We always thought that today was going to be a full day for us both and so it proved. As soon as we had got up and got breakfasted,I needed to do do various financial transactionson on our web accounts and all of this seemed to proceed quite satisfactorily. Sometimes, as last night, these transactions do not proceed as smoothly as they ought if you attempt to do something in the middle of the night, assuming that the system as a whole is going to be quiet but you run foul of various updating and maintenance periods that are running during the night. But having got these financial transactions done as far as I can, Meg and I thought we would seize the opportunity to have a little walk in the park. It really was a glorious spring day, very slightly on the cool side but nothing to disturb us. So we had our coffee and comestibles and had chats ‘en passant’ with one or two regular park users with whom we are acquainted by sight. We knew that we had to get home way before midday so we did not tarry in the park for too long. The principal reason for getting home early was that hairdresser was due to call round to give Meg a perm and this procedure generally takes about two and a half hours. Knowing that this would make our norml lunchtime meal impossible, I raided our larder to make us some tuna sandwiches (tuna mashed with a little salad dressing, some butter, a smidgeon of tomato paste in the absence of any 1000 Island sauce, and finally a little tartare sauce and a spoonful of yogurt). If this sound an odd mixture, I can only say that it works just fine and we prepared our sandwiches and then put them in the fridge, assuming that we would have to eat them in snatches whenever we could. In practice, or hairdresser had performed her ministrations by 2.30 in the afternoon so Meg and I had a fairly hurried lunch and then we set about perusing and signing a document for our solicitor. Then we raced down to our local medical centre (actually a group of a couple of large GP practices with some accretions such as a pharmacy, optician, dentist and physiotherapy) We arrived just about on time for our COVID booster appointment but were not late as we joind a queue of two and, in the fullness of time, received a jab of the Pfizer vaccine to go with the AstroZeneca and Moderna with which we had been jabbed before. Then it was case of racing home and finishing off a letter to our solicitor before we popped into our friends down the road where we prevailed upon them to witness our signatures as was required by the solicitor. We only stayed with our friends for some 5-10 minutes because we were anxious to hand the documents in to the solicitor’s office which we managed at five minutes to the hour before they closed promptly at 5.00pm.
Tomorrow is going to be quite a busy day so Meg and I may well have an early night. Our shoulders are starting to feel a smidgeon sore after our COVID jab so an early night but well be indicated. First tbing tomorrow, I need to go shopping and after that we are picking up some friends to go off to a garden centre for a ‘do’ recently advertised by Herefordshire and Worcestershire Age Concern. We have no idea what to expect but I am sure that the social contact is good for all of us.
Now that we have the local elections, coronation and bank holidays out of the way, then normal politics seems to be resuming with a vengeance. Several issues are coming together the net effect of which is to argue the failing of Brexit. The arguments are going a little like this – the Remainers are saying constantly ‘We told you so’ when the UK has the lowest rate of growth of all of the UK economies and Brexit is authoritatively said to cost the UK £40 billion. For the sake of political balance, the Brexiteers themselves are arguing that there were always going to be some short term costs, that Brexit has not been fully implemented yet as so many EU regulations are still in place and that it will take some time for the full benefits of Brexit to be fully felt. But what is extraordinary is that Nigel Farage himself was on Newsnight recently admitting that Brexit had been a failure. His ‘explanation’ was that Tory British politicians had proved to be as incompetent at managing the Brexit process as the EU commissioners were for constraining the UK economy in the first place. The current Tory party seems to be split into a whole series of factions, some actively supporting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and desperately hoping they could be restored to power whilst others seem to despise Rishi Sunak, the current Prime Minister. It is said that the current Tory party is undergoing a massive ideological and intellectual crisis at the moment but for many ‘middle of the road’ Conservatives, the next general electon is already lost and they are resigned to the fact that they may never again form a majority government.
© Mike Hart [2023]