The war in Iran my be somewhat nearer some kind of resolution despite some tit-for-tat by both sides recently but these appeared to be measured and not designed to provoke a massive military response. Although America remains the dominant military force in the area, any great show of aggression only invites a counter response and the war continues. It may be that we are edging towards a settlement but at a snail’s pace and, in the meantime. Israel is rampaging unrestrained throughout the whole of southern Lebanon and seems to keep expanding the areas that it seeks to occupy and\/or control. The only certainty that we can take from all of this is to realise that oil prices will continue to be high and it might be years before the price of oil drops to its pre-war levels. Meanwhile, nearing his 80th birthday on 4th June, Donald Trump has undertaken an annual health check and, as we might expect, the White House have issued a statement indicating that the president is in an excellent state of health and that all of his vital signs show normality. But this is evidently at odds with what independent observers note from time to time and the fact that he is said to have said 100% on a recent test of cognitive ability just defies belief. Trump appears to doze off frequently during the long cabinet meetings and, given the level of sycophancy displayed, perhaps one can understand why. Here in the UK, the really hot weather spell with temperatures at or near 34\u00b0 or 35 \u00b0 have thankfully abated and we have a beautiful fine late May sunshine but with the promise of cooler weather to come. Now that I have been accepted as part of the coach party to visit Port Sunlight in mid-July, I though I would do some background reading before our visit. Port Sunlight is an internationally significant model village on the Wirral, England, built in 1888 by William Hesketh Lever for his soap factory workers. It is historically significant for its pioneering fusion of social welfare, town planning, and Arts and Crafts architecture, which helped inspire the global Garden City movement. Conceived by over 30 different architects, the village features no two identical homes, varied English architecture, and no visible house backs. Its low-density housing and integration with 130 acres of parkland served as a radical departure from typical cramped industrial towns. Founder William Lever (later Lord Leverhulme) aimed to uplift his working-class employees by providing sanitary, affordable housing and championing overall health and good hygiene. Nearly every building in the 130-acre site is Grade II listed. It is widely considered one of the best-preserved industrial worker settlements in the UK. All of this sound fascinating and raises the interesting question whether or not we have progressed much as a society in the UK although there are several experiments such as the Garden City movement and the New Towns in the 1960’s were we have tried to create more interesting ways of urban living. At the moment, one tends to hear the same complaint from most towns in the country that housing is being built at breakneck speed in practically every part of the country but the necessary urban infrastructure of roads and community facilities is lagging a fair way behind. I have often wondered whether Bromsgrove will be the first town in the country to be utterly gridlocked as the amount of housing is predicted to rise by about 40% with no discernible commensurate increase in road capacities and the like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day turned out to be quite a full one, what with one thing or another. I made my way into town to collect a newspaper and to buy some wine and pick up a birthday card for our next door neighbours to whose 75th birthday I (and my American friend) had been invited. I had just about completed my shopping when I received a phone call from my son from our local hospital from which he was being discharged. So I made my way there and got my son home as fast as I could, filling up with cold drinks and ice cream as a treat after his spell inside the hospital (only three days but it seemed like a lifetime to him). Having got him home, my daughter-in-law called around later to whisk him off to their marital home and I went outside and finished off the weeding of the gravel border which has taken some of my attention during the last three days. This was a pleasing job to get done and I am going to follow carefully some gardening instructions as best to use salt to effectively ‘deaden’ an area in which nothing is ever intended to be grown. Salt can be corrosive and dangerous if not carefully applied but I have read a couple of extremely informative website based articles which indicates how you can usefully utilise salt to maintain a gravel border and how it can be done in such a way that other plant life is not damaged. I then went and changed into some better clothes and awaited the arrival of my American friend before the party started at 3.0pm and we both had a most excellent time with superb food and drink during the whole of the afternoon. My American friend turned up and she is really very good at mixing in with a crowd of people that she does not know. As my next-door neighbours have Welsh connections, we were even treated to home made ‘bara brith’ (rich fruit loaf) and some welsh cakes and the family had been busy baking to produce some marvellous garden party ‘eats’ I spent some time chatting with a close friend of our actual neighbours who I actually met some five years previously (on the occasion of a 70th birthday party) and she remembered meeting Meg which was poignant. We had some fascinating conversations with the other guests and really enjoyed ourselves but eventually my American friend had to tear herself away to attend her weekly dance session. After I had seen her car out of tight parking spaces I returned back to the party which carried on until about 8.00 in the evening. My American friend is coming round tomorrow afternoon where we can have some relaxation time with each other and perhaps have some to plan out some activities for ourselves, families and friends over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The war in Iran my be somewhat nearer some kind of resolution despite some tit-for-tat by both sides recently but these appeared to be measured and not designed to provoke a massive military response. Although America remains the dominant military force in the area, any great show of aggression only invites a counter response and […]<\/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-8307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307","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=8307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8308,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions\/8308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}