Yesterday was my shopping day and things bode well when one of the carers detailed to get Meg up in the morning was also scheduled to stay after her stint to be Meg's sit whilst I did the shopping. This carer is a young Psychology graduate with an incredibly sunny disposition who always seems cheerful whatever adversities in life comes her way. So I was relieved that Meg would probably be safe in her hands and so it proved as I left them both watching archive film of Joan Baez (the Mexican-American folk singer who sprang to prominence in the 1960's and still alive and performing today) The other carer was a sister of one of the other carers and has only worked for the company for about three weeks so it was disappointing to learn that she had decided to leave. Having said that, she intimated that she really enjoyed coming to our house and caring for Meg (which sentiment I have heard expressed, incidentally, by some of the other carers) so it was a great shame to have to say goodbye to her. The shopping went relatively painlessly apart from the fact that Morrisons had run out of 'The Times' so I needed to call in at Waitrose to pick up my copy of it. But when I got back, it was time for me to wheel Meg in her wheelchair into the kitchen so that we can chat whilst I unpack the shopping and put everything away, a procedure that seems to take as long as the shopping itself.By way of entertainment, I got Alexa to play Berlioz: 'A Shepherd's lament' which is actually one of my favourite pieces of Christmas music. After that and when I was starting to think about cooking the lunch, we got Alexa to play J.S.Bach's 'A Christmas Oratorio' which always starts off in such a joyous way. Within the oratorio are several cantatas which I am pretty sure that Bach lifted wholesale from his 'Matthew Passion' although it is possible that an odd grace note has been tweaked here and there. During the course of the morning, an idea grew in my mind which I discussed with the young care workers who attended to Meg both at the end of the sit and at Meg's lunchtime call. Christmas Day this year actually falls upon a Wednesday and it occurred to me that probably the Monday of that week would be a good opportunity to put on a little festive fare for all of the care workers. What I had in mind was to extend an invitation for any care worker who could spare the time or was in between shifts could drop in to see us at any time between 1.00am and 5.00pm in the afternoon. It would be easy enough to purchase some mince pies and Christmas 'eats' from our local Waitrose store and entertaining should be quite a breeze as I cannot ply any potential callers with too much alcohol as they are all drivers. So I discussed with the two carers, the ways in which I might get the invitation promulgated throughout the care company and we decided that I should write this in an email which the company managers can then extract and circulate on their own internal message system.
This afternoon, we were wondering what TV entertainment we could view and I trawled through the various offerings of Prime when we discovered 'Shakespeare in Love' This we have seen on at least two previous occasions but it is always worth another viewing and is stuffed full of memorable faces from the British theatre - in fact, I wonder if they queued up in order to participate in it. The film as well as following the rivalry between Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, the other great Elizabethan playwright, follows the story of the first production of 'Romeo and Juliet' The film is carefully constructed so that the plot lines of Romeo and Juliet are mirrored but not exactly duplicated in real life and the culmination of the play is that Romeo is played by Shakespeare himself and Juliet by a young actress with whom he becomes enamoured but is married off to a local nobleman. But on her wedding day, she evades the attention of her new husband whom she does not love to attend the theatre and finishes off playing the part of Juliet herself. Unbeknown to anyone, Queen Elizabeth is in attendance for this first performance and there are some interesting dramatic twists before the end of the film. The thing about the play is that it really is full of some of the most superb poetry in the English language and much of this finds expression in the play. I am delighted to say that Meg and I were absolutely absorbed by the whole of it.
Thursday is the long designated day when Keir Starmer is due to initiate what many commentators are calling a 'reset' for the government. Sir Keir Starmer has outlined six targets for his government to meet by the next general election in his 'plan for change' - including 1.5 million new homes and slashing NHS waiting lists to levels not seen for a decade. The new government has got off to the most faltering of starts and the combination of slashing winter fuel payments to pensioners, raising Employers NI contributions and alienating the farming community smacks of political ineptness. It is almost unprecedented how quickly a government can go from a massive majority (which will see it safe for the next five years) to a big negative dip in the opinion polls. The problem about setting very specific targets like this, even for the NHS, is that other things get neglected. One of the things crying out for attention is to manage to get a doctors appointment quickly when necessary but post COVID, one often has a tortuous process of a telephone conversation in a few days time rather than the appointment on the same day which many have rather grown to expect over the years. Governments of the centre and left generally promise better public services but they attempt to do this without the prospect of increasing taxation which is an almost impossible ask. The public if asked say they would prefer to pay more taxes to get guaranteed better public services but although the level of increased tax might be certain, whether there will be an improvement in public services is difficult to measure. There is a feeling that to campaign on a slogan of higher taxes, whatever has been said in opinion polls, will probably bring defeat at the polls.
© Mike Hart [2024]