For reasons best known to itself, yesterday is the one day of the week when the care agency decides to come along one hour early at 7.00am. One hour is not quite enough for me to get some of my early morning routines undertaken so I got up at 5.30am this morning which is not my preferred start to the day. However, I am a little relieved that the weather forecast has indicated it is starting 2° higher this morning and one is always thankful for small mercies. I looked ahead to see what the weather is going to be like and it seems that a succession of squally showers is going to sweep up the country but not the hard frost or the dreaded snow to which I never look forward these days. It seems that the exchange of prisoners and hostages is now taking place more or less smoothly although as I write there seems to be a holdup with the release of one Israeli hostage who be being held by a group other than Hamas. But by releasing four IDF soldiers, as Hamas did today, they secured the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners, including many high-profile detainees. This is many more prisoners than if Hamas had released civilians. The media is dominated by the scenes of ecstatically happy reunions with the Palestinian prisoners, in particular, being treated as returning war heroes. Many, if not all of these Palestinian prisoners were held in what the Israeli's called 'administrative detention' and were not brought to trial or charged but. held in gaols, some military and some civilian, in Israel. This makes their situation almost analogous (but not completely) with the hostages that the Palestinians have been holding. Of course, what we are seeing now is the exchange of live prisoners but in the weeks ahead we will see the exchange of the bodies of those who have died whilst detained by the other side and this is bound to the focus of much mourning anger at the point when it happens and is going to be a very tense for the whole peace process.
On the recommendations of one of Waitrose friends, I hunted out and bought a packet of jelly from the shop. This is to aid me in my efforts to get fluid into Meg and as jelly is mainly water and a little gelatine, this sounded to be a good idea. I have managed to live the best part of 80 years without ever having made jelly but it really is simplicity itself (half a pint of boiling water, dissolve the jelly, top up with half a pint of cold water and then when cooled off, store in the fridge to set) I am not in possession of a jelly mould but I emptied the contents into an earthenware cooking dish and will give some to Meg later on today. Having bought Meg some Horlicks the other day, I am mow making this as a mixture of three quarters Horlicks powder and a quarter hot chocolate drink powder and the drink is a very pleasing and good alternative to the tea and coffee I generally ingest throughout the day. I popped out to get a newspaper from the local garage and then our University of Birmingham friend came around mid-morning who is always nice to chat with. But he had not been with us that long when he received a phone call which meant that he rather to dash away to see a friend who had been taken ill.
In the late morning, I fed Meg some jelly and this seemed to go down OK. I then followed this up with a mini-bowl of a thick vegetable soup which I buy in my local supermarket and is very versatile. The mini-bowl is actually I believe an oven proof steak and kidney dish and I bought a couple about a year ago in a charity shop. As well as being ovenproof and microwave safe, they fit beautifully into one hand and this excellent for a carer such as myself. As well as the bits of food, I got Meg to eat her half of the dinner which was particularly good today as it was part of a beef joint cooked a month back and one half put into the freezer, supplemented by some Cavolo Nero kale and a baked potato. I have been forced to experiment to get food and drink inside Meg but my recent efforts have been fairly successful. I am also continuing my experimentation to find the optimum level of heating including hot water provision but I am slightly frustrated because the most definitive picture is provided by my energy supplier, Octopus, whose website is generally very good but that say that the data for the next day or so is not yet available although it must be sent hour by hour if not minute by minute.
In the afternoon there was a spoof film 'Horrible Histories' being broadcast on BBC1 but unfortunately, I seemed to doze during most of it. But I always peruse the schedules to see if there is anything broadcast that date that I can watch on catchup the following day and I am delighted that the 'Six Nations' rugby cup is going to start next weekend starting on Friday evening. Reading what the rugby journalists have to say, it looks as though the French team, although beatable, has so much talent that they will probably win the championship. In the meanwhile, Wales and Italy may fight it out to see who takes the wooden spoon i.e. comes bottom of the pile whilst the England team will probably end up in the middle of the table. When Meg and I used to go on holiday to a particular hotel in Salobreña in Southern Spain, the Brits always used to monopolise the TV lounge to watch the Six Nations rugby and if there were any Welsh guests in attendance, they would sing 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' (Land of my Fathers) with great gusto. Any Spanish or fellow Europeans would watch on in astonishment to see the Welsh singing their heads off and watched the Brits enjoying themselves with an amused detachment. I think they were intrigued by hearing the Welsh singing in Welsh which they had probably never heard in their lives before.
© Mike Hart [2025]