian origin between 2019 and 2023. I somehow do not feel that replacing the predominantly white labour force supplied to us by our continental neighbour and replacing them with personnel from the Asian and African continent is what those who voted for Brexit intended.

Today is the day when we go down the road to make contact with our Waitrose friends. We were particularly glad to see our chorister friend who is in her 90’s but who we have not seen for a couple of occasions so a smidgeon of worry about her was arising within us. She had been finding the walk down to town a little arduous possibly because her medication had been altered. We told her about ‘The Lemon Tree’ which might be a slightly shorter journey for her so we said that we would like to see her on Friday if that is a little easier for her to access. It was a beautiful day today and so the journey up and down the hill was quite a pleasant one today. Meg has a sitter today so that in theory I can attend Pilates – in practice, there is something else urgent for me to attend to and such was the case today when I needed to pay a visit to our local Post Office.On the occasions that i go there, I always seem to be behind someone in a queue whose Post Office transaction is long and complicated and today was no exception. But on the way home, I did the quickest of tours around our local Salvation Army and relieved them of a wall clock which I badly need in the upstairs bedroom where I have relocated the radio which displayed the time next to my bed downstairs.

You would imagine that pushing Meg and up down the hill would be quite arduous but not is all that it seems. Going on the downhill sections is a breeze if the slope is gentle but when the slope is more severe I have to use my triceps to ensure that the Meg and the wheelchair do not tun away with me. You would have thought that pushing Meg up hill would be difficult but this is only true for the (thankfully few) steeper sections. If there is a slight incline upwards then the weight of my body pushing Meg up the hill is not stressful. Also, since I have invested in my Hi-Vis vest (bright yellow) I am pretty sure that motorists are more inclined to stop and let me cross the road. There is a special unit that you can buy which affixes to a rear bar of the wheelchair (although ours does not have one) and this is a battery driven power wheel which gives particular assistance on going up hill.I have considered this but think that the benefits might be outweighed by the costs. I will not need the unit when going downhill or up very moderate uphill sections so the unit would only come into its own on the more steep uphill sections. Also it would add to the weight of the whole and possibly make it less manoeuvrable, particularly over kerbs so I am coming to the view that what initially looks like a good idea but not be overall.

I heard fragments of an interview in which Elon Musk and Donald Trump were forming a mutual adoration society with each other. Not only did I find this odious but I wonder whey the Main Street Media give it any airtime. The BBC reported some of the interview comments but then added that it was ‘fact checking’ some of the claims that Trump had made. But the BBC did not announce any of the results of the fact checking and I wonder when they are going to publish or release the same (I suspect never).

Last night, I watched (or rather dozed through) the closing ceremonies of the Olympic games in Paris. This was conducted with traditional French flair and at the end of the ceremonies there was the traditional hand over of the Olympic flag to the next host city which is going to be Los Angeles in the USA in 2028. All of the American razzmatazz was in evidence in the hand over ceremony and I don’t think I will enjoy the excess of Americana to which we will be exposed in four years time. The commentators are saying this morning that the Olympic games will not return to Europe for at least sixteen years (the next two games to be held in USA and then Australia in 2028 and 2032) and in 2036 it will probably be the turn of the Asian continent to host the games. I would imagine that after years of striving and then succeeding in their various disciplines, many of the athletes may experience a massive ‘post-Olympic’ blues. I remember the feeling after I had working hard for my finals in 1968 and suddenly, all you have been working for has realised. There is some concern that whilst Team GB have exceeded the last Olympic medals haul by 1, the number of gold medals gained is markedly down. But there have been several instances in both athletics and swimming where the margins between success and victory have been incredibly small. Just as a small end note to the Paris Olympics, one of Meg’s carers told me with a certain amount of glee that some 300,000 condoms have supplied for the use of approx 5,000 male athletes which works out at 60 per athlete. If it was a female planner ordering these supplied, I wonder if she was suffering from an excess of caution – on the other hand, if it was a male planner, it might have been an excess of optimism. I wonder if we will ever know what proportion were actually used?

Today being a Monday, Meg and I are to make a trip to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ which is now a part of our Monday morning routines. The care workers are due to call half an hour earlier today in their late morning comfort call so I am advancing our normal timetable by half an hour. It looks as though two tremendously hot days are in prospect for us followed (hopefully!) by some thunderstorms. So thunder was rolling across the sky when Meg and I were preparing our venture out but the thunderclouds had rolled on once we actually got underway. The weather, though, was incredibly humid and after our tea and toasted teacake in our newfound cafe, we got home to the relative cool of the house. The push up and down the hill had proved to be so humid that when we got home, I needed to change into a tee shirt and shorts, putting my other clothes straight into the wash. On the way home, I acquired a wonderful little (red) Squirrel Nutkin badged for the Rothsay Manor hotel in Ambleside, which is a little toy/plaything that may help to divert Meg on occasions. We could not really fancy a conventional cooked meal so I took the cold beef which was cooked yesterday and made a salad of it using grated carrots, tomato and choose. To the grated carrots I add a few walnuts and soma sultanas to make it all a little more interesting and appetising.

I have come across an American website called ‘Alternet’ and on this website there is an article asking the question why the media is not calling out the evident and growing signs of dementia exhibited by Donald Trump. His behaviour, outbursts, speech patterns and grasp on reality are now leading to a slew of commentators asking questions about Trump’s hold on reality but the same concern has not made it yet to this side of the Atlantic. One commentator has observed that his description of his departure from the White House as a ‘peaceful’ transfer of power, his insistence that the group that mounted the assault on the Capitol was relatively small, and his boast that attendance at his January 6 rally preceding the assault was larger than the crowd Martin Luther King Jr. drew on the National Mall for his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech all point to a presidential candidate who is seriously unhinged. Amongst various claims are that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, is ‘very smart.’ That whales are being killed by windmills. That he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. That the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. We could go on but the Democrats are certainly tapping into this growing feeling by using the term ‘weird’ to describe both Trump and his coterie. Even Republican strategists are concerned that Trump does not seem to be campaigning in the crucial ‘swing’ states where the latest polls put Kamala Harris some 4% ahead. It is also being said that Trump cannot cope with the fact that he is being outgunned not just by a woman but by a black woman (and Trump in characteristic stye has attacked her racial origins rather than her policies) Kamala Harris does not come with the same baggage as did Hillary Clinton at the time of the last presidential elections and now that Biden has departed from the race there is only one old (and increasingly senile) candidate left in the race.

I was a little distressed to learn today, that Graham Thorpe who died recently had suffered from a major anxiety and depression two years ago and attempted to take his own life. His recent demise may have been related to this but the full facts have just been released by his widow. For some reason, perhaps unexplored, cricketers are particularly prone to depression but I cannot be sure of the causal factors or triggers in this case. As a more general point, whereas sportsmen and women by definition are in a good physical shape when they are in their prime, I wonder whether their pursuit of their sport pushes their bodies to the limit and whether they consequently die younger than the rest of the population? I have read of some respectable research that indicates that famous sports stars, singers, dancers and actors all tend to show that the price for making it big in performance terms may be a shorter life.

After a good night’s sleep, Meg and I enter our Sunday morning routines. After the carers had got Meg up and we had breakfasted, we turned on the TV to get the last embers of the Olympic Games, the normal political programmes being off-air whilst we are in the midst of a holiday service. Then we had a visit from our Eucharistic minister and as we tend to do, we discussed with dismay the fate which is likely to befall our parish. It looks as though as part of a regional reorganisation, the number of services will be reduced from three at the weekend to one on a Sunday, attendance will fall dramatically, income will consequently fall and our whole parish looks as though it is going to enter its death throes. This is a source of some distress to the particularly committed church members but is a syndrome which is common across many denominations in the UK at the moment. After our visitor had left, we got together some elevenses, walked down to pick up our Sunday newspaper and thence to our usual bench in the park. We came across one acquaintance who we see most Sundays but our University of Birmingham friend had domestic commitments this weekend. We cooked some beef in the slow cooker and so had a lunch of beef, cabbage and baked potato. The beef was tasty enough but I often find the flavour improves the following day. After lunch, Meg and I tuned in to the ‘Pilgrimage’ programme which we often view on a Sunday. A group of celebrities of diverse faiths and none engage in the pilgrimage and today we viewed the route of St. Colomba. This might be thought of as a Catholic pilgrimage but according the Scotsman, Saint Columba is arguably Scotland’s most popular saint and certainly its most adaptable, ecumenical and all-purpose one, equally beloved of Roman Catholics and Wee Free Presbyterians. What I find interesting about the modern day pilgrims is that you can see the group engaging in physical, emotional and to some extent spiritual explorations as they journey. In today’s program, we have a practising Catholic, a lapsed Catholic, a Sikh, a Muslim, a pagan and a Jew. But in no way does the program attempt to convert pilgrims from their current belief systems but in practice, each participant seems to find their own pre-existing beliefs to be renewed and even reinforced. There is sometime in the pilgrimage for everyone – for example, the paganist could point to the ancient ‘stones’ that had been erected in pre-Christian times but which had to some extent been Christianised in that the religious/spiritual significance of the stones were incorporated into the early Christianity. Other pilgrimage programmes have explored the route to Santiago de Compostela, Fatima and North Wales.

In some ways, the riots that we have been experiencing in some of our communities could not have happened at a worse time. The political elite are all taking their summer holidays and the Paris Olympics is providing diversions for many. The response of the government seems to have worked, however. Massively reinforced policing, almost instant court cases and terms of imprisonment of up to ten years seems to have turned the tide. At one level, I applaud the activities of the government in responding to these riots and one can only wonder what the response of the Tories would have been if they still in power. The modern Tory party has drifted more and more rightwards and one can imagine that at least some members of the Tory party might be somewhat ambivalent about the attacks that are made on asylum seekers and other ethnic minority communities. It is sad to say that one level the riots have succeeded in one of their objectives because I have heard more than one member of an ethnic minority group say that they feel threatened and frightened in contemporary Britain. But one wonders after a period of imprisonment, what effect will this have on the mentality of the rioters? At least part of me is inclined to argue that the government is convicting people of being stupid and ignorant. One of those convicted said to the police that he had no idea what ‘Far Right’ (or Left for that matter) actually meant. Perhaps in our society, it is left to the probation service to help in the re-education process of those convicted and imprisoned. In Chinese society (and even in Saudi Arabia) there follows a process of ‘political re-education’ and although we in the UK might be repulsed at these measures, the point remains how we are to deal with the aftermath of the riots. The education secretary is going to generate changes in the curriculum to encourage school pupils to have a much more critical attitude to what is read on the internet and to spot ways in which fake news can be spotted and counteracted. But the genie is now out of the bottle and with the increasing influence of artificial intelligence, one wonders how easy it is even for those who are ‘internet savvy’ to spot fake news, let alone those at school. In general terms, I think that the government is on the right lines in doing what it can to counter the effects of social media but national governments are pretty powerless to be able to act unilaterally against the impacts of it. There is a complete irony in that Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X, has claimed civil war is ‘inevitable’ in the UK as pockets of violent disorder continues to break out across the country. But if any western country is on the brink of civil war, one would imagine that the USA should be the first to be considered in this category.

The Olympic Games ends today and a dramatic closing ceremony is promised to us by the French in the Olympic stadium. Team GB ends with 65 medals (14 golds, 22 silvers and 29 bronzes). They top their Tokyo tally by one, although did win eight fewer golds than in 2021. But to my recollection, there seemed to be a large number of events in which the British athletes were literally pipped to the post by the smallest possible margins. The next Olympic games are to be held in Los Angeles in the USA and I can only see our medal total going down in four years time as the numbers of family and friends must reduce compared with Paris.

This morning dawned as rather a gloomy day but the weather forecasters tell us to expect two or three days of really fine weather in a mini heatwave before a succession of Atlantic storms are destined to sweep across the country. After we had got Meg up and breakfasted, we set forth for our Saturday morning trip down to Waitrose to see our friends and indeed saw two of them but the third was absent so we hope that she is in good health. After we had made our up the hill and the carers had attended to Meg, I set about preparing our Saturday lunch. I had bought a large chicken, bacon and leek pie which I divided into half as is my wont, cooking one half of it today and freezing the rest for later. Immediately after lunch, I consulted the TV schedules to see if any good films were being shown. Fortunately, there was one which I had seen in a documentary before but not seen the actual film. This was a wartime story entitled ‘The Man who Never Was’ and was the story of one of the greatest acts of political deception instituted by the British during WW2. Basically, the plot was to deceive the Nazis that an intended invasion was to take place through Sicily by taking a corpse, given it an authentic British identity (including papers signed personally by Churchill himself) and then letting the body, released from a submarine, to be carried by the tides to be deposited on the beech of Huelva, near Cadiz in Southern Spain. Here it was almost certain that the body and the briefcase containing papers attached to it would be handed over to the Germans who would then assiduously check out all of the details to attempt to ensure that they were not being duped. The British intelligence officers had done such a thorough job of filling in the ‘back story’ that upon a German agent checking what was possible in London, the identity of the body (actually a European vagrant) was confirmed and so the deception was successful. To my mind, the documentary when it was broadcast several years ago was even more exciting than the film but it is always interesting to see ‘true’ stories as it were.

Returning to the American political scene after a day or so, I note that one opinion poll (which might be a very small and aberrant one) gives Kamala Harris a lead of 8% over Donald Trump. Whether this poll is an accurate indication of public opinion or not, it certainly shows the direction of travel because the Harris campaign has certainly been energised of late whereas the Trump campaign seems to be going nowhere. One of the attack weapons that the Democrats are deploying is that of sarcasm and humour and I feel that the American political system is probably more used to frontal attacks rather than wit or sarcasm. Donald Trump’s running mate, J D Vance has been the object of particular mockery, one of the attack lines being that he uses eyeliner as though he was desperate to attract attention at a disco. But the more serious charge is that it is claimed that he once had sex ‘with a couch’ Now this letter claim is interesting because upon fact checking it is probably untrue. But the political damage arises from the fact that many of the American public do believe that it could be true and herein lies the force of the attack. The Democrats are persisting with their attack line or should I say, attack word, the Republicans are ‘weird’ and this appears to be having an impact. Probably one of the greatest attack lines of all time relates to the incredibly tight race between Nixon and Kennedy in the 1960’s. Richard Nixon, who of course eventually made it to the presidency was defeated by Kennedy. Nixon was one of those men who grow a beard exceptionally strongly and really needed to shave twice a day. But in one famous television broadcast, Nixon had forgotten to have a second shave for that day and when he appeared on TV had a slightly dark and sinister appearance to his jowls. The attack line from the Kennedy camp was ‘Would you buy a used car from this man?’ and reinforced the view that Richard Nixon was not to be trusted and thus deserved another soubriquet which as ‘tricky Dicky’ In the British political system, wit and humour is much appreciated in the House of Commons on both sides of the political divide. The master of this was undoubtedly Denis Healey, the veteran Labour politician who once described Margaret Thatcher as ‘Atilla the Hen’. Another political opponent was Geoffrey Howe who had a rather dreamy and languorous appearance although he was actually quite a smart cookie, as the Americans say. Denis Healey said of Geoffrey Howe that to be attacked politically by him was like ‘being savaged by a dead sheep’ One knows that these attacks are hitting their target when opposition laughs as much at the joke as one’s own side. One of the best opponents of the art of the amusing ‘bon mot’ was the Labour MP Tony Banks who made his reputation as a wit on the Labour back benches. Eventually, he was given a junior position in the Government as a junior minister for sport and his observation upon this was ‘I am completely gobsmacked. It is a bit like going to heaven without having to die first.’ In fact, it does not take much searching on the web using the search term of ‘the wit and wisdom of Tony Banks’ to find a whole slew of the amusing put downs of which Tony Banks was the master.

There is a hint in some of the American media that Trump might be exhibiting some of the first signs of dementia, or at least a degree of paranoid behaviour. Such is the opinion of an American psychiatrist but I am pretty sure that American psychiatrists are barred by the code of ethics of their own professional association not to diagnose at a distance but this principle seems to be more honoured in the breach than the observance. But even on a straight political level, Trump does not seem to be conducting a ‘normal’ political campaign. Three months from election day itself, one would imagine that there would be lots of visits to the crucial ‘swing’ states but Trump seems to be holed up in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida rather than campaigning in the normal way. Trump has recently claimed that he has drawn a bigger crowd than the celebrated Martin Luther King in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech but this may be yet another indication of Trump’s delusional grasp of reality.

Today our domestic help called around as a change from her usual day on a Wednesday and it is always good to see her and to have a chat. Last night, Meg had a rather disturbed evening so the night’s rest was not as restful as it could be. I had recommended our newly found cafe, ‘The Lemon Tree‘ to our domestic help and she had taken along three of the residents of the home where she works for a treat in the form of a knickerbocker glory. We met up with our University of Birmingham friend, as we did last Friday and our conversations are always something to which we look forward. However, we shall not be seeing him for about ten days as he has some family obligations this weekend and then is off for a continental holiday to do what I suspect is some delightful walking in the mountains. Our son and his wife are also away for the next ten days so I will feel a little bereft so I must find other some diversions to take my mind off the absence of a holiday. Meg and I used to have a holiday in late September to coincide with our wedding anniversary and Meg’s proximate birthday and then a winter holiday in late January in the inter-semester period when I was at work in the university. Our last holiday was planned to be in Porto in Portugal at just about the time that the pandemic struck us all down so I suppose it is the best part of five years since Meg and I actually holiday together, abroad at least.

With the Olympic Games approaching their end stages, I have been thinking about how the athletes cope with success and with failure. One of the lessons that must be very hard to learn is that success or failure is not always due to one’s own efforts but what is happening around you. This was dramatically illustrated in the case of Josh Kerr, the British 1500 metre runner who had his sights solely set on securing a gold medal. He was so intent on beating his long time rival (which he did) and actually ran a personal best, securing both a UK and European record, that he failed to notice an American who made an amazing last few seconds sprint to secure the gold medal and beat Kerr by 0.14 second. My point here is Kerr achieved a silver despite putting practically a ‘gold medal’ performance. Similarly, in many Olympic sports a medal might be secured, even a gold medal, because a very near competitor made a critical error which cost them the ultimate title. The gold medal winner in these cases is unlikely to say that possession of the gold medal was not due to his or her own performance but was due to the failure of a rival. So the wider point I am making here is the behaviour of others around you may help to account for ultimate success or failure. After I had submitted my PhD thesis and was waiting for the critical three month period in which the thesis was being tread and evaluated, I typically walked to the college where I worked at a distance of about a mile. So I had plenty of time on my own to contemplate whether I was going to succeed or to fail and so I had to keep asking myself, as someone who has enjoyed a modicum of academic success in my lifetime, how I was coping with the prospect of failure. After all, it is easy to cope with success but for how many of us is it difficult to cope with failure? At the time, one of my best academic colleagues, a much younger but brilliant young scholar who was just on the point of submitting his own PhD, gave me an excellent piece of advice. I must confess this colleague had a very wise head on young shoulders and he advised me that it was not unusual after a PhD had been submitted and examined that some additional work had to be done, for example a particular chapter to be rewritten. So it proved to be in my own case as my examiner towards the end of what I thought was a successful ‘viva voce’ defence of the thesis mentioned that he had looked in vain for evidence of ‘Fourth generation evaluation methodologies’ Of these I had never heard (nor had the other two examiners either) so I did undertake an additional piece of fieldwork, wrote a chapter incorporating the aforementioned methodologies and was duly award my PhD after a total research time of only about 2-3 substantive years. I was subsequently to discover from a lecturer at Birmingham University who I knew from my conference circuit days that this particular External Examiner invariably asked his examinees to go the extra mile as they say and to make revisions and or augmentation of the submitted viva. In some ways, this made me feel better once I learned this as I am of the view that the quality of a PhD is of the Chief Examiner who approves it rather than the actual university which awarded it. But I have known some excellent colleagues in my time who have had a setback in their ‘viva voce’ examination (as indeed I did) but who subsequently did not go on to complete their PhD although I am sure they were both very worthy candidates. Earlier in my life, I had attempted to climb the Three Peaks of Yorkshire; (Pen-y-Gent, Whernside and Ingleborough) where you are regarded as competent by the Leeds and Bradford hiking club if you can complete the entire three mountain ascent/descent and the distances between them within a twelve hour period. My first two attempts to do this ended in failure but I was successful in my third attempt. I think the choice of a good walking companion was crucial in this respect because I was a fast starter but a slow finisher whereas my companion (best man at our wedding) was the reverse. Consequently, I got us around the first part of the trek and my companion the second half so again, this reinforces the point that success may depend upon the people around you as well as your own individual efforts. For the ‘Thee Peaks’ of Yorkshire, pone had to sign in with a starting time to a log book in a little cafe in Horton-in-Ribblesdale which was the starting point. Hence, it could be judged whether you had completed the round maintain trip within twelve hours and, if so, could purchase a little plaque to hang somewhere in one’s house if so inclined.

Last night, I watched the UK runner, Josh Kerr, whose ambition it was to land a gold medal in the 1500 metres. Although he was in the lead with a few metres from the tape, he was so intent on beating his long time rivalI(which he did) that an American runner ‘snuck up’ on the outside with an incredible sprint to secure the gold medal for the US. Later on in the evening, I took the opportunity to Skype my University of Winchester friend and we were chatting with each for the best part of a couple of hours. We share a lot of notes as well as emotional support concerning the condition of our respective wives who both have long term health conditions and we had not been in touch for some weeks and hence the long Skype call. So it was fairly late when I got to bed but Meg and I both seemed to have quite a good night’s sleep. This morning, being a Thursday, is my shopping day and it was not long after breakfast when our sitter arrived, a young psychology graduate with an incredibly sunny disposition, so I got the shopping sone and then we took Meg into the kitchen so that the carer and myself could put the shopping away.

Overnight, we awoke to what must be good news. Yesterday evening, the police were intimating that they might have to attend up to 100 Far Right demonstrations or more accurately confrontations right across the country. But the government and police are determined to crack down hard on this Far Right thuggery and already some of the rioters have appeared before courts and have been sentenced to quite hefty prison sentences. The government machine is also publishing the mug shots of those given a custodial sentence and the hope is that this will act as a deterrent to demonstrations in the next few days ahead. But what happened last night was remarkable. It looks as though Anti-racist groups as well as ordinary citizens had come out in force to defend their communities against Far Right attack. In particular, as the Far Right were intending to target hotels in which it is known that asylum seekers have been given accommodation, then the anti-racist groups had managed to assemble great numbers in front of the hotels and other Far Right targets to form a massive human shield. So when the Far Right did turn up, it was not in the anticipated numbers and they seemed powerless to vent their ill-will when faced with the massed ranks of the individuals across the country. So they generally slunk away without causing any of the mayhem that we have come to expect in the past few days and the government, police and most of the rest of the country must be breathing a massive collective sigh of relief. So far, the Government strategy of confronting the Far Right with immediate force and judicial sanctions seems to be working but of course we shall have to see what happens in the weekend ahead. The more cynical amongst us are crying out for some rain (as indeed it has rained today) because this always seems to have a dampening effect upon those who wish to continue the rampages of the past few days. The government is also intending to pursue those who use the social media to promote random acts of violence across the community and are also trying to hold the social media companies themselves to account but I doubt that they have the wherewith all to challenge the social media companies head on.

In the late morning, we spent a certain amount of time watching the Olympics. We witnessed some sailing although it is a little difficulty to discern what is going on at times, quite a lot of the mens spring board diving (at which the two Chinese athletes excelled) and our two divers made a bit of a hash of things after their success in the synchro diving and finally some Taekwondo which did not interest us greatly. Then I pressed on with making a stir-fry of a fairly traditional nature for me (onions, sweet peppers, fragments of ham ends, tomatoes, petit pois, some gravy leftovers, a diced apple, some sultanas and a dessert spoonful of brown sugar, served on some basmati rice and with a big dollop of yogurt. I always tend to make a it too much of this mixture but I can always eat up the rest as a bite of supper. After that, having enjoyed ‘Pride and Prejudice’ so much over the last few days, we followed it up with ‘Sense and Sensibility’. This was a complete film but we watched the first half of it and will follow up with the second half tomorrow.

On the other side of the Atlantic, it looks as though Kamala Harris is slowly starting to pull ahead of Donald Trump in the race to the White House. One particular tactic of the Harris team, particularly after the choice of a running mate for Harris, is to poke fun at Trump, repeating the observation that he and his coterie are weird. Politicians can often cope with direct attacks but to be made fun off or be ridiculed, they all seem to find very difficult.There are some indication s also that Trump and the Trump campaign is imploding, or at least finding if difficult to cope with attacks made upon them. Trump’s running mate, Vance, attended a meeting of Republicans the other day which was very sparsely attended and his past pronouncements on women has made him the object of ridicule. Trump himself seemed to be promising that if Christians voted for him, they would never need to vote again – all of this adds to the sense of weirdness and unreality.The whole election, though, will be decided by comparatively few voters in about half a dozen swing states. It is almost certain, though, that if Trump loses the election narrowly, he will cry cheat, refuse to accept the result and bring out his supporters onto the streets. So we may see something approaching a civil war after the November elections.