Our Sunday routines started off a little earlier than normal this morning as our care workers were allocated to come to us 20 minutes earlier. Nonetheless, it was a pair of care workers both of whom have families (i.e. not adolescents) and with whom we get on well. We were not sure whether the Olympics games coverage would push out the normal politics programmes but there was a judicious mixture which suited us. After breakfast, we watched some archery (in which the women were well ‘outshot’ by the Germans) and then some women’s athletics. I must admit that I watched this with my heart in my mouth because whilst we wanted the fairly young GBR team to do well but the margins between success and failure are so incredibly fine. It might have been that one of the young GBR athletes may have received a slight points reduction because they are about a quarter of a second late in transitioning from one leap to another. The GBR team have not performed as well as they might but I think they have a 50:50 chance of reaching the last finals which I think is the last 8 in the team competition. After breakfast we had a visit from our Eucharistic minister after which we had to make Waitrose at full speed to pick up our copy of our Sunday newspaper and then onwards to the park where we were due to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend in the park at 11.00am. At about this time on a Sunday morning there seems to be quite a congregation of park acquaintances so we have a bit of a laugh and joke with each other before going our separate ways. So we came home and Meg watched ‘Mountain Biking’ in the Olympics whilst I prepared the Sunday lunch of chicken, baked potato and some string beans (brought to us from Morocco but I am sure that in our gardening days we would have had a crop of them adorning our bamboo frames by now).
I have started to think about the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, not least because the veteran Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, gave us the immortal dictum that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ It is now just about a week since Jo Biden withdraw his ambitions to serve for a second term, leaving the way open for Kamala Harris, his Vice President, to press her own case. Although Kamala Harris is not the best candidate on paper, the Democratic party have rallied round her cause dramatically within the last week and we are now in a situation where having drawn level with Donald Trump in the opinion polls, the very latest polls do indicate that she may be in the lead. The reasons are not hard to find. The kind of rhetoric deployed by Donald Trump cement him even more firmly in the 25%-30% of the section of the electorate to whom his populism has a particular appeal, largely the economically disadvantaged and largely ‘left behind’ sections of the electorate. Meanwhile the Democratic party was not particularly enamoured with some of the Biden policies and, in particular Gaza. These sections of the Democratic voters are pleased at last to have a much credible candidate behind whom they can rally and there is even a section of the Republican party who have never liked Trump who might be persuaded to lend their votes to the Democrats to get rid of Trump and thereby to get their own party back again. I have also started to think that Trump is a particularly poor politician. For example, he has now chosen Vance as a Vice Presidential running mate who is even more to the right than he is and who have argued that women who do not bear children are an abomination. Many Republicans are starting to doubt the wisdom of Vance as a running mate if only because to ‘balance the ticket’ one chooses a Vice Presidential running mate who can attract support (from the centre) that is less accessible to the main presidential candidate. Trump, it is being said, is running scared of entering a debate with Kamala Harris who, after all, as a state prosecutor was well versed in the art of asking questions in a court of law that those before the court did not want to answer. Already a slogan is being suggested for the forthcoming election that the contest between Harris and Trump might be a case ‘The prosector vs. the convicted felon’. One does get the feeling that Harris could eviscerate Trump were there to be a public debate and Trump has evidently seen the danger of this. Also, we now have the situation where Trump’s age and some of his ‘mis-speaks’ could prove to be a hindrance. Some of the things that Trump is saying are horrendous – one of his latest claims is that he actually won in every single state in the last election.
Meg and I have been watching (again) some of the ‘Pilgrims’ programme shown on BBC TV and available via BBC catchup. Today was focusing on the climb up Snowdon which Meg and have done on several occasions and from most directions as well. The programme also featured the mountain railway which reminded me that the last time Meg ascended Snowdon it was to take Meg’s aged aunt and uncle up to the top on the mountain railway which I think is the only time we have ever used it. On one occasion when we were descending Snowdon with a couple of young German girls as walking companions we all decided to go for a swim in the ice-cold lake called, I think, the Glaslyn as it was a boiling hot day. Needless to say, the two German girls stripped and swam ‘au natural’ and our son and I joined them for as long as we could stand the cold water. We explained to our travelling companions that we had no swimming costumes with us but they exclaimed that there was no need to bother with that, stripped off and dived straight in.
© Mike Hart [2024]