It has been a week of birthdays, and it has also been a fascinating one for global and domestic politics news.
On my birthday, I received a Moonpig card from my brother featuring me, my parents’ spaniel and my maternal grandfather, Syd, with me and my brother.
Syd was a great character. He was a chauffeur in a grand house at Frensham where he met my maternal grandmother, then a kitchen maid. It was real Upstairs Downstairs stuff.
He ended up as a private hire driver who had a taxi rank at Farnham Station.
I was reminded of that when we took the train last week to an RSPCA reception in London (that I wrote about last week). It was the start of the heatwave, so we had checked that the trains were ok with no track buckling when we got to Alton station.
The ever-helpful ticket office staff informed us that the tracks were okay. But there was a signal failure, so we had to drive to Farnham, park and travel on by train from there. It made little difference to us.
On the way back, we made sure we got the Farnham train. Just before Farnham, the guard abruptly announced the train was terminating and not going on to Alton.
A fellow passenger asked the guard how he was supposed to get to Alton. “Shall I get a taxi?” he asked. “Or would there be a bus?” he added.
"I don’t know,” the guard unhelpfully muttered, so Sally intervened to offer this pleasant, but potentially stranded man, a lift to Alton, which we were driving through on our way home.
He said it was too kind but that we didn’t need to put ourselves out. However, Sally explained it was no problem. So off we went. He directed us out of the unfamiliar car park, and we started chatting: it emerged he was an environmental scientist who worked with property developers and big building firms.
Alastair Stewart marks the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz, placing it in the context of memory and living with dementia in this week's Living With Dementia
GB NEWSI asked if it was for biodiversity and protected species, and he said ‘no’ because they had biologists for that. He was a soil safety and floodplain man. Sally then asked him about recycling. We had both heard a lot about it, going to landfills or abroad.
He said Hampshire was good and genuine when it came to the sorting process. It was a fruitful chat and when Sal asked him where in Alton he wanted to be dropped, having walked to the station rather than drive, he asked if we knew ‘The Butts’. “Yes,” we said, “it's a small park on the outskirts of town and the name always makes our American friends laugh when they visit.”
So we dropped him off there and then headed home, a small good deed done with three rather than two people in the car, we felt good for having done it.
It was also Alastair Bruce’s birthday this week. He is a dear friend and undeniably the best commentator on state occasions and big events on modern TV since the retirement of David Dimbleby and the death of Alastair Burnet.
We exchanged birthday pleasantries. He is a great guy and a historical advisor to Lord Julian Fellowes on Downton Abbey, the reruns of which are the only things we watch on ITV. We are delighted it is coming back for a final hurrah on film again…
Globally, Trump flexed his muscles in Iran, dispatching B-2 Bombers with their bunker buster bombs. The arguments between intelligence organisations as to how successful the strikes had been were unseemly and unhelpful.
Starmer was sort of supportive and declared the UK was buying US F-35 fighter bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Gone are the days when we developed and built our own bombers.
My father commanded a squadron of Valiants and headed up operations at RAF Scampton with three squadrons of
Vulcans under his command, including the historic 617 Squadron, the Dam Busters. I recall how sad he was when we gave up on the TSR2 swing-wing bomber and sold the Harrier jump-jet technology to the Americans: it was, in his view, an aero-nautical white-flag.
Welfare reform has dominated at home. I recall when my friend Peter Lilley targeted welfare and benefit abuse. He famously said he had ‘a little list’. Well, the only list Starmer has is of the close to 160 or so Labour MPs who intend to oppose his modest reforms.
Amazing to think he could lose the vote. Last night, the talk was of him doing a deal with the rebels or ‘blinking first’ as they say in the trade. He wouldn’t be out. That takes a formal vote of confidence to be lost, but we live in interesting and turbulent times.
Even with dementia, I recall the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War, and the eras of the Labour left rebelling against the leadership. It has all been brilliantly covered by GB News and I have been glued to it..
We have had a busy time on the farm harvesting our hay for winter feed for the horses and donkeys. The man who does it for us said farmers had been told to buy fertiliser early for fear of rising prices and shortages due to a likely oil shock and the continuing war in Ukraine, which brings it all home.
We ended the week last night by taking two of our dearest friends for dinner on the eve of Sally’s birthday. We chose the sublime Chesil Rectory in Winchester, a beautiful medieval building with a fine co-owner chef who promotes local produce from the fields and streams of Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight and our rich coastal waters.
The evening was a faultless triumph, perfect company in delightful surroundings and the finest dining in the city.
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