Late in the afternoon yesterday, I received a most welcome phone call from my niece in Yorkshire. Like my sister and the rest of the family, they were concerned about Meg's progress and the fact that in response to a severe chest infection, Meg appeared to be sleeping for so much of the time. But I was very glad to be able to respond to my niece that just during the day, Meg seemed to be responding to the antibiotics and whilst still sleeping quite a lot was now was having periods of wakefulness. She even managed a smile and something approaching a joke with the two young carers who came to minister to her in the afternoon. So there are flashes of the 'former' Meg returning and she even called my by my name in the last few hours which is something that has not happened for several days. So having been given news about Meg, I was eager to learn about my niece's husband who had another hospital episode, albeit a brief one but still involving an 8 hour wait in A&E. So we were happy to exchange family news about the health status of our loved ones and then spent a certain amount of time talking about public sector pensions and specifically the McCloud judgement in the Supreme Court. In a desperate desire to limit the costs of pensions, it has been adjudged that the government acted in a discriminatory fashion by forcing through changes in the pension schemes of many public sector workers (including teachers and the NHS) and has been forced to apply a remedy to this discrimination but the issue is far too complicated to adequately describe at this point. When Meg had her teatime call, she got on well with the two young care workers and reacts to them much better than with some of the older workers. This has led me to speculate whether Meg responds to the most subtle of cues whereby she feels so much more at ease with some care workers rather than others (which speculations I have shared with the carers themselves) Thursday is the day when traditionally I get my weekly shopping done so I am keeping my fingers crossed that Meg will be alright in the morning. We awoke to a temperature of -5° this morning and will just have to tunnel through until Monday when the predicted temperature will rise to the dizzy height of 7°
The news in the morning is the government's latest attempt to cut down on the illegal boat trade by heavy economic sanctions against those organising the trade. This is being dubbed a bold and innovative mood but the trouble is that those organising the gangs are shadowy figures often based as far away as Kurdistan who are not even aware that their smuggling activities might be illegal. In order to have the slightest chance of success, this calls for a degree of international cooperation and never was there a time when we ought to have the closest of ties with our European allies and neighbours. The same argument applies of course to the current geopolitical situation where Trump still has to be inaugurated and Elon Musk is making his malign influence felt. There are rumours that even at this stage Trump is getting a little weary of the ubiquity of Elon Musk who seems to be in attendance even when phone calls are made to foreign leaders. Some commentators are predicting that eventually there will be a grand falling out between the two but at the moment it just seems like a bromance between the two. On the subject of falling out between allies, the story persists of a meeting of Hitler and Mussolini on a train strategically placed on an appropriate border and by all accounts the two leaders hated each other, despite their alliance. Mussolini, however, had a low regard for Hitler and Nazism, believing them to be uncultured and unsophisticated. In particular, Mussolini had little regard for the German's racist views which he thought were simplistic and clearly erroneous.
As the outside temperature has been about freezing all day, it necessitated my customary watering can of hot water to remove the frost from the car. I decided to see if there was anything in the supermarket with which I could tempt Meg's appetite and did indeed buy some chocolate mousse which turned out to be delicious. Aldi seem to be putting on a range of vegetarian meals so I bought a couple of these if ever we needed a meal in a hurry. Once I returned home, it was a case of putting the shopping away (which always seems to take quite a long time) and then pressing ahead to cook our quiche in the oven. I tried a slight innovation today which involved taking the broccoli once it had been steamed in the microwave and then popping it into the oven in a roasting dish with a dressing of roasted garlic mayo to enhance the flavour. This little experiment proved quite successful so I shall certainly repeat it. After lunch, Meg and I were quite intrigued to follow some of the funeral ceremonies for Jimmy Carter who died recently at the age of 100. A notable piece of TV was provided by seeing in one row the five surviving US presidents (Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden) and one has to wonder whether we actually see the like of this ever again. The funeral service was solemn and dignified and, of course, Jimmy Carter himself was a devoted Baptist. Amid a life of change, Carter held fast to his Christian faith and his Baptist identity. He was credited with bringing the term 'born again' into common American conversation in the 1976 election. President Carter will be remembered for living out his devout Baptist faith through his pursuit of peace and support for human rights as well as acts of service, such as building homes for Habitat for Humanity. When it came to following Jesus, Carter 'walked the walk'. After lunch, we treated ourselves to a Simon Sharma programme ('The Story of Us') which was a tour through the UK's cultural and artistic life focusing on the 1950's and 1960's. Some of this I slept through but it was a fascinating film well worth another viewing. When the iPlayer finished, we carried on watching a repeat of a tribute to Dame Maggie Smith which was equally fascinating.
© Mike Hart [2024]