Yesterday morning presaged the start of the week and another change to our 'normal' domestic routine as the care agency was experiencing more short-term staffing problems and this meant that the number of care workers to get Meg up in the morning was reduced from two to one and I was asked to assist - under the circumstances, I do not mind as I shall be assisting the young male Asian carer who we see several times a week. This evening as well, there will be just one young female carer to put Meg to bed but again I am happier assisting one really experienced care worker rather than leaving Meg in the hands of two relatively inexperienced ones which has happened on occasions. Last night, after Meg had been out to bed, the news came through that Newcastle had won the Carabao Cup (which I gather is the sponsorship name for what used to be called 'The League' Cup) and it was the first time that Newcastle had won any kind of major competition since 1955. Although it sounds hard to believe, I have a sort of tenuous connection with this victory in 1955. My mother had decided that in her mid 40's she would go off to college to train to be a teacher and mature students like my mother were quite a rarity in the 1950's. My sister was to attend the Bar Convent in York as a weekly boarder but to come home at the weekends to be with her grandmother whilst I was despatched to the cheapest boarding school in the country (actually, a boarding unit of 40 in a direct grant grammar school, Thornleigh College in Bolton, Lancashire) Now my mother had evidently been called for interview in 1955 to the Teacher Training college in Newcastle called 'Fenham' which was then regarded as one of the best of its kind in the country- as people used to say of other colleagues that she was 'Fenham' trained. Now we come to the connection with the 1955 Newcastle United FA Cup Victory. I remember my mother telling me, and I would be aged 10 at the time, that when she visited Newcastle the whole town seemed to be in an FA Cup fever and wherever you went in the town, shop windows were full of the black-and-white Newcastle colours. Another connection with this era was the fact that I think my mother visited London because she successfully applied for a loan of £2,000 (multiply by about 35 to get it to present day values) from a body called 'The National Council for the Education and Training of Women' to finance her and the family during the two years of her teacher training. I asked her to make a particular note of the locomotive that pulled her train, and it was the A4 'streak' locomotive known as 'Wild Swan' so even at that age, I must have had the first inklings of an interest in steam locomotives. This interest was to develop in my later years when I went 'trainspotting' (with an elder boy who lived around the corner) to York and Doncaster. Doncaster was a particular delight because there were huge engine repair sheds in the vicinity of the station around which we were allowed to wander (provided we kept to the sides of the building) during the so called 'dead hour' or lunchtime period when we had the opportunity to spot rare Scottish locomotives called down for repair.
The morning seemed attenuated as the carer was not scheduled to arrive until 9.00am this morning but I got up at the normal time and did some domestic jobs. Then it took practically an hour to get Meg washed, dressed and transferred to her comfortable chair in our Music Lounge. I discussed with the carer, who is one of the agency's team leaders, whether we need to retime the visit to Meg first thing in the morning as 45 minutes is allocated but as Meg is getting somewhat more frail, it is taking somewhat longer than this and was practically an hour this morning. After we had breakfasted, I made a telephone call to the Wheelchair service provided by Worcestershire and told them the sorry tale of how Meg had slipped out of the chair a week ago. The receptionist taking the call was suitable horrified and I explained that i though that either additional support strapping was needed and the whole question is indeed raised whether the existing chair (called a 'transit chair') is adequate to the job of a round trip of 2½ miles. Then I made my customary trip to town in the car to collect the newspaper and some milk and returned to make us some elevenses, after which time the late morning carer arrived and I made her a cup of tea. We had a simple lunch but when Meg is very sleepy in the mornings, it is slightly difficult to her requisite portion of lunch fed to her because I have a feeling that while she takes it into her mouth, she does not always swallow it as she should (all of which is part of the disease process). In the afternoon, we entertained ourselves with the first part of the ex-astronaut Tim Peake presenting a series called 'Secrets of our Universe' on Channel 5 which has some stunning photography and then followed this up with a continuation of the Mozart opera 'Cosi van Tutte' which we started watching but did not get through to the end.
I am still evaluating my newly installed browser of 'Brave' about which opinions are sharply divided. On the positive side, there are no adverts or tracking activities to follow you around and this is surely a good thing. But the browser has to be financed somehow and the business model pursued by Brave is to allow you to specify the adverts that you want in which you get paid a smidgeon in a type of cryptocurrency. The Brave internet browser blocks ads and other online trackers by default, while other browsers do not. One reviewer noted that he noticed a difference immediately when starting using Brave as, after a day or so, he was not being 'followed' online anymore. Blocking ads and trackers is not just about privacy, though as it also speeds the browsing experience by reducing site load times. Most ads and third-party trackers are scripts that run in the background of websites, slowing things down. Chrome, for example, collects browsing information, so Google and its advertising partners can send you targeted ads. Brave downloads only the essential elements for websites, so it loads way faster than other browsers like Chrome—especially if one tends to have a lot of tabs open. Although the cryptocurrency features are off by default, it still takes a certain amount of work and attention to make sure that these features, which many (including myself) want to be well and truly turned off or disabled so that one can appreciate the advantages of the browser without any of the attendant disadvantages. This I have done and so far, so good.