Ever so dapper weatherman, Owain, on BBC Northwest, assures me it will be getting milder, which is all very well, but he also promises rather more rain coming in. Personally, I would like a little less rain or maybe for it to fall overnight.

I still seem to have the knack of dodging the worst of the the weather though. It was fine when I got up to go for a run, although it started to throw the occasional drop at me as I got close to home but I got home before anything more serious started. Then it came down with a vengeance for a while. It’s been pretty bad since then, we’ll see how it goes. I probably have no good reason to leave the house for the rest of the day anyway. 

It’s a good job I have plenty of things to occupy my time. Yesterday I ambitiously thought I might sort out some of the books in the attic bedroom - far too many books! - but in the end the task was just too daunting! All I did was put them into tidier piles so that I could vacuum around them but really we need to decide which ones we can donate to charity collections. And we should do so before it becomes an absolute necessity. A friend of mine has been doing this, of necessity, because he decided to sell his house and downsize to somewhere closer to his daughter’s home. That way he and his wife could help out with the new grandchild and so on. It’s almost driven him crazy! Serious stress! So, yes, we should tackle it little by little, starting now!

I read that in New Zealand people have taken to foraging as a way of putting a bit more food on the table in this time of rising prices. It’s not just in country areas. After the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 some parts of Christchurch were judged too unstable to rebuild on. Damaged buildings were demolished but any remaining trees were left standing, some of them fruit trees. And now there are inner-city areas where people can collect fruit. 

I wonder if foraging would catch on here. When I have talked about adding wild dandelion leaves to salads, which I have done before now, selecting young dandelion leaves grown away from roads, some people have looked askance at me, as if I were some mind of witch! There’s a bit of me that says that New Zealanders are mostly descended from people with a pioneering spirit, if they’re not Maoris, and so maybe are prepared to be a bit adventurous in what they will try to eat. It beats food banks anyway.

As the Sunak scandal rumbles along, with Mr Sunak wanting to have an investigation on who tattle-taled on them about non-dom status and US citizenship, opinions have been expressed about his being more concerned about the story coming out than about the rights and wrongs of not paying taxes. However, it may well be that people would feel more forgiving towards him, and his wife, if he were not asking the rest of us to cope with rising prices, not to mention taxes! 

The involvement of Mrs Sunak in all of this is a relatively new development in politics, at least in this country. Time was we hardly knew the names of politicians’ spouses, let alone what they looked like, what they did for a living and how much money they earned. It was a peculiarity of the USA that the president’s wife was so visible, had a title, and even got involved in decision-making! Then, suddenly, there they were in this country and in France for that matter, but less so Germany and Italy, as far as O can tell. It was mostly wives. Cherie Blair was a much more visible Prime Minister’s wife, as was Samantha Cameron. Even the Chancellor seemed to need his wife around when held up the famous briefcase to announce the budget. And in France, President Sarkozy’s wife, already famous in her own right, was not going to sit back anonymously like previous presidents’ wives. 

And now here we are with wives causing problems all over the place! If it weren’t so annoying ai might almost be praising the power of these women. But in the end, they are unelected! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.