Yesterday morning, the sun came streaming through the window and I awoke at 5.45. I was in two minds whether to get up and have a cup of tea or turn over and have another half hour in bed but eventually the desire for tea proved to be stronger. I was in two minds whether to venture out to Droitwich today on a little shopping expedition but temperatures of 34C are possible in central and eastern parts of England according to the Met Office. UK temperatures in June have only exceeded this level three times since 1960. So I may just decide to play it really safe and stay indoors all day, apart of course from my statutory 20 minutes per day of gardening. I will probably turn my attention to the rear of the house where the patio needs some attention, not least because moss tends to accumulate on the roof on this side of the house and then roll off onto the patio. I know now that sweat glands function considerably less well as one ages and this is why the elderly are so susceptible when it comes to the very high temperatures we are experiencing. Part of me would have liked Meg to have enjoyed this burst of summer after the pretty terrible winter that we both had to endure. But a little thought experiment occur to me which is this. As Meg’s ability to take on fluids declined so rapidly in recent months, then this hot weather might have been too literally too much and she might have succumbed to the extreme heat with me being powerless apart from utilising a fan to do anything very much about it. So perhaps, as in so many different ways, her death when it did occur on 10th May proved to be extremely timely. Although I did have the Sunday newspapers to keep me occupied the evening before, I was quite happy just to lie in the coolest part of the house and listen to ClassicFM whilst also making sure I had replied to various messages on my phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Domestic politics are proving to be as interesting as ever. The BBC are embroiled in a debate whether they should have censured an intemperate outburst on stage condeminng the Israeli army for atrocities committed in Gaza- I always thought that the BBC had a ‘pause’ button built in so that a controller could immediately mute any offensive comments that were in the process of being broadcast. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer had admitted that the proposed welfare reforms went ‘too far’ particularly as so many disabled individuals currently in receipt of PIP would lose a substantial part of it. But the whips have been informing No 10 for months and months about the massive amount of discontent on the back benches but they turned a ‘tin ear’ to these reports and decided to press on with the reforms regardless. But the reading of back bench opinion is exactly what the whipping system is designed to be so the current operation of No 10 seems to demonstrate political ineptitude to an extreme degree. It as though No 10 thought they could suspend the normal operations of the political process and it has been obvious to almost everybody that a climb down or a ‘U’ turn was inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the morning, as it was going to be an intensely hot day and there were even ‘amber’ weather alerts broadcast, I decided to go down into town by car. I picked up salad provisions for lunch and my favourite low alcohol beer as well as some cordial and tonic water so it was just as well I did not have to lug these provisions up the hill. Whilst I was in the store, I issued an invitation for one of the staff who I know particularly well (and who supplied me with sandwiches for my Yorkshire trip), together with his partner to come round for lunch in a fortnight’s time. I promised to make them a fish pie and I am sure it will nice to be entertaining again. It gives me an incentive to get the patio put to rights so hat we can eat outside if the weather is good but otherwise, of course, we have the dining room. I waited until past 3.00pm before I ventured out today and limited myself to a very strict 20 minutes – even so, the temperature was 30 degrees in the shade. Tomorrow will be a busy morning and with Pilates at the end of it but I anticipate that the weather might just be a tad cooler than today. The airwaves are rather dominated by Wimbledon at the moment and this is the opening day but I believe that the second test match against India is due to start this Wednesday. I had sent a text message to a friend enquiring whether the Methodist Centre would be open on Wednesday and have confirmed that it will be and in the absence of our domestic help who I trust is enjoying her holiday in Italy, this should give me a good focus of activity for this Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An intriguing piece of research came to my attention from this week’s Observer<\/em>. Researchers at MIT had taken a group of students and given them a demanding essay to topic. The first group were allowed to use ChatGBT used by many students and other professionals these days. The second group could use any internet resources they could find but with no Artificial Intelligence assistance whilst the third group had to rely completely upon their own native ability with the assistance of no internet resources of any kind. The students’ brain activities were monitored with the conclusion being reached was that the more AI (Artificial Intelligence) was used, the less engaged were key brain networks such as memory, attention and executive function. The authors conclude with the following sobering quote:’Once men turned their thinking over to machine in the hope this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday morning, the sun came streaming through the window and I awoke at 5.45. I was in two minds whether to get up and have a cup of tea or turn over and have another half hour in bed but eventually the desire for tea proved to be stronger. I was in two minds whether […]<\/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-7494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494","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=7494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7495,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494\/revisions\/7495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}