Yesterday being a Sunday morning, we know that the care workers arrive at 7.00am rather than 8.00am but one of them was 20 minutes late this morning which actually, in view of the personalities involved, I did not really mind. As I was getting ready I was starting to think ahead to the New Year and to New Year resolutions which I do make (generally the same ones) every way. In the meanwhile, I thought I would keep myself going with a 'Thought for the Day' which always used to be the province of Radio4 but on a Sunday tends to be religious in nature. So I trawled the web and came up with the following for today: 'The first step is clearly defining what it is you’re after, because without knowing that, you’ll never get it.'(Halle Berry) which will do for the sake of anything better. Then I started to wonder whether instead of looking at other people's quotes it might be a better idea to think of your own slogans for the day. One thought that occurred to me which I thought might be useful to me throughout the New Year and beyond is the simple exhortation (to myself, that is) 'Accumulate less, appreciate more' so as these thoughts occur to me, I might just jot them down.
After we had got Meg up, washed and breakfasted, it was time for us to make our trip down to Waitrose to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend, which is part of our normal routine for a Sunday morning. We discussed an enormous range of subjects including the experiences that we had at the hands of the Jesuits (who actually introduced Meg and I to each other way back in 1965) and then it was time to make progress up the hill again. We had an especially friendly carer to see to Meg in the middle of the day who had tried to make it to our party but had not quite managed it. As there was quite a lot of time 'free' in our session, the carer folded an enormous pile of washing for me, for which I was very grateful. As it happened, we had more than our normal share of washing because yesterday I had twice fallen asleep in cups of tea in my hand spilling it all over myself and so this was two pairs of trousers destined for the washing machine. As I tend to fall asleep regularly under these circumstances, I am resolved never just to have a cup of tea/coffee in my hand but also to put it in a safe place before I invariably nod off. We lunched on ham, sprouts and a baked potato and very tasty it was, too. After lunch, there were several TV programmes that we intended to catch up upon and the first of these was a film devoted to the life and career of Maggie Smith who died recently, giving the BBC a magnificent opportunity to make a biopic of the famous actress. Of her many, many roles, I most vividly remember the way she played 'Miss Smith', the vagrant occupying a van at the bottom to Alan Bennett's drive for 15 years which has been shown twice on TV recently. In the late afternoon, we received a telephone call from one of the young set of Meg's carers. Her call had been badly scheduled for an hour later than would have been ideal so the couple of young carers had some time spare and unofficially rescheduled Meg's teatime call which turned out to be a very good thing all in all. This couple of young people have a great sense of humour so we all have a joke and laugh and we encourage Meg to join in if she is not too tired at this stage in the afternoon. As I have mentioned before, I am particularly impressed by the skill set and attitudes of the young carers and it does help the caring transactions run more smoothly. Our University of Birmingham friend this morning and I were saying to each other that we cannot wait until we get back to a more 'normal' set of routines which the Christmas festivities have disrupted.
Labour would lose almost 200 seats in 'highly unstable' parliament if election held today, a new poll suggests. The poll predicts Labour would come out on top - but with barely a third of the total number of seats - making forming a government difficult. Of course, the Labour government has a massive majority at the moment and could well still come out on top as the governing party. But the electorate are in a volatile mood at the moment. It is fairly evident why the mood of the public wanted the Conservatives out at almost any price but the Labour government was not elected with any real degree of enthusiasm on the part of the electorate. It looks as though swathes of voters in the former 'red wall' seats captured by the Conservatives in the last but one election was unhappy with the last Conservative administration and now may be almost equally as unhappy with the present Labour administration. So the support for the Reform (extreme right wing party) is growing and snapping at the heels of the Conservative party being only 5% votes behind them. We do not need to be reminded that Hitler came to power democratically and then swept democracy away (and Trump has hinted that he may not do the same as he promised his voters that they may never 'need to vote again' whatever that is supposed to mean) I expect the New Year's Honours list to be announced shortly. This traditionally was scheduled for 1st January but I think the powers-that-be brought it forward a little so that the lucky recipients could celebrate with family and friends at New Year parties. Some Honours are undoubtedly deserved but those awarded to big donors of political parties reeks of political corruption and threatens to underline the legitimacy of the whole Honours system.
© Mike Hart [2024]