The Lonesome West, Easter Egg Hash, Tamas Erdi and butterflies

On Saturday afternoon Bozsa and I went to see the Martin McDonagh play The Lonesome West. It was absolutely magnificent and somebody we got to chatting in the interval told us that she had seen it before and this production was a thousand times better. It was rather a slow burner in the first half, it did take quite a while to get going.  However, after the interval it got us glued to our seats trying to take in all that these two bickering brothers were up to and what that meant about humans, misery, religion and many other very human failings. It also had a kind of black humour, which, of course, is a very Irish thing. It was really well worth going and I would recommend to anyone, should they have a chance, not to miss it.

On Sunday I decided to go Easter Egg Hunting with the Hash as we were still in town and I had nothing better to do.  Even the weather was kind, so off I went. We had normal checks, where you just had to find the right way to carry on and checks where there was a number in the circle at the check, indicating the number of eggs or bunnies we had to look for.

Nata and Colin in the undergrowth hunting for eggs

 I only found one egg and one bunny.  The egg was a hard boiled one, but at least the bunny was chocolate.  Colin was the winner with 5. Some of the eggs and/or bunnies were nicked and one thief was also a litterbug as we could only find the silver wrapper on the ground! :-(

The stripy egg on the left and the bunny lying down on the right were mine

The circle was light hearted and thankfully short, after which we departed to the Piroska, which is a really lovely, friendly and homely restaurant near our hares' abode. Roy got there before us, as he never does the tiring running/walking stuff, only the eating and drinking stuff!! :-)

Colin pointing the way (to the loo??)

Haggis seems to be explaining something rather intently

Easter Monday was rather uneventful, spent reading, on the computer and thankfully totally undisturbed by anybody all day. On Tuesday I had to buy the last of the opera tickets online, then go to the doctors, but the highlight of the day was definitely the concert in the evening. Talking of my doctor, that woman needs a stern talking to, methinks.  She is supposed to have her surgery between 8am and 12 noon.  I have now missed her twice, once admittedly I was a few seconds after 12, but the second time I went there at 20 past 11 and she was already gone.  Very unprofessional, if you ask me. Finally, on Tuesday I managed to catch her, which was just as well as my pills were running out.

Now back to the concert: Tamas Erdi, the blind pianist was delighting us with several pieces of lovely music in the Great Hall of the Music Academy. He also had a guest singer whose voice was magnificent and Bozsa and I had a very good time. The other good news of the evening was Bozsa's offer of fetching the opera tickets for me, as we were off to the village tomorrow and would not be back for a while.  Although I do have two more Music Academy concerts next week, but I don't think Roy will come in for those, so I'll do those on my own and hope to fit in a day of geocaching between the two concert days.

The map with the 20 controls on

A friend of mine at control no. 31

And finally yesterday was the O event which I planned according to a fun format I found in CompassSport. Sorry about the colours on this map, but this is a scan of something I printed on a crap printer, but it'll give you the idea of the format. Start and Finish was by the car park in the bottom left hand corner of the map. This is a score event with 20 controls that has to be completed in butterflies. A butterfly in orienteering terms (for those that have no idea what I'm talking about) is a series of loops representing the wings of a butterfly.  You have to keep returning to the middle before you tackle new controls in the loops. You may have noticed that there are no butterflies drawn on the map, that's because it is you who decides where the centre is by punching it first.  After that it is up to your map reading and fitness how many loops you can run in 45 minutes, after which you lose 20 points per minute or part minute late back. In this format every control is worth 10 points, but the centre of the butterfly gets 10 points added every time you return to it.  All loops have to have at least 2 controls in them, the time limit is 45 minutes and the last control punched has to be the centre of the butterfly. The rules seemed ever so complicated on paper but most competitors, when they finished, said that out there it suddenly became very clear and simple. Only reading it and trying to imagine and remember it seemed hard. Some people entered into the spirit of the thing and one guy even managed to get very close to the maximum points score by getting all of them and returning 9 times to his chosen centre before finishing.  He, unfortunately was just over a minute late, which is why he didn't get the maximum score.  Still, his 700 points was way more than anybody else's. I had a lovely time watching people enjoying my course and even the rain kept off. There were nearly 150 competitors for a midweek, informal event, which was also great.

Now after a large Tesco shop, fetching Roy's chain saw from the repairers and the purchase of 20 geranium plants, we are back in the village.  The grass is shin high, the roses are full of greenfly, the strawberries look great with lots of blossom, although one or two didn't make it without watering during the last two weeks, (even though there were quite a few downpours), the herb patch is great, but a bit of further planting of some potted herbs and some seeds is needed - so the next few days will be spent in the garden seeing to all these tasks plus planting up the window boxes with the geraniums.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

A short week with the Freemans

Jo, Chris and Carmella arrived pretty much on time on Monday.  We bought a 5 person 24 hour ticket which was very good value as it covered their trip in from the airport and the sightseeing the following day. On the first night we went to one of our favourite restaurants and had a good time.

On Tuesday we all went on a lovely trip on the river, sailing up towards the centre of the city. The weather turned a bit cold and windy, but there was no sign of the forecast rain and was sunny most of the time. Unfortunately, and in spite of what it said on the internet, the timetable must have changed, because they turfed us out a lot sooner than we intended to get out.  Quick replanning gave us a chance to go up to the Castle District and we had a small walkabout up there. Lunch was had back at the same restaurant as the night before, followed by a quick visit to the Central Market to look  at likely presents.

On Wednesday we had lunch at another one of our favourite restaurants, followed by visiting one of the famous "ruin pubs".  This particular one is the original one that invented the concept and predictably the Freeman contingent enjoyed itself tremendously.

On Wednesday night Carmella went to a party organised by some friends of ours for somebody's birthday and she said she had a good time. This, at least, gave Mel a little time with her own age group while with us. Friday and Saturday the three of them have organised their own amusement, like visiting the thermal spa baths, going shopping and visiting the memorial in the forms of bronze shoes on the banks of the river to the victims of the Holocaust.

Finally, last night they took us out to yet another one of our favourite haunts for a farewell dinner where we had lots of lovely food and drink, as usual.

Hopefully they are now at home, as they left before 4am this morning.  It was a lovely visit and Mel assures us that she will be back.  Moreover, it could also be that Chris and Jo will turn up sometime again as well, due to Chris having joined the Wizzair Club, which gives him discounts for a year.

Garden, concert and orienteering

Not much happened since I last posted. During the week the garden was beginning to show real improvement due to some nice weather days, although now it is getting really cold again, which worries me with the possibility of below zero temperatures at night.

The mint and lemon balm patch

The peas are beginning to poke their heads through, which is great, except if frost comes in the night. I suppose there was always that danger, planting them this early. We also separated some of the strawberry plants from last year, so now hopefully we should have a better crop.

The first few peas

The separated strawberry plants

The roses are really going, the rhubarb is of triffid proportions and even the raspberry sticks that we planted last autumn are showing signs of life. 10 out of 16 seems to have taken, which is not brilliant, but acceptable.

The roses by the back terrace

A sprouting raspberry bush

The old rhubarb patch

On Friday we came into town, this time by car and both of us. On Saturday I had a concert, which for once I didn't like.  The guy playing the violin had great virtuoso skills, but I couldn't identify with his style and attitude to some of the pieces he played. This does not happen often, but even once is one too many. I went home a bit cross, which had never ever happened to me before.

Finally, today I went orienteering, which was great. I am still very unfit, but this was on terrain where even the fit ones could hardly run.  It was rough, steep and very technical.  I loved every minute of it. Due to my slowness I made no mistakes and I ended up beating one of my rivals by about a quarter of an hour, which pleased me no end. As you can see it was 3.2km with 180m of climb and I took 73 minutes. As we were both on an Open course for those entering on the day, it didn't matter where exactly we came, but finishing 15 minutes ahead of her made me feel good.

Opera (the last one for this season), Bryson books, gardening, geocaching and watching TV

The day I last posted I went into town in the afternoon.  I thought I was going to try a novel way of getting in, as I discovered that I need not go at 9.05am with the last direct bus, as there is one at 3.55pm in the afternoon which will get me in by about 6.15pm with one easy change.  It worked like a dream, so there's now a chance to travel in the afternoon, which can be handy, provided I don't have a performance starting at 7pm that evening.

The Flying Dutchman

I stayed in town overnight as I had a ticket for the Flying Dutchman in the Opera the following night. After the last performance, Jenufa, which was totally new to me, this one I have already seen last year with my other subscription ticket. It was well worth seeing it again, because there is always something new that you can discover the second time round.  It was a great performance by all of them and I liked the production and direction too.

Bill Bryson

En route into town I was reading a book which came to pass through a new pastime I developed lately. My bookshelves are full of books I haven't read in years. I may have mentioned this little known fact on this blog before, but occasionally I get to rediscover books that I haven't touched for a long time.  Currently I am going through all of Bill Bryson's books, most of which I have only read once and about 10-15 years ago. I started with A Walk in the Woods, then read Notes from a Small Island, followed by Neither Here Nor There and The Lost Continent.  Currently I am getting through The Thunderbolt Kid, which is hilarious. I would recommend to people to do this periodically, it saves having to buy new books for a while or trudging to the library and as long as you read it at least 10 years ago, it will feel like a new one.

Morello cherry blossom

As the weather has also improved, the garden has been transformed considerably. One downside of the warm, sunny days is that the dandelions have appeared and the lawn is now looking completely yellow. On the other hand, Roy can do the mowing with the tractor, so it is not so much work. The peas started popping up and the fruit blossom is generally glorious.  Currently the garden on the right looks like a bridal bouquet. All I am keeping my fingers crossed for is the presence of insects, otherwise all this gorgeous blossom will not turn to fruit.

Hollókő Castle

And on Saturday I went geocaching with a new friend, Gyuri. I got to know him through Facebook. He has given up orienteering 25 years ago, but recently started posting on the orienteering FB pages, as he has a lot of old photos and maps, which he scans and puts up for the oldies to guess who is in them and generally to get nostalgic.  I mentioned geocaching to him and he started it a few weeks ago in town. He seems to have the fervour of a religious convert and in a short time got to over 50 caches. Now he wants to cache in the country, so I invited him to accompany me to a few on Saturday.

This shows the actual trek we did on Saturday. Starting from the village of Hollókő in the top right part of the map, we went to the top of two mountains with a cache on each and in between visited a nice spring half way down the first mountain where there also was a cache.  We covered 9 miles (14.5km) and climbed 475 metres vertically.  It was a bit exchausting, but the spring forest was magical and we collected all three caches. En route back to the car Gyuri collected the one in Hollókő which I have already had, but the three in the wilds were new to both of us.

A lovely path in the woods with delicate new foliage on the trees

Gyuri stayed overnight on Saturday and while I was looking after my aching joints he went off to get the nearby caches which I have already got anyway. I had drawn them onto the walkers' map for him and he had his GPS as well, so I had no doubts that he could do about 10 miles and collect at least 4 or 5 of them. He left at 7.30am and returned around midday telling me that he only visited one cache, albeit a three parter, but two of those were in the middle of the village.  What on Earth had happened? I asked.  To which he replied: "My GPS had gone crazy!" Well, I can confirm that my GPS occasionally does that, the last occasion was when I cached with Klari in town and the rotten little gadget chose to go barmy when we were looking for a tree stump in a thick forest.  I can't think of a situation when one needs one's GPS to be absolutely accurate more like one of those.  Eventually Klari and I worked out what the GPS was doing and with a bit of luck found our tree stump. Not poor Gyuri last Sunday.  He covered 10 miles going in all directions under the sun and found only the one cache. I suggested that next time he takes a conventional compass as well to accompany his map and uses it.

Rosalie and Kitty on the ward in The Crisom Field

Since he left on Sunday evening I have been watching TV, reading my book, writing an article for a web site and doing some translation for a friend.  Talking of watching TV: I discovered a brilliant program on the BBC on Sunday night, which goes by the title of The Crimson Field. It is taking place in a field hospital somewhere in France during WW1. Obviously early XXth century medical series are in vogue at the minute.  After Call the Midwife has recently finished, now we have The Crimson Field.  Oona Chaplin (on the right) is a spitting image of her grandfather and is extremely talented.  I am looking forward to the whole 8 parter series.

On Firday we are off to town together (Roy hasn't been in town for three weeks!).  I might do some orienteering at the weekend, I haven't yet decided and then our nephew is coming visiting for 6 days, starting on Monday, with his wife and daughter. 

Spring has arrived

Roy mowing by the upper terrace and pavilion

The last week has mostly been spent in the garden, tidying, planting, mowing, watering and admiring the blossom. There was a quick foray into town for a concert on Sunday, but the rest was mostly spent in the village. Roy managed to service the mower and the tractor, so both are working. Unfortunately the chain saw needs a replacement part and a new chain, so we'll have to take it in soon to have it repaired. As soon as we can be sure of no frost in the night the seeds we bought a few weeks back will have to go out. A visit to the nearest county town's Wednesday market will also have to be done for the purchase of tomato and pepper plants.  Roy is planning a cold frame to go over those, so hopefully we should have plenty of them this year.  Enjoy the photos!

The old little peach tree in full blossom

Roy mowing with the tractor at the top end of the garden

Close-up of the tractor jockey

A  cherry tree planted very late last autumn is showing signs of life!