Yesterday was a day when the carers were again scheduled to come at 7.20am in the morning which means that I needed to get up an hour and a half earlier - consequently, I do not think that I slept particularly well because perhaps because I was conscious of the fact of an earlier start this morning. We generally do not make a trip out on a Sunday morning as later in the day, we often receive a visit from our University of Birmingham friend to which we always look forward. The political agenda in the forthcoming week is probably dominated by the visit that Keir Starmer is due to pay to the White House on Thursday. There is a consensus view that the UK Prime Minister will have to approach this meeting with the utmost delicacy, expressing warm words for the president in public (for the sake of the cameras) but perhaps informing Trump in private conversations that some of his ideas are actually quite mad, as well as being illegal (for example, emptying Gaza of Palestinians, ending the Ukraine war by appeasing Russia and getting American hands on mineral deposits) President Macron of France will precede Starmer by meeting with Trump on Monday and no doubt the European leaders will have got their act together to deliver a uniform European view. The whole meeting is characterised by an analogy that was used in the run up to the election i.e. a Ming Vase moment when, in this thought experiment, one has to walk very carefully across a room bearing a priceless Ming Vase but frightened to death of dropping it. The Brits always like to talk about the 'special relationship' that the UK has with the USA but the Americans never do unless they have been reminded by their own diplomatic staff. In the case of the Trump coterie, I doubt that he words will ever enter their heads and, in any case, the Trump administration is probably of the mindset that Europe if now 'finished' and not worth bothering with. Sky News have broadcast a long, rambling and sometimes incoherent speech by Donald Trump full of uncheckable facts and some pure venom and he termed anything in the previous administration pursuing probably quite centrist policies such as the US Aid programme as 'radical Left Marxists' In an act of pure vindictiveness, he has denied ex-President Jo Biden any access to government papers which is a customary right bestowed on all past presidents and has threatened to go after any members of the judiciary who had overseen any actions against Trump in the past. So much for the 'separation of powers' between the legislative and judicial arms of government.
Mid morning our University of Birmingham friend called around, as is often the case on Sunday mornings. We nearly always have an academic topic that we need to discuss with each and yesterday a lot of our attention was devoted to problems of measurement. We both have an interest in this even though we come from very different academic traditions and we explored the concept of reliability vs. accuracy. I had a vague remembrance of a diagram which explained these concepts perfectly, using the example of arrows hitting a target butt. Fortunately, I managed to find a website that illustrated these points where a measure could be reliable (consistent in the results) but consistently wrong as in arrows that cluster closely together but off the bull's eye. As opposed to this, we have results that are regarded as accurate but are rather inconsistent. My friend was going to do a bit of reading around these concepts and explore them further with another friend with whom he was having similar discussions. My friend do not mind the fact that this academic interest of ours could be regarded as a little 'nerdish' but I recall well the incident were an accountant who was supervising one of our placement students when discussing her work in general was bemoaning the fact that she had no real concept of the approximate magnitude e.g. of an invoice which came before them. He uttered the observation which I have. not forgotten that the student had the facility to be 'precisely wrong instead of approximately correct', perhaps because she was one of the generations who had used calculators all of their lives. Actually, when working out anything, it is always a good idea to have an approximate answer to a question so that one is not wildly wrong but in the right ballpark. Towards lunchtime. my son and his wife called round to see us and I explained to them what was happening with the mistaken direct debit issue with Worcestershire County Council. We then did a few experiments to see if I could get my main computer to use 'Siri' to locate a misplaced phone and we managed to get this working to get us out of accidental misplacements in the future.
We had some lunch where I was pleased to able to get most of it inside Meg whilst we were watching the Italy France 6 Nations rugby match. Despite Italy being one of the weakest teams in the tournament, they played with a great deal of panache (appropriately against the French) and actually scored two tries in the first half. As a team, they are improving season by season and beat Wales a fortnight ago to mark a new 'low' for Welsh rugby. The weather yesterday proved to be very windy and showery, and I was relieved that it was not a kind of day when Meg and I usually take a trip out. The very likeable male Asian carer came around in the afternoon and I assisted him in getting Meg hoisted into her chair in the lounge/bedroom. He was going to goo with a friend to visit an Italian restaurant so we were discussing the type of Italian food in which he might be interested. Steering away from the spaghetti bolognese, I thought he might like to try a Carbonara or, in fact, anything with either fish or mushrooms in it, both of which make Italian food very interesting.
© Mike Hart [2025]