Monday, 25th July, 2022

[Day 861]

I suppose all days are likely to have minor triumphs and some disappointments and such a day it was today. However, our day started off exceptionally well because our ‘old’ landline number, disconnected when we upgraded to Full Fibre acquiring a new number in the process, was successfully ported over to our fibre connection. To be fair to BT, one of their technical staff last Monday promised me that they could ‘probably’ restore my old number starting today and they confirmed by text in what they called a new order. If you were to go on the web and look at some of the kinds of discussions that people have had in similar situations, it has often proved to be quite problematic as BT had often said that they would attempt but not guarantee to get the old number back again. So the strategy that I deployed to move my whole fibre package over to BT so it was a case of transferring from ‘old’ BT landline to ‘new’ BT fibre broadband, seems to have paid dividends. Tomorrow morning one of the very helpful BT technical staff with whom I dealt last week is going to contact me (ring me on my new number?) to check that everything has worked all right. I am not committed to my old number for sentimental reasons but it is is printed on lots of business cards and address labels that I put inside Christmas cards and the like so the ‘old’ number is probably written into diaries all over the country. Now that we our comms restored to something like a decent state, I texted some of our friends with whom we have not been in contact for a week or so to arrange a FaceTime ‘chat’ with them tomorrow. Then I downloaded the instruction manual for the new phones so that I know how to utilise all of the features (including the volume control). After all of this, Meg and I decided to return to our re-purposed Arts centre where we have already received two vaccinations plus two ‘top-ups’. It is unclear to us whether we are now due to receive a third top-up as our last one was on 21st March which is now four months ago and our enhanced immunity status might have diminished a fair bit. But when we got to the centre, the whole building was closed and will only re-open at 2.00pm tomorrow afternoon. So this means that Meg and I will need to return tomorrow after my Pilates class and a somewhat delayed lunch so we could have done without this on the day before we are due to go away.

Although we have had several days of intense sunshine, like the rest of the country, the lawns were looking a little sorry for themselves with some tall-stemmed wispy looking weeds spoiling the overall appearance. So as the sun was shining I took the opportunity to get our grassed areas cut which I like to have done before we go away for a few days. When I was in the middle of this, two cars appeared outside the empty bungalow which faces us across our communal green area and this was no great surprise to us as the house which was ‘Sold’ then reverted to ‘Unsold’ and then again to ‘Sold’ all within the last week or so. I imagine that the cars belonged to new owners, either actual or potential, and they might have a word with me about how the BioDisk works and related issues but in the event they just drove away.

Tonight, there is going to a ‘Question Time’ type of program in which Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are going to defend their political stance in front of an audience of Conservative party members. This may prove to be another ‘bearpit’ after some of the hustings last week but as Liz Truss is apparently so far ahead in the opinion polls of Conservative party members, tonight’s program is seen as crucial for the Rishi Sunak campaign. The debate is going to be held in Stoke-on-Trent as it was one of those Labour ‘red wall’ seats that swung massively behind Boris Johnson. From this, we might be able to infer that many of the audience will favour Liz Truss as she is seen as the Boris Johnson ‘heir apparent’in a community like this. How the BBC is going to get a ‘balanced’ audience tonight is an interesting point because in the run up to the EC referendum, most editions of ‘Question Time’ seemed to dominated by very vociferous Brexit audience members whereas Remain members appeared much more subdued. Some fairly late news this evening is that Rishi Sunak has agreed to be interviewed by Andrew Neil – in my view, one of the most penetrating interviewers in the whole of the media scene. For her part, Liz Truss has not agreed to be interviewed. So I suppose the very evident front runner feels she has everything to lose and the candidate who appears to be a long way behind has everything to gain.