Again, watching Al Jazeera early in the morning. It is difficult to see someone being interviewed who has lost 21 members of his family. Merely the illness of one of the people I regard as friends causes me disturbance never mind their death, expected or sudden.  If my entire family was wiped out at one go I think I would go into a state of shock. I saw a journalist say that he had lost his wife, his children, his grandmother in a targeted explosion. It is justified in the terms of rooting out Hamas and destroying it but how can you destroy an idea?

I feel that for every day this goes on, and people sit back and do nothing, the integrity of the whole planet is compromised. I think the shame will rub off on America and in so far as they are duplicitous, The United Kingdom and also those who supply arms to Israel. This has certainly been the most contemptible conflict at least in my lifetime.

Full credit to the inspired person who got this idea of be commemorative outline. Was originally for people who served in the war but this is our local version, in Midsomer Norton, which was a mining town and so the man has his miners lamp in his left hand while holding his pick in the other.

A day of nothing? I doubt it.

Today we have nothing special planned. I do not expect that fact to be of interest to anyone so let me ask you this. Have you ever found that a day magically fills itself up from nothing. The point is there can never be ‘nothing’. Nature abhors a vacuum and as sure as anything, events will pile up almost without us noticing.

I am very keen that people take up diary writing. I invite you to join me at the beginning of a day when nothing is planned and let me know via the comments, what actually happened.

So off we go to the Westfield Methodist Church we went to last Saturday in the hope or finding a Christmas pud. Alas they had to be pre-ordered so we were out of luck. I have spoken about the all-purpose meeting room adjoining the church room itself. It is used every day for art classes, for yoga, for general social activities, for devotional reasons. If anyone wishes to take any interest in Christianity they would do worse than try a Methodist church.

The style is relaxed, non-hierarchical, and friendly. When we entered there was a table of eight people more or less full so we ordered our tea and coffee and sat by ourselves. Two new people turned up and we invited them to join us. I realized that this is a little bit un English and it is good to put your head above the parapet and take the initiative. I almost raised my voice when I invited them. As I have said before, this standoffishness and excessive modesty does not do us any good.

Pots of home made jam, and chutney for £1.50 A lovely chocolate roll – very popular -which sold out whilst we watched. All lovingly home made.

We had a chat with a lady who was born in Manchester, moved to Leeds, and finally moved down from there in the mid 1980s. Her husband is still alive. I have to say this because so many people have been predeceased by their husbands and she was bright and chirpy.

We discussed the new NHS system where you have to book a doctor’s appointment online and we agreed that it was a very good idea in principle but not so good for those who were unfamiliar with computers and who did not have an advanced mobile phone. I thought that the latter would take up more time because they would have to speak to a receptionist and would have to more or less spell out their needs. I cannot see this process taking less than 6 minutes per person.

We did talk about the old days and I discussed the increase in cost of postage where the postage cost more than the card whereas in olden times the converse was true.

We will return 6th January when they are going to be serving bacon butties.  They get a different clientele. I wonder why.

Meeting with an old friend

We left about an hour later and went on to see my friend Terry with whom his son lives part time. His son is 17 and we asked him about school and he said most of the teachers do not care any more. He does not engage with other pupils because he cannot find anything in common. I asked him what he was going to do when he left school and he said the first thing is to get his GCSE and then take it from there.

I told him that when I asked my father what I should do, he said that he was unable to help me. I did at least admire his honesty. My first job was with the National Coal Board which was on the Albert Embankment in London. Now the offices have been converted into luxury flats. I would not pick the ones abutting onto the Waterloo Clapham Junction train line.

Terry and I know each other so well and we talk in shorthand. There are a number of versions of both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. We are not sure if they are both dead but if you look carefully, the differences between the originals and the fake copies are obvious. The key lies in the ear. No ears of two people are the same. You don’t believe me? Take a look next time and look at the detail. We discussed Flat Earth people and said that when you ask them a question that they cannot answer they just say that the questioner is just talking about technicalities.

Terry is about the only person in the area with whom I am on the same wavelength. He is more interested in American politics than I am. I focus more on covid and seeing the situation from the position of the United Kingdom. It is dreadful how we bow down to Israel and indeed to America. It’s not just dreadful, it’s embarrassing.

Visit to Father Christmas and two reindeer

Françoise went off to Faringdon and there was a Father Christmas season this weekend. There were two reindeer which had been hired from a firm in Kent which is a good three hours drive away on a good day. The cost was quite substantial, and reflects that the reindeer work for only a couple of weeks at Christmas and briefly at Easter.

Latest ‘toy’ purchase

I do like buying toys, and buy ‘toys’ I mean machines and equipment that has a value and makes my work easier. Yesterday’s purchase was a log splitter. I needed it because some of the logs supplied were too big and it was quite a challenge to split them even with a chopper.

I had a look at the splitters and they were about 120 pounds for ones which you split by applying force to a lever and the next grade up was an electrically powered  one which was available for about 165 pounds. I really didn’t want to spend such money and looked around for something cheap and found the illustrated which as you can see is a very simple instrument which I purchased for the modest sum of £9.99

I had my doubts if it would work so I found a particularly wet and unforgiving log, and with the aid of a large club hammer,  at the third whack the whole thing split in two. I tried it with some dry oak and it obliged me in the same way.

I was glad to buy something small because we are running out of room in our gardening shed for yet another machine

Warning, if you try to use it on grass, the impact will be less because the grass will absorb some of the impact. If you use paving stones as a base, they will probably crack. We used breeze blocks. You need to get larger size ones but these were tough enough and did the job. A tree stump would be perfect.

You can find this kit on marcopaul.co.uk ; it only took a couple of days to arrive.