Home again

It is not even a week and if I wrote down everything that happened since I last posted this would be a saga. So let's try to have a shortened version (not my strength, you understand!!).

The flight from Toronto to Gatwick was totally uneventful. The only aggravating thing was that we asked to have the back row, which was just two seats, the lady at checkin gladly obliged, or so we thought, but once we arrived at our seats they were neither at the back or in a double seat row. On the other hand, the lovely lady sitting on the isle seat next to Roy was friendly and chatty and the flight was fine. I watched Leonardo DiCaprio in a very good movie by Clint Eastwood on the life and times of J. Edgar Hoover, which was great, but the lack of sleep probably wasn't. Still, we landed even a bit early, the luggage came out promptly, we caught the bus fine and even managed to buy a hot water bottle (Lucy asked for one by SMS!), some Cheddar and sausages for Roy and posted a present to Pete en route to Stephen's house. As you can see from the pictures the new little family is very happy, Elian is absolutely gorgeous and both grandparents were delighted and proud. We managed to stay 2 and half hours and Stephen gave us a lift back to Gatwick which was a boon as the arthritis in my right arm was really painful by now due to dragging the suitcase everywhere. The next leg of the journey was delayed by an hour and a half, but we happily read books and magazines in a nicely air conditioned airport, sat around and finally arrived in a tropical BP after yet another uneventful flight.

Jetlag really laid us low for a while, but we had a good Sunday evening to look forward to. Nerrille (see picture of her from last October!) was coming for supper prior to her departure for foreign climes. She was an absolute hoot. We so love her company that the only downside of her visit was the sadness that she was leaving. Roy invented a new sweet course: the DIY Fruit Salad. It consists of everybody getting a bowl, a sharp knife and then having to peel and chop their own fruit from all the fruit in front of them on the table. We also put out some squirty cream and a bottle of palinka and it was delicious. The fruit on this occasion included: our own bottled peaches, apples, pears, grapes, cherries, satsumas and bananas. Brilliant idea, we will repeat it. In the meantime the heatwave was raging and getting worse and worse. Therefore we decided that we will have to experiment with a way to get to Ber we only recently realised existed. As the car was left behind in the village we had to catch the bus. The first direct one goes at 1.30pm and that was totally out of the question. So we caught a bus going to somewhere else, but partially on our route at 6.50am, got off at 7.38am in Aszod, hung around for about a quarter of an hour and then caught another bus which took us all the way. We were inside the house a few minutes before 9am. Great! In times of 40+ Celsius that is the only option for bus travel and we made it.

Attila, our gardener, assisted by his mother have looked after the flowers beautifully, so the garden looked great. The veg patch looked a little parched in the back, but even that survived. One of my first jobs was to make a large bottle of Nocino, a delicious walnut liqueur out of Roy's palinka and our own walnuts. The latter proved a bit difficult, as a late frost ruined all my walnuts, but a neighbour came to my rescue and you can see the end result in the pictures. Initially we put them in two lovely square bottles with the special tops, but finally decided to put them into one large one to work through the fermentation process all in one go. To stay with the agricultural theme, we have pulled our first onion this week, which considering the heat and the drought did very well. It will be ceremoniously chopped into a salad when I next make one.

A fair number of other things have also happened in the last few days, but I think this blog post is heading towards being a three volume saga, so I stop here.