Yesterday, being the start of the week, I engaged in what is now my new routine of getting up fairly early, writing a little of this blog, doing some exercises, performing my ablutions and then having some breakfast. My son popped around this morning and I was particularly pleased to see him as there were one or two things I wanted to discuss with him. One thing that I showed him was a newspaper article which I had gleaned from the 'Weekend' section of Saturday's 'Times' written by a 61 year old woman who had suffered some spinal problems and decided to turn her life around with a series of diet and life style changes. Her article indicated that she felt fitter now than she did thirty years ago so I thought that there might be lessons to be learned. Having given this article a detailed reading, I think I will put many of its recommendations into effect. One thing of which I am quite conscious is that after pushing Meg around in her wheelchair for so long, I have developed quite a stoop in my own posture (as I leaned forward to propel the wheelchair, particularly up the long hill out of Bromsgrove) I have no doubt that some of the cartilage in my spine is not as elastic as once it was so I have tried to address this by equipping myself with two pairs of shoes, one for indoors and one for outdoors which give my feet much more cushioning. I have also resumed my Pilates classes and I am hoping that these classes plus a modicum of daily exercise will help to straighten my back out somewhat. I also took the opportunity to discuss the hotel prices that I was investigating to plan a visit to my relatives in Yorkshire once we get the funeral out of the way. I may well go the following week and the hotel in which Meg and I used to stay seems to be offering as good a rate as any and an even cheaper rate than the bed and breakfast establishment in which we use to stay and which has now been converted into an 'apart-hotel' After breakfast, I walked fairly slowly down the hill to collect my newspaper from Waitrose and also stopped off to have a coffee which is available free to card holders who bring along their own mug. On the way back home, I knocked on the door of my two oldest Catholic friends and I was delighted to see that they had returned from their holiday at Lake Garda, Italy where Meg and I actually spent two pleasant holidays. I think they were very pleased to see me and I was certainly pleased to see them and we exchanged news about Meg's funeral arrangements and some of the other activities in which I have been engaged recently. I accepted another cup of coffee and they were very solicitous that I should look after myself in this particular period. After I returned home, I seared off some chicken breasts and then baked them in the microwave oven with a mixture of onions, tomatoes and peppers and a jar of sweet and sour sauce. This turned out to be quite big so I only ate one half of it, leaving the remainder for another meal. During the afternoon, I was tempted to watch the Jane Honda/Lee Marvin film of 'Cat Ballou' which I first saw in 1965 and thought then it was the amusing film I had ever seen. I don't think that I would retain that judgement after sixty years but the film had a happy and surprising ending about which I had forgotten. The theme of the film is about a gun slinging rancher who is often hopelessly drunk on whisky but the more he drinks, the better he can shoot. Then in the afternoon, I set about bringing some order to the books that were stored in a large deep shelf which we have on a coffee table in our lounge. This is where we traditionally used to keep brochure and guides to places that we had visited in England - the guide books to foreign cities were housed in another bookcase on our landing. Going through these materials and junking the vast majority of them was quite a painful process because it reminded me of the places that Meg and I had visited together but which I would in all probability visit no more. Still, I managed to throw away a lot of out of date material and to only retain what I thought would still be really useful to me.
Today, the major political event has been the Prime Minister announcing the findings of a Strategic Defence Review in which there will be a policy of rearmament not dissimilar to the 1930's when we faced the threat of Hitler. But there has been a dramatic development in the war in the Ukraine which illustrates very dramatically the changing nature of modern warfare. The Ukrainians had manage to smuggle several lorries into the proximity of air force bases, some deep inside Russia. Then the coverings of the containers were rolled back, one presumes in response to a radio signal and a total 117 drones were released which managed to destroy about one third of the entire Russian bomber aircraft fleet which were strategic cruise missile carriers. This was a daring and audacious attack which had been planned for about 18 months according to accounts. So when Donald Trump informed the Ukrainian president that he 'had no cards to play' in the by now, notorious, dressing down in the Oval Office. Donald Trump underestimate the ingenuity of the Ukrainian military and their desire to defend their homeland at all costs. One used to think of warfare as consisting of boots on the ground supported by long range artillery and tank advances but the relative cheapness of drones means that modern wars will be fought in a very different way. The interesting thing about this attack is that Jo Biden would not have sanctioned it but given the Trump policy of relative disengagement from the Ukrainians, they presumably feel more free to launch attacks deep inside Russia whatever the Americans might think.
© Mike Hart [2025]