I recall not being a particularly happy bunny when got this morning as before I went to bed the previous evening, I consulted the carers schedule and saw that we were due for a 7.00am start which means getting up at 5.00am. Well, it would have been 5.00am if I not shut off the alarm and immediately fallen asleep for another 35 minutes which makes me running late in the morning. When the couple of carers did arrive, they brought along with them a 'shadow' i.e. newly recruited worker who has to observe minutely what the experienced care workers do and then they themselves will be out on the road in a few day's time. These new workers often look frightened to death because there is so much to learn and to retain for each individual client and they have to desperately absorb as much information as they can. In theory, they should be sent out with a more experienced worker to get some good hands on experience - I often tell them that if they leave the care profession, they could ways get a job as a 'continuity producer' whose job it is to ensure that on a film set or on a TV studio, everything is in place as it should be for future visits to the location and they have to have incredible memories for where things are in each location they visit. We have no particular commitments today and the weather seems no worse than yesterday do I suspect we shall just collect our newspaper and then see how the day unfolds. But do we do go back up the hill to watch Prime Minister's Question Time although this often proves to be an irritating anti climax for us. Whilst we were on our way down into town, we actually did bump into both our Irish friends and also our Italian friend who carried on walking with us as far as Waitrose. Having picked up our newspaper, we did progress onto the High Street where I managed to buy some much needed items from the cosmetics store as well as getting our weekly cash out of the ATM. Once we had returned home, I often make some soup for both of us. This starts off as a packet soup which I then mix with some boiling water and top up with full cream milk and finally eat up in the microwave. I gave Meg her little portion and then settled down to watch the remainder of Prime Minister's Questions with the cup of soup in my hand. Then an altogether too familiar calamity overcame me which, alas, is all too common these days. After the 5.00 am start and then pushing Meg up and down the hill, I was just starting to enjoy my coup of soup when I fell sleep spilling the soup all over myself, my trousers, the chair and the carpet. All of this required a change of clothing and a massive clean-up effort of the soup on the carpet. I now know that I need quite a lot of water to get the stain of the carpet and then masses of kitchen paper to soak up the water, After all of this, I did have a little doze and started work on lunch which seemed to take forever. This was because I was preparing a type pf pasta for Meg and curry for myself which involved quite a lot of dicing of the vegetables (onions, peppers, tomatoes) supplemented with an onion gravy, diced fruit, sultanas and a dollop of yogurt. By the time it was prepared, Meg was fast asleep so I put Meg's own dinner in the microwave for later whilst I had mine (and fell asleep again) I think it is the combination of the 5.00am starts, pushing Meg up and down the hill and my own general exhaustion level which is contributing to this sleepy level. Bit when the carers came around for the late afternoon call Meg seemed wide awake and laughed and joked with the two young carers which is always wonderful to see.
The really dramatic news which came through late in the afternoon is the fact that Putin and Trump are in touch with each other and are going to start negotiations immediately to end the war in Ukraine. We already know that the American defence secretary has already forcefully given his view that the Ukrainians at the very least should give up the lands in Eastern Ukraine that they have already occupied and will insist that Ukraine never joins Nato. The American defence chief as also told the Europeans that the entire focus of the American military will be away from Europe and towards the Pacific and the China region, Putin and Trump are each to meet in each other's country and it looks as though a deal will be done over the heads of the Ukrainians and the other Europeans. At the end of the day, Putin will have gained some extra territory and stopped the eastward expansion of Nato but at the expense of several thousand Russian soldiers and nearly three years of warfare. There have been hour long calls between Putin and Trump and between Trump and Zelenskyy and the BBC is reporting that the whole of this endgame is turning out to be a diplomatic triumph for Putin. It is more than a year since an American president has visited Russia and, no doubt, both Putin and Trump will bask in their respective mutual glory.
I do not follow the local news very closely but there was a news item about the immensity and the complexity of the railway engineering now that the HS2 work near Birmingham is gathering pace. Apparently viaducts galore have had to be constructed and whole site to the east of Birmingham now occupies a space the size of three spaghetti junctions for which Birmingham is famous/notorious. This phase of the work is now considered unstoppable but what a pity that the while HS2 project had not been considered as a 'T' in which Manchester and Leeds were connected first and then the line was to be driven southwards. Most the economic work conducted on the construction of high speed lines indicates that in the last analysis they tend to benefit the capital cities most in the countries in which they are located.
© Mike Hart [2025]