Knowing that I had a journey down to Hampshire to make this morning to attend the wonderful birthday of my ex-colleague's 80th, I arose at 6.00am as I have been wont to do for the past year or so, mainly so that I could be prepared for when the carers called around to get Meg prepared for the day ahead. But when I return from Hampshire, I may start to revise my daily routine and get up at 7.00am rather than 6.00am which has been my custom over the years. On the other hand, there is something to be said for arising early and getting things like a daily exercise routine in place as well as domestic concerns such as keeping abreast of emails and financial records. I had the experience today of packing an overnight bag in preparation for my one night stay away in Hampshire but this experience was not entirely novel to me. At the time that I was preparing papers for my PhD, I occasionally had an overnight stay and this was sometimes extended for a few days if it was a trip to a European city on the conferences organised by a professor/entrepreneur who is now a lifelong friend. So I suppose I can exercise my 'conference mentality' memory and I will recall the habits associated with packing an overnight bag. The only large item which remains in our main lounge is the camp bed which the Eucharistic minister and her husband let me have on loan throughout the last year so that I could be at Meg's side should she experience any distress in the middle of the night. Fortunately, such occurrences were quite rare but if I had slept upstairs and Meg was in distress, there was no way in which I could have known about it. So it has served its purpose admirably and now I am sleeping in my conventional double bed and I think I am getting a better night's sleep as a result. The other day when we were preparing the 'Order of Service' and not quite completing our task, my friend asked me to consult my family bible. I grabbed this and the book next to it and this turned out to be a missal (Catholic prayer book) When I looked at the flyleaf, there was a dedication from Meg which read 'With my love and prayers' and was dated May, 1966 and so must have been a 21st birthday present from Meg and not long after we had decided to marry.
The latest mad idea has emerged from the Trump regime (or should I say 'cabal'). Up to a million Palestinians could be permanently relocated from devastated Gaza to war-torn Libya under plans being worked on by Donald Trump's administration, NBC News reports. The idea has been discussed with Libya's leadership, sources told Sky's US partner network, and would potentially see billions of dollars in frozen Libyan funds released. The North African country remains divided in two - nearly 14 years after the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi sparked a civil war - with two rival governments fighting for control. By any stretch of the imagination, this has got to be ethnic cleansing and the term is now being openly applied to what the Israelis/Americans seem to have planned for the Gaza strip. It is one of the most incredible facts of the history of the last century that the Israeli peoples, having been subject to ethnic cleansing in the Holocaust are now said by many to be guilty of ethnic cleansing themselves in their policies towards the Palestinian residents of Gaza.
I set off for Hampshire in plenty of time and at just after 12.00pm. I was in danger of arriving half an hour early for the party. So as I had plenty of time, I stopped in a lay-by for a breath of fresh air. I noticed a little gap in the hedge and proceeding from this was a little beaten track down quite a steep little slope. I think this was an excellent opportunity to answer 'a call of nature' but I soon found myself propelled through the air in a rugby scoring type dive and landing full length in a huge bunch of nettles. I have to say that I was completely unhurt but when I examined what had occasioned my fall, there was a bit of a beaten down wire fence about a couple of inches above the ground and a trained saboteur could have positioned a trip wire more expertly. The rest of the trip was a bit of a nightmare because the SatNav took me not on the route I was expecting but on the M27, then off it, then on it again on roads totally unfamiliar to me. The SatNav failed to locate the address of my friend which is a large farmhouse in a track obliquely of the road and I had to stumble about trying to find it. To cap it all, the telephone number had friend had supplied had just that morning been disconnected but when, in desperation, I stopped to ask for help I was only about 50 metres away from where I needed to be. The garden was pretty full when I arrived but I was soon joined by a couple of close ex-University of Winchester friends and we finished off having an excellent afternoon chatting with each other and with guests invited to the celebrations on my friend's 80th birthday. As I was staying the night, I spent the evening in long conversations with my friend and his new 'squeeze' who was somebody with whom he had re-established contact from his postgraduate days. I managed to play them a little bit of a video clip of Meg's address to our Harrogate (family) party some seven years ago before the ravishes of Meg's final illness had intensified. Perhaps because of the WiFi connection this cut out about a third of the way through the clip but at least they were able to see Meg 'at her best' as it were. Because my University of Winchester friend and his new 'amante' had both experienced the death of their own partners in recent years, they understood why I felt the need to share the videoclip of Meg with them. We ended up talking until after midnight but had some late night supper of quiche and salad to sustain us.
© Mike Hart [2025]