{"id":8326,"date":"2026-06-08T15:19:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=8326"},"modified":"2026-06-08T15:19:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:19:26","slug":"monday-8th-june-2026-day-2275","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2026\/06\/08\/monday-8th-june-2026-day-2275\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 8th June, 2026 [Day 2275]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I awoke to another gloomy day but I was in good spirits because I regularly attend the 8.30 service in my local Catholic church after which there is coffee, cakes and a chat to which to look forward. After some of my regular Sunday morning routines which now involves car washing, I can look forward to my American friend calling around and we are going to cook a simple lunch together and relax during the afternoon although we may well take a turn in the nearby Sanders Park. \u00a0I turned to Sky News<\/em> and in particular their excellent defence correspondent, Michael Clarke, who presented us to today with a fascinating series of observations about the Ukrainian war. Clarke is commenting upon the somewhat cheeky letter that Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader sent to Putin suggesting a meeting (which offer was immediately rejected) But Clarke has suggested three reasons why there are grounds for cautious optimism. Firstly, on the ground whilst Ukraine is not winning the war, it is certainly not losing it either and the Russian ground offensive seems to have stalled. After all, the Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and their very existence but the same is not true of the Russian side. Secondly, Ukraine has developed its drone technology in great leaps and bounds and now has a series of weapons so that deep strikes are now possible deep into the heart of Russia, including St. Petersburg much to the chagrin of Putin who was hosting an international conference recently. This has a great psychological even if not military impact as Russians now realise that the war is not going to go away. But a third factor is that the Russian economy, whilst large, is stuttering and as a result of persistent inflation there is now quite an acute labour shortage. This is exacerbated by manpower used to prop up the army and there may be now as many as 1.5-2.0 million ex-soldiers who have either died or been severely injured, all of which acts as a drain upon the economy. Russia is evidently quite desperate which is why its own drone attacks upon the Ukraine are increasing in intensity so we are in a situation which, in footballing terms approximates to a 1:1 draw between the two sides. I think there is a growing realisation amongst the Europeans that Ukraine must not lose this war and thus, in the absence of the American support, the other European nations must strain every muscle to support Ukraine. Of course, the Iran conflict has made Ukraine drop out of the headlines but this analysis is very interesting, nonetheless. On the other side of the Atlantic, some of the wilder excesses of Donald Trump are being ameliorated as the Republicans gradually start to exercise a feeble fight back. So it looks as though the \u00a32.8 billion slush fund to compensate the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol building in 2021 has run into the ground, as has the attempt to rename the Kennedy centre and \u00a0there are persistent rumours that the so-called ballroom, being built over the remains of the East Wing of the White House, may be similarly doomed. On the other hand, it looks as though Trump may have succeeded in ensuring that neither he, nor his family, can be prosecuted for the evident corrupt gains which they amassed in the latest presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rather extraordinary disclosure I suppose you could say happened to me as I was taking my coffee and biscuits in th Church hall this morning but some words of background are in order. When Meg was alive and more or less ‘compos mentis’ despite her advancing dementia, we used to attend a special event organised obout once per month by AgeUK locally for dementia patients and their carers. On one such occasion and I think must have been in the autumn of 2024, Meg and I attended an event in the Rugby Club at Finstall (a nearby village) and the attraction that day was a visit by the principal violinist (and mow musical director) of a local orchestra known as the Midlands Sinfonia. Members of this orchestra as part of their outreach remit visit schools and residential homes and hence the visit to the AgeUK event. Meg and I had were photographed with the violinist and another attendee and this particular photo was uploaded to the orchestra’s website to demonstrate their outreach commitment. Now we come to today’s event and our church organist and one-time Eucharistic minister gave me the latest publicity leaflet for the 2026-2027 season of the Midlands Sinfonia. There, on the back cover, was the photo of Meg, myself, the violinist and another attendee at the event and, of course, this leaflet would have had a print run of several hundreds if not a thousand or so and would have been distributed across the Midlands. It is hard to fully describe the feelings of pleasure and joy that seeing Meg (happy!) in this photograph gave me and I must confess it evoked a few emotional tears once I got home and reflected on how widespread Meg’s image would have  been distributed. I had got the car washed and then cooked myself a late breakfast of a fried egg on sourdough toast before I start to think about preparing some lunch for (much) later in the day. My son gave me an extended telephone call to detail his movements as he and my daughter-in-law are going to be away for well over a week (dog-sitting for other family members) so normally, I would feel his absence quite keenly. But I have several events coming up next week (including a Curry Club dinner in the middle of the week) and then other U3A activities so if I am pretty busy then this has to be a good rather than a bad thing. The preset cool snap may well give way to some warmer weather the week after next so I might avail myself of a trip up and down the Severn Valley Railway if I can get this squeezed in before the schools break up (as there are bound to be grandparents taking their grandchildren on special trips as soon as they are released from school) There are some concerts coming up which I would like to attend both here in central Birmingham (at the town hall) as well as an opera in Malvern (‘The Marriage of Figaro’) so I will have to have a long hard think about whether to make the effort to attend this and whether I can persuade anybody to accompany me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I awoke to another gloomy day but I was in good spirits because I regularly attend the 8.30 service in my local Catholic church after which there is coffee, cakes and a chat to which to look forward. After some of my regular Sunday morning routines which now involves car washing, I can look […]<\/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-8326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326","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=8326"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8328,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions\/8328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}