Today has been a very strange day in all sorts of ways. Meg and I had a delayed start for our walk down into Bromsgrove but as we went this morning, practically everybody we met wanted to stop and chat. Oyr Italian friend’s water problems seem to have been solved – ar at least, we think the leak has been rectified and the hole in the pavement filled in. In the park, we had a long conversation with a couple where we know each by sight. Today, we stopped for a much longer chat mainly talking about the ways in which ourselves and our families had coped with COVID over the months. We concurred that those of who live fairly near the park have had a pretty good COVID as we have had the opportunities of a good walk, a chat with friends and acquaintances and of course lungfulls of generally fresh air and the changing vista of the park to admire. After our extended park stay, we popped into town to collect our newspaper, went to an ATM to take out a bit more cash and finally called in at Waitrose so that we could replenish supplies of tea and milk before I go shopping in the morning (visit of our shopping trip to Waitrose delated by a day this week).  As we walked up the hill to get home, we happened to pass one of our neighbours who lives just around the corner and whose husband acts as one of the marshalls in the Artrix Arts Centre which, here in Bromsgrove, has been re-purposed as a vaccination cntre capable of handling up to 2,000 vaccinations a day when fully manned. We were informed that the centre had plenty of vaccine and if we wanted to receive our booster vaccines, all we needed to do was to get ourselves down there. So after we had a rather thrown-together lunch, we got ourselves down to the Artrix to get our boosters.We had taken our NHS numbers with us (most useful of all) as well proof on our phones of our first two vaccinations and we were soon located on the system and received our jabs without further ado. We were mildly surprised to be getting the Pfizer vaccine as out first two vccinations were Astra-Zeneca – nonetheless, I think I have read (somewhere) that giving separate vaccines helps the immune system to produce a better response  than a single vaccine. As we were last vaccinated last April, it is probable that our immune reponse might have lowered somewhat so we were pleased to get our booster way before the autumn cold gives the cold viruses (of all types) a field day.

Late on this afternoon, we thought we would FaceTime my sister who lives in Yorkshire. The news from Yorkshire was all a little depressing. My brother-in-law has suffered from prostatic cancer for some years but this has now migrated to his spine and it is severely impairing his mobility which is now almost zero.  Needless to say, he has been getting depressed by all of this and its sequelae but a wheelchair was delivered this afternoon. On the strength of this, one of my brother-in-law’s sons was pushing him out to a local pub (or at least a place where alcohol is served) so it looked as though he might drink his first pint for many a long month. The news from the rest of the famnily was a little grim as well. My niece has been infected with COVID (probably by one of the pupils in the school in which she works) and has infected her husband and daughter so the three of them have been coping with all of this for the past week or so. We always knew that schools were massive reservoirs of infection but the government has kep on insisting that they are ‘safe’ (perhaps for other pupils but not for the staff who work in them) Tomorrow, I must get into contact with them and get all of their news from the horse’s mouth as it were. 

Now that the Conservative party conference is over, three particular features remain in the memory. The first of these is that the whole of Johnsonian conference speech was devoted to what has been termed ‘blusterism’ where the speech was full of rhetorical  announcements about a glorious future but no indication how we are to get there. The second feature is many of the business community (and even some on the Conservative right) are labelling Boris Johnson as economically illiterate and doubt that many of the ‘sunlit uplands’ might actually arrive. And thirdly, there are a whole series of absolutely massive problems building up (massive rise in gas prices as well as council taxes, cut in Universal Credit, possibility of rampant inflation and this is before we even start to factor in the results of Brexit unwinding).To these, the government appears blind with no policies to speak of at all (but they are still ahead of Labour in the opinion polls)

Last night, I thought I would hunt around in the ‘pending’ tray in my study for my letter of appointment for the routine CT scan which I am going to have on Saturday in one of the local hospitals/treatment centres. As it happens, Bromsgrove is in the middle of a triangle of hospitals and for any procedures, investigations or indeed anything more serious one can be sent either to the Alexander hospital in Redditch, Worcester Royal (in Worcester) or sometimes a treatment centre (a downgraded hospital) in Kidderminster. As patients, we are well used to shuttling round between any of the three centres as we are approximately equidistant for each. The staff also get shuffled around and by all accounts the staff actively dislike this arrangement – but they have hardly any choice. The point of this story is that I discovered my letter of appointment for my scan on Saturday but also discovered, almost completely by accident, a routine urology appointment for today, Wednesday, at 10.0am in the morning. This appointment letter was sent to me in August and had somehow evaded my normal system where hospital appointments get marked up on the calendar and on our house ‘planning board’. When I arrived at the hospital this morning, the car parking although free was an absolute nightmare. Every single space allocated for patients was already taken and we were directed to an overspill  carpark, itself an overspill from a staff carpark and seemingly hundreds of yards away from the main hospital. The hospital appointment itself was a breeze as there were no other outpatients around and the whole waiting area resembled the ‘Marie Celeste‘.  I was seen by a nurse practitioner who was very chatty and informative and she arranged a further (routine) MRI scan for me which might take weeks to run through the system. She performed a little diagnostic test on me to reassure each other that all was well and then I was sent on my way, having given a blood sample en route. When I got home, the weather was really set fair and so I made up a flask of coffee and Meg and I made for the local park (as per usual) On our way down, we bumped into our Italian friend who had reported some gurgling water noises to the local water authority and they had turned up, dug a hole in the pavement and presumably identified the source of the problem which no doubt they were going to fix eventually (leaving a hole in the pavement in the meantime) We didn’t actually go directly to the park but called in at Waitrose to pick up a few things of which we were running short before our main shop-up at the end of the week. Finally, we headed for home and prepared a chicken meal for ourselves.

The news channels this afternoon were very much taken up with Boris Johnson’s address to the Conservative party Conference. This was an extraordinary affair to put it mildly. The speech as a whole was full of (not very funny) jokes and typical Johnsonian bluff and bluster. It was hard to discern any acual policy announcements and the whole ‘performance’ was designed only to entertain the party faithful. However, he did manage some digs at his predecessors (Cameron and May) by referring to ‘decades of drift and dither‘ and it is evident that Johnson is intent on painting a big picture (bereft of any detail) of ‘a high wage, high productivity, low immigration’ future for the UK. You would not imagine, though, that we were living in times when we were queueing for petrol, thousands of pigs were being slaughtered because there are not enough workers to process the carcasses in the abattoirs, the Universal Credit was being cut by £20 a week and gas prices were spiking again. Of course, all of these problems are just being dismissed as ‘transitional problems’ whilst we progress towards a  fully  post-Brexit economy. In circumstances like this, I always look forward to the analyses on Newsnight on BBC2 each night – as this is when serious analysis does get undertaken of the day’s political events and some detailed questionning can take place.

The other political mantra which is being constantly heard is the philosophy/politics of ‘levelling up’ and now we even a Minstry with the words ‘levelling up’ in its title.The big trouble here is that hardly anyone knows what ‘levelling up’ is meant to be! I think I can be pretty certain that I know what it will NOT be – which is a massive redistribution of income and wealth and life chances across the country. This would imply that the Tories are committed to the abolition of all social class, ethnic and regional differences across the whole of the country which is not going to happen. Instead, it is a rather innocuous soundbite which sounds good but is  essentially meaningless. Eventually, some more money might be pushed in the direction of (Tory) local authorities which might be enough to prove that some regional inequalities have been ironed out but I suspect that like other meaningless slogans which means all things to all men it will eventually disappear.

Last night we heard it raining cats and dogs during the evening and the weather was really gloomy this morning with a constant threat of rain all morning. We understand that the weather may improve lightly from mid-week onwards but, in the meantime, we have to content ourselves with living through these dreary days. But to lighten our gloom, we got a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend whon we arranged to meet in Waitrose. The last time I was in our local building society, they had a little table with a few donated books upon it for which you asked to donate £1 to a local hospice. On the table, I discovered a copy of a book which I already own by a science journalist,Ben Goldacre called ‘Bad Science’  According to the publisher’s blurb:

“Ben Goldacre’s wise and witty bestseller, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, lifts the lid on quack doctors, flaky statistics, scaremongering journalists and evil pharmaceutical corporations” 

I bought this especially with my University of Bimingham friend in mind and was more than happy to give it to him when we met for a coffee.We spent a happy half hour or so together before I had to go shopping for a few provisions in the Waitrose store itself, before departing by car in order to get home promptly. I then put on my tracksuit bottoms and gather up a few things before I set off for my Pilates class (as I do every Tuesday) at 12.40 prompt.  The Pilates session lived up to its usual promise although ‘as a treat’ we are allowed to have a few minutes ‘relaxation’ at the end of the session in Week 6. As I generally fall almost completely asleep during this relaxation period, there is a running joke that the quality of the Pilates teacher is always to be judged by how quickly they can send me asleep. My other class members swear that I always end up snoring but I think this is a leg-pull as a part of me is still conscious even though I  was well on the way to being fast asleep. When we got home, I cooked some crispy cod fish fingers, just bought at Waitrose, which I attempted to microwave. I must then confess to cooking the worst meal of my 54 years of married life. The crispy cod fingers were as hard as iron – in fact, so hard that  knife could not possibly cut through them.  Even raising them to one’s lips and attempting to eat them like sausages was not much better as we were in danger of cracking our teeth into little bits were we to persist. So eventually, all of these wonderful cod fingers were consigned to the bin before we did any damge to our dentition or our gastrointestinal tracts.

We always have a bit of a foreshortened afternoon on a Tuesday and in no time it was 5.00pm. This is the time of the week when we usually FaceTime our ex-Waitrose friends and we have a general natter about the things that have happened to us in the last week. We detailed the way in which we had driven 110 miles and achieved 55mpg on our journey up to Lancashire about which we feel immensely proud.

One of the stories hitting the headlines tomorrow is the fact that healthy well-tended pigs are being sent to slaughter and then dumped – all because there are not enough staff in the abbattoirs to process the carcases. After Brexit, many of the workers from eastern europe as well as elsewhere have returned home leaving the UK 20% short of staff. So far today, 600 pigs have been slaughtered and then dumped but there are fears that this figure could rise to as many as 150,000 in the weeks ahead. Many of those responsible for the rearing of the pigs are said to be in tears at this needless slaughter. Whereas temporary visas have been offered in the case of HGV drivers and poultry processing workers, this facility has not been offered to those in the pig industry. The official government line on all of this is that we should expect, post Brexit, some transitional problems as we progress from a low wage, immigration-fuelled economy to a high wage, indigenous work force. As it is the Conservative party conference in Manchester at the moment and the convention centre is buzzing with journalists, there is a lot of oppotunity to question ministers over these economic transitions. One particular line of questioning (I am think of Beth Rigby interviewing Boris Johnson) is to ask ‘Where is the plan‘ for this transition given that Brexit itself was six years ago now. It is becomingly increasing clear that there really is no plan at all and the governnment are just ‘muddling along’ The latest attempt to recruit extra HGV drivers from continental Europe has yielded 127 drivers so far.

Today we had to make a fairly early start because we had a routine appointment at the dentist. Actually, we have a six-monthly appointment wiuth the dentist ‘proper’ as it were and a six-monthly appointmnt with the dental hygienist who we have been to for years and we lag one by three months compared with the other. This arrangement actually works extremely well because it means that our mouths, gums and teeth get looked at every three months rather than every six and any incipient problems can be nipped in the bud. This actually happened to me today as one of my fillings had developed a bit of a rough edge and the hygienist was able to ‘burr’ it down for me (it sound a bit less agressive than ‘file’ it down but the result is the same). Afterwards, I spent the morning helping our son sort out a communications problem he was having with his phones and we think at the end of the morning we are nearer to a resolution of the problem. Then we had a lunch of chicken thighs which we bought as part of a pack last Thursday in lieu of a joint.

In the afternoon, Meg and I spent a certain amount of time sorting out some of the contents of our (storage) chest of drawers in our bedroom. Over the course of a few years, things have got a little jumbled and out of place so we spent the afternoon having a fairly good sort out. In the fairly near future, we intend to have a much more comprehensive sort out  and this will involove being ruthless about the things that have not been worn for a few years which need either to be salvaged, donated to a charity shop or even thrown away. Some things, of course, never get thrown away – I have tried to persuade the women of the household never to throw away used tights, as once washed of course, they make magnificent ties for things like stray branches on errant trees and bushes in the garden. The thing about tights is that not only is the material strong particularly when twisted but there is just a little bit of ‘give’ which can mean that shrubs, trees and particularly rose bushes do not get damaged in the process.

This afternoon, we watched, in snatches, some of the Conservative party conference (which I observe wih a kind of fascinated horror) Today was almost a master class in the art of dissimulation on the part of the Chacellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak. Several ‘messages’ were being sent out, seemingly woven like a tapestry into the same narrative, namely – I believe in fiscal responsibility as do all of you (= public spending will now be cut where possible), I do not intend to raise taxes but refuse to rule them out, spending will be kept severely limited (except just before the next election) even though this policy as espoused by George Osborne bore down most heavily upon the already poor, I am a true Brexiteer but I deny that Brexit has anything to do with current crises, I swear complete loyalty to Boris Johnson but know how to distance myself from ‘Uncontrolled spending pledges’ which are ‘Un-Conservative’. Absolutely all of this is nothing to do with the current problems that the country faces but absolutely everything to do with Rishi Sunak positioning himself as the darling of the Tory grassroots so that as as soon as Boris Johnson makes the most enormous gaffe and may (nearly) lose the next election, so a new leader is ready and waiting in the Conservative wings, ready to take over at a moment’s notice. 

Another political story tonight is the so-called ‘Pandora papers’  (named after Pandora’s Box of Greek mythology).  The Sky website reports:

The secret wealth and dealings of world leaders, politicians and billionaires has been exposed in one of the biggest leaks of financial documents. Some 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 public officials are featured in the files from offshore companies, dubbed the Pandora Papers. They reveal the King of Jordan secretly amassed £70m of UK and US property. They also show how ex-UK PM Tony Blair and his wife saved £312,000 in stamp duty when they bought a London office. The couple bought an offshore firm that owned the building.

Today has been the most marvellous day. We knew that today was going to be a bit of a special day not only because it was Meg’s 75th birthday but it was also the day when we had plans to go ‘up north’ to Bolton to see Meg’s cousin (who we had not seen for decades) and her daughter who we think we have not seen since she was 3 years old (we are now half a century on) We set an alarm for 6.00am and leapt out of bed to make an early start. As a birthday present for Meg, I had ordered a dressing gown from John Lewis which had been delivered to our local Waitrose down the road. I brought this present up to the bedroom together with Meg’s early morning cup of tea and she tried on the dressing gown for size. As it happens,it was perfect size and one of John Lewis‘ best sellers and she was delighted to try it on and then to wear it. After we had had a ‘quickie’ breakfast, I walked down into town to collect our copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ and then we had a schedule for the journey this morning. I remembered from the fuel crisis of the 1970’s that we needed to be very economical with the use of the accelerator and the best wasy to achieve this was to drive either in stockinged feet or in slippers. I decided to drive in a pair of old slippers and I figured out that as the  distance of the journey was about 110 miles, I should allow for two hours actual driving time. I then suspected that I would have to queue for anything up to an hour at one or more petrol stations to top up before the return journey. Then I had allocated ½ hour for a ‘pit stop’ probably on the motorrway and then another ½ hour for ‘getting lost’ or ‘fishing about’ time – some 4 hours in total.   But .. the best laid plans of mice and men! The weather turned out to be a beautiful day for motoring and we kept to a steady 60-65 all the way up the M5, M6 and M61. The rest of the traffic seemed to be moderating their speed somewhat so we were not much slower than fellow motorists. We arrived in the vicinity of our destination address in Bolton and about a mile short of it, saw a huge Tesco store wih its own petrol station. We swept into it and filled up to the brim ready for the journey back. As I was paying the cashier, I mentioned the steps I had taken to conserve fuel and shot me a glance as though I was slightly mad. When I enquired about the availability of fuel in the Tresco store, I was told that they had plenty of fuel and in effect was told ‘Fuel crisis?  What fuel crisis?’ As a result of my economising efforts, I discovered that I had used 9 litres of fuel (practically 2 gallons) and had travelled some 110 miles so I achieved a mpg of 55mpg which I don’t think I ever achieved before (and probably never will again) in a conventional petrol driven car.

So we arrived at the house of the cousin’s daughter and her husband an hour and a half earlier and had to make our profound apologies for arriving so early (but we had taken along some fizzy and pot plants with which to appease the household gods) Then we spent most of the next 4-5 hours catching up on family matters, filling in some family back history, talking about our current family members and generally making up for decades of neglect. The one question to which we needed an answer was follows. Meg’s family was rooted in the Potteries and we are in contact with several members of one branch of the family on Meg’s mother’s side. We are also in contact with a similar number  of family members from the branch of the family on Meg’s father’s side. What we did not know was to extent these two branches of the family were cognizant of the other – whilst they knew of each other and might have met fleetingly at weddings and the like, how much did they actually know each other?  The answer as it turned out was – not much! So after the most enjoyable of meals, sharing of family photos, stories and reminiscences , it was time to head for home. As we were not now having to super-careful of our fuel supplies we headed for home not bothering to keep our speed particularly low but kept up with the rest of the traffic and so we got home in a couple of hours. To complete our pleasure for the day, we watched a reprise on BBC4 of the life of the famous cellist, Jacquline du Pré which we had seen once before but was always worth worth a second viewing.

Today when we woke up, it was a constant drizzle and so it persisted all day. So whatever else we were going to do, we knew that our normal walk was probably out of the question. Today is very much ‘the day before the day afterwards’ because tomorrow is going to be our ‘big trip’ up to Bolton in Lancashire to see Meg’s cousing and her daughter. In preparation for this, we called in at our local Waitrose in order to buy a couple of pot plants for the members of our family tomorrow. This having been done, I whizzed off into town in order to replenish our supplies of money – I always feel as tough I need a certain modicum of cash with me before a long trip. Having done our errands, we then made for the park where we hoped we might bump into our University of Birmingham friend even though it was raining quite hard. We surveyed the distant benches (and realised they were unoccupied) and glanced towards the bandstand, which was similarly unoccupied. At this, we decided to call it a day and we drove home and had our prepared elevenses at home instead of shivering on a cold, rainy park bench. We made this do for our lunch as well as, by now, it was rather late in the day. 

Last night at one minute past midnight was the time of the month when the results of the latest Premium Bonds draw were to be publicised. However, we had a rather frustrating time as the updated NS&I app which gives you notification of how you have (or have not) won that month was not behaving itself. This app has worked quite well over the months but not on this occasion. They had updated the app and all that it indicated was that ‘Results are not yet Available’ (although we had other indications that they might be). Eventually, we went onto the website and discovered that, between us, we had actually won £75.00 (which is rather nice as we had had a run of fallow months recently so we thought it was about time that our luck changed) We are checking the amount of prizes we have won and what kind of interest that would represent and after our latest winnings, I calculate that our putative interest rate works out at 1.32% which is a lot better than the 0.5% which all of the building societies seem to be offering at the moment.

After lunch, Meg and I had a rather lazy afternoon and decided to hop through the TV channels to see if anything attracted our attention. We settled on the ‘Yesterday’ Channel which was showing a whole series of Michael Portillo’s Great Railway Journeys. The minute we tuned to tuned into the channel, they happened to showing views of Harrogate which was interesting for me as I was brought up in that town and lived there from the age of 4 until I was about 18. Harrogate is a pleasant town in which to live (and many of the cosmopolitans from Leeds have decided to settle there) so we found the travelogue quite interesting – and carried on watching the rest of the programme (which detailed the journey by rail fom Hull to Llandudno in North Wales). My most abiding memories of Harrogate were working in the Old Swan Hotel Harrogate which in many ways was a financial lifeline for me and I worked there from 1960 until 1964 alhough, in truth, it seemed a lot longer than that) The stratification structure of a large 4-star hotel is quite fscinating. I started washing dishes at 2s 6d an hour (12½p an hour) and then progressed onto washing silver which was paid at the rate of 15p an hour. For this, I progressed onto washing dishes for the bar (at 20p an hour) and finally became an (underage) barman at 25p an hour. As well as doing these various jobs, I also worked as a porter (during the day to carry the suitcases of coachloads of American tourists to their rooms), and a night-time porter (one of my duties was to hoover the vast expanse of the ballroom) In addition, as a ‘trusty’ I wa often detailed to set up a temporary bar and this involved getting the stock and the glasses, organising a float, setting up a temporary bar and then getting the cash back into the system  and the stock returned to its proper home (and I was only 17-18 at the time).

In preparation for tomorrow, I have hunted out a pair of new slippers that I had in stock and I am going to use my ‘old’pair as a pair of really light driving shoes – all of this in an attempt to save fuel. The extreme of this policy, of course, is to drive in one’s socks and the lighter presssure of the accelerator helps one to conserve fuel (we learnt this during the fuel crisis of the 1970’s)

Today turned out to be a very different Friday to the pattern of the last three weeks.  For a start, our domestic help texted in to inform us that her dog, a long-lived family pet, had been taken very ill in the middle of the night and they had to take the dog to an emergency all-night vet  (I did not know that such a service existed) The dog was diagnosed with a heart condition and breathing difficulties – this afternoon, I texted our domestic help to see if there was any news but have not had a reply so I am fearful that the eventual outcome may well be a sorrowful one. At 11.0 in the morning, we had been invited round to the home of our long-standing Italian friend for coffee and cakes. We were there ‘on the dot’ and spent a marvellous three hours with our friend as we had quite a lot to catch up. Our friend was mainly full of reminisciences about her late husband and we were informing her also about some of the medical difficulties that members of my family are experiencing in Yorkshire. So we left to prepare our meal of sea-bass, which is a particular treat for us each Friday and it might well be that our friend comes and joins us in a week or so’s time so that she can share some sea-bass with us. I now have the requisite casserole dish (complete with lid) to help to prepare this dish to perfection so I am hopeful I can repeat my culinary efforts and share them with friends along the way. After lunch, I walked down to collect our copy of ‘The Times‘ always held behind the counter for us by our friendly newsagent. I then popped into Waitrose to pick up a parcel (a surprise birthday present for Meg for next Sunday) and also to buy a birthday card.  I don’t know why it is but a lot of birthday cards seem to feature wine bottles, champagne bottles and the like – on the assumption that a happy birthday can only be had if you have consumed an awful lot of alcohol. This may be true for many people but there are more things to make a birthday happy and memorable than a load of booze. 

The repercussions from the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer continue apace. A counter-reaction to yesterday’s outpourings of grief and comment came form a North Yorkshire police commissioner. We were told that ‘So women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can’t be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that…. Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process, to just learn a bit about that legal process.’ To add to some of this nonsence are such bits of advice as ‘Run away! ..Hail a passing bus!… Ask the policeman if you can use his radio to radio through to his control room to confirm his identity…‘ All of these bits of advice fall into the league of things you thought you would never hear. I call to mind the advice given to foreign visitors to St Paul’s in London to enter the ‘Whispering Gallery’ and shout as loud as you can to fully appreciate the echo. Another story which I well believe to be true is that the Vatican in he 1970’s authorised the use of condoms by the use of missionary nuns who were being raped (or in danger of being raped) by young Congolese mercenaries. The oficial advice given from the Vatican is that the nuns should offer condoms to the soldiers immediately prior to their acts of rape to enquire would they please put on a condom first! I kid you not. But there is another story today which is almost as silly. All the Germans living in the UK at the moment are being written to by the UK authorities to see is any of them would like to volunteer to become a HGV driver. Apparently, any licences issued to Germans before 1997 entitled the holder to drive a small tuck up to 7.5 tonnes in weight. So even though a holder of such a licence might never have driven a HGV in their life, the UK government is asking them if they can help us out in the current fuel crisis. 

Some of the latest COVID news is either interesting (or disturbing) depending upon one’s point of view. A finding has been published that the highest rate of infection is to be found in ..secondary school  pupils.The ONS data covers the week up to 25 September, and estimates a steep rise in infections in children aged 11-15 over the last few weeks, with nearly 5% now testing positive – up from 2.8% the week before. This is a figure of 1 in 20 whereas the figure for the general population is 1 in 90. Needless to say, whenever you see secondary school children outside in the shops and streets, none of them are wearing masks (even though they are 4-5 times more infectious!)

Thursdays are the days when I traditionally used to have our weekly shop but this week, we are having to change our plans somewhat. Having used the Waitrose online and delivery service during most of the pandemic, I have started to shop in a Waitrose store in Droitwich which is about 7-8 miles distant. My new pattern involves getting to the store about one minute before the store opens so that I am often the first customer though the doors. It is ? was? an absolute delight to shop in a store like Waitrose which is absolutely deserted apart from the staff doing bits of last-minute restocking. However, today because of the fuel crisis and because we are going up to Bolton on Sunday next, I decide to have a somewhat lighter shop by patronising our very much more local, but smaller store, about ¾  mile away. This will save me some precious fuel-miles which might yet prove critical in the days ahead. So I turned up a few minutes after 8am and did a lighter shop as intended – it could be that I will get into a new pattern of a ‘lighter’ week just down the road followed by a ‘heavier’ week in the more distant store. I don’t think that I missed out anuthing important, though, even though the range of goods in the smaller store if commensurately smaller. Meg and I thought after breakfasting, unpacking the shopping and showering (a little late) we would decide whether to go into town by car on on ‘shank’s pony’ (old fashioned expression for walking!) The reason was that we wished to buy a plant as a birthday present for some of our closest friends and this might have proved a little awkward to lug home. But this had the bonus of us having a conversation in the Waitrose cafe who we remember from our pre-COVID days.

Having got home, I thought I would cook a more exotic lunch as we had some venison steaks in the freezer. For veg I decided to try an interesting combination as follows. I had previously bought some red cabbage which can be a little bland, not to say boring, so we cooked one quarter of this alongside a couple of our own cooking apples that are now ready for picking down in Mog’s Den. I put in a smidgeon of demerara sugar as well. For our second veg, I parboiled a carrot cut into small wedges, added some petits pois and then, having drained the  pan, I finished off with some oil and a bit of runny honey which is a mixure I have tried before. All in all, this was quite a good dinner although we seem to have finished of with a moungain of washing up for our pains. Just after lunch, our friend called around to deliver a little ‘prezzie’ and a card for Meg on Sunday next. As it is our friend’s birthday the day before, we ended up exchanging cards and gifts and saying that we would have a bettter get together once the weekend (and our travels) are over.

What with all of the comings and goings in the morning, we had forgotten to pick up our newspaper. So  I decided to walk into town, if only to get some eercise during the day. However, the weather was decidedly showery and blustery and walking was not a particularly pleasant experience. However, once this had been done, I ‘amused’ myself to adding to my Premium Bond selection (by running down some other savings accounts) I had entertained myself on my journey into town by doing calculations in my head how many wins I would need in the course of a year in order to match the measly 0.5% I am getting on my accounts at the moment. I am trying to convince myself that I will maximise my chances of winning a prize if I can get my Premium Bond holdings as large as possible.

The media today has been full of the sentencing of the murder of Sarah Everard, walking home in an area of London near Clapham Common. I do think it is important that society recognises and deals with the problem of violence against women but the circumstances of this case are very, very rare. A policeman had used his powers of arrest to arrest, handcuff, rape and then murder his victim. There are calls for all kinds of immediate action, one suggestion being that no policeman should ever arrest a suspect on his/her own but only when another colleague is present. When society reacts to very rare events, you sometimes get legislation with really bizarre consequences, particularly if the legislation is passed in a panic. For example, the Official Secrets Act was passed in 1911 (since repealed but going for about a century) which made it an offence to communicate any knowledge acquired as a result of one’s employment by the state. So it became an offence to communicate the colour of the walls  of the office in which you worked as all such information was deemed to be an ‘offical secret’

Today proved to be an interesting day. We knew that our routine was going to be a little bit knocked out of the ordinary because I had a ‘webinar’ organised by the Worcestershire Association of Carers from 10-12 around the theme of financial support packages. As I suspected, none of the issues that were raised in the webinar were at at relevant to Meg and myself so I spent a couple of hours sitting in front of a screen that was to all purposes completely ‘dead time’ But the facilitators had tried to fulfill their brief fully and the technology worked for all of us. The only thing that I did learn was that the Citzen’s Advice Bureau were in breach of their contract with various local authorities because they were no longer offering face-to-face contact or support which the contract (and I suppose the monies that flowed from it) specified. Hence there had been lot of argument going behind the scenes.

After the seminar was over, I walked into town on my own because I had some business on the High Street. I went to the branch office of my bank in order to bank a cheque (rare these days – but the refund from my ex fuel-supplier which was rapidly issued) I then toured one or two of the charity shops in search of a cheap belt. I need this so that I can adapt to act as a ‘tie’ between the two straps of my rucksack which have an unfortunate tendency to slip off my shoulders – this should alleviate this problem and it means that I have an arm free so that Meg can link onto me which should help to prevent any trips or falls to which Meg is now prone. I acquired a belt and also a ‘pooch’s dog collar’ from Poundland so I shall have to see which one these these proves to be the most serviceable under the cirumstances. On my way home, one of our KidderminsterRoad friends spotted me and offered me a lift home. Normally, I would have refused this, preferring to walk for the sake of the exercise but in a moment of weakness I  gratefully accepted the offer of a lift as I was running a bit late anyway.  After we had had a spot of lunch and as it was a really fine (but cold) afternoon, Meg and I made a little trip to the park to get in a little bit of our daily exercise. Rather than coffee, we consumed a bottle of iced peach tea which I just happen to have  left over from some entertaining or other. As we were now so late in the day, the population of the park had completely changed its character and according we bumped into none of the friends and acquaintances that we might have expected if our trip had been earlier on in the day.

Today we see the continuation of the coverage of the Labour Party Confrence (to be followed by the Conservative conference in a week or so) As you might expect, the Labour Party conference is rather a fractious affair which the press (and the BBC) are always eager to exploit. Personally, I do not find the Labour party conference particularly interesting as one has grown to expect a lack of consensus in a party of the left. However, it does look as though the left wing of the Labour party has been well and truly ‘put in its box’ and they have been completely out-manouvred by Keir Starmer and his immediate followers. So we are having lots of anguished cries from the left as they enter their death throes and perhaps a realisation that they will never dominate the party again as they did in the Corbyn era. The feature of the party conferences are that they are alway driven by the extremes as the activists and the delegates are always way to the left of the parliamentary party (the MPs) in the case of the Labour party and well to the right of the parliamentary party in the case of the Conservatives. I personally find  the Conservative party conferences much more fascinating affairs. This is because they are generally the party of government  and therefore the spokesman are generally ministers. It is said that many MPs and particularly ministers really fear the party conference because they have to make the most blood-curdling threats (meaningless of course) to find favour with the delegates. To do otherwise, means that it does not look as though they are in touch with their grassroots and therefore they may be liable to demotion or dismissal at the next reshuffle. At the last Conservative party conference (two years ago), it was the Brexiteers who were creating all of the running but now that Boris Johnson has an 80 seat majority and all of the Remainers in the last government were sidelined, dismissed or even thrown out of the party so the modern Tory party is an almost completely Brexit party.

Today the weather has changed into a truly autumnal pattern and one has the feeling that the last warm days of summer are behind us.  Before we left for our walk, I was involved in a financial transaction where I was decanting some small savings accounts I have with a building society into a larger ‘pot’ with which I am going to buy some National Savings and Investments (NS&I) Premium Bonds. Evidently, in this sort of operation one has to be ‘mega’ careful not to put in a wrong digit when it comes to transferring pots of money from one place to another. However, it was very satisfying to see that my various savings accounts had successfully  been transferred into my current account from which they were used to fund the purchase of a block of Premium Bonds. This is now prominently displayed in my NS&I webpage and after they have been in the system for a month, they will be eligible to be put into the ‘draw’ at the very start of November. I have also downloaded a webpage which calculates the return that you might get from a block of Premium Bonds given the ‘average’ degree of fortune (or statistical probability, I ought to say). It might well be that over a year and a half, I only just match the 0.5% which my building society accounts were yielding but I have a feeling that with a block of Premium Bonds I might better this rate, particularly if I were to have a bit of ‘beginner’s luck’. Like all of these types of ventures, you have to be a little careful getting them set up but once the system is working as intended, it should be a fairly simple job to add to this block of savings whenever I wish to in the future.

Meg and I then walked down into town and bumped into our Italian friend half way down the road. We had long promised each other a little ‘get together’ once we had got our holidaying all done and dusted so we have gratefully accepted an invitation to call around for coffee with her on Friday morning. There is so much more that close friends can say to each other in the comfort of one’s own homes rather than a snatched conversation on the street and so that is something to which we are both looking forward. When we got down to the park, we were delighted when our University of Birmingham friend turned up ‘on cue’ – we converged on the same park bench practically to the second and we always enjoy each other’s company. Then we were joined by two more mutual friends and discussed the fuel situation locally (what else?) amongst other things. Then I was just about to peel off from the group in order to go and buy a newspaper when I realised that as it was my day to go to Pilates we were going to run out of time. Accordingly, Meg and I struck off for home and I had a few minutes of time to get some of the elements of our lunch prepared, change into my tracksuit bottoms and then trot down to my Pilates session. What with holidays last week and a hospital appointment for Meg the week before, I had missed two Pilates sessions in a row so I was keen to attend this particular session and get back in the swim of things. 

This morning, we received an email from the daughter of Meg’s cousin who now lives in sheltered accommodation in Bolton, Lancashire. We have been trying to arrange a meeting for months now but lockdowns have kept intervening and we seem to have made arrangements several times over but events have always conspired to defeat us. We are hopeful that we can make a journey up to Bolton on Sunday next so it will be both a family reunion and Meg’s birthday as well. Evidently, we have to think carefully about the logistics of the trip given the scarcity of fuel situation but we are determined not to let events defeat us on another occasion. We think we can get up and down to Bolton on two thirds of a tankful of fuel if we drive carefully by motorway and maintaining a moderate speed all the way. Then we should be able to replenish our supplies next week at the local independent garage later on in the week. As we have not seen our relatives for a good decade or so we have quite a lot to catch up on. So we thought we would start off at Meg’s earliest recollections of her cousin (when they are teenagers?) and then carry a narrative forward from there, explaining our lives and work have evolved during the intervening years. Meg’s cousin had an interesting career as an opera singer in Germany (or was it Switzerland?) during the 1960’s so I am sure she has a lot of interesting stories to tell.