So it looks as though having ‘survived’ probably the hottest May day on record, we have just endured the hottest May night as well. The upstairs of my house was like a furnace so I took the precaution of falling asleep on the sofa in our lounge which was one of the coolest parts of the house. It is true that I woke up after a couple of hours but by this time my bedroom had cooled down sufficiently for me to spend the rest of the night sleeping upstairs. Whilst we all enjoy a spell of good weather, these temperatures are extreme and I think that most of the population are doing their best to keep hydrated and to avoid the really excessive temperatures we are currently experiencing. In the evening before last, I had the most pleasant of surprises which was a text followed by a phone call from one of the quarter of young carers who looked after Meg so well in her declining weeks and days. This quartet (two boys, a fianc\u00e9e and a young Asian lad) were a very cohesive group and they rally loved both caring for Meg and we all held each other in mutual love and affection. Naturally, they attended Meg’s funeral a year ago and the celebration afterwards and I ensured that they had a special round of applause for their efforts. Now none of us have forgotten each other and the Asian boy was communicating the good news that he had actually proposed to, and been accepted by his partner, to become officially engaged after they had bought a house together and moved in with each other. He told me that he had actually got down on one knee to propose to his partner in a very traditional way. The purpose of the phone call was both to inform me of his good news and also the act that he wanted to organise a little ‘get together ‘in my house as soon as work commitments would allow. It would be delightful to throw a little garden party for the four (now five) of them and, as my American friend was still staying with me, I encouraged them to introduce themselves to each other and to explain the nature of our mutual friendship. What is so nice is not to be forgotten about when ‘so much water has flowed under the bridge’ as a year flashes by for us older people but time seems to elongate for these younger people. Both my American friend and I love to be in contact with the younger generation so this will be a wonderful social gathering to which to look forward as soon as it can be arranged. Later in the day I have a routine hospital investigation later in the afternoon so I am having to ensure that as well as abstaining from food and drink I do engage in anything too stressful during the early part of the day. So I am particularly pleased to have got the front grassed area mown yesterday morning. Later in this week, I have a couple of festive events to which to look forward. Once a month, some members of the \u00e9migr\u00e9 Ukrainian community put on a special day of Ukrainian food and cooking at the Methodist Centre. Members of the Ukrainian community will cook their specialities and the rest of the community can come along and enjoy food which is out of the ordinary whilst the funds raise evidently go towards alleviating the suffering of the sick and injured in the Ukrainian conflict. So all of this is going to happen on Friday whilst on the following day, my immediate next-door neighbour is celebrating (outdoors!) her 75th birthday so this will be another nice event to which to look forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day today was always going to unravel in rather a strange direction as I was not allowed any food before a routine (every three years) gastroscopy procedure. My daughter-in-law took me and my son brought me home from what is not the most pleasant of procedures although I did avail myself of the available sedation, delivered through a cannula. I also took along an old iPhone with approx. 200 music tracks recorded on it which I use a de facto MP3 player so at least I had some Mozart to accompany me.The staff were very through and professional in their procedures. The minute I got home and in view of the fact I had not eaten for hours and the weather was still unbearably hot, I treated myself to some ice cream after which I promptly had a doze and then I cooked myself some scrambled eggs with grated choose, followed by even more ice cream. I rescued the washing which my domestic help had put on the outside line and was now ‘crisp’ after hours in a baking sun and then my American friend and I had a telephone conversation where we exchanged notes on the day. I suppose I ought to explain that what I refer to as my ‘American’ friend is not really American at all as in her youth she lived in both Sutton Coldfield and the later in Staffordshire. But she did them escape to Florida where she worked for decades as well as several other countries and thus ‘American’ friend is just a kind of shorthand description albeit not a very accurate one. Se is a pronounced ‘Trump hater’ and actually registered to vote. as part of ‘Democrats Abroad’ which is one of the world views that we happen to have in common. As this is a half term week, some of my regular routines are a little disrupted there is no Pilates class and the Methodist Centre is closed but I dare say we will cope somehow. Later on this evening, there is a repeat f some of the Simon Scharma programmes on the ‘History of Britain’ and the repeated episode this evening devotes itself to the impact that the French Revolution had upon British political and social life, so this will be well worth a watch. Although I still have to get my had around some of the latest political news from America, it looks as though some of Trump’s diehard supporters from MAGA are suspecting that whatever Trump negotiates with the Iranians could be interpreted as a sell-out. In the context of Donald Trump, the slang acronym TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out”. This term was coined by financial commentators and Wall Street traders to mock his negotiation style, which frequently involves announcing aggressive economic tariffs or political threats, only to delay, reduce, or reverse them later. The same could equally be said of his frequent statements and changes in policy announcements with regard to Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So it looks as though having ‘survived’ probably the hottest May day on record, we have just endured the hottest May night as well. The upstairs of my house was like a furnace so I took the precaution of falling asleep on the sofa in our lounge which was one of the coolest parts of […]<\/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-8297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8297","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=8297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8298,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8297\/revisions\/8298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}