Tuesday 20th

It has been a lovely day today, and not just the weather although that was good too.

Tim and Jeremy visited me unexpectedly, bearing ice cream,   Jeremy had a business meeting earlier in the day in Oxford,   It is not very often that I get to see them both together so that was a wonderful.

surprise.

After Jeremy left for home, hoping to beat the worst of the traffic, Tim  took me back to their house where they were having a barbeque, and that was all very nice.

I've noticed changes since I have been back here, and I think none more so than in the disappearance of our post offices.   Every little village or small town had one, but there isn't one in Summertown, and I have to go all the way into the City to find one.    

I'm told that now that everyone has their state retirement pensions etc paid directly into their bank accounts, post offices are not really needed anymore.   But at the peak of their usefulness they were conducting any of 231 transactions, they weren't just handing out pensions - they were renewing tv licences, for example, paying their car tax, withdrawing or depositing money in savings accounts, buying premium bonds, posting parcels.   Frequently in Shawnee post office I joined a queue 15/20 deep, I wish I had paid more attention to what they were all doing, I am sure they weren't all just buying stamps like me. 

And I got to wondering - what happened here when thousands and thousands of little old ladies, or old men, who had never had a bank account in their lives were told they would have to open one so that their pensions could be paid into it.   It just boggles my mind thinking about it.   Did it all happen while I was gone?

Now for my 2 cents worth on the US Election.   I see Donald Trump has won the Republican nomination.   But where, oh where, I ask myself, is his former bessy mate, the excruciatingly, irritating Sarah Palin?  And come to that, the equally excruciating (and lying) Hilary Clinton who - as nobody knows except me - will be in prison before she gets to the White House.  (I think I have just knocked myself off my friends' Christmas card lists).

But before I leave the subject of the aforementioned Hilary Clinton - I'd like it to be known that when she is filmed in her prison jump suit, I'll be available to Fox News.  I can sit up there with the likes of Charles Krauthammer and Brett Baeir, pontificating.