This morning started off as we have by now come to expect with a couple of carers turning up to help Meg up, showered, dressed and then eventually helped downstairs. We breakfasted to the news dominating the airwaves of George Galloway and his Workers’ Party of Britain having gained quite a sensational victory overnight in the by-election yesterday. Normally, this seat would have won by Labour but the Labour candidate was disavowed by the party after he had made anti-Semitic comments and so George Galloway romped away with the seat in Rochdale with an Independent candidate occupying the second place. What was so remarkable about this election was that the two established mail political parties, the Tories and the Labour Party were beaten into third and fourth place. After we had breakfasted, we waited for our minister to arrive from our local church who we had not seen for a week or so but were delighted to see her when she arrived. We spent a slightly shorter amount of time together as she had another service that she needed to attend but, as always, we find these visits quite uplifting. Then Meg and I had the choice of where to go for coffee so we chose to go to Droitwich which we sometimes do on a Friday. As we were parking in Droitwich, I espied a most extraordinary sight which was a group of about eight nursery age children packed into a sort of modern trailer which was then being pulled along by their minders. I suppose this arrangement must be somewhat safer than having a line of children some of whom might be stragglers or be otherwise wayward. The only time that I have seen something similar was in La Coruna in Northern Spain where I did once notice a long length of blue rope with young children (aged about 4) who had evidently been instructed at all costs just to hang onto the piece of rope. At one end of the piece of rope was their teacher/minder and this was a device that they utilised to get across busy roads and otherwise circumnavigate the city. This morning as I was concentrating on my driving, I did not have a great deal of time to observe exactly how the transportation of nursery school children was being done but I suspect it was fundamentally a staff-saving type of arrangement. So Meg and I picked up our copy of our daily newspaper and then headed for our normal cafe which was much quieter than usual. But when we came to leave, we were astonished to see that the ground was white over and evidently there had been a sudden flurry of hail if not snow (I think the meteorologists cover themselves by calling these ‘wintry showers’) But whatever shower there had been, the skies had cleared quite quickly and became quite a bright blue with a hint of warmth from the sun. Today is called meteorologically the first day of Spring, an event I would prefer to be associated with the equinox on 21st of this month. We made our way to the Worcestershire Association of Carers shop to see if, by any chance, the Murano glass goblet was still in evidence but it was not, so had evidently been sold perhaps to a discerning collector. Then we made our way home, the weather having changed remarkably for the better. Once we got home, we wee running somewhat late for our normal Friday lunch of a fish pie which would have taken a fair amount of time to cook. Instead, we made ourselves a lightning lunch of a slice of toast topped by a slice of cheese, then a slice of ham and topped up with some garlic mushrooms. This lunch was not only tasty but prepared in a record space of time as well.
During the afternoon, I was encouraging Meg to have a post-prandial map when I received a mobile phone call from a nurse who was actually standing outside our front door with a piece of kit designed to enhance Meg’s mobility around the house. I was half expecting this piece of kit to be delivered but I was not expecting the person who delivered it to be a nurse employed by the Falls Prevention/Occupational Therapy team to be delivering it in person. This turned out to be a most useful visit as she came and assessed Meg’s mobility and made sure the new piece of kit was suitable for her. She also took Meg’s blood pressure both sitting down and standing up and then was going to submit the readings to our doctor. She was a very useful source of advice and I would have liked to spend even more time with her if it were possible but just then our hairdresser turned up (by appointment) and so between us, we managed to get Meg’s hair given its monthly treatment. In the late afternoon, we saw the Prime Ministerial statement and then an amazing interview of George Galloway, the winner of the Rochdale by election with Sam Cooke, the Sky News political commentator. Whatever one might feel of George Galloway’s political stances, his rhetorical flourishes are second to none and he seemed to reduce Sam Cooke to a quivering wreck in the course of a most extraordinary interview. I saw George Galloway do a similar thing in the United States Senate here again he managed to completely out-argue his Senate inquisitor who was absolutely no match for the verbal skills that Galloway can display when he is ‘on song’ as it were.
© Mike Hart [2024]