Our Sunday routines started off a little earlier than normal this morning as our care workers were allocated to come to us 20 minutes earlier. Nonetheless, it was a pair of care workers both of whom have families (i.e. not adolescents) and with whom we get on well. We were not sure whether the Olympics games coverage would push out the normal politics programmes but there was a judicious mixture which suited us. After breakfast, we watched some archery (in which the women were well ‘outshot’ by the Germans) and then some women’s athletics. I must admit that I watched this with my heart in my mouth because whilst we wanted the fairly young GBR team to do well but the margins between success and failure are so incredibly fine. It might have been that one of the young GBR athletes may have received a slight points reduction because they are about a quarter of a second late in transitioning from one leap to another. The GBR team have not performed as well as they might but I think they have a 50:50 chance of reaching the last finals which I think is the last 8 in the team competition. After breakfast we had a visit from our Eucharistic minister after which we had to make Waitrose at full speed to pick up our copy of our Sunday newspaper and then onwards to the park where we were due to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend in the park at 11.00am. At about this time on a Sunday morning there seems to be quite a congregation of park acquaintances so we have a bit of a laugh and joke with each other before going our separate ways. So we came home and Meg watched ‘Mountain Biking’ in the Olympics whilst I prepared the Sunday lunch of chicken, baked potato and some string beans (brought to us from Morocco but I am sure that in our gardening days we would have had a crop of them adorning our bamboo frames by now).

I have started to think about the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, not least because the veteran Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, gave us the immortal dictum that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ It is now just about a week since Jo Biden withdraw his ambitions to serve for a second term, leaving the way open for Kamala Harris, his Vice President, to press her own case. Although Kamala Harris is not the best candidate on paper, the Democratic party have rallied round her cause dramatically within the last week and we are now in a situation where having drawn level with Donald Trump in the opinion polls, the very latest polls do indicate that she may be in the lead. The reasons are not hard to find. The kind of rhetoric deployed by Donald Trump cement him even more firmly in the 25%-30% of the section of the electorate to whom his populism has a particular appeal, largely the economically disadvantaged and largely ‘left behind’ sections of the electorate. Meanwhile the Democratic party was not particularly enamoured with some of the Biden policies and, in particular Gaza. These sections of the Democratic voters are pleased at last to have a much credible candidate behind whom they can rally and there is even a section of the Republican party who have never liked Trump who might be persuaded to lend their votes to the Democrats to get rid of Trump and thereby to get their own party back again. I have also started to think that Trump is a particularly poor politician. For example, he has now chosen Vance as a Vice Presidential running mate who is even more to the right than he is and who have argued that women who do not bear children are an abomination. Many Republicans are starting to doubt the wisdom of Vance as a running mate if only because to ‘balance the ticket’ one chooses a Vice Presidential running mate who can attract support (from the centre) that is less accessible to the main presidential candidate. Trump, it is being said, is running scared of entering a debate with Kamala Harris who, after all, as a state prosecutor was well versed in the art of asking questions in a court of law that those before the court did not want to answer. Already a slogan is being suggested for the forthcoming election that the contest between Harris and Trump might be a case ‘The prosector vs. the convicted felon’. One does get the feeling that Harris could eviscerate Trump were there to be a public debate and Trump has evidently seen the danger of this. Also, we now have the situation where Trump’s age and some of his ‘mis-speaks’ could prove to be a hindrance. Some of the things that Trump is saying are horrendous – one of his latest claims is that he actually won in every single state in the last election.

Meg and I have been watching (again) some of the ‘Pilgrims’ programme shown on BBC TV and available via BBC catchup. Today was focusing on the climb up Snowdon which Meg and have done on several occasions and from most directions as well. The programme also featured the mountain railway which reminded me that the last time Meg ascended Snowdon it was to take Meg’s aged aunt and uncle up to the top on the mountain railway which I think is the only time we have ever used it. On one occasion when we were descending Snowdon with a couple of young German girls as walking companions we all decided to go for a swim in the ice-cold lake called, I think, the Glaslyn as it was a boiling hot day. Needless to say, the two German girls stripped and swam ‘au natural’ and our son and I joined them for as long as we could stand the cold water. We explained to our travelling companions that we had no swimming costumes with us but they exclaimed that there was no need to bother with that, stripped off and dived straight in.

Last night was the formal opening of the Olympic Games held in Paris and we were promised quite a spectacular event. The French had decided to be both bold and innovative and chose to hold the opening ceremony not in the Olympic arena which is customary but to host a succession of craft, usually barges and the French bateaux rouge, which sailed down the Seine with the athletes celebrating aloft. This way, the French reckoned that the craft could go on a six kilometre route and be seen by many more people but at the same time some of the iconic buildings and beatiful bridges of Paris could be highlighted. This was an amazing concept but the weather was very much against them and the ceremonies were held in teeming rain. All countries use the opportunity of the opening ceremony to display some of the cultural and historical event that make a nation what it is but I have the feeling that a lot of what would be displayed might be lost on the wider world viewing audience. For example the way in which the French have a revolutionary tradition and disposed of the heads of many of their aristocratic elites might be lost on many people. I personally was not over impressed by the singing, dancing and gymnastics that took place but I was mightily impressed by the mechanical horse apparently ridden along the surface of the Seine depicting the way in which the Seine might have got its name. But there were quite a lot of technical hitches in such an ambitious project and the howling rain drowned out some of the spectacle so some people who come to watch went home to watch it all on TV. The UK ‘Daily Mail’ was scathing and labelled it all as a ‘farce’ but most of the British press were full of praise for French innovation and quirkiness. I personally would have liked a special programme edited for British TV in which some of the boring bits were cut out but a good explanation was made of all of the cultural references that the French were trying to convey (such as headless Marie Antoinettes lining the banks of the Seine from the prison she was once held whilst figures dressed in red hold severed heads peering out from the windows of the Conciergerie.) The ‘Daily Mail‘ was also delighted to point out amongst several technical hitches in the rain the spotting performer’s testicle hanging out during the ceremony as a dancer suffered an x-rated wardrobe malfunction. Today is filled with all kinds of competition and Meg and I have enjoyed some of the sculling and cycling competitions we have seen so far but the rainy conditions are making things nightmarish for the cyclists performing on the roads of Paris where obstacles such as wet pedestrian crossings have to be negotiated. Whilst on the subject of the Olympics, something was reported in the columns of The Times and then picked up by some of the other media. The French have equipped the Olympic village with some 3,000 beds made of an enhanced cardboard like substance. This has led some to complain that the French have provided athletes with ‘anti-sex’ beds as once athletes have completed their competition they are in the company of thousands of other athletes equally divided between the sexes and feeling free to party to their heart’s content once they have gone as far as they can in their own competition. After all, a sprinter could fail in their heat which means that their Olympics might be over in 10-12 seconds. One American athlete has claimed that some 70%-80% of athletics engage in amorous liaisons whilst at the Olympic games and therefore the question arises whether the beds provided are fit for purpose. As the sportsmen and women began arriving at their accommodation in the ‘city of love’, they were being directed to a ‘mattress fitting’ zone. They are measured for size and weight and an AI computer tool personalises their mattress’s density – to provide what the Japanese inventor claims will give them the comfiest night’s sleep an Olympian has ever had. Motokuni Takaoka, founder of the Airweave mattress company, told the Mail: ‘I was a marathon runner so I appreciate how important it is to have a good sleep before an event.’ The cardboard beds provided in Paris’ Olympic village are sturdy enough to hold up to three, according its inventor. A former marathon runner, Motokuni Takaoka said the beds were ‘very robust’ and ‘tough’ so athletes could do whatever they wanted on them. Yesterday Team GB diver Tom Daley, 30, was among those eager to debunk the myth, as he leapt about on his cardboard bed in a TikTok video while saying: ‘As you can see, they are pretty sturdy.’

As we went out this morning and I was wheeling Meg towards the main Kidderminster Road, we were intercepted by one of neighbours who lives around the corner but we have not seen for several months now. She was explaining to us how her daughter-in-law had lost a baby in the middle of the COVID crisis but now she is expecting twins shortly and is due to give birth in a couple of months. I explained the situation with myself and Meg and she told us to call around on a Wednesday when she is not at work. This we will almost certainly do because even though our domestic help calls around on a Wednesday, I often take Meg for a little walk somewhere so tea with a neighbour sounds pleasant. Our son and daughter-in-law are off on a break for the next ten days or so Meg will and I will certainly seize the opportunity to chat with people as and when we can.

In the American presidential campaign, I came across an interesting quote from ex-adviser to Donald Trump. According to this source ‘If I were on the Harris campaign, I would attack Donald Trump on his record with immigration. It was a total failure. Barack Obama deported more people than Trump. Trump said he was going to have Mexico pay for a wall. I would go in and say he has the greatest failure that we have had. And that is what the Biden administration handled’

I generally look forward to Fridays but today was a little unusual in the way it started off. I was expecting one of our regular care workers, who was going to be accompanied by a manager who often puts himself ‘on shift’ when they are short staffed. Today, though, the young care worker had been in a car crash which was not her fault. The offending driver was drunk and refused to undertake a breathalyser test and I wondered what the consequences of this could be. In short, it probably means the suspension of a licence for a year and the possibility of increased fines and/or a prison sentence if convicted. Our young care worker was OK but somewhat shaken and I feel for her. So I acted as the ‘assistant care worker’ for the manager, not for the first time and I suspect not the last either. But when we were all done, I could get Meg her breakfast and we could prepare ourselves for a trip down the road to the Waitrose cafeteria, as we often do on a Friday, where we meet up with our University of Birmingham friend. Our trip down appeared a little different to me today for the following reason. In the last few days, I ordered a couple of Hi-Vis (high visibility) vests that were on sale for less than £6 the pair. I wore one over my normal outdoor apparel this morning and it may be my imagination but I got the distinct impression that the traffic was much more inclined to stop (one even stepping on his brakes) when I was observed standing at the kerbside. Whether this is or is not the case, when the mornings get darker and gloomier in the autumn, these vests will come into their own. We had to have rather a hurried coffee with our friend this morning and would have liked to have tarried a little longer but the care workers late morning call was scheduled about 30-40 minutes earlier than is usual so we had to make full speed up the hill. After I had got Meg home and the care workers had paid their morning call, as it was a fine morning and we had some time in hand, I decided to give the back lawn a much needed cut. This opportunity was well taken because it did not delay our lunch hour at all and the cut was badly needed, having been missed for a week or so.

This afternoon, the Olympic games will have their very original opening ceremony starting at 6.30. The opening ceremony is going to be very different from the norm, not to be held in the arena itself but rather on a succession of craft which will process down the Seine for about 6km in total. The advantage of this is that many more people can see the athletes from a variety of vantage points most of which will be free. I get the impression that the French are not quite as enthusiastic about their own Olympic games as we were about our own games held in London. What amazed the world on that occasion was the way in which Danny Boyle highlighted and celebrated our own NHS which we used to think of as being the envy of the world. Of course we could not say that nowadays and I did not fully appreciate that the last Olympic games held in Tokyo may have had an opening ceremony but it was at the height of COVID (or was it postponed for a year?) and consequently the number of people allowed to attend was minimal. The French have been promising a spectacular and innovative opening ceremony showcasing the best of France – what aspects of their history will they choose to celebrate on wonders. But there has been some rather devastating news overnight. So many police and military have been detailed to police Paris particularly for the opening ceremonies when all of the athletes process so the rest of the country might be lightly policed. Anarchist groups (one assumes) have chosen this moment to sabotage practically all of the major high speed (TGV) lines running out of Paris. Lines to the North, East and West have been subject to arson attacks but the one running south to the Mediterranean might have been spotted just in time. As the celebrations start at 6.30pm this evening and Meg is put to bed shortly afterwards, I am going to bring into commission our little portable TV so that we can watch the opening ceremony together from Meg’s bedside. So I am especially glad that I have equipped myself with a nice comfortable bedside chair from which to view the TV.

This morning, a report into the Care Quality Commission commissioned by the Tories but now received by Labour has been received. The new Labour Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has declared the CQC not fit for purpose and some of the findings are shocking. Some hospitals have not been visited in 10 years and one of the care inspectors had never been in a hospital in his life. About 10-20% establishments had never been visited and so on. So the Health Secretary had labelled the CQC as ‘not fit for purpose’ because it is quite possible that members of the public were relying upon reports that were superficial or based upon the most inadequate data sets. I asked the Care Agency manager what he thought of the setup and he said that when he was last inspected, it was six years ago and just relied upon a telephone call. For this his organisation had to pay several thousands of pounds a year. Listening to a debate on Radio 4 this morning, it was said that the CQC could not afford to conduct in-depth inspections and therefore relied upon more artificial reports to which my retort is that if you are going to rely upon an inspection routine, it either gets done properly or not at all. Much as I am interested in issues of Quality Management, I abhor the tick box culture which pervades quality measurement these days wherever one looks.

Thursday is my shopping day but we had a slightly different timetable of events in prospect for us today. For a start, the two carers who were detailed to get Meg up washed and dressed in the morning were detailed to start 45 minutes later than usual. But one of the carers (a young psychology graduate with whom Meg and I get on particularly well) was detailed to stay on and be Meg’s ‘sitter’ whilst I go out to do my weekly shop. This new arrangement seems quite sensible to us so I was happy to go along with the slightly changed regime. Shopping ought to have been quite straightforward but turned out to be quite fraught. This was because this week is the first full week after the children had been let out of school and the long summer holidays started last Friday. I do not want to sound curmudgeonly but the store was a bit of a nightmare to go around this morning. There seemed to be quite a lot of excited 6-9 year olds careering round the store with empty shopping trollies and I even heard one exasperated father exclaiming to his two young children that he never intended to come shopping with them ever again if they continued behaving in the same way. The children seemed to be under the temporary control of grandmothers as well as mothers (hardly any fathers) and the net effect of their behaviours was to slow down the shopping process considerably. Perhaps by next week they might all have gone off on holiday to theme parks or the like but we shall have to wait and see.

I have been doing a certain amount of research how to clean one’s silver (or in my case, recently acquired EPNS soup spoons) using simple ingredients. My web-based searches have recommended the following, some of which I vaguely already half remembered but all of which are simple remedies which means one does not have to have recourse to commercial silver cleaning solutions. The first of these is to wrap the articles in tinfoil and then place them for a few minutes in warm water in which some baking power has been dissolved. I do not have any baking powder to hand and it sounds a bit complicated so I will pass over this one. The second method is to use tomato ketchup (the cheaper the brand with a higher vinegar content the better) where the acidic content combats the tarnish on the silverware. A third method is to use toothpaste and a worn out old toothbrush and I have used toothpaste before to remove slight blemishes from the paintwork of cars. Toothpaste itself contains both a bleach band a mild abrasive agent so this appears to be quite an effective remedy. The final method is just to deploy coca cola which again has a fizzing and an acidic mode of action. I have seen videos of how to clean toilets using coca cola and when you consider the effective job that it does to clean the enamel from toilet bowls, it does make you wonder what it does to your insides if you consume a lot of coca cola regularly. Of these various methods I am inclined towards the tomato ketchup home made remedy as less likely to be as aggressive in its cleaning action as some of the other suggestions.

The US presidential elections have now been transformed as Joe Biden has dropped out and suddenly Donald Trump is bearing the burden of being by far the oldest candidate. I must say that I have been quite impressed by the showing that Kamala Harris has made so far and i thing the various factions and groups within the Democratic party are delighted to bury their differences and to back a candidate who may just about be able to beat Donald Trump. But there is one factor that has not received much attention over here in the UK but which may prove to be vital. I decided to enter the search term ‘Will the issue of abortion rights win the 2024 election for Harris’ or something similar and discovered that this is a raging issue on the other side of the Atlantic. The Trump nominees to the United States Supreme Court effectively overturned the ‘Roe vs. Wade’ ruling which regulated US abortion for over half a century. This means that the women in several US states have less abortion rights than even their grandmothers. Democrats are pretty united in trying to preserve the rights to abortion in the US but the Republicans are more divided on the issue. The extreme fundamentalist, pro-Life groups in the Republican family have chosen to weaponised abortion as a stick with which to beat the Democrats and to win elections. But even Trump himself is wavering a little on this issue seeing how unpopular the abolition of the Roe vs Wade ruling has become with about two thirds of Americans (and particularly young and female voters). So I think that this issue alone might give Harris the extra 2-3 percentage points that will enable Harris to sustain a lead over Trump in the November elections. I would predict that this issue, which is the Democrats strongest card to play, will receive hours of airtime and debate in the months ahead.

There are two news event stories running this afternoon. The first of these is the fact that there are now several candidates throwing their hat into the ring to be the next leader of the Conservative party. The party had adopted the process of voting to whittle the number of candidates down to the top four who then go onto the party conference where they will engage in hustings. the four will be then be reduced to 2 and these two will go ahead to the wider Conservative party for a final vote. The second major news story today is a really shocking bit of video which took place as members of the Manchester police were attempting to make an arrest. With their suspect on the floor and I believe already ‘tazered’, then a policeman is shown kicking the prone suspect and then stamping on his head. Needless to day, this case has evoked a collective national horror and the policeman in question has been suspended whilst the case is investigated further by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Who actually took the video I do not know but with the ubiquity of mobile phones it is not surprising that this clip ad film has emerged.

So another Wednesday dawns and I was pleased to see the carers this morning as Meg, as is customary these days, had not got to sleep by the time I actually got to bed but she was not actively restless so that was a type of blessing. After we had got ourselves up and breakfasted, I popped out to get a newspaper and also to ‘liberate’ some MPS cutlery that I had seen in a local charity store. In one of them there is a collection of largely worthless miscellaneous items of cutlery but hidden in their midst are some magnificent and high quality soup spoons which hold twice the quantity of a desert spoon and which I find particularly useful in my culinary preparations. I managed to buy half a dozen at these at the price of 10p each and promptly donated some to our domestic help whose day it is on a Wednesday. I also found a little knitted crochet blanket which is going to be useful to put around Meg’s knees when I take her out in the wheelchair and the weather is a little chilly. I also bought some seat pads which I intend to use on our outside metal garden chairs now that we are enjoying our own back garden so much. So all in all, it was a very successful little venture out this morning and as there was a slight drizzle, I was not unhappy that I had not taken Meg out for a spin this morning. As it was, I bumped into one of our Waitrose friends but we could only have a brief conversation in the rain and with my needing to get back to Meg as soon as practicable. Meg was feeling a little wobbly this morning but our domestic help was very good in helping Meg to cheer herself up somewhat. We lunched on ham, baked potato and the remains of an onion gravy and delicious it was as well. Then this afternoon, we thought we would settle down and watch ‘Chariots of Fire’ which,in anticipation of the Olympic Games that open in Paris on Friday, was shown at the weekend and which we thought we would access on the BBC iPlayer. We originally saw this film decades ago and there seems to be a very long build up as we view it today but one can see why it was scheduled to be shown last weekend (as the theme of the film was the Olympic Games held in Paris in 1924)

There are just a few indication that the American presidential race may be getting very exciting. Jo Biden finally decided to withdraw, The Democrats have united behind Kamala Harris and one feels that the Democrats feel like a part reborn. I saw some clips of Kamala Harris speaking with campaign organisers and she was unscripted but seemed to hit all of the right inspirational notes. Practically every significant Democratic leader has now endorsed Harris with the exception of the Obamas and this is still fuelling suspicions that Michelle Obama might enter the race if it looks as though Kamala Harris faltering. I thought I saw one poll (amongst many, no doubt) which is now indicating that the Democrats have enjoyed a ‘bounce’ in the polls and may now be narrowing the gap to 1%-2%. Almost certainly, the black voters who were not enthralled by Joe Biden’s support of Israel in the conflict in Gaza may now come back into the fold. And another ‘straw in the wind’, Kamala Harris and some Democratic leaders are not rushing to meet Netanyahu who is currently on a visit to the States. I also saw a report that some of ‘MAGA’ (Make America Great Again’) lobby in the US are worried that Harris may appeal to younger voters as well as black and Hispanic voters and this does not help the Republicans to win over some of the centre ground (not that much of a centre ground exists in the US at the moment)

I have recently started to reflect on the ‘several ages’ which it is said most of us exhibit. It is often said these days that we all have three ages – a chronological age (years we have inhabited this earth), a mental age (our mental acuity which might be in advance or behind our chronological age) and finally a biological age (what a pathologist might judge from the state of our internal organs were they to be subject to a pathological examination) I have generally bought this analysis but I think that I would want to add a fourth age. This is the age that one thinks of oneself as being but even this may be a bit more subtle than I have suggested. Given that we may incorporate the ways in which others react towards us and we absorb these reactions of significance others into our own psyche, then perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is our perceptions of other peoples perception about ourselves that we build into our own self image. Some of this is drawn from some of the American social psychologists and I have thinking in particular of the work of them. The term looking-glass self was first introduced by Charles Cooley (1902) who refers to the dependence of one’s social self or social identity on one’s appearance to others. I have tried out some of these formulations with a couple of the younger care workers who are studying psychology at ‘A’-level so some of the care sessions whilst they are ministering to Meg are taking on some the appearances of an academic seminar. In general, the care workers like to chat and to joke with each but a lot of their conversations revolves around how they are going to cope with the rest of their rota which tends to change endlessly around them and they consult their mobile phones to see what are the allocated jobs for that day.

The first Labour rebellion has been, quite predictably, over the issue of the abolition of the cap on extending universal credit support to children beyond the first two. This was a policy adopted by the Tories and which Labour inherited, as it were. No one in the Labour party likes this policy but it will cost about £2.5 billion to get rid of the cap so that Labour party policy is to wait until it can be afforded. There were seven MPs who voted against the government last night and the Labour whip was immediately withdrawn from them. One of the rebels representing the Tower Hamlets constituency (one of the poorest in the country) was arguing today that she was elected on a policy of ‘Change’ but keeping the existing Tory policy is not to change anything and the voters had voted for ‘Change’ (the Labour Party slogan) in the General Election.

So Tuesday dawns and it is a day to which we always look forward being the day when we meet up with our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria. We anticipated that we would be one short in number today, as indeed we were because her flat was being redecorated and this involved the supervision of items of furniture as they were moved around the room. It was a pretty fine day today so we were happy to get out and have a pleasant walk down the hill with just the hint of a cooling breeze to keep us comfortable as we walked. One of our favourite Waitrose partners whose job it is to attend to the flowers section of the store and to throw away dead or dying stock presented us with a bunch of roses each so Meg and I came home with a beautiful bunch of yellow roses. Once we had returned we had the late morning comfort call for Meg and after that the carer came along who we know quite well who was on sitting duty today. I received a telephone call from a person in the Transport and Highways department of Worcestershire County Council who explained that he had some good news about our pavement problem. But the good news turned out to be telling us about about a road reconfiguration which is going to take place near us at some time in the future and might be of some assistance to us. The officer from Worcestershire explained that the day-to-day management of the plan and the scheduling would now rest with the planing department of the District Council so I should contact them for any more up-to-date news. As the road reconfiguration is probably not scheduled for several months if not years ahead then the net result of all of this is that we would get nowhere. So the next result of all of these activities is that everyone concerned at official level seems to be passing the buck and the responsibility for someone else to solve and always at some indefinite time in the future. I cannot be surprised by all of this but I think I think it is faintly amusing that if a ‘problem’ arises on someone’s desk, the first response is to pass it on to someone else so that from their point of view, the problem is sorted and so on, ad infinitum. I am reminded of the story of the communication between a GP and a consultant, both noted for the terseness and brevity of their communications. So the GP wrote to the consultant regarding one patient ‘Please see and treat’ to which the response came back shortly ‘Seen and treated’

The carer who came to sit with Meg gave her a spin around the house in the wheelchair and upon my return from a mini shopping expedition was intrigued by the wedding photos that we have on our iPhone dating all the way from 1967 (i.e. the date of the actual event but the digitised versions only appeared in time I think for our 50th anniversary nearly seven years ago now) I managed to get out on the road for half an hour buying some important non-food shopping and managed to obtain a supply of much needed toiletries as well as seizing the opportunity of buying a couple more cushions. These happen to be just the right size and shape to fit behind Meg’s back to help to keep her vertical and not slumping in her wheelchair and were were quite a useful buy. Once returning home, we finished off the meal of fishcakes which turned out to be a fairly delayed lunch and then what should have been the mid-afternoon career’s call came an hour or so earlier than we would really have liked. So we made the best of a bad job of scheduling and Meg and I then spent some time in the back garden where we sat in the shade and enjoyed some cooling ice-cream to boot.

Last night, Meg had another rather disturbed night again which seems to occur every other night at the moment. So this means that various domestic jobs that I have lined up to do in the evening now get neglected or postponed as I have to supervise Meg in the evening to ensure that she does not attempt to get out of bed or to fall out of bed. Were Meg to actually ‘fall’ or should I say slither out of bed, the the carers are not allowed to pick her up and put her back into bed again. They are instructed that they must call the ambulance service and/or the falls team and these carers also are instructed that in the event of falls (or rather slithers) people have to be admitted to A&E. So I try very hard with a combination of techniques to ensure that Meg stays intact in bed each evening and if she is asleep this is not a problem. If on the other hand she gets agitated and attempts to get out of bed, then we are living dangerously, not to say on a knife-edge and, of course, I cannot convey the seriousness of all of this to Meg who cannot understand fully why it is essential that she stays put when put to bed for the evening. A request had gone in to the Occupational Therapists for a bed with sides but we are awaiting for an assessment, and then a recommendation and finally perhaps some provision but this might be some weeks away. I think the month of August is going to be a nightmare month as so many services are short whilst the largely female staff with families are taking them off on holidays in the six week period between the third week of July and the first week of September. I often wonder if these carers look forward to the summer holidays in the same way that turkeys look forward to Christmas i.e. with a degree of excitement but some trepidation about the weeks ahead.

So today, being a Monday, we pop into our Monday morning routines. After we had got up and breakfasted, we start to think about our routines for a Monday morning. I whizz down the road in the car leaving Meg to watch the Voces8 (Dutch) group singing Fauré and similar works that we regularly view using YouTube. After I had returned home, we prepared our elevenses and then set off down the hill at which point we enter the park and occupy our usual bench overlooking the lake. It was a fairly gloomy day but one in which the clouds were being drifting away. Whilst in the park, I received a phone call on my mobile from the County Councillor with whom I am in contact who informed me that she thought that our request to the County Council (for amelioration of the absence of a pavement) should be directed to a different councillor. As it happens, I know the colleague very well because he was tremendously helpful to us when we were attempting to prevent the development of the orchard immediately next to our house into a housing development of 18 houses. Just for the record and without revisiting past traumas, if the orchard had been under the remit of Worcestershire County Council more directly rather than Bromsgrove District Council, then the orchard would have received an automatic protection i.e. the development would have been prevented. And for the record, we did win at the planning application on three separate occasions but eventually lost on the fourth occasion. If a developer loses a submission despite their being a presumption of favouring all such applications, then they can appeal, appeal and appeal again until they are ultimately successful. The wider point here is that ‘Nimbyism’ (Not In My Back Yard) may succeed on many occasions but more than not, individuals and communities are not in a position to resist the encroaches of large building firms who can employ KC’s and have larger pockets than a mere individual. So when I returned home, I copied the entire email trail of my contacts with Worcestershire County Council to Councillor No. 2 and I now await a reply and further developments. Just as an aside, I started off this query over a month ago and wrote to a District Councillor who forwarded my request to a County Councillor and then waited two weeks whilst she was on holiday and then awaited a further week before I had our video clip shot and chased again only to be told I should be contacting another person who still has to liaise with the Highways Department. Perhaps no wonder that people lose faith in the democratic process if all contacts with one’s elected local representatives follows a similar pattern.
I then prepared a lunch of ham cooked yesterday, some sugar snap peas and a baked potato, followed as is customary by an after dinner yogurt.

After lunch which was a little delayed, we thought we would some good ‘live’ TV. Republican members of Congress are focusing on the role of the Secret Service, as their frustration and anger grow over the agency’s response to an attempt to assassinate presidential nominee Donald Trump. A House committee hearing will on Monday grill its Director, Kimberly Cheatle -something Speaker Mike Johnson said would make for ‘must-see TV’ for Americans concerned about security lapses at a Pennsylvania rally earlier this month. ‘She has got a lot to answer for. And these concerns are bipartisan’ Mr Johnson told CNN. Ms Cheatle’s agency is charged with providing protection to the president and his family, former presidents, those in line to the White House and other political candidates. Meg and I watched the start of these proceedings wondering what on earth the chief of the Secret Service would say. Under the most detailed of questioning in which Congress members spoke about the man seeing using a ladder to ascend to the roof a nearby building, taking his rifle with him, Kimberley Cheatle tried to make a distinction between a ‘person who was suspicious’ and ‘a person who was a threat’ trying to argue that the would be assassin was the former and not the latter. To every single question she basically gave a non-answer saying that the matters were subject to an investigation within the agency itself and therefore no responses could be made to the Congressional Committee until the Secret Service’s own investigations were complete. It is no wonder that so many members of this bipartisan committee are calling for her immediate resignation.

After Joe Biden has retired from the presidential race, there has been a coalescence of support for Kamala Harris, the existing Vice President to become the new Democratic nominee. But Barak Obama has failed, so far, to specifically endorse Kanala Harris and there is some speculation at the moment that Michelle Obama might be persuaded to enter the race. This is on the basis of he fact that polls show that Michelle Obama could decisively defeat Donald Trump in all of the key ‘swing’ states but the same is not true of Kamala Harris. Speaking personally, I would be absolutely delighted if Michelle Obama could be persuaded to enter the race but the probability of this actually happening is very small at the moment. The Democratic party has several good potential candidates but not one of them wants to set forward to wrest the nomination away from a female, ‘person of colour’ in Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris has an interesting professional history- in 2010, she succeeded Jerry Brown as California attorney general, becoming the first female, Black and South Asian attorney general in the state’s history. In view of this, one of the slogans that has already been bandied about if Kamala Harris does secure the Democratic nomination is that it would be ‘The Prosecutor versus the convicted felon’ and can only imagine what social media would make of all of this if Kamala Harris does secure the nomination. This afternoon, it looks as though some big money is swinging the way of Kamala Harris and thus we may eventually see a quasi ‘coronation’ of her as the Democrat’s nominated candidate to do battle with Donald Trump.

This has been quite a full day what with one thing or another. But firstly, Meg slept very soundly last night for which I was well and truly grateful and although I did fall asleep in the chair downstairs whilst watching the news, I did crawl off to my own bed and have a reasonable night’s sleep. After. we had breakfasted, we tuned into the Politics programs where we are wondering whether, and how, Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor, is going to respond to the pay review body recommendation of about 5.5% for many of the public sector workers. She hinted this morning that the government may concede pay rises that are above the current rate of inflation but will still probably fall short of the 5.5% recommended by the Pay Review bodies. A decision on this is expected shortly and of course the perennial question of how the increase is to be funded. After breakfast, our Eucharistic minister called around as she does most Sundays and it was pleasant to see her. She has had rather a bad time recently because there seems to have been a spate of some distant relatives and some close family friends all dying and last week she had two funerals in two days. We empathised with her about this because sometimes these deaths do occur in clusters and a few years ago we had a terrible year in which many of our own close friends seemed to die within a few months of each other. Our son popped with a box of chocolates for Meg mid morning and, of course, we are always pleased to see him. I took the opportunity to update him with some of the details of how we are hoping to get some improvement in our pavement situation but he himself thought that he response of the County Council would be to do nothing on the grounds of expense. On the other hand, we showed the videoclip to our friend from church who called around this morning and she gasped in horror when she first saw it so who knows what might happen. I had to dash down the hill which I did at almost breakneck speed in order to pick up our Sunday newspaper and then immediately wheeled Meg back to the park and to our favourite bench. There we got deep into conversation with an acquaintance which we used to see quite regularly but who is now on crutches having had a knee replaced – before she was using a mobility scooter. We laughed and joked about our University of Birmingham friend who she used to assist on occasions finding a lady friend of the appropriate age and status but she has not seen much of him since he discovered his latest squeeze. We enjoyed a pleasant chat when our friend arrived but we both learned that a lady named Gloria that we used to see almost every day in the park in the height of the COVID peregrinations died about two weeks ago. We were saddened by this but not very surprised because the lady in question seemed to be carrying so much weight that it must have compromised her health status. In the past she had been an NHS manager and it is sad to think that although she kept going so gamely on her mobility scooter upon which she used to whizz around at the most enormous speed but now she has made her final journey. So we made our way home in the sunshine getting ready for the late morning carers. Thos morning being a Sunday, I was cooking a ham joint in the slow cooker and we dined on this with a baked potato and some spring greens. This was quite a delicious dinner as I always prepare a rich onion gravy in which I immerse some slices of the cooked ham. Today we had a special sweet that had been donated to us as our University of Birmingham friend had brought along a couple of raspberry compotes which were left over from a party he had attended with his new squeeze last night.

Just before lunch, we got a call from the care agency with a familiar request which is could I could assist as a second pair of hands at one of the scheduled visits for the day? One of the managers had put himself on duty fo late on this afternoon because I have put to him a proposition for a slight tweaking of Meg’s care package. As Meg does not enter a deep sleep approximately every other night, I am speculating whether we can cut down the time allocation for one of the daytime visits and then release some space for an additional visit to Meg late at night (about 10.00ish) to make sure is comfortable and that might assist in her developing a better sleep pattern. The manager is going to liaise with social services in order to ascertain whether this plan is both feasible and fundable but he, and I, think that it might represent a good ‘tweak’ to Meg’s existing care package. This afternoon as the weather was so fine, I sat Meg outside in her wheelchair whilst I got on with a cutting of the outside lawn which has escaped my attention for a week or so. We managed this all right and then came in to watch the end of a modern Peter Rabbit film which was amusing as far as it went but was not quite what a younger viewer might have expected.

An USA Senator has now called upon Joe Biden to resign together with 36 other prominent Democrats. One does the feeling that Joe. Biden will have to be pushed out of his candidacy one way or the other but one is left with the feeling that the stubbornness and pride of an old man is standing in the way of the best long term interests of the Democrats. Every day that Joe Biden hangs on is a day less to get a suitable challenger to make their way through the system. I think the Democrats, like our Conservative party of old, would prefer to have a new candidate ’emerge’ rather than have a public blood letting in their party conference which is to be held shortly. As a stop press, I can now confirm that Joe Biden has indicated he will drop out of the race and later on he endorsed Kerala Harris, his Vice President (which I feel personally would be a mistake)

Last night turned out to be quite an interesting, not to say productive night, in some ways. The carers were scheduled to come along earlier than usual last night which was not really to our liking. However, as it was to be the first night of this year’s Proms, we got Meg into bed and I got our portable TV installed alongside the bed so that Meg and I could watch this together. This half worked and although Meg did not really follow the concert or go to sleep, she seemed less agitated yesterday evening which was all to the good. After I judged Meg to be asleep or at least dozing, I composed the email to the District Councillor plus County Councillor with whom I am in contact to try to get some amelioration of our ‘absence of pavement’ problem. I succeeded in getting the mail sent off to our District Councillor expressing the disappointment that our County Councillor had not been in contact and asking that the email containing the videolink be sent on to her. I also discovered what I should have no reason to know that, by default, the video files shot on one’s i[phone will have a .mov format but this is not the best format for Windows 11 to access. So I managed during the night to not only access a program which concantenated (= joined together end to end) but also managed to save the resultant file in an .MP4 format which the Windows operating system seems to handle more easily without additional codecs (whatever they are) and then the resultant single videoclip incorporated in to the mini website. All of this generated results and fairly quickly. The district councillor to whom I had sent the email replied quickly informing me that my video was being copied to the County Councillor who has responsibility for highways and transport matters. Just after lunch today, I received a phone call from the County Councillor responsible for our area of Bromsgrove so she had evidently received the additional email plus video link. The upshot of this telephone call was that she was going to have a consultation with the Highways Department and some time in the next week they try and arrange a site visit so that they could assess the situation for themselves. As far as I am concerned, this is excellent news as my previous efforts have led only to an email response and a response that this is ‘low priority to be added to our spreadsheets as and when conditions allow’ But I think the circumstances are very different this time around and I am intrigued to see if the Highways department can come up with any workable solutions. But I think the combination of a degree of political ‘oomph’ if I can put it that way together, with some specialist highways expertise stands a fighting chance of something being done this time around.

After breakfast, Meg and I went down the hill to see our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria as is our wont. I had taken with me the ‘singing toy’ that our domestic help had loaned to us for a week. This is a working doll that sways whilst singing two verses ‘When I’m 64’ which is, of course, first recorded I believe by the Beetles. The young counter assistant who often befriends us on a Saturday morning before she goes off to university in January to start a paramedical course was tickled pink and amazed when all of the oldies managed both to remember and to join in the second verse of the song. So this was the source of amusement for the day. Having got the ‘pavement’ video and videoclip accessible on my iphone, I showed it to our friends who are a little intrigued to see what transpires. I have also learned during the night that the Highway Code has been revised over the past couple of years but with recommendations of which some motorists and indeed pedestrians for that matter are unaware. The principal philosophical twist is to assume a hierarchy of ‘risk’ and those users judged to be most at risk (and Meg, in a wheelchair would come into this category) would have a degree of priority. There is some dispute wether this code/philosophy applies at the exit to a roundabout where it is unclear which principle holds good but, in general, you can see that it is an attempt by those responsible for balancing the competing interests of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians (not to mention horses and the like) to coexist well with each other. This may explain why I find some motorists very accommodating when I am pushing Meg across the road i.e. the motorists either know of or are acting in the spirit of the newly revised Highway Code.

The huge IT outage yesterday in which Microsoft’s Windows installations were badly affected by the installation of a badly behaved, software bug occasioned in a security upgrade is still wreaking havoc across the globe. Some IT experts are indicating that it might even take weeks for all systems across the globe to be brought back fully into operation. Although the immediate bug has been identified and then ‘fixed’, machines have to be rebooted and then, almost inevitably there are some settings that have to be tweaked to get back to full functionality. The NHS is warning of GP disruption next week – as travellers report long delays and lost baggage. Airline passengers have reported long delays and lost baggage, while pharmacies are trying to deal with a backlog in medicine deliveries. The Port of Dover says it is dealing with ‘hundreds of displaced’ airport passengers. In the NHS appointment systems, patient records and prescriptions all seem to have been badly hit by the outage and then there is a tremendous amount of catching up to get done on top of already overloaded systems. It could well be that some holiday plans are disrupted as well as planes and their crews may find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time so I think getting back to normal, as it were, might be quite a long slow and painful operations for millions across the globe.

Today is another day, as they say. Last night was not a particularly happy night for us as Meg was put to bed at 7.15 but did not finally go to sleep until 10.15. It might have been the heat or something else but Meg repeatedly threw off her bedclothes and attempted to get out of bed. After I tried to put her back properly into bed on about half a dozen occasions, I gave up until she fell into a doze with no bedclothes on and with her legs out of bed. I dragged her back into bed and put a heavy blanket on her and now, after an agitated three hours, she fell and then stayed asleep. I resolved to take some remedial action in the morning but in the meanwhile, I tried to get done some of the things that I had intended to get done during the evening. The one thing that I did manage to do was to take the couple of videoclips of me wheeling Meg along the ‘de facto’ ring road which I will eventually send to the County Councillor who has not, as yet, responded to the email which her colleagues had forwarded on to her. I shall try again this evening if I can snatch some quiet time for myself. This morning just before the carers came along to get Meg up and ready for the day, I got the two videoclips into a website which I had managed to create very quickly (having a template which only needed the most minor of adaptations) The point of the website is that I trust that it should be quite accessible via an iPad or a mobile phone where the native files might be too big to download by themselves into a standard mobile. After breakfast, we knew that the weather was going to be fine so we repaired down the hill with Meg in her wheelchair but with a large sunhat because we knew that later on today it was going to get seriously hot. Whilst in the cafeteria we got into conversation with a lady who had lived in San Diego, California and we swapped stories with each other first about our lives whilst living under COVID regimes and then about life in Mexico, where evidently I could expand upon our visits to the country as our son had spent a scholarship year before going to university. Then our University of Birmingham friend turned up as we had arranged and we had a pleasant chat, as always, before it was time for us to leave. Our friend knows Switzerland quite well having holidayed there for extensive periods as a child so I wondered out loud to him why the Swiss had the reputation that they did have for cuckoo clocks on the one hand and for fine chocolate on the other. Both of these mysteries may be solved for us both in the fullness of time. Once we had arrived home and Meg had received the attention of her carers as she always does late morning, I set to making a salad. Normally I have some tins of tuna in stock but I had forgotten to replenish these but instead I had bought a can of corned beef several weeks ago and this served the occasion well. Like yesterday, I made up my own coleslaw and I was as pleased with this today as I was yesterday.

It was a very hot afternoon and we spent a little time outside at the front of the house. Eventually, though, we retreated indoors and I searched YouTube using the search term of a ‘Life of Mozart’. This generated two or three possibilities and Meg got absorbed by one of them, I am pleased to say, before the two young carers turned up for Meg’s afternoon visit. These two young people, one male one female are best mates with each other so in the morning we had promised them a little treat of vanilla ice-cream. So for our afternoon treat, I treated Meg and myself and the two young people with a serving of vanilla ice-cream enhanced by a dollop of ‘Orange Blossom’ honey which the young people had never had the opportunity to try before. So this was very welcome on what might prove to be the hottest afternoon of the year and this heat could extend into the evening as well making for a hot and sticky evening. Having said that, tonight is the first night of the Proms and Beethoven is often performed on an opening, Friday, night and tonight it is to be Beethoven’s 5th. To try to learn from the events of last night when Meg lay awake for hours, tonight I am going to ensure that as soon as I have got her into bed I will discourage her from going to sleep and we can follow the Proms concert which is to be broadcast from 7.00pm-9.00pm tonight. In this way, I hope that Meg can fall asleep naturally and without the benefit of some of the ‘sleep’ preparations of which I have purchased several varieties and none of which appear to work.

In the USA, it now looks as though some of the leading lights of the Democrats party are trying to put pressure on Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race but, so far, he has shown all of the obstinacy for which old men are often notorious. It is rumoured that even former President Barak Obama has given his view that Biden should withdraw but the way in which Joe Biden is being encouraged to leave the Presidential race seems long and protracted and the eventual outcome far from certain. But it does appear that the Democrats must get Joe Biden to relinquish his hold on the presidency soon because time is very rapidly running out in which a replacement can be found, approved by the Democratic Congress and then a campaign mounted to start to fight with Trump. I personally think that Joe Biden may not be able to hang on until after Sunday but we shall have to wait and see.