Friday is the one of the days in which carer(s) have been allocated to us and so we got up in plenty of time and got everything prepared ready for a start at 7.00am. But by about 7.40 nobody had turned up so we assumed that we had better get on and do things ourselves which we did. Then the two carers turned up and they were a good team as they were the same pair that we had seen on Wednesday. They wondered what else was to be done and I suggested that Meg’s hair could perhaps do with a wash. As it turned out, one of the carers had been practising hairdressing for over twenty years and she was quite happy to do this act of personal care for Meg. After a washing, we used one of our hair dryers so that at the end of the day Meg had a little styling thrown in as well. This put us both in a good mood and we are pleased when this particular pair of helpers turn up so we are considering whether to write a note to the agency that employs them requesting that some continuity of service might be a good idea and requesting that we get this pair on a regular basis. After Meg and I had breakfasted, we got ourselves ready to make a little trip to Droitwich, just down the road. Having parked the car relatively easily, we popped down the road to get a copy of our newspaper from W H Smiths and then progressed on to our favourite charity shop just around the corner. We had quite a good morning’s shop because they just happened to have some new, but heavily discounted, jogging trousers which we could do with for Meg and where, quite by coincidence, I had ordered a pair over the internet during the night. We also bought some ladies socks and a nice looking top for Meg so we have some nice new kit to try out on Meg in the morning. Then we make progress to our cafe of choice which was teeming but where they know us well so a table was magicked up for us and we indulged in a pot of tea and a large bacon butty between us. On the way home, we called in at one of our friends down the Kidderminster Road to invite them around for a cup of tea some time in the next few days. Instead, they invited us around for coffee tomorrow morning which invitation we readily accepted as we have not had the opportunity to have a good Christmas-style chat. When we got home, we needed to prepare some lunch and I made a rather novel (for us) lunch. I had taken a fillet of white fish (Basa) out of the freezer and although we thought this could be rather tasteless, we had some tartare sauce that would perhaps add a bit more flavour. To this we added some beetroot salad left over from the weekend and some celeriac coleslaw and together this provided a very tasty and different kind of meal for us.
After lunch, we had decided on a film that we would watch this afternoon. When I had taken out a subscripion to Amazon Prime, I had noticed that one of the films provided that we could watch was ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ Normally, I do not comment much in this blog on TV programmes or films that I have watched but this was bit of an exception. The writers had taken the basic plot of the novel by Fowles and had then intercut, at some relevant points, a sub-plot of some of the actors playing the principal roles (Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons) who were having an extra-marital liaison that some to extent mirrored the main plot of the film. This made the denouement of the film more and more interesting because one was not absolutely sure how it was going to all work out in the end. In the ‘modern’ sub-plot it was revealed that the film crew were probably going to film two endings, one a happy one and one an unhappy one but the actors involved did not know which of these endings was to make it into the final version. And so the main film ended, with appropriate inter-cutting of the more modern sub-plot, and so the viewer was left guessing as to which ‘ending’ was to end either the main plot or the subplot. I am sure that this device has probably been used before and it may well be that the film as a whole made for some unhappy viewing amongst the acting fraternity where there may well be cases of ‘life imitating art’
As we are approaching the end of 2023, scientists are reporting that the globe may well have had its warmest year for 125,000 years. There are still some climate change deniers around but one wonders how they continue to argue their case in the face of this overwheming evidence. Of course, if all else fails, they will argue that the world’s media has been taken over by a left-wing cabal who are spreading myths about climate change in order to disrupt capitalist systems or similar types of nonsense that climate change deniers are wont to spout.
© Mike Hart [2023]