Last night, Meg seemed to get off to sleep relatively quickly and I felt as though I could benefit from an early night. However, that is not how the night transpired because as I had ordered new iPhone, an iPhone 16, I thought this would be a good opportunity to clean up some of the clutter on my existing phone. So I went through the entire collection of Apps, deleting about half of them and evidently only keeping those that I thought would still be useful to retain even though I had not used them a great deal. At the same time, I made sure that I could access my NHS app and, in general terms, tried to make things neat and tidy before the changeover next Tuesday. I feel that I would like to start off with a fairly limited set of useful apps and I believe that in the updated model, Apple will actually group together apps that are similar to each other and this sounds a useful feature. I managed to locate some 'Getting Started' guides which I have run off on the printer and put in a file. Whilst up and about, I thought I would see what range of Amazon books might be available for me to make maximum use of my new phone but the available offerings were both extensive and, to some extent, confusing. Sometimes, these books can be excellent and sometimes they are a complete waste of money so I decided to stay my hand and see if I could find a book that was a clear market leader or, at least, not a complete waste of money. Perhaps I do not have the search terms correct but when I try to search for some recommendations or evaluations of the various books to make sure that I do not buy 'a pig in a poke' but decided to stay my hand for the time being. So I was pretty tired this morning as I had been up half of the night but it is only once in a while. After we had breakfasted this morning, our domestic help turned up as is usual on a Wednesday and then Meg and I decided to make a Waitrose trip. This all worked out as we had intended although we did not bump into any of our regulars but had a brief snatch of conversation with our Irish friend who we passed on the way down. After we returned, we awaited the arrival of the carers to give Meg her late morning call which was an hour later today for some reason. The two girls who turned up were of a very chatty and friendly disposition and this certainly helps to both keep Meg in a good mood and also make the whole carer session progress so much more smoothly. I thanked the care workers and then let them know that I thought that if the visit was filled with a lot of jolly conversation, this was very good therapeutically for Meg. We lunched on the fishcakes and microwaved vegetables which is normally our Tuesday rather than our Wednesday fare and settled down to see a biography of D H Lawrence on Sky Arts which was reasonably informative.
This afternoon, Meg and I set ourselves down to watch a film hosted by Lucy Worsley being run as a supplement to the Mozart series on BBC2. Entitled 'Mozart's London Odyssey' it details the stay in London of Leopold Mozart, Mozart's father who was attempting to cash in on his son's prodigy status. The family stayed at various addresses and performed at a series of locations but occasionally times were hard and Leopold Mozart had to accept whatever opportunities came his way. On at least one occasion, both children were to be heard performing for just half a crown (12p) at a tavern named the Swan and Hoop near the western end of Cornhill, in the heart of the City. Leopold Mozart advertised his son's age at seven even though he was in fact eight at the time but even more remarkable is the fact that Mozart composed his first symphony at this age and whilst staying in London.
The Labour party conference closed today having been dominated by the row of the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowances and the rank hypocrisy exercised by some of the leading figures of the party, including the Prime Minister, as they accepted gifts from wealthy donors. Whether or not all of this is transparent and within the rules is completely besides the point as the 'optics' of members of the party accepting handouts whilst benefits are denied to old age pensioners just seems to scream of a lack of political common sense. But the Tory party conference will start shortly and I have always found this to be a lot more interesting. I think this is because one expects the Labour party to be rowing with each other and to be fractious but the Tories would always like to generate the impression of complete party unity. In fact, party unit is said to be the Tories secret weapon but post-Brexit all of this has broken down since the premierships of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. At this party conference, there will be four candidates for a new Leader of the Opposition strutting their stuff but there is to be a vote amongst the representatives (not delegates to a Tory party conference!) to whittle the four down to two and then these two names will be put to the constituency parties. The possibility remains, of course, that the successful candidate may appeal to the right wingers in the constituency parties but not command a majority of their own reduced number of MPs and this does not bode well for the future. Of course, the number of corporate sponsors and big business interests will shrink dramatically at this party conference as the Tories may well be out of power for 10 years and therefore not be in a position to hand out contracts and other largesse as they have done over the years. The big political question for the Tories is what kind of party they want to be and will they swing further to the right (which probably spells out further electoral oblivion) or will they tack to the centre ground which the Tory party has not done for some decades now? And of course most parties in opposition, and after heavy defeat, take the opportunity to have a rethink of their policies but I cannot really see this happening in the modern Conservative party which probably appeals at a more visceral rather than an intellectual level these days.
© Mike Hart [2024]