{"id":7530,"date":"2025-07-16T16:04:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T16:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=7530"},"modified":"2025-07-16T16:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T16:04:07","slug":"wednesday-16th-july-2025-day-1948","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2025\/07\/16\/wednesday-16th-july-2025-day-1948\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday 16th July, 2025 [Day 1948]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday was the day when the latest hot spell was due to moderate and it was anticipated that a band of rain would move across the country from west to east. How much rain we will get is yet to be seen but the grass in the gardens is that yellow-brown picture that we last witnessed some fifty years ago in the long hot summers of the 1970’s. The Test Match came to an exciting conclusion and led me to go and check the laws of cricket. The last wicket fell with only 22 runs to spare and the Indian batsman stopped the ball only for the ball to very slowly roll towards the wicket and so this becomes a bowled out. As the ball only just hit the stump and very gently and the bail did appear to fall then this would have been a ‘Not Out’ But the England team went into a wild celebratory mode but I did not actually see the bail fall. Later on, though, when I studied the TV news of the victory, I did see the bail fall as must the rest of the England team. Partisan feelings on one side, the two sides are incredibly equally matched although I think that the England team have held onto one or two really difficult catches and this is ultimately the difference between the two teams. The night before I had watched the Michael Moseley programme on the ageing process where the initial point made at length in the film is that the amount of blood flow and hence oxygen reaching the brain is critical and this explains why some people ‘age’ more than others. I suppose also that this is why walking a certain distance each day (and perhaps swimming also) assumes the role that it does in maintaining a well oxygenated blood supply to the brain. I try hard not to wonder whether if Meg had exercised in middle life, this would have prolonged her life but it is all a matter of conjecture, being wise after the event and applying knowledge that at the time that we did not have. I try to push these questions to the back of my mind but almost inevitably there is always a rather persistent ‘what if’ that keeps coming to mind. There is the point, of course, that trying hard to avoid one cause of death raises the possibility of dying from several other causes which is the ultimate ‘counter-factual’ My son, who is after his retirement from the NHS is taking great pains to get himself fully restored to health and fitness often calls around in the morning after he has had his early morning swim at a health club. When he calls round, he has a bite of breakfast here and is keeping a filial eye on me and we tend to discuss sporting and political events of the day. I gave him an article published in yesterday’s ‘Times<\/em>‘ where one of the regular staff writers was bemoaning the experiences that she had recently had with her aged mother in hospital and the frustrations that this caused. Although the parallels were not exact, there were sufficient points of similarity for me to understand her ‘angst’ as I had to share similar feelings when Meg had her episode in hospital and despite after tests being declared medically ‘fit’ on the day she was admitted, took another 8-9 days to get her discharged to home where she could be looked after so much better than in hospital. Of course, each hospital differs in its internal organisation and coordination but one is always left with the feeling that NHS is bed-blocking itself, whilst always waiting of course for understaffed social services to make their own assessments of the care packages that are needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked down into town this morning, making contact with two separate groups of friends in Wetherspoons<\/em>. The first group were the two old ladies (sometimes three) that make a point of us meeting up in Wetherspoons<\/em> for a coffee. Our topic of conversation this morning was the way in younger generations of women who were talented but not destined for university would receive a good secretarial education in shorthand and typing. Shorthand was once the ultimate hack for fast note-taking, using symbols and lines to capture words in real time. Punctuation marks are kept to the bare minimum. Only periods and question marks are generally used \u2014 the rest are optional. Perfect for journalists, secretaries and court reporters, shorthand turns fast-paced conversations, speeches or interviews into easily transcribed notes. The market leader as it were in shorthand was the Pitman’s system and my mother was trained to us it and even taught the rudiments of it to some of her grandchildren. Our chorister friend used it as a young woman and can still write notes in it which she still does if she wishes to record some facts for her own life story. The trouble is that none of the rest of the family can understand it and eventually with the onslaught of modern technology, it will soon be swept away. We also reminded ourselves that in the 1920’s and 1930’s young women if married had to resign their jobs in the civil service. This procedure known as the ‘marriage bar’ was abandoned in 1946 but it persisted in the Foreign Office until 1973. After the first little group broke up, I then hunted out Seasoned World Traveller and we exchanged some stories about our occupational and social lives in bygone decades, when we were both much younger. Whilst we were partaking of coffee it rained quite heavily but fortunately the showers had passed over by the time I came to walk home. then I had only just about enough time to gather together my things and go down for my Pilates class but I make this journey by car to save time and effort. Upon my return, I made myself a lunch of mackerel fillets, green beans and some tinned tomatoes. Then it was time for a doze and a read of the ‘The Times<\/em>‘ where the health sections on a Tuesday are always quite informative. There was a particularly interesting article written by a neuropsychologist writing how she had turned theory into practice to help to slow the progression of dementia in her own mother. Naturally, this article gave one a lot of food for thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the day when the latest hot spell was due to moderate and it was anticipated that a band of rain would move across the country from west to east. How much rain we will get is yet to be seen but the grass in the gardens is that yellow-brown picture that we last […]<\/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-7530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7530","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=7530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7531,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7530\/revisions\/7531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}