The evening before last before I went to bed, we were evidently waiting for the huge storm to do its worst. Before I went to bed at 10.00pm I looked out and saw that the car had about 1″ of snow on its windscreen which I removed with a little long handled brush which I just happen to have to hand. This morning, the snow was not as bad as was predicted and I also removed the additional 1″ of snow that had fallen overnight and I can tell from the distribution of snow on our lawns that things could have been a lot worse. I exchanged text messages with my son and with my Droitwich friend to ascertain what snow conditions were like. My Droitwich friend had hardly had any snow at all whilst her friend who lives in Bromsgrove and nearer to Birmingham had received much heavier snow falls. As it is the GCSE ‘mocks’ for the boys in their family starting today, then getting into school was quite important but my friend’s boys had managed to make it into school whilst some of their classmates (and presumably fellow examinees) had not. In the morning, I intend to get fully kitted up and will then walk into town but only if things seem relatively safe. I shall deploy a trekking pole as well to have 2-3 points of contact with the ground. In the evening before yesterday, I had received a welcome invitation which was to join a coach party organised to go around Jodrell Bank radio telescope in Cheshire in late March, organised as an outing for U3A (University of the Third Age) to which I belong. I replied as soon as I could to the email and was delighted to learn that I was into the system and so I organised the payment of the outing fee via bank transfer to endure that I had a place. After Meg and I had completed our finals at Manchester University, one of her social policy tutors organised a garden party to which our son, then still quite a new-born babe, went along and was the centre of attention. The tutor’s house was practically in the shadow of the radio telescope which obviously dominates the landscape but that is the nearest that we have been to it. Evidently if there are other trips as interesting as this one, I shall continue to sign up for them immediately and as well as the trip itself being inherently interesting, you are also in the company of like-minded people. As well as the radio telescope itself, there are lots of other things included and the outing particulars tells me that ‘we will be able to browse various interactive Science Exhibitions, take a stroll through the Arboretum and take a break and\/or refreshments in the on-site caf\u00e9. Leaving Jodrell Bank we travel on to visit the historic market town of Nantwich which is famed for its many medieval timber-framed buildings, Roman salt production and more recently its many independent shops. The nearby canal offers the opportunity for gentle strolls along its banks.’ So all in all, this sounds a wonderful day out and as the date happens to be the date of my son’s birthday, one I am not likely to forget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I planned to walk down into the town today and this was surprisingly easy as the pavements had been walked on and the snow turned to slush whilst the roads were absolutely clear. I picked up my newspaper and had my customary coffee but did not bump into anyone with whom to chat – I see that the house where Clive the trumpeter used to live with his family has been sold and the family moved to the other end of town. I called in on my Italian friend but she was so poorly we could only have a few snatched words through a (closed) downstairs window. In fact, on the way back from town I was nearly run over when I was crossing a side road that runs off the Kidderminster Road. I am always particularly careful on crossing roads and the vast majority of motorists are generally considerate when they see me half across the road but this one was not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My attention has been absorbed and for understandable reasons about the aftermath of the 37 year old (white) mother of three shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis yesterday. One way or another, there seems to be massive amounts of footage of this incident and the New York Times as well as other media have pored over the footage frame by frame. From this it is evident that Trump, Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have not only rushed to judgement but are evidently lying through their teeth about what happened. It is evident to the vast majority of observers that the victim was trying to escape the clutches of the ICE agents and was in no way trying to run them over as the video footage makes abundantly clear. In fact, the whole collection of video footage could be shown as a training exercise for all law enforcement officers as an example of how NOT to deal with a situation like this. One near neighbour has observed with a great deal of acumen that ‘it is more legitimate for a motorist to panic and to attempt to flee than it is legitimate for an ICE agent to fire three shots through an open side window of a car and kill the driver’ In the fullness of time, we may see prosecutions but the polarised situation in the USA means that he FBI are solely responsible for any investigations, including of course the body-cams of the ICE agents (which I predict will ‘disappear’) One legal expert has also hypothesised that an ICE agent who got into his car and then drove away was interfering with a crime scene and this was an offence in itself. I have a feeling that this is going to run and run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An interesting sign of the times is reported on Sky News. Weight-loss jabs has forced Greggs to change their menu. Greggs chief Roisin Currie says the rise of weight-loss jabs has hit the baker’s bottom line. There is ‘no doubt’ that appetite-suppressing drugs mean customers are looking for smaller portions, healthier options and fibre, she says. Protein has also become the focus of a ‘broader health trend’, so smaller portions and protein-rich products will be rolled out to meet demand, the company previously said. In another sign of changing diets, Tesco’s fresh food sales rose by 6.6% in the 19 weeks to January compared with a year earlier – and the supermarket sold 250,000 bottles of alcohol-free prosecco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The evening before last before I went to bed, we were evidently waiting for the huge storm to do its worst. Before I went to bed at 10.00pm I looked out and saw that the car had about 1″ of snow on its windscreen which I removed with a little long handled brush which I […]<\/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-7964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964","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=7964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7965,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions\/7965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}