Today is not quite the twelfth night of Christmas but certainly the day before and the time when we had scheduled our Christmas decorations to come down. Our domestic help calls around on a Friday and as she helped us to put up the decorations a fortnight ago, we enlisted each other’s help to take them all down again. Principally, we have to ‘undress’ our silver Christmas tree and then put it and the baubles safely away. This does involve eventually accessing the loft where all of the Christmas decoration is stored in a nicely accessible time, ready for the same thing again in 50 weeks time. After the Christmas tree and other decorations were removed, we had two little cribs (one we have had for years, the other a traditional set which we bought just before Christmas) and these are now all put into away in the bottom of a wardrobe in our spare bedroom, again easily accesible for when we need them again. I always have the same rather conflicting feelings about this time of year, the first of which is a certain amount of relief that Christmas and Christmassy things have all been out away for another year. But it is also true that our hall which provided a home for the Christmas tree looks rather stark at least for a few hours once it gets restored to normality. Actually, it is not actually the case that Christmas type things are absolutely over because we still have our Epithany/Reyes Magos/Galette des Rois little party tomorrow evening with three sets of friends (plus ouselves) joining forces for a little fiesta celebrating Twelfth Night in a very continental fashion. As we had spent a fair proportion of this morning putting away our Christmas decorations, we decided just to have a quick visit down the road to the Waitrose cafeteria to pick up a newspaper and to have our morning coffee. None of our regular friends were there but we would not expect to see them there until tomorrow morning in any case. On the way down into town, I popped into my newsagents to enquire if there any details about the funeral we wish to attend on Monday. The young lad in the shop was an employee of the new owners i.e. not family, and did not know anything about the funeral arrangements. But he phoned the owner for me and I spoke with her, giving her my mobile number and requesting to be kept informed about what time the funeral was due to be.

Over the past four days, ITV has been screening a docudrama entitled ‘Mr. Bates vs.the Post Office’ illustrating in 4 one hour episodes one of the biggest scandals and miscarriages of justice in modern times. Basically, the Post Office introduced a new computer system called ‘Horizon‘ which was not fit for purpose and when shortfalls were wrongly identified by the system, the sub postmasters had to make up the deficit from their own savings. This caused many of them to lose their business, their houses and resulted in a plethora of wrongful convictions and some suicides. After the series of four programmes had been transmitted, ITV published a documentary (rather than a docudrama) to show ‘the real story’ This was shown last night but I thought it would be good idea if Meg and myself could view this on ITVX this afternoon. But it was not yet listed on the schedules so Meg and I started to watch the final and concluding episode, first shown last night. But then the doorbell rang and it was our hairdresser calling round for a routine appointment. Although we had her on our planning board and I reminded Meg that she would along this aftenoon, we both forgot that she was coming. She has many clients of a similar age and health status to ourselves and we always receive sympathetic treatment from her hands.

One little job which Meg and I can do together relates to the Christmas cards we have received over the festive season. We used to throw them away quite quickly but this year we have retained them all and we think that a re-reading of the various bits of family news would be a pleasant task for the days ahead. One thing that we often do at this time of year is to work out which relatives and friends we wish to see and in which order. Then we need to make a little planning calendar so that we can schedule who we go and visit in the weeks to come. Of course, we are assuming that the weather will continue to be kind to us but I am always sustained by the fact that the days are getting longer by a smidgeon every day. But the factor that may prove problems for us in seeing friends and relatives is the local flooding situation. Worcestershire and Gloucestershire seem to be particularly prone to flooding and although some local flood defences are in place, these are often tested to (and sometimes over) the limit. To illustrate this, a town quite near to us, Bewdley, is very prone to flooding and a TV report showed some local residents who where arguing that an extra course of bricks (or even two) on the local flood defences could make a dramatic difference for them.

Thursday is my shopping day so a different routine swings into action. I make sure that Meg is up, washed and dressed before I leave for the supermarket. Then my son sits with Meg and works at my little Music Lounge work station until I return which is generally an hour and twenty minutes later. Today, everything went beautifully as planned and then I started to unpack the shopping unil the carer arrives, which she does on a Thursday later in the morning and I have a chance to step forth and buy the things unavailable in my local food supermarket. The carer who calls on a Thursday comes originally from Peru so we take the opportunity of a few exchanges of words in Spanish and explanation of the type of customs e.g. asssociated with the 6th of September which is ‘Epiphany’ in the UK but ‘Reyes Magos’ in the Hispanic world. What I do not know is to what extent Meg can remember the Spanish in which she used to be so fluent but I hope that the carer from Peru might help to unlock a bit of it for her. After we had a little chat, I went on the road to buy some cosmetics and bits-and-bobs. Of course, I cannot resist the temptation of popping into some of the charity shops of which there are half a dozen along the Bromsgrove High Street and bought some cosmetics of which we were in need. But I also acquired two further little items both of which took my fancy and were pretty good finds under the circumstances. One was a small cushion the colours of which perfectly match the new leather armchair which I bought for myself just before Christmas so this has been claimed as my own. But the second was a flower vase with quite an ornate peacock design on it and I surmised that it must have been applied by a transfer process as there is no way that it could have been handpainted given the level of detail upon it. I thought that it looked vaguely reminiscient of a vase that we already own and, although they are of somewhat different different designs, it is evident from studying the peacock transfer that they must have come out of the same stable and therefore from the same pottery. There is no hallmark associated with it and if there were to be one, this would have increased the value tremendously. But as things stand, they form a quasi-matching pair and I am left to marvel at the coincidence of finding a match like this and, of course, if we were in closer contact with any of our relatives who were steeped in the history of designs from the English potteries, then we may have discovered some chapter-and-verse about their provenance. Suffice it to say that for the incredibly low price for which I picked up these pieces (i.e. less than my unit of currency which is the price of one cup of coffee) these pieces are mass produced and pleasant enough without ever being labelled as valuable. I might just do a ‘Google Images’ search, though, later on tonight which might thrown some lights on the history and provence of the design.

I got home at midday and the specialist nurse who had been booked to come round and give some advice on Meg’s condition was already at the house, having arrived early. She was moderately helpful and may be instrumental in getting some additional medication to help things along. Of course, one does not expect any dramatic breakthroughs in terms of medication or practical aids at this stage but it is generally a case of discussing ‘tweaks’ and working out what works in any particular case. At least, I know she is available if I need some more specialist help later on and it is always a good idea to be able to put a name to a face under these circumstances.

There are some developments on the political front today as Rishi Sunak has announced there will ‘probably’ be an election later on in the year, pointing to an autumn poll. From the Tory point of view, this allows for some huge tax handouts a.k.a. known as ‘election bribes’ to be handed out in the Spring budget and for the electorate to feel the benefit of these as they work their way through the economy. In addition, there is always the ‘something might turn up’ factor and I am always reminded that Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular prime minister of all time just before the Falklands invasion which came as a godsend to her. Inmediately, after the successful re-capture of the Falklands (Malvinas to my Hispanic friends) her popularity rating soared to new heights and she won a huge election victory shortly on the back of this military triumph. Although the Labour Party is massively, and consistently, ahead in the opinion polls, I fear that this election may one of the dirtiest ever to be fought in British politics. Also the malign effect of misapplied AI (Artifical Intelligence) and the prominence given to fake news, I would not be surprised if the Tories managed to pull back quite a bit of lost ground.

Today was quite a sad day for Meg and myself. As the Methodist Centre is not back into full operation until next week, we decided to call in at our favourite cafe in Droitwich. On the way there, I made a detour through the town to see if my usual newsagent had reopened. The shop was being prepared by an Asian female and although she had no newspapers in stock today, I informed her that Saad (our newsagent) used to keep a copy of ‘The Times‘ behind the counter for me to ensure that I could be assured of my copy. But I was informed that the elderly newsagent had died some two weeks before which came as quite a shock to me. I knew that he was suffering from a very serious lung condition but my reading about this condition on the web indicated that his life expectancy might be between 6-12 months and certainly not the week or so. I think that he was in his 80’s and was certainly working until a week or so before his death and I can’t imagine how distraught his now widow must feel. The funeral is to be next Monday and although I have no other details as yet and a possible clash of commitments, I am going to see if we can probably attend the funeral. So then we progressed onto Droitwich with heavy hearts, and then parked quite easily, picked up a copy of our newspaper and made our way to the cafe where we indulged in our usual fare (a pot of tea and a huge bacon butty between us) After this, we thought we would progress down into town and visit some of the charity shops we had not frequented for a month or so now. I wanted just a simple item which was a coffee or teatray on which we could rest our refreshments whilst sitting together on new settee. In the event, I did not find exactly what I wanted but ‘en passant’ I found a smart top for Meg which she can try on in the morning. We noticed, as we were passing by, that Poundland had taken over the old Wilko store and we had a quick whizz around. I have the feeling that Poundland probably took over a lot of the Wilko stock or at least suppliers because the store did not look too far removed from its precessor. We availed ourselves of a melamine coffee tray into which we fitted a heavy glass display dish and the two items complemented each other well and will serve our intended purpose very well. As we were walking through Droitwich, we were hailed by a person who knew us from our park meandering days and it transpired that she worked locally and had probably seen us emerge from the cafe. So we had a pleasant chat about times past and we indicated to her that we did not venture forth into the park as much as we used to do when Meg was a lot more mobile than she is now. When we got home, we had to race around and make a rather delayed lunch but this was not too difficult as all we had to do after putting the quiche into the oven was to prepare some runner beans and tomatoes to make the meal complete.

Further news is now emerging about the terrible aircraft fire in a Tokyo airport yesterday. But first, we have to say that it was little short of miraculous that the entire passenger and crew list of 379 were safely got out of the burning plane although there are a small number of injuries as people slid down the exit chutes. There is some chatter that Japanese society, which is incredibly ordered and compliant, probably helped to save the lives of everybody on board and one can only speculate that a planeload of Brits would have probably been a lot more argumentative with a consequent loss of life. It now appears that the light aircraft that collided with the Airbus was supposed to be in a holding area and had not been cleared for take-off i.e. they should not have been on the main runway at all. The pilot of the small fixed wing is very badly injured and all of the rest of his crew lost their lives.

Last night, I wondered if any of the radios upon which I used to listen to ClassicFM and had been rendered obsolete with the ClassicFM upgrade from DAB to DAB+ were at all capable of salvation. One radio cannot receive DAB+ and does not appear to have an FM mode so it will have to be junked. But in every other case, I have managed to access the FM mode upon which ClassicFM is still transmitted and the quality is surprisingly good given the fact that FM is so susceptible to background hiss and what-have-you. But a bit of experientation and fiddling with aerials has produced surprisingly good results. The reason this had not been discovered before is that if you have a DAB radio and one can access all one’s favourite stations, then there has never been a reason, or an incentive, to access the FM mode which some DAB radios still possess. So that makes me quite a happy bunny because I am now in the position of having practically of the functionality and the ease of access to ClassicFM which look so threatened only a day or so ago.

So today is the day when we are starting to return to a degree of normality after the Christmas and New Year break. We are still slightly in the holiday break, however, as I suspect that it will be next Monday before things return to ‘normal normal’ as it were. Today when it started (i.e. just after midnight) is when the ClassicFM switch over from DAB to DAB+ was due to take place and when I was up in the night, I discovered the worst and the best. To start with the worst first, four of my Pure Radios in various locations failed to received DAB+ plus one of my recently acquired Panasonic mini-systems. But there was some better news in that practically all cases, there was a proximate source that received ClassicFM that would serve the purpose in that particular location. But the much better news was that in each of the three locations that are in almost constant use (in order of priority, the bedroom, then the kitchen and then our en-suite shower room), I had already had DAB+ so continued reception was assured. The location about which I was most relieved was our bedtime radio because I rely upon this, for for Meg and myself, to program this so that it switched off after a specified period of time and I have learnt to adjust the volumes to be just about audible if you want to listen but sufficiently quiet to drift off to sleep as well. So at the end of the day, the changeover which could have spelled a lot of disruption was managed to give me the functionality that I had previously enjoyed. Today was the day when the ‘early morning’ carers were not scheduled to call so we slept in for a little (but I had been up in the middle of the night doing some messing about with my DAB/DAB+ radio receivers) It was raining cats and dogs this morning but, nonetheless, after we had witnessed the terrible sight of the Japanese airliner ablaze across the whole of its fusilage in a Tokyo airport, Meg and I ventured forth to Waitrose. This really was as quiet as the grave but two of our friends turned up whom we were heartily glad to see and we had our customary chat and a laugh. As it turned out, we were the sole cafeteria clients for the morning insofar as I could tell.

Today was the day when I should have gone to undertake my Pilates session but Meg was feeling particularly fragile and it really was a 50:50 call whether I should go and risk Meg having a stressful hour and a half plus with a carer or stay with her for the morning. The carer was someone we had not met before so we decided to let her stay and make Meg’s acquaintance (useful for futher occasions?) and have an extended chat with her. As she was of Pakistani origin, I managed to fill a good hour with various stories, the first of which was the wedding gifts which the mother of our Sri Lankan flatmate bestowed upon us when we were married in 1967 (a tea chest of tea, a sari shot through with silver thread and a 1lb tin of saffron!) We also intimated some of our experiences whilst we worked at Leicester Polytechnic of which one was the extended story, absolutely with no hint of exaggeration, as to how Meg had collaborated with the ‘secret’ part of the British state (police, border agencies) to smuggle a Muslim student out of the country with new papers in order to avoid an arranged marriage. Our student finished off, via my mother in Leeds, to get to a sympathetic aunt in Copenhagen. The sequel to this story is that after the successful transit out of the country, the police advised us to take a different route home each day for about a fortnight so that the mentally disturbed father, the possessor of several legal firearms, did not smell a rat and come after us. I must admit there are not many stories that lecturers in Higher Education could give that parallel this one.

Meg and I then had our normal Tuesday lunch day meal of fishcakes and easily cooked vegetables. After our afternoon cup of tea which we conventionally take after the clock has struck 4.00pm, Meg sat on our new two-seater settee and I put on a concert on Amazon Prime of choral performances that we have often played before but of which we never tire and always brings solace to the weary soul. I was also delighted to have improvised a little to provide Meg with a little table for her afternoon cup of tea. Instead of buying another table and perhaps adding to the clutter, I took a little melamine tray which I keep for the purpose inside one of our piano stools adjacent to the settee and this swings into purpose just when required and is easy to put away again. Tomorrow is the day when we would normally go the Methodist Centre for a coffee but one of our friends told us this morning that it was not opening this week so we may well have to make other plans for the morn. Droitwich is a possibility if the road is not flooded, which it might well be.

So here we are at the start of a new year. I stayed up last night in order to see in the New Year and sent off various ‘Happy New Year’ messages from my iphone contact list. It always strikes me as odd that the first thing one does in a new year is to consume alcohol but I did treat myself to a thimble sized glass of a single malt. I only watched a few minutes of the fireworks and got myself off to bed at the earliest opportunity. Yesterday afternoon, Meg and I watched ‘The Jungle Book’ in which the animation was superb. I only mention this because I have an early memory of being read portions of this book. My mother always had a life long interest in scouting and, indeed, I have a photograph of her with a cast of hundreds in a meeting of all of the local scouts in Hull when she must have been about 18. What her role was in this gathering, I am afraid is lost in the mists of time. But my mother, when working as a local government officer and before she went to train to be a teacher, ran the local Cub pack and, at the age of eight or nine, was automatically part of this cub pack. But I have quite vivid memories of my mother sitting the cubs in a circle round a make-believe campfire (actually, just a candle room on a block of wood in an unlit basement room) whilst she read out portions of ‘The Jungle Book’ – in the Rudyard Kipling terminology, evidently my mother was ‘Akela’. My memories consist of this group of young cub scouts listening with rapt attention and in absolute silence whilst my mother each week would read out a portion of ‘The Jungle Book’. I am sure the experience of running a cub pack would have served her in good stead when she applied at a mature age to undertake teacher training in the 1950’s when it was almost unheard of for mature students to enter a training college.

We always thought that today was going to be an ‘itsy-bitsy’ kind of day because one never knows which shops are open and which closed. The day started off with clear skies (although this was not to last) so we thought that a trip to the park would not be unpleasant so we made up a flask of coffee and determined to go there, after we had made a trip to a local garage in order to pick up a copy of our daily newspaper. I had assumed Waitrose would be closed but as we whizzed past, it appeared to be open so we changed our plans and parked the car. But as I was getting the car parking ticket, one of the store assistants who knows me well came dashing out to inform me that the cafeteria part of Waitrose was not open this morning. So I collected my newspaper and we then journeyed on to the park as was our original intention. We had our coffee and then some nibbles and then started out for home as we knew that during most of the day, the ‘Drama’ channel was going to screen several episodes, end-to-end, of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’. But we were just approaching our car when we bumped into a couple of very old park friends with whom we get on tremendously well and with whom we have been to have lunch on several occasions in the past year. We quickly caught up on each other’s news but by this stage, Meg was gettiung a little chilled in her wheelchair so we raced home and got ourselves tuned into the Jane Austen of which we had only missed a few minutes.

The next day or so is going to prove interesting in my ‘audio’ life. The explanation for this is that Meg and I have become habitual listeners to ClassicFM and we have several radios, typically purchased for very reasonable sums, on eBay and the like, in many rooms of the house. But ClassicFM have decided that they are going to enhance the listening experience of their listeners by upgrading their transmitted signal to DAB+ and hence are turning off the unenhanced DAB signal. The upshot of all of this is that many of our radios will not now receive ClassicFM amd therefore not fulfil the purpose for which they were principally bought. The ‘switch over’ date is either tomorrow of Wednesday but I am not quite sure when. When that happens, it will bve a case of trial and error to see which radios will receive the enhanced DAB+ signal and which will not. An alternative is to switch to the FM signal which in some parts of the house (and some audio units) produces a more than tolerable listening experience but others give you the terrible FM ‘hiss’ In our particular house, I have discovered that the horizontal positioning of an antenna often, but not invariably, gives better results but there is quite a degree of unpredictability, as well as trial and error involved in the whole process. So when the changeover actually occurs (and it may for 6.00am on Wednesday but ClassicFM are being a bit coy about this) I shall have to go around the house and consider my options on a case by case basis.

Meg and I slept in for a little while this morning which is surely a good thing. By the time we had got ourselves up and ready for breakfast, it was time for the Lorna Kuennsberg show except that in this holiday season, it was not being aired. So we made do with the Sky News rolling news program until our Eucharistic Minister called round at 9.45. We were delighted to see her and thanked her very much for the Christmas present which was the book of ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ upon which the delightful cartoon (shown again on Christmas day) was based. We exchanged news of each other’s Christmas activities and I also took the opportunities to discover what she knew about the various happenings in our local church. During the course of her visit, we received a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend and we agreed to meet in the Waitrose cafeteria later on that morning. As we entered the store, we bumped into our Irish friend and our Italian friend – so big hugs all round with two of my favourite female friends. We had our coffee and a nice chat with our University of Birmingham friend and then the time came for us to part but we took the opportunity to buy some provisions in the store before we left. Then it was a case of getting home and cooking our Sunday lunch which was mainly a case of using up provisions that we already had in stock. But whilst in the store this morning, I took the opportunity to buy some reduced chorizo flavoured sausages which will provide quite a treat for us tomorrow. We have contemplating how best we might spend the morning tomorrow as it is New Year’s Day and the majority of shops, as it is a Bank Holiday, will probably be closed. I consulted the web to explore whether the Touchwood Centre in Solihull might be open tomorrow as we know there is a John Lewis store within it. We discovered that the John Lewis store and other shops would be open today but not tomorrow which is not exactly the sort of news that we wanted to receive. On the other hand, the Merry Hill Centre down the motorway is open tomorrow but does not contain any of the shops that we are minded to visit. So we are still contemplating the nature of our little trip out tomorrow, not knowing what is open and what is not.

No doubt, each family in the land has its own little rituals associated with New Year’s Eve which, of course, is today. Some couples would always make it a priority to either throw or to attend a New Year’s Eve party with family and close friends, the idea being of course to stay up until midnight to see the New Year in. Meg and I have never gone in for that sort of thing but there are various things that I like to have done on New Year’s Eve. This is to ensure that in our principal living rooms, we have a copy of the appropriate calendar so that tomorrow maorning (or even later on this evening) we all have 1st January ready to display. Of course, the Scots make a big thing of Hogmanay which is more important to them than Christmas Day and they have the tradition of ‘first footing’ in which a tall dark stranger is meant to enter the house by the front door, consume some whisky and perhaps some other comestibles on the way through the house and then leave through the back door. This is meant to symbolise the spirit of the New Year entering the house and chasing the remnants of the old year out of the back door. I also seem to remember that the stranger should be bearing a piece of coal (as the provider of light and warmth?) in their hand and perhaps some other artefacts as well. My mother, although not Scottish, used to engage in a scaled down vesrion of this ritual. Being a one parent household, there was rather a dearth of tall dark (male) male strangers so my mother had to improvise. This usually consisted of typing a small lump of coal around the neck of our our typically bewildered cat, which did have the virtue of being practically black all over. The cat was then thrown out of the back door just before midnight, being left along for a crucial minute or so and then being called back in in the New Year bearing the coal round its neck. What the cat thought of this charade I am afraid I never knew. But we did introduce the practice to our next door neighbours in Hampshire (as the husband was naturally dark in complexion) and they participated in the suitably pagan rite just for the fun of it. When we meet with our group of friends at our little gathering next Saturday night, I must remember to ask them if there are any similar traditions here in the Midlands. As it is, we are looking forward to next Saturday where we will consume, by courtesy of our French friend, a specialised confection which she will bake called ‘galette des rois’ and the recipient of the lucky token hidden inside the cake can be King or Queen for the night.

So this is the start of the weekend and we know that no carers will call until Monday or Tuesday. After quite a good night’s sleep, Meg and I get ourselves and breakfasted and then set off for the Waitrose cafeteria where we were due to meet, but only briefly, with our Saturday crowd friends. Lasy Wednesday, after we had arrived home, I discovered that Meg was wearing a pair of gloves that she had absentmindly donned before leaving the cafeteria – but these were not hers but they belonged to one of our friends. So I was determined that they be put back into the hands of their rightful owners so we secured a parking place close to the store and then ordered one cup of coffee which Meg and I drank between us. Then our friends turned up and we returned the gloves but said a quick ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ because we were due to pop around to some of of our oldest friends along the Kidderminster Road for a morning coffee. Once we were safely esconced with our friends we had quite a lot of news to catch up on and we participated in some nice Christmas nibbles. Although the invitation was for coffee we were actually with our friends for a good two and a half hours and chatted about all kinds of issues that affect us both. Not least of these matters were some of the goings-on in our local church where we received all kinds of news, some of which did not make very pleasant listening. Nonetheless, we had spent a most delightful time in the company of our friends who we do not actually get to see as often as we would like. During the summer months, our friends were often out doing their magnificent garden and some months ago, Meg was sufficiently well for us to walk down to our local park on an almost daily basis. but now, we tend to whizz past in our car and, of course, the winter months means that we are not bobbling about in the garden to anything like the same extent and so the opportunities are not many for the casual chats that we used to have whenever we met. And, of course, we are all getting that little bit older and the ravages of time are taking their toll. Once we got home, it was too late for us to start preparing a midday meal so we have had a tin of a chunky lamb soup followed by remnants of Christmas cake and cheese. This was more than satisfying for us and then we settled down to watch ‘Mary – Queen of Scots’ during a lot of which I dozed but seemed to be summarised as a gaggle of Scottish noblemen arguing with and occasionally stabbing each other, with sometimes intervention from Queen Elizabeth I of England (this, I admit, is only a crude summary of the plot but you get the gist) Later on this evening is Paddington 2 which I do not think is as good as the first of the Paddington films but I may not be able to resist watching some of it.

In the late afternoon, we received a very welcome telephone call from our French friend who lives down the road for a little gathering of seven of us in total to celebrate January 6th. In Spain, this is called ‘Reyes’ (Kings) and used to be the time when most children received their principal Christmas presents (some token presents being given on Christmas Day as Anglo Saxon traditions come to predominate) In Spain, this feast day is celebrated with great processionns – to add a real feeling of verisimiltude, in some of the smaller coastal communities young children can actually witness the ‘Three Kings’ arriving in all of their regalia at the prow of a local fishing vessel. In some of the more southerly regions and the islands, particularly Tenerife as I remember, the Kings actually arrive on camels which again lends credence to their exotic nature. Obviously we have nothing like this in the UK but our French friend wants us to participate in a European tradition where the seven us stand around a specially baked cake and whoever is the recipent of a hidden token becomes the King or Queen of the gathering for the day. This tradition is new to me but of course Meg and I will be delighted to play our part.

The political shenanigans happenings on the other side of the Atlantic continue to provide us with a spectacle of fascinating horror as thw Trump march towards what may be a second presidency seems to be almost unstoppable. But today on Sky News there was a fascinating article which was entitled ‘All you need to know about the legal labryinth facing the former president’ and I have actually run this off as a printed copy so that Meg can read it (and re-read it) at her leisure. The legal problems facing Trump seem to fall into one of three major categories, some of which overlap. The most important constitutionally is the extent to which Trump either tacitly or explicitly gave encouragement to the rioters to invade the Capitol building just after the last presidential election. To this we add civil law suits some of which relate to alleged sexual assaults and some of which are just plain financial fraud. After all, Al Capone was eventually convicted of income tax evasion.

Friday is the one of the days in which carer(s) have been allocated to us and so we got up in plenty of time and got everything prepared ready for a start at 7.00am. But by about 7.40 nobody had turned up so we assumed that we had better get on and do things ourselves which we did. Then the two carers turned up and they were a good team as they were the same pair that we had seen on Wednesday. They wondered what else was to be done and I suggested that Meg’s hair could perhaps do with a wash. As it turned out, one of the carers had been practising hairdressing for over twenty years and she was quite happy to do this act of personal care for Meg. After a washing, we used one of our hair dryers so that at the end of the day Meg had a little styling thrown in as well. This put us both in a good mood and we are pleased when this particular pair of helpers turn up so we are considering whether to write a note to the agency that employs them requesting that some continuity of service might be a good idea and requesting that we get this pair on a regular basis. After Meg and I had breakfasted, we got ourselves ready to make a little trip to Droitwich, just down the road. Having parked the car relatively easily, we popped down the road to get a copy of our newspaper from W H Smiths and then progressed on to our favourite charity shop just around the corner. We had quite a good morning’s shop because they just happened to have some new, but heavily discounted, jogging trousers which we could do with for Meg and where, quite by coincidence, I had ordered a pair over the internet during the night. We also bought some ladies socks and a nice looking top for Meg so we have some nice new kit to try out on Meg in the morning. Then we make progress to our cafe of choice which was teeming but where they know us well so a table was magicked up for us and we indulged in a pot of tea and a large bacon butty between us. On the way home, we called in at one of our friends down the Kidderminster Road to invite them around for a cup of tea some time in the next few days. Instead, they invited us around for coffee tomorrow morning which invitation we readily accepted as we have not had the opportunity to have a good Christmas-style chat. When we got home, we needed to prepare some lunch and I made a rather novel (for us) lunch. I had taken a fillet of white fish (Basa) out of the freezer and although we thought this could be rather tasteless, we had some tartare sauce that would perhaps add a bit more flavour. To this we added some beetroot salad left over from the weekend and some celeriac coleslaw and together this provided a very tasty and different kind of meal for us.

After lunch, we had decided on a film that we would watch this afternoon. When I had taken out a subscripion to Amazon Prime, I had noticed that one of the films provided that we could watch was ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ Normally, I do not comment much in this blog on TV programmes or films that I have watched but this was bit of an exception. The writers had taken the basic plot of the novel by Fowles and had then intercut, at some relevant points, a sub-plot of some of the actors playing the principal roles (Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons) who were having an extra-marital liaison that some to extent mirrored the main plot of the film. This made the denouement of the film more and more interesting because one was not absolutely sure how it was going to all work out in the end. In the ‘modern’ sub-plot it was revealed that the film crew were probably going to film two endings, one a happy one and one an unhappy one but the actors involved did not know which of these endings was to make it into the final version. And so the main film ended, with appropriate inter-cutting of the more modern sub-plot, and so the viewer was left guessing as to which ‘ending’ was to end either the main plot or the subplot. I am sure that this device has probably been used before and it may well be that the film as a whole made for some unhappy viewing amongst the acting fraternity where there may well be cases of ‘life imitating art’

Asa we are approaching the end of 2023, scientists are reporting that the globe may well have had its warmest year for 125,000 years. There are still some climate change deniers around but one wonders how they continue to argue their case in the face of this overwheming evidence. Of course, if all else fails, they will argue that the world’s media has been taken over by a left-wing cabal who are spreading myths about climate change in order to disrupt capitalist systems or similar types of nonsense that climate change deniers are wont to spout.

Yesterday afternoon, we were happy to entertain our next door neighbours and exchange some stories of our youth. Afterwards, we watched a little bit of TV and then after Meg was in bed, I watched some of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures which are nearly always scientific subjects put into a digestible form so that a young audience can follow the plot. The theme of this years was Artifical Intelligence which I suppose is an issue confronting us all in its many guises- I found last night to be moderately interesting but not enthralling and some treatments, such as the role of AI in Art left me rather cold. Today being a Thursday is normally the day when I get to the supermarket to do some shopping early in the day whilst Meg is still in bed. But today was a slightly different pattern as we did not need a great deal of extra shopping and only needed to do what you might term a ‘half shop’ So I waited until the carer arrived for her stint and it proved to be the Peruvian carer whom we have seen at least once before. As our son had spent a year in Mexico before going to university and Meg and I are moderately good Spanish speakers, we have quite a lot on common. So I shot off to the bigger Aldi in the centre of town and finished off doing an intermediate volume of shopping which took me about half an hour. Then, having arrived home, I cooked the dinner which consisted of jacket potatoes, some beef left over from Christmas day but added to an onion gravy/sauce and some stick beans. We were just about finished the washing up when our chiropodist called around and although she was on our planning board, I had momentarily forgotten just when she was due to arrive. Our feet having been done, my son and his wife arrived as we had planned to have a little Christmas afteroon tea. As with all such family occasions, we just sat around the kitchen table and tucked into some roulade which our family had brought with them. So we ate this up, supplemented by some of the little cakes which we had left over from yesterday’s entertaining of the neighbours and a jolly time was had by all.

There is a lot of speculation today that we could have a general election as early as May. The reason for this speculation is because Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequeur has announced the government would hold an earlier than anticipated budget, with a date set for 6 March, 2024. The Labour party also seems to be gearing itself up for a general election in May. Asked if the budget date signals an early election, Ms Thornberry said: ‘Yeah, it is the worst kept secret in parliament that we are likely to be heading for a May election and this budget date seems to confirm that’. We know that a general election has to be held by January, 2025 at the very, very latest and the temptation for many governments and Prime Ministers is generally to hold on if at all possible. If it looks as though all of the economic indicators are showing that the economy is scheduled for a downturn, then it might be logical to go for an early general election. The Labour party has been ahead in the polls for a long time now and all of the indicators are that the Conservatives are likely to lose the next election. This being the case, one line of thought is that going for an early general election will minimise the anticipated scale of the losses of seats. An early budget may be able to put some money into the pockets of the electorate and thus encourage the view that the ‘Conservatives are not so bad after all’ But we are constantly being told that economy is about to improve and, of course, a few more months may help the government to pass some more legislation which is ‘voter friendly’ and this might point to a general election in the autumn. Of course, there is a certain amount of gamemanship in all of tbis and it may well be that the Conservatives are trailing the prospects of an earlier general election to see if there degree of ‘bounce’ in the polls in their direction and then to act accordingly.

One way or another, it looks as though we are in for a year of intense political activity on both sides of the Atlantic. On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump seems destined to become the Republican party nominee and could well win an election if his opponent is the aging Joe Biden. But there are storm clouds on the horizon for Donald Trump. There are some reports that he is getting increasingly tetchy and indeed troubled in his recent appearances in the many court cases that are being held over him. The Supreme Court, stuffed full of Trump nominees, may well overturn the ruling in the State of Colorado that Trump be not allowed to stand as a candidate because of his past encouragement for the storming of the Capitol building some two years ago. But will they overturn ruling after ruling as many other states are due to follow the example of the state of Colorado and declare that Trump cannot be a candidate in their state? So it may well be that the US judicial system comes to the rescue of the Democrats by making it impossible for Donald Trump to stand again as a candidate or, at the very least, to lose some of the states he will need to retain.

Today being a Wednesday was the day when some carers were due to call around to give me some assistance with getting Meg up, washed and dressed. Sure enough, at about 7.10 or thereabouts, the doorbell rang and it was two carers from the agency, one of whom I have seen on two previous occasions and the other new to me. The older carer is a cheery little soul and I was very pleased to see her. Between the two of them, they made light work of getting Meg sorted out with a very cheerful disposition and so I am hoping against hope that I can have at least this one carer on a more consistent basis so that we can have some much needed continuity. After we had breakfasted, we knew that today, Wednesday, was going to be this week’s Tuesday as the usual Waitrose gang had intimated their intentions to be here. Meg and I were there for about half an hour and were just on the point of departure when one of our number turned up. On the off-chance, I had taken along a small bottle of my own damson gin and 2-3 very small little glasses so I gave our friend an illegitmate little snifter to enjoy after her normal coffee – and she enjoyed it tremendously. After this, I went shopping and bought some extra milk as I think that with the big shop up of last week, I have enough provisions to keep me going for the next week. We also took the opportunity to buy some party type nibbles and cakes as we are entertaining our next door neighbours this afternoon. Lunch was a fairly simple affair as I utilised the roasted vegetables left over from last Monday and I needed to prepare was some broccoli and onion gravy. I am delighted to be able to say that this meal was as good as Monday’s meal was poor and Meg and I enjoyed it tremendously. Then, after lunch I got some things ready for our guests this afternoon and this was simply a case of opening some packets of ‘goodies’ bought from Waitrose. It also gave me the opportunity to display the party food on the good crockery set which I espied in a charity shop the other day and which made a fuller complement of this particular design whioch just about comes in the category of collectables.

Our neighbours are very good company and we started off in our Music Lounge explaining how and why we had bought the various pieces that we had and then explaining our interactions with the social care agencies. My neighbour and I shared some boyhood experiences with each other and we discovered that we shared a common past-time in our youth. This was the construction of what I think in Yorkshire we called ‘go-carts’, in Leicester were called ‘trollies’ and in South Wales had the popular name of a ‘gambo’ (I think). The basic mechanics of construction were always similar. First, and most importantly, one had to get access to a local municipal tip where one could liberate the wheels from old pram. Prising the wheels away from the main body of the pram took some brute force and native cunning, but eventually one would emerge with a prize of two sets of axles with two wheels on each. Then one needed to have access to some wood from which one constructed a platform – the back wheeles were fixed but the front axle was attached to an essentially moveable cross member to provide an element of steering. Now one had to secure quite a large hole in both the framework of the go-cart and also the cross member, sufficiently large to accept a large bolt through the two of them. In the absence of a drill the older boys in the village taught me how to make a hole – first lightly tapping a nail and then extracting it, then making a hole with a small screw, slightly enlarging it with a larger screw and finishing off with a red hot poker, taking red hot from the midst of a coal fire and plunged into the small screw hole to make a larger bolt hole. Finally, one persuaded one’s mother to liberate a bit of old carpet to decorate the surface of the go-cart, some string (generally baling twine of which there was lots in the country side) strung across the cross members to provide steerage. If you had a spare wheel, you could make a ‘real’ steering wheel whilst the final refinement was some beer crown cork tops hammered into the surrounds to add a touch of glamour. We used to run it down the hill and into the into the gap of the Methodist Chapel front yard to complete our run. This was my own experience but when my son was about 6-7, I built him a go-cart. The other local lads, or rather their dads, were not to be outdone so my son’s go-cart was soon joined by about two others and then raced down the pavement of the street where we lived (which was also on quite a steep little hill, but there were too many cars on the roads in the 1970s to repeat exactly what we used to do in the 1950’s). So – simple pleasures!