Last night myself and the carers were in some disarray wondering whether or not Meg's hospital bed which failed to function as it would receive any attention before Meg's bedtime. The engineer who had conducted the routine test on the bed only about a fortnight before turned up having been phoned at home by the firm responsible for the bed. Actually the village of Catshill is only a couple of miles distant whilst the other on duty engineer was in Stoke on Trent. The engineer discovered that a key transponder unit had failed which meant that the bed could not be raised or lowered but other sections of the bed could be made to work. New unit would take a week to arrive so the carers would have to work with the bed at an intermediate height for several days. Although this whole incident was unfortunate, I was still very pleased to see the engineer at relatively short notice as I only phoned the firm sometime after 5.00pm after we had discovered that it had failed and I am sure we can out up with some inconvenience for a few days. I am relieved that the weather this morning has turned up so much milder but at the price of some gusty rain (of which there is an 18% chance) so I shall have to make a judgement call whether or not to give Meg a quick push down the hill to collect our newspaper. The wind direction might also be a critical factor because if it is behind us on the way back, this is much more tolerable and easier to cope with than if the wind is blowing from the West. The political news this morning relates to the question whether the far-right political leaders in this country, such as Nigel Farage the leader of the Reform party will endorse the oft repeated claim by Donald Trump that the Ukrainian leader is a dictator. Nigel Farage has said Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not a dictator and everything Donald Trump says should be taken 'truthfully not literally which seems a weasle form of words if ever I heard any. The Reform UK leader also said he did not think Ukraine started the war with Russia and claimed Mr Trump was talking about 'causal factors' when he suggested as such. Meanwhile Priti Patel who would normally be a Trump acolyte has agreed with the Nigel Farage view, so we now have the interesting scenario where even the far right in this country safe having to disavow some of the wilder statements that Trump makes. Meanwhile, in the US a prominent magazine an artificial image has been shown of Trump actually wearing a crown and called a 'King' which given the broad sweep of American history appears preposterous. Meanwhile on our own continent the Germans are having an election in which the German Far Right (Alternative for Germany) is expected to do extraordinarily well. The Far Right is being assisted by a massive Russian disinformation campaign as well as the active endorsement of the American vice-president, J D Vance and a welter of social media. All of this amounts to as clear a meddling in the internal elections of a European country as it is possible to see but the Far Right has been so emboldened by the Trump presidency that there are no practical restraints on it any more. Finally on this topic, I am pleased to see that the Sky News presenter, Sophie Ridge whose style of journalism I like and admire is now publicly calling for the Trump lies and fulminations to be 'called out' which is something that most politicians close to government are failing to do.
It is said that troubles come in threes but this morning the reverse turned out to be true as I had three pleasant surprises in the morning. I had decided it was a bit too windy to expose Meg to the elements so I was just on my out in the car to collect my daily newspaper when I received a phone call from my University of Birmingham friend. We are always pleased to see him so we had an enormously pleasant chat, aided by coffee and some remnants of chocolate cake. In the middle of his visit, the engineer called round with a whole new 'transponder' unit (I think they are called) which might or not work in the hospital bed. The engineer fitted the new unit and it worked perfectly so the bed is now fully restored to functionality. Naturally, I thanked the engineer effusively and am so grateful for his prompt attention - and this was the second of the good things that happened this morning. Lastly, I had a canvas from a very nice lady who, as it happened, was campaigning for a seat on the County Council and she has a fair chance of retaining this. Several years ago, I had leafletted for her predecessor (which she did not know) but was grateful for my offer of support in the future (but not the immediate future, because of Meg which she well understood) I told her about the direct debit fiasco with Worcestershire County Council and she was horrified. As it happens, she has very good relations with a County Councillor from the governing party who is in a position to make representations on my behalf. So I am going to write a long email to the lady who canvassed me this morning and she assured me that she would follow it through and make sure that I received some satisfaction in how this particular mistake was to be rectified.
I am cooking a basa fillet for lunch which I discovered lurking in the far recesses of the freezer and I am going to cook it, now that it defrosted, in the same way that I used to cook sea-bream fillets. Doing some reading around the subject, it appears that this fish whilst cheap may be subject to industrial contaminants if farmed in South East Asia, so despite saying 'Responsibly sourced' I think I will not buy this product again. The carers are not due to call until way past our normal lunchtime today and I needed to help out with helping the one care assistant this morning because of staffing difficulties. The situation is one where there is probably a shortfall in the service promised for Meg practically every day.