The evening before last, I made a journey to our church hall where there was going to be tea and biscuits provided by a widow of one of the prominent parishioners who died last year. This individual was very kindly to Meg and myself and I was more than happy to go drink a cup of tea in his memory, alongside other parishioners. I spent the evening conversing with a very chatty Liverpool Irish lady I know quite well as she also works in the Methodist centre and she was actually helping out the day before in the servings of the Ukrainian meals which takes place there once a month. When I returned home I was just in time to watch the whole of the England v. Spain match. After a goal was gifted to Spain in the first two minutes by a terrible defensive error (to which English players seem particularly suspect) England scored two goals back and were leading at half time. After a penalty was awarded to England, the opportunity was there to go 3:1 up but Harry Kane slipped slightly on his run up and the ball hit the crossbar. Spain then hit back and won the game 3:2 as you would expect world champions to do but the English fans had experienced an exciting game of football of the match knowing that England could have won that particular game. Having had a wonderful day on the Severn Valley railway yesterday I have a little project devoted to the afternoon which is to make the latest in my batch of soups which is going to be celeriac and grainy mustard where all of the ingredients have been bought. Although in theory one can put ingredients straight into the soup maker, I prefer to parboil them and then give them a little roast in the ‘oven’ mode of my microwave cooker to give them a sweeter, more intensive taste before they are processed in the soup maker where I make about 3-4 litres of soup, enough for about 5 servings both on the day of preparation and during the forthcoming week. My future ventures are going to include leek and potato soup and I have read that Maris Piper and King Edwards are regarded as the best varieties to use when preparing leek and potato soup and these two varieties ought to be available loose on the shelves of local supermarkets. On the subject of supermarkets, there is a flurry of excitement as a new Sainsbury’s, built on a previous HomeBase site, is due to open on October 1st which is next Thursday and I may well transfer my allegiance to that new store. But the only thing to moderate one’s excitement is that car parking on the new site is likely to be at a premium and the new development is located in the middle of the dreaded A38 road improvement scheme which seems to have been going on for ever and caused massive disruption in the town. In fact, the local Tory MP has raised the question in Parliament and so much disruption and local angst have been caused that the MP has requested that the Highways agency take over the whole management of the scheme. But this has been beset by so many difficulties that the Highways Agency do not wish to touch the scheme with the proverbial barge pole and are quite happy to let Worcestershire County Council continue to bear the opprobrium. The widening and enhancement of the A38 in Bromsgrove, known as the Bromsgrove Route Enhancement Programme (BREP), has drawn intense public scrutiny, local fury, and political fallout. The \u00a350 million project managed by Worcestershire County Council has faced significant controversy over severe delays, escalating disruption, environmental damage, and recent tragic safety concerns. Work on the A38 began in January 2024 and was originally slated to finish by late 2025. However, the council has pushed the completion date back twice, with the timeline now extended to spring 2027. The council blames unforeseen challenges with underground gas, water, and electricity networks. In the meantime, constant roadworks have caused massive congestion, leaving the town gridlocked and severely damaging local businesses. Bromsgrove MP Bradley Thomas publicly stated that the town has lost faith in the county council’s ability to deliver the scheme, accusing the authority of lacking the necessary expertise. Thomas petitioned the central government and Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander to have National Highways take over the project. However, in September 2026, the Department for Transport rejected the plea, drawing criticism for washing its hands of the issue. Furthermore, local politicians have warned that the project may be outdated before it is even finished due to changing housing targets. The controversy intensified significantly following a tragic incident at the junction of the A38 and New Road, where a cyclist in his 80s was killed in a collision with a lorry. This prompted immediate calls from the MP and community campaigners for an urgent emergency safety. When the road improvement is in in full operation, it has been calculated that motorists using the new facility travelling North to South may save as much as 2 minutes of travelling time which is hardly compensation for the hours of distress caused to thousands of residents which has seemingly been going on for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After my attendance at church and my customary coffee and biscuits and chats with fellow parishioners, I collected my newspaper and gave the car a quick 5 minute wash. I popped into my local Asda<\/em> and surveyed seemingly masses of different varieties of potato with names that were unfamiliar to me but was delighted to alight upon a bag of Maris Piper, ready for next weeks soup making which is to be leek and potato. The next time I am in this supermarket, I shall write down the names pf all of the different varieties because \u00a0even though I have really scaled back \u00a0my potato consumption because of the starch, I still like to know what I am purchasing and then consuming and the amount of information supplied \u00a0with each variety of potato is limited. Supermarkets often stock a creamy fleshed, red-skinned potato that keeps well and appears very similar to ‘Desir\u00e9e’ which is a variety I used to grow some decades ago when I lived in Leicestershire and had a long garden in which I grew quite a lot of vegetables \u00a0at the time. In \u00a0church this morning, there were details of a ‘parish meal’ pre-Christmas in a local hotel but I have put my name down for this even though the event itself is not scheduled until mid-November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The evening before last, I made a journey to our church hall where there was going to be tea and biscuits provided by a widow of one of the prominent parishioners who died last year. This individual was very kindly to Meg and myself and I was more than happy to go drink a cup […]<\/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-8603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603","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=8603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8604,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603\/revisions\/8604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}