Constitutional matters. The return.

It was widely belived that because the USA had a written and codified constitution, that its citizens were safe from a Government hostil to them.

The UK has a constitution, written down, but not codiefied. Not in a single document, instead, spread out through thousands of parchment rolls in Parliament.

But a constitution has to mean something to those who keep guard over it.

A written constitution may well say that Congress Approval is needed to delpoy tropps on the street of US cities, or that trade policy is also a matter for Congress not the President. Or that clear statements or amendments to the Bill of Rights can just be ignored by a stupid orange man signing Executive Orders.

Those who constitutional task it is to protect the Constitution itself, must take this task deeply seriously. Instead, Congress, The Supreme Court just stand back, or agree that what is being done is within the Constitution, even when Liberal members argue clearly that it is not.

The Supreme Court is packed with right wing Judges who do not seem to care, and a Senate that just has given up its power.

Both could stop Trump tomorrow, all within the Constitution. But they choose not to.

How much is a written constitution when it only applies to white men.

Those who think it will all stop with Latinos, Black Americans, Gays, trans people: womenn's rights are next. Remove your right to vote. Trump thinks the law should not get involved in domestic "fights" between man and women.

We either fight for our freedoms, or they will be taken away.

And the UK constitution is weaker in restraining a similar figure, perhaps Farage is that figure.

It can and will happen here.

Tuesday 9th September 2025

Some of you, I know, are big fans of Whitfield Tesco, so here is news from the store.

Yesterday, all trolleys were being swapped for new ones.

There were trolleys everywhere, most of the old ones being arranged to be loaded on trucks. All shelters in the car park empty of trolleys as the new ones were unloaded and distributed.

As I had several bottles to buy, I took a large family one, and I can confirm its wheels, all four of them, ran true and silent.

I was shopping as Jools had been dropped off at the sports centre for an Aquacise session, and in the time she was there I would do the big shop.

All children are back at school, at least those over 5 years old, so the aisles and checkouts were pretty empty at even nine in the morning.

I pay and drive back, have enough time to pack stuff away before going back to collect Jools.

So, by eleven, both major events were done.

We go home, have a brew, but instead of eating at home, we drive to Deal for fish and chips.

The town was busy: the blue skies and warm sunshine must have brought out more people than usual.

We take one of the last two parking spaces, walk through Five Step Alley to the chippy, and take the seat in the window where we could watch the world go by.

I order skate and chips, Jools has haddock. Skate is a ray, has no bones just cartlidge, and has white flesh with a weak fishy taste.

Ten minutes later our lunches arrive, crisp golden fish and a large portion of freshly fried chips.

It went down a treat, doubly for Jools who hadn't had breakfast.

After eating, we walked along Middle Street, then cutting to the High Street to see if that branch of No Name Shop had also closed.

Sadly it has, as well as the main branch in Sandwich. So, there goes our main supplier of stinky French cheeses.

So it goes.

We walked back to the car, as we had to get back home to check on Scully.

Back home along the main road, busy with traffic, and hot in the afternoon sun.

We check Scully's sugars, then give her some low carb food, and the afternoon is hours.

Too hot to work in the garden or walk, with storms forecast for Wednesday, it felt like the last day of summer.

Which it may well be.

I pour myself a beer, while Jools snoozes in the sun in the shelter at the bottom of the garden. Scully sleeps for two hours beside me, not bothered about food.

An improvement.

We had burger for tea, and after settling down there was international football as England travelled to Serbia for another qualifier.

I hostile conditions, England cruised to a 5-0 win, and look very much the challenger for the World Cup we hoped them to be.

Monday 8th September 2025

We thought the most important thing with cully, was to obtain as much data as possible, now we had a blood monitor that we could trust.

So, we decided to test before the insulin jab, then on the hour, every hour after that.

In order to do this, we could do phys in relay, with me going to the gym first.

I set the alarm, and was up and about after falling back asleep twice in 40 minutes, had a coffee, and was on the road by eight.

Traffic was building, but not yet crazy, so I drove to Whitfield, found a place to park and walked to the entrance.

Walking into the gym studio, one bike was free, so I took that, and cycled along the west coast of California until the machine zapped me the Rheims and I cycled past the cathedral twice.

I did 40 minutes. Not the most intense session, but double was I did two week ago.

Back to the car and home, arriving just after nine and Jools had just done the second test, which I recorded on the spreadsheet.

We had breakfast, then she went to the centre, she swimming up and down.

Up and down.

While I washed up and kept an eye on Scully.

We had stale rolls and left over deli meat for lunch, and I tried the chilli jam on the corned beef.

Not too hot at all, very pleasant in fact. So it was worth picking out every seed from every chilli.

The afternoon was filled with cards.

We were all in good spirits and humour, but I was the one left smiling as I won the last game of Meld, scooping the jackpot after going straight out. And then, as time ticked, I won the kitty of several pound in Queenie, which meant that when we came to store our winnings away, the jar was only just big enough to take it all.

Back home to feed the cats, then have leftover chicken with salad.

The chicken I cooked in the air fryer looked fine, until this red gunge oozed out of one of the drumsticks, pouring down the herb crusting like lava.

We left that.

And Scotland on the tellybox in the evening, and they bear Belarus by sending their opponents to sleep and scoring on the break.

Sunday 7th September 2025

It is the Sunday of a football international break, and the only match available later is Germany v Northern Ireland.

I went to bed.

Which, as soon as I typed it, I realised was a lie. As from 19:30 onwards we sat on the patio waiting for the Blood Moon to rise.

It was a day off going to the gym. But after coffee, Jools went to the beach to see Ange and Sean and go "for a bob" in the sea.

Here, it was expected to get breezy, so while Jools went out, I stayed behind to measure Scully's blood sugar levels.

I washed up, and did chores until she came back for lunch.

When she came back, after a wee brew, I went out for a walk to check the neighbourhood.

Good job I went then, as soon in the early afternoon the wind got up and thin cloud swept across, meaning it was too cool and breezy for butterflies.

I didn't go far: along our street, up Station Road to the first track, then along before walking down to Collingwood and via the track over the fields back home.

It was nice to get out, but a bit of a slog up Station Road. I mean its not a mountain, but gets the blood flowing.

I had my earphones in and was listening to a podcast, this set up is expected to encourage me out walking more.

I walk to take photographs so far, of course.

I see several flowers hanging on in: Common toadflax, Mayweed, Agrimony, Meadow vetchling, Red bartsia, and walls of Ivy now in flower along the lanes and tracks.

Two Small coppers, a few tatty Common Blues and Large whites, but no Clouded yellows in the fields of Lucerne.

It was just gone midday, very warm indeed, so glad to get back to the track leading to our street, then get back home, after checking on the colony of Dense-flowered fumitories, mixed in with the Lucerne.

Back home for lunch and a large glass of iced squash.

And then the afternoon was ours!

No football.

We do more in the garden, though its mostly all done for winter now, except the last cut, scarify and sowing for the lawnmeadow at the end of this month.

I make bread to go with the Caprese. We listen to music.

Once the bread is done, I prepare the salad, all is served, so at half six we sit down to eat.

Come half seven we were outside, sitting waiting for the moon to rise at twenty to eight. But clouds were still there, and it was a good half hour later that the sliver now being lit as the moon left the Earth's shadow showed bright enough through the clouds. The red part in shadow did not pierce the cloud, so we watch as minute by minute, the sliver got to about a quarter, before the moon went behind more cloud and was lost to view. I took shots, when I could. Of course.

Saturday 6th September 2025

It am the weekend.

So, instead of laying in bed, I had set the alarm for ten past six, so we could be up, showered, dressed, drink coffee, feed cats, jab Scully, and be out by half eight.

This was to see and snap the fleet of buses for the East Kent Bus Rally taking place on The Strand in Walmer.

No traffic to talk about, and lots of parking, but most spaces had a time limit of an hour. But I spy a shot on Kingsdown Road, I reverse into that.

It was quarter to eight, we had two hours before the rally was due to start.

We went to a corner store to buy something for breakfast, then sat along the Lifeboat Station to eat and drink.

And wait.

A London Routemaster arrived, but we were mid-breakfast, so I let it go by without taking shots.

Jools went for a walk, leaving me with camera and a short weight of a long stand.

Whatever.

Nothing much happened until ten to ten, bus-wise, but I witnessed the park run which went up and down the prom, and a paraglider did a low level flypast to the amazement of no one.

A flurry of activity up to ten with maybe 5 buses arriving, along with other classic vehicles.

I walk round the vehicles taking shots.

I climb up the Leyland to see if I could find the ECW details, but it was coachwork by somewhere up Lancashire.

I look at the stalls, and decide as nice as a destination blind would be, we had nowhere to put it. So, I buy nothing, remembering that I already had a Lowestoft Corporation bus from my Dad's collection.

I called Jools so we could meet at the car, and once she arrived, we loaded the car and headed home.

Highlight of the rest of the day was the delivery of the new glucose monitor. This came at midday, and required over an hour of studying the instructions on how to set the machine up and calibrate it.

When I did, we could test Scully's levels, and begin from scratch on how her levels are doing. Sunday we will try to measure them for the six hours after the morning insulin injection, once an hour.

I watched the Cambridge match on the tellybox, and thin gruel it was too, with one goal and a goal line clearance from nearly 100 minutes of footy.

Between, I made chilli jam with the glut of chillies supplied by our neighbours. Delia claimed just one and a half chillies were needed for the jam.

At this, I laughed.

I put in maybe eight, blend, add vinegar and tomatoes, then after adding half a pound of sugar, bring to the boil and simmer.

I have three small jars to show for the work.

Will let rest for a week or three, then try.

England played Andorra on ITV, and thin gruel that was too, as England barely got out of neutral, let along 1st gear, and laboured to a 2-0 win.

By which time it was seven, so with the funk and soul show playing, I sat in the garden to watch the moon rise, and jets fly over the hours to places much more glamourous.

Friday 5th September 2025

I watch a video channel on YouTube called "Christopher Collects", it's a guy who opens bags of money in the hope of finding rare UK coins.

Its better than that, as coins are split between definitives and commemoratives, or those normal every day coins and ones that mark an anniversary of other such event.

I learned from this that there was a special £2 coin being minted, though not circulated, of the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington as well as the Canterbury and Whitstable railways.

This then I sent off for, and using money received from a lifelong friend, you Dougie, I bought this from the Royal Mint.

Apart from this being delivered, this was the day we learned that you get what you pay for, and in the process really put Scully's life in danger.

Jools bought the glucose monitor, and the reviews made it seem OK, so we bought it and have used it for a month. And then yesterday the first reading at 08:00 didn't see right, so I retested it straight away with the same sample, and the reading halved.

I tested again and the reading dropped again. The same thing on the 4th test.

Hmmmmmm.

I did the same on the 09:00, 10:00 and 11:00 tests and got the same range of results, seconds apart.

The upshot is we don't know if the first "high" test is correct or the cluster of lower ones.

When Jools came back from her craft club, we decided to buy a new monitor, no expense spared, and that would be delivered ASAP, or Saturday as it turned out.

In the meantime, we would monitor Scully and feed her little and often and administer insulin twelve hours apart at seven in the morning and evening.

I posted a review on the Amazon page for it, and saw when you delved down into customer's reviews, many people had said pretty much the same. 50% were good reviews, but 25% were that it was a danger to our pets.

I added mine to the 25%.

I kept my word and went to the gym first thing, while Jools stayed to measure more blood sugars from Scully.

While she was away I cleared some of the vegetation down the side of the drive meaning that now when we reverse down, not all sensor warnings will go off all at once.

We have lunch, and after that settled, off out again, this time to Aycliffe to go hunting for sloes. Not so much hunting but a lot of gathering.

When I went down to the footbridge a few weeks back, I noticed huge amounts of sloes, so back on Friday to pick them.

We parked at the bottom of the Ropewalk, then down the footsteps, through the tunnel, and there were the sloes.

Not quite as many as I remember, but plenty for us as we topped up stocks for the autumn when we will be making sloe gin.

Two bags collected, we go back to the car, Jools drove us home safe and sound, back past the castle and over to St Maggies.

I had my annual chat with Mark and David on the occasion of my birthday, a perk being a supporter of their podcast. And then straight into the weekly quiz, of which I was stumped until the end.

So it goes.

I make dinner, marinated duck breast, corn, creamed spinach and a melody of grains.

And beer.

Being the weekend.

The evening's entertainment was provided by Scotland and Denmark who fought out a 0-0 draw in wonderful, wonderful, Copenhagen.

Thursday 4th September 2025

Having missed gym on Wednesday, I foolishly suggested I would do both Thursday and Friday to make up for it, so to do the three sessions I said I would.

As we were going to measure Scully's blood sugar levels hourly, Jools was going to stay and do the tests at eight and nine, while I pumped lard.

Oddly, the gym was very empty. Both cycles were free, and instead of riding up a hill in Costa Rica, the bike treated me with rides round Paris and Reims.

I did nearly 40 minutes, and apart from being hot and sweaty, felt fine.

I came back home to have breakfast with Jools, so she could then go swimming and have a session in the sauna, while I would stay behind and tend to Scully.

The optimism of two weeks ago has been replaced with caution, as her blood sugars seem to have climbed.

We were to learn on Friday much, much more, but more of that next time.

The wind was blowing, and as always we were waiting for thunderstorms to sweep in, though the nearest there was, was south of the Isle of Wight.

It rained hard in the morning, then brightened up.

We check Scully every hour to two, then let the poor kitty have a rest before the evening checks.

We could have done something, gone somewhere in the afternoon, but instead we stay home, reading, listening to podcasts.

Our favourite for dinner: Chorizo hash, though with no beer.

And no football in the evening, so to bed after a shower, with darkness falling.