It seems unbelievable to us but Donald Trump seems to be serious about his desire to acquire both Greenland and Canada to make for a 'greater' United States. In the case of Greenland, there are vast mineral and rare earth resources that America would really like to acquire, and they have had eyes on Greenland before. It is not likely that Denmark will release Greenland but the Trump regime is about to impose tariffs upon Denmark to attempt to force the issue and it is not out of the bounds of possibility that he might succeed. But the desire to take over Canada and to make it the 51st state of the USA appears to be pure moonshine, and the Canadians will resist for all they are worth. Mark Carney who was the governor of the Bank of England has just taken over the premiership and has called an election in Canada in which its independence is a major election issue. Were they to join the USA, they would probably be a Democrat controlled state with a large number of electoral college votes, not to mention the Senate, so the Republicans would lose power for a generation or more. But this is not going to happen and as in the case of Greenland is a pure case of bully boy tactics.
When I last pushed Meg out in her wheelchair, something seemed a little different about our environment as I pushed Meg towards the main road. Then I realised that the local authority had cut back a magnificent 2.5 metre hedge in the road which we use to access the main Kidderminster Road to a height of about 1 metre or less. Why this hedge which has been at the 2.5 metre height for about the last 20 years and probably way before that should suddenly require such radical surgery is a mystery to me and I wonder what impact it will have on the local bird population. The fact it has been done in late March rather than in April makes me wonder whether it has been done now so as not to run foul of any legislation, but it always distresses me when quite well-established hedges are ripped out or cut back in this way. In the large new housing estate which is being built down the road, a perfectly well established hedge was ripped down by the builders and replaced by a rather inadequate looking fence by the builders and I am sure that the occupants of the new houses would have preferred a hedge to border their properties rather than a fence. As we know from our own experience when a small orchard adjacent to our property was cut down before seventeen houses occupied the plot, it only takes couple of cowboys and a chainsaw to wield all kind of destruction and by the time one is driven to protest or to stop such an act of vandalism the act has been done. In the case of the adjacent orchard, at the time I urgently requested that the local authority Tree Officer call around to give a view on the felling activities but by the time he got round to it in a day or so, the act had already been performed. If the apple orchard adjacent to our house had been in rural Worcestershire, it would have received an automatic protection, but this policy did not apply to Bromsgrove as we found to our detriment. But as I am basking in the fact that I have got my first grass cutting of the season under my belt, I notice that the local authority had performed their very first cut of the season on the local verges so they, too, must have the last week of March in their calendar as the date upon which to re-commence their regular mowing activities. Having said that, I have always had a policy of not keeping my grass too short as we could still have late frosts in April. I did discover that I had some grass seed already in stock so as soon as the weather is propitious (by which I mean sunny but with the prospect of rain in an hour or so) then will go and re-seed the areas left bare by the mole which has rampantly made its progress across the whole of our grassed area to the front of the house.
Yesterday turned out to be quite a busy morning. Meg and I journeyed down the hill and met up with our two regular friends in Wetherspoons where we were especially pleased to see our 90 year old chorister who had made it to our rendez-vous this morning. Our domestic help had come around today as on her usual day tomorrow she was having to supervise the fitting of a new garden fence and we always have a lot of domestic type news to share with each other. As soon as we had returned, I received a text inviting Meg and I to receive a spring anti-COVID injection and despite joining a queue of 17 requested that Meg and I be added to the list when the District nurses administer the vaccine as it is not feasible for Meg and I to attend the surgery. The care worker arrived for the 'sit' session and we were soon interrupted by an electrician who was detailed to come round at short notice to isolate the electrical fittings in the ceiling the dining room before the plasterers arrive next Thursday to start the repair following the leak we had a few weeks ago, Then two care workers turned up for Meg's late morning call so for a few minutes bodies seemed to be everywhere. By the time all of the care workers and the electrician had left it was past 2.00pm and I did not feel like starting to cook our normal lunch of a risotto at that point. So I made a type of 'quickie' lunch which was tin of tuna, enhanced with some good dollops of salad cream, butter and Thousand Island dressing and then served on a slice of toast. This as it turned out was sufficient lunch for Meg and myself. In addition to all of this, I took delivery of another oil-filled radiator which I decided to buy to complement the one I bought some weeks ago and with which I am delighted. The circumstances of this latest purchase are rather unusual because I was turning over in my mind whether 2.0kw rather than a 2.5kw heater would serve my needs as it was only two thirds of the price. I needed to go into our bedroom and looked in a bedroom drawer in which Meg and I stored some purses and when I looked inside one of them there were a number of £1 coins (which is scarcely unusual) but also a folded up £20 note in a small compartment in the purse that I had completely forgotten about. Spookily enough, what I found in the purse was almost exactly the cost (to the nearest 10p) of the oil heater I was contemplating a purchase so reckoning that I could buy this for effectively nothing having just discovered the contents of the purse in the bedroom. This heater arrived today and I needed to assemble some casters on it and bring it into use. As the previous heater I had purchased had three heat settings but I had only ever used on the 'middle' setting of 1.5kw then I reckoned that this new ater rated 2.0kw should prove to be more than adequate, particularly now that the worst of the winter has passed us by.
© Mike Hart [2025]