I awoke at just about 6.00am yesterday morning, turned on the radio and then immediately fell asleep for another hour. This is all too easy to do when the mornings are as dark as they are and I know that there are no pressing commitments for the morning ahead. If the weather holds, I may give the car a much-needed wash today as the nearby building work blows a fine dust over all of our vehicles but fortunately the builders do not work at the weekend giving us all a little respite. As the temperatures are just dropping a little day by day, I started to prepare one of those little sachets of breakfast porridge where all you have to do is to heat them up for a couple of minutes in the microwave. But as I did this for the first time in months, I did have a few waves of sadness sweep over me because I always used to prepare porridge for Meg every morning and managed to get this inside her so that she started off the day with some good slow release carbohydrates inside her. The ceasefire appears to be holding in Gaza but the next few days are going to be both critical and also massively emotion filled. The few remaining hostages that Gaza holds will be handed back including some just in their coffins whilst hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and others who are detainees (but the world’s press do not call these hostages?) are due to be returned. Tens of thousands of Palestinians continue to head back to their homes in the heavily bombed northern part of Gaza. The fighting has displaced around 90% of the two-million-strong Gaza population. Many of them will find fields of rubble where their homes once stood – even greater destruction than when they returned in a January ceasefire, after Israel waged a new offensive in Gaza City. So, we see images of thousands of Palestinians walking home along a makeshift road constructed by the side of the sea (and the Israelis have indicated that they should not deviate from this route if they value their life). Of course, they are returning ‘home’ but where their homes used to stand is reduced to rubble. One clip of film showed a young Palestinian woman who used to live in a tower block but such is the scale of the destruction that she cannot even find the footprint of where the tower block used to stand. One can only presume that once they have returned ‘home’ some tens will be made available to them but even were these might be pitched is problematic. The Israelis have never allowed reporters to enter Gaza, even now, so the clips of film that we must be shot on cameras and transmitted out of the country. A lot of attention is focused on ‘Hostage Square’ in Jerusalem where the worlds media is assembled and the families of the hostages are gathering even though it is a couple of days yet before the release day and hour which is scheduled to be 12.00pm next Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The morning turned out to be quite a full one. I eventually met two of my Saturday friends but in a different coffee bar but parking was a nightmare. After I left them, I went in search of these large plastic numbers that you put on the side of dustbins. The local council have updated their refuse disposal vehicles which necessitates a new design of wheelie bin. Consequently, all of our bins have been replaced but when they are all placed together one needs to distinguish one’s own bin from that of a neighbour. Naturally, all of our previous bins had their house numbers affixed to them but these have now all been taken away and destroyed. Eventually, I found my way to a local hardware stall and hunted in vain for bin numbers until an assistant directed me to a carousel where the numbers were sold. But as every bin if the area has been replaced, there has been a real run on the numbers even though my own bin was only replaced this morning. Most of the numbers were already sold out including the one that I wanted\/needed but another assistant informed me that the stock was replaced daily so I will try again on Monday morning. After I had eaten the remains of a curry I prepared a couple of days ago, I was fortunate enough to be at the absolute start of the film ‘Miss Potter’ which was a biopic of the life of Beatrix Potter, the celebrated children’s author and eventually, landowner and sheep breeder of distinction (Herdwicks) in the Lake district that she loved so much. Although I had seen the film before it was well worth a second watch and quite heart rending to watch as the man to whom she was engaged died suddenly at his home in London (he was a partner in the small publishing firm of Warne’s which published all of Beatrix Potter’s books) In our day, we had collected most of the Beatrix Potter books in which she span stories around local farmyard animals of which the most famous is Peter Rabbit. But Beatrix Potter was an artist of some distinction and each of her books are illustrated with her own drawings which were then painted in water colours. I think we gave the complete set away to a local primary school once our son had grown up and was beyond the stage in which he was interested in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I received a couple of texts, one from my Droitwich friend who is on holiday with her family in South Africa and the other from my Winchester friend with whom I spent the day yesterday in Worcester. Later on in the evening, I shall attend the Saturday evening church service which is now part of my routine and then later on, as it would have Pavarotti’s 90th\u00a0birthday had he lived, celebratory concerts are to be held both on ClassicFM<\/em> and also BBC2<\/em>. The weekend supplement in ‘The Times<\/em>‘ is often filled with advice on healthy living and in today’s edition there is an extended article on ’15 ways to live longer’ Most of these I am doing already but perhaps the most surprising items to floss one’s teeth regularly to prevent the buildup of bacteria that can eventually lead to heart disease. Other advice is easy to follow (e.g. a little bit of dark chocolate as well as two cups of tea – but only if drunk in the morning)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I awoke at just about 6.00am yesterday morning, turned on the radio and then immediately fell asleep for another hour. This is all too easy to do when the mornings are as dark as they are and I know that there are no pressing commitments for the morning ahead. If the weather holds, I may […]<\/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-7741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741","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=7741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7742,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions\/7742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}