Wake me up when it's over ...

I've just had one of the most difficult, heartbreaking, uplifting and life-affirming weeks of my life. I have been scathing about people using his platform to post about very personal matters so you'll have to either give this one a miss/accuse me of being a hypocrite/just bear with me. Or alternatively, skip to the political section.

My Father Died

There. I've written it so it must be true. He was 83 and had been suffering ill health for quite some time. He'd recently been discharged from a short stay in hospital but we knew a week ago that he probably didn't have long to live. I went home to be with my mum and brother.

If any of you have been in a similar situation, and I'm sure many have, you may have found yourself, like me, wishing for it all to be over whilst at the same time not wanting the inevitable to actually happen. You need to be there to experience death and to support each other and at the same time you'd rather someone just wake you up and tell you it's all over.

Now, in retrospect, I realise that being there, experiencing his death, beginning to grieve, sharing the news with others (he was a larger than life character with a very large circle of friends, 99.9% of whom were in some way attached to the local rugby club) was the only way of getting through this. You can't avoid the pain but through that pain comes joy, memories, love, laughter. Grief really is the price of love.

Angels

Having decided keep my dad at home, the NHS system kicked in and we were rapidly supported by district nurses, paramedics and a doctor who literally worked through the night to make sure his last days were comfortable. When he died, the nurses washed him and changed him into his new pyjamas (he's from Yorkshire, you don't let those things go to waste) and the undertakers swung in to take care of him before the funeral.

Can you imagine doing a job where every day you're going to dealing with people who are cut down by grief? How do they do it? All I can say is I'm so grateful they do. Where would we be otherwise?

In a Mess

Is where we'd be. And where we are. Sadly, it seems that rather than facing up to the situation and coming together to get through it, the Government and Conservative MPs have (currently) opted for the "Close your eyes and wait till it's all over" option.

Told you So

I'm no economic or political heavyweight, neither am I a gifted seer, a Cassandra of the 21st Century, if you like, but I DID say last week "It's the Cost of Debt, Stupid". I also pointed out that you can't have what was a MASSIVE (forget the mini) budget and not include advice from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Being right, though, gives me no joy on this occasion.

Tory MPs are reportedly worried that "this is a self inflicted political disaster" which will result in them losing the election and, ergo, their jobs. Meanwhile, the rest of us are worried that this is a disaster inflicted by imbeciles which will result in many of us losing our homes and our jobs.

Lady Jane Grey or Anne of a Thousand Days

What's you're betting? How long do with think Liz will last? My reckoning is somewhere between Lady Jane Grey's tenure as Queen (9 days) and Anne Boleyn's. Hopefully they won't chop off her head.

What was she thinking? It's not just the bonkers unfunded tax cuts and ridiculous self inflicting damage done by cutting the top rate of tax (which raises relatively little anyway), it's also the process and the timing.

Can you imagine thinking

"I know there are risks to this and if it goes down badly I will be gifting Rishi the chance to say he was right all along ... but I'm so convinced I'm going to do it anyway. And yes, I know that I will be handing the Labour Party lots of ammunition ready for the week of their annual conference - a week when they will actually be able to get press attention for once - but what the heck, I am a CONVICTION politician so pass me the mic!"

What possessed the woman? Is she bonkers? Or ... here's my theory ... is she secretly working for the Lib Dems? She used to be a member, just like she used to be a Remainer. Maybe it's all a cunning plan.

Not in My Name and Not in Your Manifesto

Ok team. Here is the way out. I've checked and ditching the economic "orthodoxy" that has meant the Government has to sort of try to balance the books was NOT in the Conservative manifesto in 2019. Neither was cutting the top rate of tax and there was certainly no mention of taking a machete to public spending. There was also no mention of ditching climate change commitments and starting fracking.

Here are some of the headlines

• Extra funding for the NHS
• 20,000 more police
• Millions more invested every week in science, schools, apprenticeships & infrastructure
• Reaching Net Zero by 2050.

Sure, circumstances may have changed. So rewrite your manifesto telling voters how you plan to deal with it and call an election so we can have our say.

Here's the Joke

So far I've heard that the Government's cunning plan has three big ideas that will turbocharge growth:

1. Relax immigration rules (see how that one goes down with the 160,000 Tory party members)
2. Relax planning laws (ditto)
3. Change the ratio of carers per child to improve childcare provision. (I'm not even going to comment).

In the Meantime

Luckily we had other news to keep us amused this week. Particularly for those of us over 50. If anyone was worrying about how to celebrate an upcoming age-related milestone, help is at hand from the usual celebs.

Gwyneth Paltrow celebrated her 50th by posing nude, painted in gold body paint. It's on Instagram if you want to have a look. I'm not that interested TBH.

Helena Christensen, 53, "frolicked" around in black lacy underwear to celebrate (aka "promote" her partnership with Coco De Mer.

Like, (channeling my 20 year old daughter who often, bizarrely, starts a sentence with this word), why do I find these women uninspiring, silly and just a bit sad?

The Cultural Bit

I'm watching: Karen Pirie. On ITV. A slightly amended but very good adaptation of Val McDermid's The Distant Echo. They've taken a gamble by making it three quite long (2 hour) episodes and I think they're good. Quite different from your usual TV crime drama. Except that the victim, obvs, is a young woman.

Also Watching: State of Happiness. I think it's BBC. It's Norwegian with subtitles. Series one was available in lockdown and series 2 now out. It's (partly) about how Norway dealt with finding oil in the North Sea - in conjunction with the Oil companies - and went about protecting some of the wealth created for the benefit of the state. With lots of personal dramas overlaying that,

I'm singing: Hymns. Lord of All Hopefulness, Lead us Heavenly Father, I Danced in the Morning, etc ... trying to choose ones for the funeral that are not too long, where everyone knows the tune and that I can sing without descending into a blubbering mess. (My dad never went to church but he did like drama and attention, which is why, I assume, he's asked for a church service, followed by the crematorium, topped of by the mother of all wakes at the rugby club.

That's all Folks.

Enjoy your week