China

Is Canada being used by China?     Canada becomes the proxy for China.    

France stops purchase of supermarket chain by Canada.   Is Macron a bit more astute than the rest of us and sees China and Canada becoming buddies?

Trudeau goes to India, non state visit.    Was this visit on the instructions of China given bad relations between China and India?

Trudeau invited Chinese army to train in Canada a month ago.   

At Davos Xi spoke of Covid of course and said the world will defeat it together.    Why was Xi speaking at the World Economic Forum and given  a Special Speech slot?  

"History is moving forward and the world will not go back to how it was in the past".

Xi has spoken.   Oh, and he said  don't meddle in our affairs.

China's economy is expected to grow 8% this year while the rest of the world all go into a downward spiral.  China's biggest growth spurt for 10 years.

I don't know any answers or whether these questions are correct but they are worth thinking about. 

Ear ache

I am exhausted.  I am now coping with ear drops on my own.  The Consultant said had I got someone to help me.  I said no.  He paused and then gave me a lovely demonstration  with his own ear of giving ear drops to oneself.  You really need three hands.  

I then went to the chemist to pick up the prescription and the lady at Boots inside Waitrose  said "we no longer keep that, you'll have to find an independent chemist" .  

Stay calm I told myself. Nobody is at home waiting for you, your time is your own.   It was getting late, extremely cold, dark and raining and miserable.   Don't rush.  

So off I  drove into the city   to the only independent chemist I know hoping the shop still existed  and, if so, was still open - it was by now after 6.     It did and it was.     A lovely friendly old fashioned chemist shop.    I called out to the chemist  "have you got it, Boots didn'thave it?"   He replied driely  "Yes,  all Boots want are profits".  

I chatted to the girls while the prescription was bagged up,  they were clearing up for the day although people were still coming in to collect prescriptions, all of whom were  dealt with without fuss or shouting and it could have been normal except the queue was a little widely spaced and  it was all very friendly and like a Covid world free zone and lots of laughing, one of the girls was trying to cash up the till and counting out loud.   It was like stepping back in time.     I paid  because it was a private one and called out "I will come here again" as I left.    

I have lost my hearing in one ear in case you are wondering and have an ear infection.  Never put your finger in your ear said the Consultant as he wrote out the script.    He had already sucked out the gunge.  I asked him what he was doing and he said "sucking out the pus".  It was a great relief.

I had a hearing test this morning with his sound technician and the Consultant , when reading the results this afternoon,  said my hearing is appalling.  I said I know.   He said come back in a fortnight if it isn't any better when you've finished the drops.  

My day started at 6am.  It was still dark.    I sat in a sound booth pressing a button each time I heard a sound.  I said it was like being in a recording studio listening to digital music intermittently with special sound effects like ships foghorns and trying to hear the  cuckoo.   

I'm going to bed.   And oh, yes, I put the first four drops into my ear just like the Consultant demonstrated,  and I had an  audience of cats  as I lay on the floor, and it worked. 

Films and Dramas (Now updated)

I have no idea what to write about today so I will list for Graham because he said in his post today that he has not watched Netflix much recently although he subscribes to it, and anyone else who is interested,  the films and dramas I have watched on Netflix myself recently and enjoyed.   

Hope Gap with Bill Nighy

The Two Popes

Cuties (don't be put off by the name).

A United Kingdom (based on the true story of the throne of Bechuanaland, now Botswana)

Boy Erased  (actually I have only seen this at the cinema but it is available on Netflix I think and it is very good).

Dramas

Queen's Gambit  (Chess girl)

Unorthodox  (Jewish girl escaping from orthodox Jewish marriage)

Giri Haji (Japanese Mafia)

If you have Sky: 

The Undoing  on Sky Atlantic.  This is the one with Nicole Kidman and Huge Grant which I have watched about 5 times because I like it so much. 

Some of these recommendations came to me via other bloggers and the films are ones I had either seen myself at the cinema and wanted to see again or those I had wanted to see but couldn't because they were only on Netflix or just films I want to see.  

I often have the television on and do other things and only after I have watched something more than once do I fully pick up on all the ins and outs.  

 I watched A United Kingdom last night and it is very good.   It is based on the true story of Bechuanaland and the black tribal leader taking back his white bride from England after he finished his university studies here  and the opposition to this coming more from Britain and South Africa than his own tribe except for his uncle. 

If you ever come across Call Me By Your Name and you like Italy  and you like life in the 1980s 

before mobile phones this is one of my favourite films     I did have it permanently recorded on my old Sky box but the new one didn't hold on to it when I downloaded it recently and it disappeared after a few days.    It is not on Netflix at the moment.   It is based on the book by André Aciman. 

And Tom mentioned  to me a couple of days ago, coming soon on Netflix , The Dig, the Sutton Hoe treasure story. with Ralph Fiennes and Lily James,  which sounds good.   Release date is 29 January. 

Recommendations are always gratefully received. 

Here is the muntjac in the garden, he has just appeared, and is looking at me looking out at him from the kitchen window.  He comes everyday, has his own path across the grass and is quite friendly. 

Stop Press   I have just found another film whilst reading my Vogue over breakfast this morning  to add to the list.   Pieces of a Woman.   A look at a relationship in the wake of tragedy.  How relationships overcome the aftermath of trauma.  And many don't.    Film by Hungarian director Kata Wéber    Now on Netflix, I just checked and it is there. 

Friday

I am watching the life of Ingmar Bergman on You Tube on my television.  One of the many good things about my new SkyQ is that You Tube has become like another TV channel from which I can choose.  So it is no longer  a laptop play thing on my knees where I jump from video to video.   

I like Ingmar Bergman and his troubled world and always feel relaxed in his company or the company of his films.   Tonight I am in his company alone looking at his life.  It is a mixture of Swedish and English.  There are no subtitles.   I remember seeing this  on British television and can fill in the Swedish parts from  my memory of the words viewed with the film before me now,  enough for me to follow it. 

 I have been troubled all week.    Don't ask me why I am not sure that even I know why.  Yes I do.   But still don't ask me.    But it may help one or two of you to know by way of explanation that I have been troubled this week.   It is a detachment. 

I wrote a short post on Trump's foreign policies and didn't publish it this morning.   Someone had looked for anything that Trump did and asked if there was anything.    I found  things.     Not hard to find in his foreign policy which was good.    I  wished Biden luck and hoped  that he doesn't act like Nancy Pelosi but rather he genuinely  seeks to heal divisions.   Does a Gerald Ford.    That's enough of that post to understand it and it didn't deserve  to stand alone as a post only to fall on stony ground as it no doubt would have done.   

I missed my History of Art class, I didn't feel in the mood for it.  That has never happened before.   I had an appointment and I made that my excuse for non-attendance.   I really did have an appointment however it did not have to clash but I made sure it did.  It was a legitimate reason for going out, essential travel, to a medical appointment.      (I have now received the Zoom recording of the class and skipped through the two hours in 10 minutes.  It seemed odd to watch the class that seemed not nearly such fun  as mine (the tutor does the same class four times and records only one and it is one  that I am not in)  (although I am sure we  sound just as bad) and I exited quickly from my phone Zoom link.   I had done the reading and the homework in any case. 

This morning I attended the Zoom German class and didn't make notes.   I didn't even sit at a table, I slumped in an easy chair with  cats climbing over me and watched on my phone.     

I know from experience that fellow bloggers are not interested in my moods, especially angst and gloom.   I make an exception tonight for myself, self indulgence.     I am sure that in spite of my remorseless  efforts to do things, like write my blog, "talk" to people,  engage with things, read, learn, walk, Zoom,  sit, sleep, fetch fire wood, eat, cook, invent,  at the end of the day Covid lockdown hasn't helped  the bad situation I was already in.   I look forward like everybody else to coming out on the other side. 

Graham talked about a dream in the post before last and whilst thinking of something to say, which I never achieved,   I was taken  back to my former partner's dreams which were always nightmares with shouting, conversations that lasted  30 minutes or longer, complete conversations in strange voices that I could never understand,  and physical manifestations so bad that I had the builder screw the bed to the floor such was my distress at constantly seeing the bed had moved once more across the room, hearing the kicking of sheets, you wouldn't think so would you, but kicking in bed is frightening and I was only listening from the next room.   I now feel more distress about it than I even did at the time I think although I can't be sure.  The memory plays tricks.       I had never really taken it all in properly perhaps.   The voices, the cries, the constant calls for help and in the end the voice that made him leave.     There endeth that part of my angst.  Don't trouble over it I just sometimes need to talk about it.  (Please do not feel sorry for me).

The days are drawing out and it was still light at 5pm, just.   The full moon is a week away, energy is coming.

Blank

Nothing to share tonight except it has been a nice day with sunshine, blue sky, and windy and perfect for getting the washing dry, which it did. 

Blogger pencil edit has disappeared as has the delete button, both quick facilities that bloggers use.  Of course the facility to do these things is still there via Design/Dashboard but it is annoying and the delete facility for a comment has gone too so if you comment somewhere and change your mind, at the moment,  tough.  The Blogger Forum says they are looking into it. 

Monday out

 I went out today as the snow has now gone and the roads are back to normal for driving,  dry.  The fields still have lakes where there should be wheat and barley and rape showing through;  it is there  struggling somewhere under the water. 

I went to Waitrose and found it quiet as it always is in these days of lockdown.   I am going through a phase of not knowing what I want to eat  so shopping is a bit difficult.  I have almost always shopped daily and feeling hungry  focussed the mind on what I wanted to eat and made shopping quick and easy.  Shopping less often means that I have to make decision about what I might like to eat in days in advance which I find difficult. 

I drove home.  

Yesterday I decided to write my own German history textbook as the book list sent to me by the History tutor contained only very  expensive books and very long books (600 pages was about average).  (I do buy secondhand books from Abe books but I have recently gone through a metamorphosis of not wanting secondhand being  disappointed at  opening a beautifully packaged   book that has been already dirtied  by someone else's hands and  not deserving of the wrapper and a book that is not my choosing from a bookshelf on the basis of condition.       I like new since this metamorphosis, or library along whose shelves I have browsed,  or a book from a charity shop that I have been able to handpick and approve first).   I started last night with watching all three episodes of the BBC's  Rise of the Nazis which more or less covered my course and  I filled an exercise book with notes.   I feverishly wrote for almost three hours.   I learned names I had not known before who were very important in the rise of Hitler like Kurt Van Schleicher,  Ernst Rohm and  Franz Von Papen besides Himmler and Goering without whom most of what happened would not have happened.  The historians contributing, the participants in the programme,  turned out to be the authors of two of the books in the book list I had received from the tutor.      I am pleased to have decided to write my own textbook.     

Winter Weather

 It is snowing here this morning.  The birds are busy on the crab apple tree.  Fieldfares and blackbirds and smaller birds, I can't see what the smaller birds are. 

The fieldfares go full on into the tree and attack the apples there, the blackbrids are more on the ground.   

The tree has birds in it but I took the photo through the kitchen window and it was snowing.   But is still full of crab apples.   During the snow of three years ago when it was much worse and lasted for days the tree was like this at the start and the fieldfares stripped it absolutely bare. 

I have been outside to fetch wood and it is now turning to rain.  The fieldfares will disappear  back to their feeding grounds on the fields.  I only ever see them in my garden when it snows when they come to this tree.   They know.   They aren't daft.     The blackbirds will be left alone.

The postman has just been . 

Enjoy and have fun and keep that tv switched off.

Charly is hosting a writing group session in 50 minutes.