Yesterday morning two of Meg's regular carers turned up on time and got Meg washed, dressed and sitting in her wheelchair. When their care tasks are completed, the care staff assiduously fill in the two sets of reports that they have to make (a Task List and Care Plan notes) and they used an app called 'Birdie' which the care agency staff have enable me to download so that I can check on what has been said (which, in fact I do not need to) eventually, I hope a little functionality will be added so that I can check up on the time of the next scheduled visit (which is important to me, as I need to time my little trips out to ensure that I am back here on time) When they chat with each other at the end of a care session, the workers are always talking about the logistics of meeting with the next set of clients because despite the schedules that are done on a weekly basis, this can change by the day and even by the hour. After we had breakfasted, we made our way on a really beautiful morning to meet up with our friends in Waitrose and, as usual, had a jolly chat with two of our friends. I took the opportunity to buy some heavily discounted Little Gem lettuce that I needed for our lunch and also bought some Cavolo Nero which is that wonderfully nutty and non-bitter form of dark kale which has been especially bred and has made kale taste delicious. When the care workers called around, one of them intimated that her next task along was to cook a salmon fillet for the person for whom she was a care worker. As it happened, we were due to have some sea bass for lunch and so we discussed the best way for the fish to be cooked. Our domestic help showed us a wonderful method for cooking fresh sea bass (which I had bought from the supermarket when I last went shopping) and we have followed this ever since. Basically the fish is washed and dried in kitchen paper, and then has a quick smearing of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice and just a soupcon of salt. Then we fry it in a special grill pan that we have that is manufactured with ridges which keeps the fish from sticking too much to the bottom of the pan and cook it for three minutes on one side and then two minutes on the other. It is served quickly on a bed of lettuce and then eaten quickly before it cools. Prepared this way, the fish is absolutely delicious and its delicate flavour is enhanced and so we really enjoyed our lunch time meal which, believe it or not, feels one quite filled and satisfied. This afternoon, as we often do, we settled down to watch a programme which had been broadcast the night before. The programme for this afternoon was on Channel 5 and was '1984: The most shocking moments' This programme is evidently compiled with a lot of BBC archive film and two things really stood out for me. The first of these was the scathing and delightful 'Spitting Image' which parodied politicians and particularly Margaret Thatcher ruthlessly. Margaret Thatcher's image was voiced by a male actor who managed to get her intonations with a great deal of accuracy - one of her cabinet, Edwina Currie, revealed that she was certain that Margaret Thatcher watched the programme and afterwards actually became more like her Spitting Image persona with a deeper voice and portrayed as wearing male clothes. The makers of Spitting Image contemplated making John major look slightly less grey and boring by inventing an affair with a contemporary female politician. They considered Edwina Currie but eventually chose Virginia Bottomley but the shocking truth that was revealed a few years later in Edwina's Currie autobiography that she did have an affair with John Major and they actually engaged in sex on the desk that he had in his room in the House of Commons. When the cartoonists learnt of this, they portrayed John Major as an up-to-date Superman but wearing his underpants outside his trousers. The whole extra marital affair helped make John Major's reputation to recover from a bold and unadventurous politician to somebody much more dynamic - incidentally, the same thing happened to Paddy Ashdown the Liberal Party leader who the cartoonists promptly labelled as 'Paddy Pantsdown' Naturally, the program on 1984 included the horrific events of the miner's dispute and their eventual confrontation with the massed ranks of police, some of them mounted, at the now infamous Orgreave coal coking plant. There were many other memorable shocking moments of 1984. One of them was the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and the whole of her cabinet in the IRA bombing of their conference hotel in Brighton, not to mention the death on stage of the comedian Tommy Cooper (shown live on ITV) Tommy Cooper just appeared to crumple and the audience cheered thinking it was part of his act but he had in fact died. Finally, we have the appearance of Madonna who in a show sang her iconic 'Just like a Virgin' but dressed like a bride which outfit she discarded in stages and with a series of gyrations that completely belied the title of the song.
The quote 'Tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth' is often attributed to various historical figures, including Lenin, Hitler, and Goebbels. But this is now receiving a new twist with respect to the forthcoming USA presidential election where it appears that most voters now believe the Trump lie that the last election was fraudulently won by the Democrats. Only 57% of Trump supporters said they believe this November’s elections will be run and administered somewhat or very well, according to polling of registered voters that the Pew Research Center released on Thursday — compared to 90% of Harris supporters. Forty-two percent of Trump supporters believed the elections would be run 'not too well' or 'not at all well.' Both groups had high confidence in election administrators in 2018, Pew’s historical data shows, but a dramatic split between the Democratic and Republican candidate supporters developed in 2020 and has only grown wider since. There was a similar split in confidence that mail-in and absentee ballots will be counted as voters intended, with 85% of Harris supporters confident the counts will be accurate compared to 38% of Trump supporters. Voters were also split, though less dramatically, on how confident they were that in-person votes will be counted accurately, that state election officials and local poll workers will do a good job and that U.S. election systems are secure against cyberattacks.
© Mike Hart [2024]