{"id":3049,"date":"2021-09-11T20:45:46","date_gmt":"2021-09-11T20:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2021-09-11T22:55:32","modified_gmt":"2021-09-11T22:55:32","slug":"saturday-11th-september-2021-day-544","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/09\/11\/saturday-11th-september-2021-day-544\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 11th September, 2021 [Day 544]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was a typical Saturday morning – we seemed a little delayed as we did not have rush too much as we were not due to meet anyone in particular in the park. I left Meg on our usual bench chatting with a couple of our park regulars whilst I went off into the town to gather our newspapers and collect one or two bits and\u00a0<\/span>pieces. At the newsagents, I received a pleasant \u00a0and unexpected surprise. Yesterday, I had dropped off a card and a bottle of bubbly to\u00a0help the newsagent and\u00a0his wife to properly celebrate their 45 years of\u00a0successful marriage. Today, Meg and I were the\u00a0recipients of a very interesting looking bottle of ros\u0117 bubbly and card as well (as it was our 54th last Thursday) so we have\u00a0both helped each other to celebrate our respective good\u00a0fortunes. En route,<\/em> I also passed a\u00a0hardware stall where I bought as a speculative purchase a large adjustable spanner. This was bought as much for the fact that being a tool of\u00a0not-recent\u00a0manufacturer, it is quite heavy as it is made from drop-forged steel and consequently is\u00a0reasonably heavy (and so useful for weighing things down as occasion demands)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When we got home, it was pretty late so we had to ‘make do’ with an instant meal. On occasions like this we tend to make use of a tin of corned beef which can be made into an\u00a0instant mince when added to some fried onions and a bit of instant gravy. To this we added a baked potato and some petit\u00a0poi<\/em>s – well, I have tasted better and tasted worse, but at least we\u00a0rustled a meal together in just over 10 minutes. We\u00a0treated\u00a0ourselves, though, to a specially concocted \u00a0‘sweet’ which starts\u00a0off with a banana and after some ice-cream, yogurt and a Waitrose<\/em> special\u00a0choc-ice special topped off with a drizzle of honey. It sounds (and is!) indulgent but has to be tasted to be believed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon, we were more than happy to have a\u00a0<\/span>lazy afternoon because we knew that we were going to go to church leaving the house at 5.30. When we got to the\u00a0church car park we ran into one of the friends whose wife is in hospital. We were delighted to get some good news that our\u00a0friend’s angiogram proved negative and we are\u00a0hoping to see her home fighting fit as soon as she can be discharged – they are waiting for the artery into which the angiogram is inserted to heal somewhat before she can come home again, hopefully before\u00a0new Thursday which just happens to be her wedding anniversary.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight, as I blog, I am half-listening to the ‘Last Night at the Proms<\/em>‘ as it is that time of year again. I feel deeply\u00a0ambiguous about this programme now\u00a0that we are living in a post-Brexit era. I used to enjoy (if that word is not far too strong) the\u00a0eccentricities of the\u00a0English letting their hair down once a year in order to be\u00a0straight-laced for the rest of it. But now in these post-Brexit, English-nationalist type days, I feel deeply unhappy about the rampant\u00a0<\/span>xenophobia, flag waving and\u00a0generally denigration of foreigners (‘Britons never, never will be slaves<\/em>‘ etc.) I think it\u00a0would be more\u00a0appropriate now \u00a0to sing not ‘Britain rules the waves’<\/em> but\u00a0rather ‘Britain waives the rules’) <\/em>I always suspected that all of the xenophobes and English nationalists used ‘Last Night<\/em>‘ as an excuse \u00a0for their\u00a0posturing\u00a0 but now it seems to have received official endorsement from the establishment. Incidentally, I think the BBC does a magnificent job not allowing too much attention given to the extremes of flag raising and the hunting \u00a0out of spots of rampant xenophobia and they do try hard to\u00a0focus on a few non-UK type flags being waved to try and present some ‘balance’ \u00a0The\u00a0traditional medley of songs etc I shall avoid but I do enjoy listening to how witty the conductor chosen for the last\u00a0night can\u00a0prove to be.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Last night, we did listen to the whole of Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion<\/em>‘ \u00a0and\u00a0really enjoyed every minute of it (broadcast from 7.00pm until 10.00pm. I first heard it when I was about 14 and in the school music room in Thornleigh College, Bolton, getting prepared to travel home by train for the Easter vacation. The very last cantata (<\/span>‘In tears of grief, we leave thee Lord<\/em><\/span>‘) in\u00a0English translation, held me\u00a0absolutely transfixed, as it does to this day – if you listen careful to the cadences of the music and\u00a0it is skilfully interpreted you can almost hear the sobbing of grief played out in long cadences. Incidentally, to any\u00a0musicologists out there, does the very, very last chord of the cantata end in a deliberate mis-chord (like an ‘E’ and an ‘F’ played next to\u00a0each other) – written by Bach (who was a deeply religious man but\u00a0although a Protestant, his music and I think much of his religious work was\u00a0performed in\u00a0catholic cathedrals such as Leipzig), I think he may have been a\u00a0very subtle\u00a0point in writing the\u00a0discord right here (but of course, I\u00a0could be wrong)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was a typical Saturday morning – we seemed a little delayed as we did not have rush too much as we were not due to meet anyone in particular in the park. I left Meg on our usual bench chatting with a couple of our park regulars whilst I went off into the town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3052,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}