I was relieved to see that the weather was somewhat better when I awoke yesterday morning after a good night’s sleep. The media are collectively celebrating the 199th birthday of Sir David Attenborough by showing some of his classic films and I did rather get absorbed in one of them last night. He was following the social life of a group of chimpanzees and, in particular, how the alpha male asserted his dominance not just through physical shows of strength but also by entering into political alliances with other males who could make allies at times of conflict. What absorbed me was the fact that some of the younger males turned on their leader and attacked him, leaving him severely wounded and practically dead. Then the troupe of chimpanzees moved on desperately searching for water but some of the female members of the group came and attended to his wounds by licking them. Although left for dead, the group leader gradually regained some strength and made a six mile journey to catch up with the rest of the group where he could re-assert himself but disguising how wounded he had actually been. I was reminded of Churchill when the Tory party grandees actually propped him up in front of the Conservative party conference to say a few words even though he had suffered a stroke. The same used to be said of the former Soviet leaderships where some of the old stalwarts were propped up by colleagues even though half dead themselves. Last night, I made a booking at Harvington Hall which is an Elizabethan manor house famous for its priest holes and only have 6-8 miles distant from us. I am taking along my American friend as she has never seen it before and is intrigued by what she has read about priest holes but never actually seen one before. Harvington Hall in Worcestershire houses seven remarkably preserved priest holes (secret hiding places) designed by Nicholas Owen. While some were uncovered by inspectors over the centuries, the ingenious, hidden spaces \u2014 including one in the bread oven and another under the grand staircase \u2014 were highly successful at protecting Catholic priests during the Elizabethan era. This week is going to be quite a full week and an even fuller weekend so I am preparing myself for a Curry club meal with U3A members with a Conversational Spanish the following day (for which I do. not feel very well prepared) I have just read a very interesting analysis of the ways in which Bank account customers are switching. Bottom of the pile comes the Halifax (which has lost 25,000 customers) followed by own bank but the great winner has been Nationwide which has attracted 64,000 new customers. Of course domestic banking is only part of the activities of most banks but one wonders whether we shall see spate of acquisitions and mergers ahead. Most High streets used to sport at least three or four banks but as the banks have switched to online services, some of these branches have been disappearing faster than he proverbial ‘snowballs in June’ Following major closures in early 2025\u2014including Lloyds (May 7) and Halifax (May 29)\u2014Bromsgrove High Street has lost four banks in three years. While Santander was set to become a counter-free branch by June 30, 2025, and Barclays\/NatWest previously closed, few traditional, full-service branches remain. A permanent Banking Hub is envisaged but may not see the light of day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Pilates class was held as usual this week and there are a regular group of only four of us (three females and myself) and we regularly have a laugh and a joke with each other. As might be imagined, we have our little celebrations and rituals one of which is to have a period of relaxation once or twice within the six week block. But if any of our number have a birthday in the week of the class, then as a treat we all have a relaxation session in that class. As a reminder to myself, I must remember to take along some cakes or other goodies to share with class members. After my Pilates class, I returned home and had a lunch of kipper fillets (from a tin!) and salad and then thought about getting the back lawn cut which is a much quicker job than actually the large green area in front of the house. This having been done, I then settled down to await the arrival of my American friend who had promised me that she was going to pop around in the late afternoon for a spot of afternoon tea. As so often happens on occasions like this, we had nothing to dash home for and so having indulged in a lot of opera the other day, in the early evening we thought we would treat ourselves to a spot of ballet and so finished off watching some of he better excerpts from ‘Swan Lake’ Although ballet is not my first love, I think I might hunt out YouTube to see if there is an classic film of Nureyev and Fonteyn dancing together. By all accounts, the chemistry between the two of them was instant and mutual and I would be surprised if that was not captured on some archive film. Rudolf Nureyev, a legendary Soviet ballet dancer, defected from the Soviet Union on June 17, 1961, at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, seeking asylum in France to escape restrictions on his artistry and life. Fearing imprisonment by the KGB upon being ordered back to Moscow, he broke away from his minders with assistance from French police and friends. Key Details of the Defection:The Incident are that while the Kirov Ballet was departing for London, Nureyev was told he had to return to Moscow to perform at a Kremlin gala. Realising he would likely never be allowed to travel or dance freely again, he asked for asylum at the Paris airport. While presented as a Cold War blow to the Soviets, historians suggest his defection was prompted by the desire for artistic freedom and to live openly as a gay man, which was suppressed in the Soviet Union. Nureyev was sentenced to prison in absentia by Soviet authorities, though he went on to have a glittering career in the West, dancing with the Royal Ballet and later directing the Paris Opera Ballet. He did not return to his native country until 1989. Nureyev\u2019s defection is considered one of the most dramatic in Cold War history, removing one of the Soviet Union’s greatest cultural assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was relieved to see that the weather was somewhat better when I awoke yesterday morning after a good night’s sleep. The media are collectively celebrating the 199th birthday of Sir David Attenborough by showing some of his classic films and I did rather get absorbed in one of them last night. He was following the […]<\/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-8245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245","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=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8246,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions\/8246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}