Yesterday dawned as one of those beautiful bright and clear days with the prospect of a fine summer day before one. This is my traditional day for a weekly shopping and I am just starting to get a little tired of a diet of salad which I have been preparing for myself in the past few days. No particular commitments beyond he shopping are looming so it is probably a day when I need to turn some attention to the gardening. But one task looms large and that is to give my newly acquired car a wash, Largely as a consequence of all of the building work that is going on all around us, the car is covered with a fine dust and is crying out for a wash. The last vehicle we had was a Honda which was quite an unusual honey or sandy colour which colour went by the marketing name of 'Sahara Sand' Now this vehicle had the marvellous advantage that it could remain unwashed for weeks and one really did not notice as the fine dust occasioned by things like building works blended beautifully with the colour of the car. Whilst Meg was so ill, this was actually quite a bonus because I could, and did, forget about the washing of the car for weeks on end but now I have a darker coloured vehicle I need to get used to a regular washing of it. This is no bad thing because it gets me out of the house and gives me some exercise - in any case, I do not feel that a car is really yours until it has been an intimate once over. It is true that I could take the car to a car wash to which I am not averse but I like to do what I can whilst I can.
Some extraordinary happenings are evident in the domestic political front. The media was replete the day before with images of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, visibly in tears whilst she as sitting on the front bench. One suggestion was that she was suffering from a very personal trauma of which we are unaware but, if so, this has coincided with the absolute gutting of the welfare reform bill which Reeves had put forward primarily to save about £5bn. The markets are tumbling as international investors take fright at the sight of the Chancellor evidently not being able to cope and there are even some parts of the Labour party who are arguing that both Starmer and Reeves are doomed and ought to be replaced particularly as they incapable of shaking off from the threat of left wing parties such as the Greens in London and right wing parties such as Reform in he rest of the country. Politics it is often said is a cruel sport and not for the faint-hearted but political commentators are saying that they have never before experienced the sight of a leading government minister visibly in tears whilst occupying the front bench in the Commons. I received two telephone calls this morning, one expected and the other one not so. The first was one of the doctors from our practice wanting to discuss with me the results of a spinal X-ray I had performed the other day. The GP practice had tried to get into contact with me twice yesterday and I was slightly fearful that the X-ray was revealing some unwelcome news and this is why the GP practice was trying to contact me. But the X-ray revealed that although my spine was showing some deterioration this was described as subtle and about the wear and tear that could have been expected. So this will give me encouragement to carry on with my daily walks and to get the most of my physiotherapy appointments. The other telephone call I received was whilst I was doing my weekly shop and was not at all welcome. It was from my long-standing Italian friend who was informing me that she was putting her house up for sale and therefore intended to go and live in a smaller property but in the proximity of her daughter and grandchildren. In a way this was not totally unexpected news because my friend told me that she had been thinking about this for some time. Nonetheless, I had hopes that she would stay for some years more as I had hopes that we could have carried on giving mutual support to each other in the absence of our now departed spouses but the opportunities for this will now be few and far between once my friend has moved away. In a way, this has taught me that I should now take nothing for granted but must take every opportunity to forge new acquaintances and friendships whenever I am able. I am a little torn between going out and making this new life for myself but I am also conscious that there is a lot of work to be done in the garden but also in decluttering the house and bringing the double garage into a semblance of order whilst I am it.
After I had lunched, I received a call from one of the parishioners from our local church who collects for the Missions. In theory, one is meant to ask every visitor to the house to contribute but I just stuff some notes into the box and it gets collected once a month. The Mission lady and I chatted over the fact that we are to get a new and young parish priest at the start of September and we are both looking forward to the prospect if only because the relationships between clergy and parishioners can take some nurturing and in the case of the present incumbent, I think it is fair comment to say that we never gelled. As the new priest is going to be quite young, my parishioner friend and I were joking whether the older female members of he congregation would do their share of mothering and I was wondering whether to invite him round for a meal if only because I think that he spent some time in a seminary in Vallodolid (Spain) so it could be that he has some facility in Spanish. I then phoned my good Italian friend down the road to express my regret that she is leaving the community in which she has lived for the last fifty years to live near her daughter. I can understand this but part of me feels that she might be making a mistake as it not so easy to forge new relationships when you are in your 80's. Reading between the lines, I think my friend lost confidence in independent living when she gave up her car following an accident which was not her fault but has left her with a slightly damaged knee. Then I set about giving the car a wash which according to my tried and tested system involves wetting the car with a fine stream of water from a long handled watering can, then a brush with a long handled car brush, then a hand wash with a car washing mitten followed by a final rinse off and drying. As the weather was quite warm, I came inside for a cup of tea (and a little doze) before going outside again to clean with windscreen and windows of the car.
© Mike Hart [2025]