Our two care workers arrived this morning, both looking exhausted even before they started their day's work, suffering from a variety of ailments. As always, I offer them whatever medicaments are likely to soothe their present troubles but this is invariably politely declined. Nonetheless, we had a jolly little chat over Christmas related issues and they gradually came round and then left whilst I prepared breakfast for Meg and myself. Then we received the most welcome invitation to meet up with our University of Birmingham friend who we tend always to meet up with on a Sunday morning. We took the opportunity to buy some soft drinks and then had quite a dismaying time when we came to present the voucher for our copy of the 'Sunday Times' at the checkout. The polite young lad who was acting as a Sunday job informed us that is was now Waitrose policy not to accept these vouchers any more and the system would not accept them. When I protested about this change of policy and informed the lad that I had been presenting vouchers every day for the last six months, he apologised and said I could have my copy of the paper 'just this once' I happened to see what one of the oldest established of the 'partners' as the Waitrose staff are called and asked him whether it was true that these pre-paid vouchers were no longer being accepted. The partner checked with a colleague and the vouchers in the event are being accepted, at which news I gave a great sigh of relief. As there are no newspaper shops on the High Street any more (a sign of the times?) one has to go to a supermarket to buy a newspaper in Bromsgrove these days and this would have been a severe disruption to my daily routine. But the Sunday boy has misinterpreted some information he had been given so all is well that ends well. On the way home, I noticed something quite extraordinary. I had two large bottles of soft drinks and some cans of 'Red Bull' for the youngsters and these I hung from the handles of the wheelchair. But being quite weighty, they evidently acted as some kind of counter balance to Meg's weight in the wheelchair and actually made it easier for me to push her up the hill. I suppose this is akin to the principal that it is easy to walk up a hill with a heavy bag in each hand rather than just one bag in one hand so my journey home this lunchtime was just that tad easier than might have been expected. Once we got home, we tuned into 'Songs of Praise' which was mainly traditional English carols but the presenter is Aled Jones (who also is a presenter on ClassicFM) and whose easy style I can quite take to. For lunch. I seared off some chicken thighs and then baked them in a lasagne sauce in the oven and I also put some parboiled kale and a cooked potato in the oven to give us some oven baked vegetables. I nearly gave myself a nasty burn by getting hold of the handle of an oven-proof saucepan which I had forgotten had been in the oven but in a second or so immediately ran my fingers under a stream of icy cold water which averted the potential disaster. One of the most miserable Christmas dinners that I ever ate occurred when we having Christmas in my mother's house in Leeds and she handed me a dish straight from her mini-oven which burnt all of the fingers on one if not both hands. Naturally, my mother did not have any 'Acroflavine' to hand of which we normally have a tube in the cupboard next to the oven ready to slap on in the case of emergencies. In the afternoon, we re-ran the program on Alan Bennet of which we had only seen half yesterday. I particularly wanted to see again the shots that had been taken inside 'The Crown' hotel which was our most recent abode when Meg could get into a car and we could visit Harrogate - but those days are now over. To be saved for another day is a program on the life and career of Dame Maggie Smith (who was absolutely marvellous in the way she played 'The Lady in the Van' who had camped at the bottom of Alan Bennet's garden for some 15 years)
The other day I indulged myself in 'once a year' purchase of the 'Radio Times' which details all of the programs across a wide variety of channels for a two week period over Christmas and the New Year. Although expensive, this issue of the weekly is generally worth having as it helps one to map out the programs and perhaps films that are not to be missed over the Christmas period. Also, it has its uses on the newspaper non-publishing days over the festive period. In the past, I am sure that have made a feature of the entire lost of films (often totalling over 100) that are to be shown and it can be useful to either plan ahead or view a program on iPlayer if there is a not-to-be-missed program. One one occasion I remember an anguished letter being published which pleaded for the program planners to show 'High Noon' (a regular Christmas favourite) because the viewer thought that they might have 'forgotten some of the words' But I looked in vain for this feature and did not find it so it might be a case of browsing through and then marking things up day by day. In the past, some fascinating replays have been done on Radio 4 when they tend to raid the archives and to run some of the BBC classic recordings some of which can be hilariously funny but the BBC allows to broadcast on festive occasions.
What is happening in Syria at the moment is disturbing in the extreme but the world's attention is focused elsewhere.As well as positioning troops inside Syrian territory, Israel has also unleashed air strikes on military targets across the country. It says it is doing this to stop weapons stockpiles falling into the hands of extremists. The chief of staff for Israel's military, Herzi Halevi, for his part has dismissed the idea that Israel has no justification for its involvement in Syria. But for one country to send its military across an international border must surely be a violation of international law (although the Israelis and the United States have shown scant regard for the principles of international law in the past)
© Mike Hart [2024]