For whatever reason, I had a wakeful period in the middle of the night last night so I decided to deploy my time productively my updating the Waitrose order I have scheduled for eight days’ time. This all went smoothly and it is always reassuring to be emailed an up-to-date copy of your order which helps to ensure that the extras you have ordered are actually included. The park today was not quite so busy as it has been in recent days – perhaps a function of the fact that the temperature has dropped down several degrees, it was very windy and the sunbathing tendency has abated. Whilst in the park, we met with our friend Julie who now seems fully restored to health after her recent little health episode. She told us though of one of the Waitrose staff who we know well who seemed to have similar symptoms to Julie’s (gall-bladder?) – however, our Waitrose friend had not had a happy time in A&E at our local hospital and was left for several hours with no prospect of a scan or similar investigations. She felt that she had been badly treated and we were speculating whether she got worse treatment by having her husband drive her directly to the hospital rather than calling an ambulance. It might just be the luck of the draw whether you get good treatment or not – Meg and I were hoping that no implicit racism was involved. Whilst in the park, we also ran into our good friends who had bought us an excellent bottle of wine on the occasion of Mike’s recent birthday. This wine turned out to be absolutely excellent so we soaked the label off the bottle to give to our friends in case we saw them – which of course we did. It sometimes happens when you give a bottle of wine as a present, then apart from the price and the label and the vintage, you might have few clues whether it was a good or an indifferent wine so we were glad to pass the label onto our friends so that they could enjoy a bottle for themselves.
I promised not to keep mentioning, ad infinitum, my gardening activities so I will keep this particular entry short and sweet. I finished off the major construction work that I have needed to do once our fallen tree had been removed and now include a little video clip so you can get a mental picture of what is going on. I must mention that the iPhone first records the journey down the steep little slope (a height of 6ft) into what we call ‘Mog’s Den’ and you can then get an idea of the shoring up that has been necessary in what is quite a steep slope. Whether or not my beech trees survive is another matter but they can always be replaced. After a little ‘pan around’ the journey is reversed and you traverse up the path towards ground i.e. normal lawn level. Here is the URL : Mogs Den
The Dominic Cummings story continues to dominate the news agenda, as you might imagine. On tonight’s ‘Review of the Papers‘ (Sky News Channel, 11.30-12.00), I have never seen a journalist so incandescent with rage as was Christina Patterson in her comments. She even used a phrase that I myself had used last night (‘contempt for the little people‘) but, of course, will the rest of the press join in the hue-and-cry? What makes the story particularly juicy was the revelation that, if true, Cummings had transgressed on at least two if not three occasions! There are now calls for Boris Johnson to sack Cummings forthwith – if he does not, then Boris Johnson himself seems to be condoning the moral, if not downright illegal, transgressions that have taken place. Watch this space!
© Mike Hart [2020]