16th February 2025

(25th January 2025)

The night the MSC Preziosa crossed the English Channel on its return to Southampton, Storm Eowyn swept through the UK and northern Europe. Thankfully, the 100mph winds affected Ireland and Scotland rather than the Channel, and in our cabin, we felt just the occasional shudder. However, I had little sleep, feeling cold and battling a runny nose, the onset of something unpleasant.

Disembarking at the end of a cruise is a very familiar process, but this time was different. As usual, our cases disappeared from the corridor outside our cabin sometime overnight. However, I stayed in bed instead of joining Sue for a hearty ‘going home’ breakfast. The duvet’s warmth was far more appealing than the food I had no appetite for. I got dressed when Sue returned, and by 8 am, we made our way to one of the lounges to await the call to disembark.

Our cases were waiting for us shoreside, and within minutes, we had dragged them to our car and begun the three-hour journey home to Willowbank. Once home, after hauling the cases inside, I took to my bed with a hot water bottle, a bowl of soup, and a packet of cold and flu tablets. Later that evening, Sue went to the Little Theatre in Harborough to watch a film.

The following day was Archie’s second birthday, and Sue and I had planned to visit Newbold Verdon to deliver presents, but I was feeling to ill to travel. As a treat, the family had a day at the Snowdome.

A few days earlier, I received a message from David asking if I would like to accompany him on a trip to Bulgaria to finalise the sale of his house. However, my illness and the recent hospitalisation of Lee’s mother meant Sue and I might need to help look after Alice and Archie, which she usually does during the week, and I declined.

Still feeling cold, coughing, aching, and groaning in bed with no appetite and just wanting to be left alone to take life-saving flu tablets, Sue went to the cinema on Saturday and again on Sunday. The Sunday film, The Apprentice, was one we had planned to see together, and we had already pre-bought tickets. Fortunately, Sue’s friend Viv was able to take my place.

By Monday, still unwell, Sue informed me that the firewood I had stacked in bins several weeks ago was nearly gone and would only last the day. She also mentioned that we had a mouse in the garage chewing a hole in the rear garage door. She suspected it might be building a nest, raising concerns that it could be making one in my Fiesta’s engine once again. Dragging my bug-ridden body to check, I was relieved to find that, thankfully, it wasn’t.

Early on Tuesday morning, I optimistically had a hot bath, but afterwards, utterly exhausted, I went back to bed and slept until mid-afternoon. Later, after Sue had left for a U3A Architectural Meeting, I got dressed and managed to fill up the woodbox before exhaustion set in again, forcing me back to bed for the rest of the day.

Wednesday started promisingly. I got dressed, had breakfast, and was looking forward to spending the day out of bed while Sue planned to go shopping in Corby and watch a film at the Cube. However, when taking her car out of the garage, she noticed rat droppings and nesting material around the vehicle. As she pulled out of the driveway, the car’s management system alerted her to an engine fault. After she swapped cars, I checked underneath her Mini and found a hole in the chassis cover behind the front wheel, which appeared to have been gnawed through.

I spent the rest of the morning sweeping out the garage in search of the rat. After lunch, I booked the Mini into the garage for the following week, then went into town to buy two rat bait boxes, which I placed in the garage. I also nailed wood over the hole in the door that Sue had discovered on Monday.

Sue returned late in the afternoon to take up guard duties against our unwelcome guest while I took the opportunity to grab a recovery nap.

By Thursday, I began to feel better, though I still tired easily. Sue went for a walk around Welford with her friend, also named Sue, followed by lunch at the Wharf Inn. In the evening, four friends joined me to play pool in the Garden Room and catch up on gossip.

On Friday morning, Jamie and Ruth dropped off Nala for us to look after until Monday while they visited Estonia over the weekend.

On 29th January, both our cars went into the garage for repairs following the rat attack. My Fiesta was also due for its annual MOT. Unfortunately, it failed and required new bushes on the rear suspension, meaning it remained in the garage until the following Monday. Sue’s Mini needed further investigation to assess the extent of the damage and was booked in for the following Wednesday.

February began with a dentist appointment for a small filling, supposedly needed to strengthen a crack identified by an X-ray. The procedure took all of five minutes, though I wasn’t entirely convinced it was necessary, as I’d had no issues with my teeth. It was the same dentist who, a year ago, advised me to have a tooth extracted, only for another dentist to insist it was perfectly fine and urge me not to go through with it. I didn’t.

After caring for Nala over the weekend while Jamie and Ruth spent a few days foreign sightseeing, a couple of days later, I had the pleasure of her company again for a few hours while Jamie went for a hepatitis injection in preparation for his April wedding in Bali.

Nala made yet another appearance on the 10th for an overnight stay when Jamie, Ruth, and a couple of friends travelled to a registry office in Chelsea to have their marriage officially recognised, with their friends acting as witnesses.

Despite the atrociously damp and cold weather, the rest of the family has been keeping just as busy. Ellis attended an Air Cadets parade and, after sitting the UKMT maths test, came top of his year, placing him in the top 10% of students in the UK! Alice received an excellent school report, and Archie reached a development milestone by swapping his nappies for underpants.

Sue continued to throw herself into her U3A activities, playing pétanque and rambling, though she was disappointed on a visit to Rutland Water when she didn’t manage to see the Rutland Ichthyosaur, discovered a year ago while draining a lagoon island, as it was still being prepared for exhibition.

On a sadder note, poor Mia has been unwell and is now on pain medication for hip dysplasia. Annoyingly, I seemed to come out in sympathy, managing to rick my lumbar while digging out a couple of flower borders and hauling paving slabs from the top allotment.

For Valentine’s Day, after presenting Sue with a dozen red roses, I took her out for an excellent lunch at The Yews in Great Glen. Later that evening, we went to the cinema in Harborough to watch Nosferatu. Despite the sound and special effects, it failed to hold Sue’s attention. She fell asleep.

Exactly a week later, I had my Fiesta back home, fully repaired and MOT’d, while the Mini remained off the road, requiring significant work to rectify the damage caused by a rat’s gnawing. That evening, Sue and I attended a superb performance of the UK Pink Floyd Experience in Kettering. They played the entire Wish You Were Here album alongside other tracks from the band’s catalogue. The light show was excellent, enhancing the concert’s atmosphere brilliantly.

Jamie, Ruth, and Joey travelled to the French Alps for a week of snowboarding, and for once, little Nala stayed at home. Along with the rabbits and hamster, she was looked after by a paid animal sitter.

On the 19th of February, Sue drove to Newbold Verdon and from there accompanied Sarah, Alice, and Ruth to visit their family friend, Sheila, in Tenbury Wells. It was a pleasant, unseasonably warm day, which made for a lovely get-together. Sheila had been eager to see little Archie, and despite being only two years old, he behaved impeccably, both in her small bungalow and later at the café for lunch.

Meanwhile, I began digging the vegetable plot in the garden before hosting a few friends in the Garden Room to watch England reclaim the rugby Calcutta Cup from the Scots at Twickenham.

For weeks now, each morning, the world wakes to news of Donald Trump signing yet another executive order, each seemingly aimed at dismantling the structures and procedures of American society that have taken decades to evolve. These reckless decrees have not only disrupted the USA but have also unsettled the global order. His simplistic, off-the-cuff remarks, thoughtless and erratic, are both arrogant and dangerous, leaving consequences that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to undo.

The following quote, discovered on Facebook, seems to address a very pertinent question:

“Why Do Some British People Dislike Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities that the British traditionally admire. He has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour, and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor, Mr Obama, was generously endowed. So, for us, the stark contrast throws Trump’s shortcomings into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we enjoy a good laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty, or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically; I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly unsettling to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s undeniable. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of humour is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, or a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and never laughs; he only crows or jeers. Worse still, he doesn’t just speak in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind operates like a simple, bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is no undercurrent of irony, complexity, nuance, or depth – it’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. We don’t. We see it as the absence of an inner world, a lack of soul.

In Britain, we have always sided with David, not Goliath. Our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, and Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky nor an underdog – he is the exact opposite. He’s not even just a spoiled rich boy or a greedy fat cat. He’s more like a bloated white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. Worse still, he is the most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to these things – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards, something a gentleman should, would, and could never do, and every blow he lands is below the belt. He particularly delights in kicking the vulnerable and voiceless – and he kicks them when they’re already down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans observe his behaviour, listen to his words, and still think, Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy is perplexing and, frankly, distressing to many British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us – and, by and large, they are.
• It doesn’t take a particularly sharp eye to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially baffles and dismays British people, as well as many others; his faults seem impossible to overlook. After all, it takes no more than a single tweet or a few sentences of his speech to stare deep into the abyss.

He turns being artless into an art form – he is a Picasso of pettiness, a Shakespeare of stupidity. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty ones too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W. look intelligent.

A week or so ago, I inadvertently published this blog ahead of its originally scheduled date after the Pink Floyd concert. As WordPress doesn’t have an option to unpublish, I have simply added to it whenever there was something worth commenting on.

I had already, in frustration, mentioned Donald Trump before this final publication, but since then, he and his henchmen have been relentless in their assault on democracy and the current world order, and I feel compelled to comment further.

America is a wonderfully diverse country, both in its people and its landscapes, making it a place well worth visiting. However, travel insurance for the USA is extortionate compared to the rest of the world due to the exorbitant cost of medical care. Added to this is the population’s love affair with guns, the relentless shootings in schools, shopping centres, and streets, the warnings from taxi drivers to avoid certain areas, and the 24-hour news channels filled with reports of violence and political bickering. Despite all this, Sue and I have gladly crossed the pond and experienced the hospitality of this once-great nation. But no more!

USA, you did this to yourself. American democracy is being dismantled and replaced by an oligarchy and dictatorship. Putin has quietly manipulated the simple-minded, narcissistic Trump (and most likely Musk) into plunging your country into chaos, leaving the rest of the world on edge, including China. Europe now sees little benefit in fostering close ties with the United States and will instead seek alliances elsewhere.

Over the past five decades, Sue and I have travelled extensively, visiting places where an American citizen would not have been welcome and would have been foolish to set foot. Trump has shrunk your world and made your lives more dangerous. The only true winner in this situation is Putin, not future generations, not your children or grandchildren.

“Make America Great Again”—a phrase that may not only bring about the destruction of the current world order but, quite possibly, the world itself.