Last night, after Meg was safely put to bed, I was engaged in some tidying up and realised that my phone was not where it should be. Then followed one of the worst 20 minutes I should ever experience as my iPhone seemed to be irrevocably lost. Normally, when it is temporarily misplaced, I do not really panic but have a really ancient Nokia phone with oodles of credit on it which does not expire on the deal I have with Tesco PAYG mobile and so all I have to do is to phone my iPhone to locate it. But last night, try as I might I phoned and phoned and could not hear my iPhone anywhere. I knew I had it earlier in the day to phone my University of Birmingham friend and eventually located it to my evident relief but why had it not rung when I accessed it from my Nokia? The new iPhone16 has several unmarked buttons on it (three on one side and two on the other) and one of these at the top on the right left side is a 'silent' mode button which must have been inadvertently pushed when I was putting it in its case. I consulted the web for a diagram of the buttons whose function I had forgotten and Apple very (unhelpfully) explained that it had relocated the silent mode button to a place where you want to use it frequently. This may well be true when entering a meeting or some other public meeting place but if you put your phone down somewhere it can make it hard to find. As I could not get it to respond, my worst fears was that one of the carers had mistaken it for their own phone and taken it inadvertently out of the house because they each have a smartphone (which they themselves sometimes lose when they put it down inside the house) and sometimes an extra work phone as well. In fact, one of the young Asian carers had a similar experience when he had placed his phone on one of the curved arms to a leather armchair and it has slid down and out of sight. So now I know, I am going to be extra careful about this and the left hand button in particular. I had been up in the middle of the night as I had a little bout of indigestion and had taken some special indigestion relief and thought I would wait 15 minutes for it to settle and for the electric blanket to heat up before I returned back to my campbed besides Meg's. I switched on the TV which was tuned to the BBC news channel and was in the middle of a Business report, focusing as it happened on the Spanish economy. What instantly took my attention was the opening shot of Segovia which is a little Spanish town to the north of Madrid made famous by the most magnificent three tier stone aqueduct, built by the Romans and still in use today. When I visited it with Meg and later with a colleague who had come out from England to try to organise a joint MSc degree, traffic still circulated round and under the bridge, but I think it has now been isolated from the traffic so as not to sustain damage from vehicle emissions. What is remarkable about the structure is that it is a prime example of magnificent Roman architectures built without cement and in such a way that the stones naturally abut with and cradle each other. But the wider news report was how well the Spanish economy was doing with a growth rate of 3% which was much superior to the German and the French (and obviously the UK) economy and all of this whilst a Socialist government is in power, as well.
There are several newsworthy news items yesterday morning. Keir Starmer is off to an emergency meeting of Europeans in Paris to work out a response to the Putin-Trump attempt to carve up the future of the Ukraine without the Ukrainians (or even the Europeans) actually being allowed to attend the meeting. This seems so extraordinary and it may be that Trump will relent but I suspect his dislike for Europeans is so intense that Europe will continue to be excluded. Keir Starmer is actually seizing the initiative to some extent by saying that he is 'ready and willing' that British troops, even though they could be put in harm's way, should form part of a buffer force between the Russians and the Ukrainians once a peace agreement of some sort is agreed. Germany, which is to have elections shortly, and France are in some disarray politically so Starmer could step in to the breach to provide some European military leadership which is an interesting concept in its own right.
Yesterday morning, I had to make a judgement call whether the conditions were such that I could Meg a push down the hill. In the event, I was guided by my iPhone weather app which said the temperature because of the wind chill factor would feel like -3° so I thought we should both stay at home, particularly as I had some phone calls to make. One massive irritation with which I have to deal was an uncollected direct debit as my contribution to Meg's care which Worcestershire County Council failed, for diverse reasons, to collect last August and trying to do so now. One way or another this will have to be paid but it is a molestation I could well do without. Our chiropodist called around in the late morning performing services beyond the call of duty (such as a manicure of Meg's hands) for which I was very grateful. She also let me have some of her special ointment for my hands (my fingers being full of cracks from the cold weather) which again was highly appreciated. In the afternoon, after a delayed lunch, Meg and I viewed a programme on the BBC iPlayer on Elizabeth I which was first broadcast the evening before and which I have saved for an occasion such as the afternoon when Meg and I have time to enjoy it.
© Mike Hart [2025]