The evening before yesterday was quite a fine but chilly afternoon and I had scheduled that I would get our back lawn cut. This I did but I motivated myself with a good hot cup of drinking chocolate before I eventually ventured outside. This is going to be the second last cut of the season and it would not be desperate if it turned out to be the last one but in two weeks time I anticipate the last cut of the year before the mower gets put to bed for the winter. In the evening, I went to church which is my Saturday early evening routine and our new priest announced a little innovation which I believe is going to be welcome. In theological terms, November 1st is ‘All Souls’ Day in which one particularly remembers those loved ones who have died in the past year. Our new priest was going to produce a special ‘In memoriam’ book which would have its place inside the sanctuary of the church during the whole of November. In addition, as ‘All Souls Day’ falls on a Saturday, he was going to have a special service to be held on the following Monday and the sentiment was expressed that members of the parish community might like to attend on that day to celebrate the life of their departed one. I filled in Meg’s details on a specially provided envelope so that these can be inscribed into the book and, as this is the year’s of Meg’s death, I feel as though I ought to attend this year of all years so that is something in prospect in about a week’s time. You well and truly know that autumn has arrived when the clocks go back and people look forward to an extra hour in bed but I actually spent that extra hour in getting my various clocks and timepieces to show the correct time. In many cases, this is a simple adjustment but I have one or two timepieces where it is especially awkward involving taking off the back and a pendulum in the case of the miniature grandmother clock I have above the desk in our Main Lounge. In the morning, I stared in some disbelief at one of our ‘Pure’ radios which should have updated itself automatically but failed to do so – this was easily remedied by plugging it in and then plugging it back again which forced the system to download the correct time. The car which I acquired from my son during the past year might prove to be a challenge but I was fortunate as the system updated itself automatically without any intervention. Domestically, the hunt continues for the prisoner who was a convicted sex offender destined for deportation but who was accidentally released about three days ago. The man appears to be in a state of utter confusion and hung about outside the prison once released asking on several occasions where he should go in order to be deported! Eventually the prison staff directed him to the train station from which he caught a rain into central London. The hunt continues and he has been spotted on a video in a library in London but was eventually caught after a tip-off by a member of the public. As time progresses, it appears likely that he might never be located because some members of the emigr\u00e9 Ethiopian community might have ‘rescued’ him and possibly he is now secure in a house from which he might not emerge for months. One would have thought that the release from prison by mistake was an extraordinarily rare event but this is not the case as apparently some 262 prisoners were wrongly released in the past year. The prison service has been so denuded of staff in government cutbacks that mistakes like this are almost bound to occur. When it comes to HMP Chelmsford – which is where Kebatu was being held – a report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons said the facility faced considerable pressures because of national capacity issues. There is now going to be a massive political debate about the state of our prisons with the opposition parties taking every opportunity to blame the government as the release occurred during their watch but, in truth, the under-funding of our public services has proceeded apace for several years when both Conservatives and Labour have been in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had reconciled myself to a Sunday where I was very much left to my own devices as my son and daughter-in-law were away and my University of Birmingham friend had engagements elsewhere. So I decided that I would visit the parish hall attached to the church at the conclusion of the second service of the morning and so having collected a copy of my Sunday newspaper I timed my visit to the church just when I judged it was ending. As I generally attend the service on a Saturday evening, I have lost contact with the other two thirds of the parish who attend the two services on Sunday morning and a visit to the social centre might be a good way of reestablishing some contacts. There was only a small group of us who attended for coffee and biscuits but I sat and spent a pleasant half an hour with so with two other parishioners. One was a widow who had moved up from the South of England about eight years ago whilst the other was a much younger person who hailed from Brazil. I had taken with me some copies of my eulogy for Meg which they accepted and said they would read later at home. At the end of the day, I had contacts with two people for a pleasant conversation and if I had not made the effort, I would not have spoken to anybody all day. Next week, I shall repeat this experiment but might go for the earlier service two hours earlier, particular as the two ladies with whom I had been conversing indicated that they would not be there next week in any case. I augmented some of the remains of yesterday’s meal with some chicken pieces and cooked some carrots and broccoli alongside this before I contemplated how to spend the afternoon which, by now with the hour going back was quite dark and dull. Despite the theme not being the most suitable for someone in my situation, culminating as it does with the death of a beloved partner, I hunted out some recordings of ‘La Boh\u00e8me’ where I thought I could just play some of the essential bits of the story (the initial meeting between Rodolfo and Mimi where the fall in love, the scene from the Christmas Eve party in the caf\u00e9 Momus and the final, extended death scene) If any of the friends who may come to visit me are not familiar with opera, then here are some highlights with which I can entertain them (or bore them to tears, until they beg to leave!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The evening before yesterday was quite a fine but chilly afternoon and I had scheduled that I would get our back lawn cut. This I did but I motivated myself with a good hot cup of drinking chocolate before I eventually ventured outside. This is going to be the second last cut of the season […]<\/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-7774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774","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=7774"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7780,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774\/revisions\/7780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}