Callum, concerts, cold weather, revolutions and earthquakes

Weird title, isn't it? Well, it has been a funny week to say the least. My remedial back exercises are progressing, but I doubt they will have any appreciable effect in either the short or long term. Occasionally, they might even do harm, somebody said the other day and they might be right. When arthritis is in an active phase it might be more harmful than beneficial to work the muscles. If I have the condition I suspect I have most of the pain should be coming from the places where muscles and ligaments are attached to bone. I must admit, sometimes I feel worse after the exercises than before them. I have a friend through TrailO (note new spelling!) who has a very good rheumatologist and she gave me his phone number, so I might be on the move to new doctors and treatments soon.

The weather has been really freezing this week plus I am struggling with a cold, so on Wednesday I missed a ballet I had a ticket for through a total unwillingness to get out of my armchair in front of the TV. I know that's bad, but I challenge anyone to want to get out into -5 and a snow storm from a nice warm flat!! I suppose the fact that I would have been on my own didn't help either. On the other hand, towards the end of the week I went out twice and on both occasiona it was absolutely worth it. The first one was a free performance by my favourite small ensemble called Hortus Musicus where two lovely ladies played flute duets on 200 year old instruments. The place where we were was a bit cold, so my toes were deep frozen by the end, but the magic of their performance made up for it. The second one was yesterday when I could see and hear my beloved Kristof Barati and enjoyed his play on the "Lady Harmsworth" Stradivarius again. He was superb and such a darling that he gave us two pieces of encore, which is unprecedentedy.

Yesterday afternoon I had a little chat with the little monster from across the water again. He was not very co-operative, but I managed to catch him for a few snapshots in the occasional seconds when he could be grabbed for a photo. Since then I read on Facebook that he has hijacked a sauce bottle from his mum's kitchen and smashed it on the pavement outside. Very naughty indeed!!

And just to explain the last two words in the title starting with the last one: there was a 4.8 earthquake under the Vertes Mountains just before I sat down to listen to my concert last night. We didn't feel it, but people further West did. No real damage, but they are warning of after shocks later, hopefully of diminishing strengths. I bet the epicentre was under one of our orienteering forests, especially that I heard this morning that the church in Vargesztes (which is on one of the maps for sure) developed some cracks. :-(

Revolutions are also in the news, although not every country reports them truthfully or even half fully. Let me not name the ones that are apalling in this respect. Not enough that Mubarak has now banned the internet, mobile communications and even Aljazeera TV, over here you here nothing but unrest, looting etc. The usually clever lies of selective reporting: ie. not totally untrue but not the real significance of the events either. I am really impressed by the bravery of the people of Egypt on the streets. Nothing is going to stop the mass of people once they are not afraid. History proves that, but dictators always think they are special and history does not apply to them. This one will find it to his detriment that he is wrong. I loved the cartoon that I posted above. It just shows how graphic a simple drawing can be to get a message across. Better than a thousand words!!

Must go now. Will post from the village or back here as I have news later.

Callum, Barclaycard and truffles

Thursday and Friday were so full of paperwork, answering e-mails and other computer stuff that it wasn't until Saturday that everything started getting done in earnest. Not that it was totally without hassle. My favourite credit card had given me yet another bout of aggravating officiousness and hassle, so much so that I was pretty close to telling them to stuff it. As Philip has finally got round to sorting travel, car hire etc. relating to next summer's Scottish trip I thought I would finalise my arrangements as well now that I know how it would fit in with Philip and Richard. On Friday I bought my final airfare which was from Edinburgh to Gatwick and then set about trying to find reasonably priced accommodation in Edinburgh in July. I think I would have had more success if I was looking for a Tyrannosaurus Rex, methinks. Finally I did find a room in a Travelodge for just over £35 a night, so I went ahead and booked that on Saturday. The card went to Verified by Visa, which was bad news as I had a great deal of hassle with somethig similar back in November resulting in me having to have a new card. So I was extra careful to make sure I was putting all my codes, passwords etc. in correctly. In spite of all that (I will not bore you with the details) it declined my purchase. So I paid with my other card, beginning to think that after about 35 years of faithful service me and Barclaycard will soon have to part company.

An hour or so later while I was chatting to Callum, Alex and Meaghan on Skype my phone goes. Barclaycard automated security wants all sorts of security detail, asking stupid questions etc., etc. Finally they put me on hold, 3 or 4 minutes of which I thought was enough and I put it down. Needless to say not only they instantly stopped my card (again!!), but they even stopped my internet access to my account, which was just about as aggravating as they could get. So I called them back, was very assertive (politely put) and 5 minutes later my card and account were back. Well, I think this was the last occasion I am prepared to cope with this amount of crap. No way I am going to give the satisfaction ever again to some hopeless little git to lecture me on internet safety when 9 times out of 10 all this hassle is caused by hiccups in their programming and bugs in their system. And even if it is me who is accidentally putting in the wrong code (which I do not think was the case), why can't they just tell me that I did that and give me another chance to put it in properly? They are so utterly neurotic about security that the default position is that you are a fraudster and it is up to you to prove you are not. Bankers are the newest swear word and I know why!!

OK, rant over. Now to nicer topics: as you can see from my snapshots Callum was in good form. He sat in one place for quite a while crunching on cheerios and yoghurt to start with, but eventually we were chasing after him all over the flat. Good job Alex has a small netbook or he could get a hernia running about with his Apple desktop! Callum is still a real cutipie and I loved my chat with him as always.

After all that was over came the long awaited truffle making. It took me from 11th December to 22nd January to get all the equipment and ingredients together to have a go. Standing up for hours was seriously exhausting, so much so that at the end of it I just plain collapsed. I think I was also quite ambitious at trying to make 5 different flavours all on my own, especially for the first time. I made lots of cockups: overheating the chocolate, overcooling the chocolate, being impatient and not waiting for it to cool down naturally, then putting hard set ganache into the cone which then got demolished in the process. It turned out that I didn't put enough falvouring in any of them, so next time it has to be more chillis, walnuts, whisky, rum, although the one with the marmalade was quite interesting. I gave Nelly a few of each and she seemed to like it, but could not differentiate the flavours. Mind you, it might have something to do with the fact that you do need a discerning palate for this sort of thing.

In flavour (other than the need of more of the same next time) they were great. In looks, not so much. Aesthetics will need some more practice, although who cares, I think for personal consumption anything goes. I photographed a plateful of the best lookers, so they were not so bad.

We are off to town tomorrow, some more remedial back exercises await and I think we will not take the car, so bumping on the bus is on the cards. Next Friday and Saturday I have two interesting concerts, the first being free and the musicians are playing 18th century pieces on antique clarinets; the Saturday one has Kristof Barati in it, of whom I have enthused a couple of posts ago. I am really looking forward to both.

Back in Ber

I have an American friend who keeps posting pictures of platefuls of food on Facebook. So I thought I can do that on my blog, so that you can see how well we live in our retirement. These two platefuls were today's lunches. Roy stayed patriotically British with his Cheddar ploughman, I went continental with mozzarella on toast with tomatoes and basil with lettuce and rocket on the side, all dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. Yum, yum!!

The weather forecast was absolutely spot on with the cold returning yesterday. We made it back in the car just before it became a bit chilly and started snowing. Today it all melted, but tonight there is a nip in the air again. We picked up all the ingredients and gear needed for making truffles (Belgian chocolate, cream, fresh chillis, nuts, booze, stone slab, chocolate thermometer, bowls, spatulas etc), so either tomorrow or the day after I will gather all my courage and have a go. The plan is for chilli, walnut, rum and whisky truffles. We'll see how they turn out. If they are a disaster, we'll just eat them. If they turn out OK, I might even photograph them. On the course we made orange truffles with some candied but moist oranges. I have been thinking how to imitate that, as that ingredient is only available in catering quantities. Just now I had a brainwave: what if I make up a small amount of paste from marmalade? That might work!! We'll see.

Tomorrow I am giving my exercise classes a miss due to unwillingness to travel 2 1/2 hours there and 2 1/2 hours back on the bus. I hope Edina and Zsofi, the two lovely ladies will not mind my slacking. I did forewarn them that I might not come and they seemed OK with that. I promised them that I will do what I can on my own and I fully intend to.

Mixed week

We did finally come into BP by car as temperatures have risen and most of the snow and ice had disappeared. The concert at the Bartok Memorial House was magical. The violinist, Kristof Barati (see picture) is a phenomenal talent with an exceptional violin. The Chicago Stradivari Society lent him the "Lady Harmsworth" and the sound he can get out of it is beyond description. The hall was very small, so I was sitting no more than 6 or 8 feet from him, which was an experience in itself. This young man has not only talent, but a personality that is attractive in the extreme. So, I have joined the Barati groupies and am now on the lookout for all his performances. Thankfully he teaches at the academy, which keeps him in the country, otherwise he is in so much demand the world over, that we would never see him at home.

As we had the car we finally managed to find the piece of stone that I need for making truffles at a monumental masons by the cemetery. Hopefully we should be picking them up (we ordered two) tomorrow and take one of them down to Ber. As they weigh a lot we definitely need the car for fetching them.

The appointment with the rheumatologist went well. She seems a nice lady - since then I had some X-rays done and started remedial exercise classes and electrophoresis treatment. When these have finished I will have some manipulation/massage and finally might even get referral to the thermal baths for some water based treatments. Well, it can't hurt, which is usually the attitude I have to these treatments, although I very much doubt they will fix my pack pain. We'll see!! Said the blind man.

And to make the week really mixed the weekend had two really good and one not so good events. The first good news was that Klari rang on Sunday morning with news of two free tickets to the Opera. We saw La Boheme, which was very good indeed. Unfortunately the bad news was that three young women got crushed to death at a nightclub in the centre of BP on Saturday night while trying to flee the premises for some yet unidentified reason. I am not personally involved as I didn't know them and I don't think I had any friends there, but it still upset me. Roy and I have always said that Hungary is one almighty great accident waiting to happen. This was not only a case of the inadequacy of regulation and/or the total lack of enforcement of safety laws. This is undoubtedly a stark example of how corruption, which has permeated every level of life in this country, kills. Apparently, the night club had no licence to operate anything other than a club of about 300, definitely not large gigs for up to 3000 people. So, how could they organise these gigs with no trouble for the last 6-8 months? The right bung in the right pocket, that's how. The guy who organised Saturday's gig openly admitted that he sold 2881 tickets and that he didn't know the club owners had no licence. He also said the accident had nothing to do with him. Since then he had been arrested along with the owner of the club and of the building, but as the courts are often as easy to bribe as building inspectors and licence control officers I am not holding my breath about their prison sentences. And even if they lock them up as scapegoats that will not bring the girls back. Very, very sad, but typical.

And to end on a much happier note: the other good event of the weekend was that we had a little chat with Callum again on Sunday afternoon and the pictures below were taken on Skype.

The demon banana flinger of Toronto town

Had a lovely session with Callum this morning. His breakfast was an enormous banana, which disappeared very quickly. Bits of it towards the end seemed to be flung in several directions, but most of it went straight down the right way. If I had a banana which was in the same proportion to my body size as his, it would have been at least a foot long.

After breakfast he was obviously training for some endurance event, because the maximum we could have him in one place was about 10 seconds. He had some lovely new shoes on, which he insisted on putting on his feet, even though he has not yet got out of his banana jammies. See the offending fruit on his bum!!

We have read a good few books, but only after we pulled every single book off the shelves and thrown them all over the floor. We had some climbing practice too, occasionally on the step ladder to see what's outside, other times onto the safety gate between the dining room and kitchen. Definitely Daddy's son!!

His appetite is amazing. Apparently, at day care if he just eats a normal portion the attendants worry about his health. His habit of playing with non-toy toys is still quite prevalent. Alex commented that with hundreds of dollars' worth of toys, he most enjoys to play with an old window shade from the car, especially that it rolls up suddenly which amuses him no end.

Today the weather around here was really weird. The fog was so thick that I couldn't see the other side of the valley. The temperature stayed above zero, so if all goes well we are off by car tomorrow.

R. I. P. sausages

We have come back down to Ber on the bus, so we couldn't carry much food with us. Never mind, we thought, we'll raid the freezer. Well, it is getting more and more difficult to do that on account of the hard winter and Roy's reluctance to use the car on these dreadful roads when it is thick with snow and ice. Road clearing is a thing of the past, so it is pretty lethal to travel on them, especially around the village and for about 15k beyond.

Anyway, we carried as much as we could the rest came out of the poor freezer, which is getting emptier and emptier by the day. Roy managed to dig out his last 4 sausages, ate 3 of them for dinner and is looking forward to the last one put into a sandwhich some other time. My fish, as you can see, is looking splendid. It is called pangasius, no idea what that is in English, but spiced up with salt, pepper, mixed herbs and a bit of garlic and then baked with a little bit of butter in the oven, it was delicious.

The fuss over the new Media Law rumbles on. The EU still doesn't give a monkey's ... about Orban flirting with the extreme right and all things are great in the presidency of the EU. I have just read this morning that some parts were left out of the English translation of the law as sent to Brussels, including a directive of not really putting it into effect until after Hungary handed over the EU presidency to Poland in July.

It will be interesting to see what happens in 2011 when the economy does not recover, or it might do so slightly, but nowhere near the expectations of the masses who put this rabble into power in the spring. Decent people are still keeping their heads down, but a few are beginning to lift theirs and are making a stand. That is hopefully the beginning of something good that might offer resistance to this despicable shift to the right.

New Media Law in Hungary - One of the first complaints

Those of you that read the news might have come across the furore caused by Hungary's Conservative government passing a new media law. This includes some ludicrous and very restrictive clauses, calculated to gag any and all criticism of the government, protect the government's image of what is moral, acceptable and promotable. The text of this great "national unity" they are building is now on the wall of every official place and we all supposed to read it in awe and live by it. This whole thing would be laughable if it was not backed up by a newly appointed Authority, whose members are all conservatives and who have near unlimited powers for 9 years, including the issuing of extremely punitive fines and the possible closure of newspapers, television stations and radio stations.

So the other day I have got an e-mail from a friend which advised me that an eminent academic put the new National Media & Communication Authority to the test by making a complaint about an antisemitic article using abusive language. We all know what sort of complaints this Authority is expecting: against blasphemy, against anti-authoritarian and anti-religious views. In fact, one line in the Media Law demands that news presenters put no opinions, interpretations or any views of their own into their programs. You see, even conservative Hungary seems to be full of pinko journalists, not just the BBC!

However, this professor's complaint is absolutely in line with the Media Law's provisions. He is complaining on the basis that this newspaper article was "offensive to his beliefs" and that practically calling for the murder of Jews is definitely "capable of disturbing the peace". We all wait the authority's response with bated breath!!

THE COMPLAINT

Subject: Complaint
From: "Istvan Mayer"
Date: Tue, January 4, 2011 14:29
To: info@nmhh.hu

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Media Authority

I am very pleased that I managed to find your e-mail address.

Please deal with the matter of the deplorable article that appeared in the Magyar Hirlap, written by Zsolt Bayer. URL: http://www.magyarhirlap.hu/velemeny/ugyanaz_a_buz.html

As the quotation below shows, this article, apart from the barely hidden anti-Semitic incitement (by only mentioning from the myriad of articles on this topic in the world press those authors whose names sound Jewish) is tantamount to a call to repeat the massacre at Orgovány. This latter call is in all likelihood contrary to the statutes of the Hungarian Criminal Code; I believe that it is your duty to also notify the State Prosecutors office of this fact.

The text of the quotation:

“There is a “stench emanating” from Hungary – writes some stinking excrement from somewhere in England by the name of Cohen. Cohen, Cohn-Bendit and Schiff. And Népszava appears as a red man with the hammer, demanding press freedom. And most people think that this is something new and there has never been a campaign like this before. Nonsense, there is nothing new under the sun. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to bury all of them up to their necks in the forests of Orgovány .”

Looking forward to your actions in this matter,

With respect

Prof. Istvan Mayer
Chemical Research Centre
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
H-1525 Budapest, P. O. Box 17, Hungary
Phone: (+361) 438-41-41, -42...-45 (ext. 295, 107)
Fax: (+361) 438-1143, 438-1142, 325-7554, 325-7750

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Lovely chat with Callum, Meaghan and Alex this morning. Breakfast was cheese and pears with crackers. He seemed to be rather fond of it and so was the pussycat. She was very clever and when nobody was watching managed to snatch quite a few pieces of cheese off Callum's tray.

Let us hope 2011 will be an improvement on the last 2 years.
Amen!!