Yesterday, before I settled down to bed, I Skyped my University of Winchester friend whose wife is in a specialised nursing home and with whom I am in regular contact. Our respective spouses, although they have differing medical conditions, have quite a lot of symptoms in common, so we take the opportunity to have a good natter with each other. Some of this is practical help and support, some of it are common reminiscences but above all it is a wonderful opportunity to share experiences with each other. We started our Skype session at 9.15 and were in communication with each other for three hours, the time actually speeding by. Yesterday morning as I was getting dressed after my shower, I enjoyed the rendition of Mozart's Clarinet concerto being played on ClassicFM. I can remember vividly the first occasion when I heard this piece. I was in a small dormitory of about 4 beds in the attic of the accommodation in the boarding unit and it was the time of the Asian flue epidemic (1957-58) which swept across the country. Our dormitory master happened to be our art/music teacher and he somehow got hold of a record player and availed himself of the school copy of the Mozart clarinet concerto, which I have enjoyed ever since. The piece has a particular salience for Meg and I anyway as our son played a movement from this piece and won the schools music competition with his rendition of this. A combination of young women, trains and photography (I am not sure in which order) swept away my son's musical career on the clarinet but, of course, I still have the memories. Today, the weather seems to be set fair so after breakfast, Meg and I will make a trip down the 'The Lemon Tree' cafe which we have a little neglected of late but also offers the opportunity of a trip along the High Street where I buy some cosmetics not available in our local supermarket.
There is so much to say about the current conflict in the Middle East. But if I were to have a conversation with a Jewish rabbi, I am sure that I would pursue the idea, first I think enunciated in the Old Testament, of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' The whole point of this expression is that after a wrong has been done, the response should be proportionate and I think that it is an interesting point of moral/political/philosophical discussion whether the 40,000 deaths in Gaza following the invasion of a year ago is proportionate. The media is full of the talk about the first anniversary of the initial attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage when Hamas militants stormed into Israel. However, the latest calculation of deaths in Gaza is upwards of 40,000 which is a kill ratio of 33:1. This does not seem to me to be a case of a proportional response but of course Israel is arguing that it is fighting for its very existence against hostile enemies, fuelled by the people and their descendents displaced in 1948, who have vowed the complete destruction of the state of Israel. However, I am left with the thought that if one were to ignore the Negev desert in southern Israel, then the West Bank (of the Jordan) seized in the 6-day war in 1967 effectively doubled the size of the occupiable land available to the Israeli state. I mention the West bank (which the Spanish newspapers refer to as 'Cis-Jordan') because a two state solution has to have a redistribution of lands but I doubt that Israel will ever let go of the occupation of the West bank thus making a two-state solution practically impossible.
We made a trip down into town today, calling off at Waitrose where we picked up our newspaper and one of the friendliest partners pressed a Danish Apple crumble into our hands knowing it is Meg's favourite. Afterwards, we paid a visit to our local Salvation Army charity shop to peruse their shelves to see if they had any blankets in stock. As it happened, they had not but I just happened to espy an assistant and asked her to look in the back to see if any blankets had been donated. She came out with one polyester double blanket which she sold to me for £1.50 so I purchased this together with a brand new and packaged single sheet that was being sold off for £3.00. Then we made our way to 'The Lemon Tree' cafe where again we received a friendly greeting from the proprietors. We only had time for a cup of tea and then made our way up the hill, taking a short cut through the town and getting home bout 5 minutes before the carers arrived. I quickly put our newly purchased blanket into the wash after which it receives the lightest and lowest heat tumble and this proved sufficient to dry it out completely without the necessity to hang it on the line outside.
In the days when I used to garden extensively and bought some gardening books to extend my knowledge base, one used to see the phrase 'Choose a fine day to...' Now chance would be a fine thing but in the afternoon, there was a burst of sunshine so I decided that the back lawn badly needed a cut. This generally takes 20 minutes but I had nearly finished when the heavens started to open. I pulled my jacket over my head and then progressed to give my mower its clean (when, naturally, the clouds had rolled away and we were back in brilliant sunshine again) Now that I have today's cut done, there are two more before the end of the mowing season. Incidentally, I heard a very good tip from Alan Titchmarsh, the gardening 'guru'. He used to advise that if there had been a leaf fall by the end of October or the beginning of November, it was well worth a last mowing even though the length of the grass did not necessarily warrant it. He advised that the mowing action would chop up fallen, dried leaves into much smaller and finer pieces and this would enable the worms to do their task of dragging fragments of leaf down into the soil below the lawn, thus helping to fertilise it. That is the sort of gardening tip well worth knowing and I doubt it would occur to many people. I try to make my last mow of the season as near to the 5th November but I am always fighting the fact that the days are shortening with the clocks going back an hour at the end of October.
© Mike Hart [2024]