There has been at least 10 weeks' worth of happenings in the last 10 days, so I am likely to miss some of it, but here goes:
Last Monday we did some paperwork, put some money into the bank and I saw La Cage aux Folles on stage. It was hilarious and dead serious all at the same time. It was very well done, which is not surprising as the director was Robert Alföldi.
In the meantime my ISP notified us that they will be upgrading the network and that required a change of modems. The previous week we fetched the new modem from the sorting office, so now I thought I could install it myself. No chance! I could not understand a word of the "instructions" they sent and generally felt that it was an outrage that they expect the layman consumer to do their job of commissioning new equipment. I had hair raising experiences in the past in me trying to do something to the computer which I am not qualified to do and then the so called "helpline" is so swamped with calls that you just can't get through. I decided that £20 or no £20, I will call my little man to do it for me and then I will have an easy time of it. How wrong can you be? Dylan is too big a man now, so he will not come out any more. However, he offered his assistant, so we went for that. Nice young lad spent nearly 2 hours and was no further down the road to installing the damn thing as I was to start with. Hanging onto the phone ringing for what seemed like hours I finally got through and they were rather helpful, which was nice, but the server was not co-operating. I was promised it would work within the hour. Nothing going, so I went to the theatre. The following morning miraculously it worked. Obviously, the server finally got round to us and accepted my new modem. If you think we could just get on with it after that, you would be totally wrong. The main desktop worked as it was on a cable link to the modem, but nothing else did, as the WiFi was not working. Back came young engineer, who admitted to doing something wrong the day before and therefore this time he fixed it for nothing., Phewww, that was most stressful, as I was sitting there thinking I need to say good bye to my internet connection forever.
On Tuesday we decided to go out for a drive and recce the likely places for my two new geocaches. I was planning to put one by the British Military Cemetery and another one near the house of a soldier who became a righteous gentile for treating Jewish prisoners like human beings in WW2. It went great, we found the places, took lots of photos and upon arrival at home I wrote the cache pages and submitted them. This time the moderators made a nuisance of themselves over the nature of hiding the box near the cemetery. I stood my ground and eventually they both went through. This was also pretty stressful, as I was trying to respond to all their requests for changes and criticisms, while having no internet some of the time. I even had to borrow a mobile dongle from a friend for part of the time, as I left mine behind in the village.
I also went to see my doctor, who this time subscribed my medication for three months with no hassle and sent me for some bloodtests as suggested by the cardiologist back in July. I also had to see my homeopath, who subscribed all sorts of new remedies, including restricting me to maximum 4 dl of herbal tea a day. She seems to think too much herbal tea is not good for me, which is a shame, as I love the stuff and used to drink a minimum of 2 litres of it every day.
On Wednesday evening I had a concert at the Music Academy, sitting behind the stage, which is my favourite place there. Dezső Ránki and his family were raising money for the Hospice Foundation by playing Liszt. They were superb, as they usually are.
On Thursday I got to the lab to have my blood test done, result of which I still don't know, as I had very little chance to see my doctor since. Hopefully nothing too dreadful turned up, but I will not know what has, if anything, until next week now, when we are back in town.
Thursday evening I was back at the Music Academy, this time to listen to Yevgeny Sudbin playing Scarlatti, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Skryabin expertly. By the time I got home from the concert our hashing friends, Ros and Ian arrived. They were staying with us for my naming ceremony in the village and before/after it in town.
On Friday we travelled down via Tesco and the organic supermarket and arrived before the first of two cars full of hashers. Ros, Ian, David, Agi and Rabies came on Friday night, with the rest of the crowd: Nata, Eva, Judit and Jozsi following on Saturday. On Friday night we met the first five in a nearby village for a meal. We had such a good time, I knew we were heading for a hilarious and very enjoyable weekend.
On Saturday David, Rabies and I went to put out the trail and discovered a planned quad bike race for Sunday in the same bit of forest, so we had to cut the hash route short. That was a bit of a blow, but as it turned out the distance was plenty long even in its shortened version. There was plenty of mushroom picking going on and then I had the telephone ring in the middle of it. It was the guy with the plum orchard, whom I have been chasing for months about his plums. He had just told me that I have 3 hours to come over and fetch my plums or else. Then followed a frenetic ringing of Roy to track down Sanyi for the transport. Then tearing home to meet Sanyi to explain where to go and how to get there. As it happens we were towards the end of our track and it was nice to get home to Haggis's lovely leek soup.
In the afternoon I took the crowd out to Buják, to see the castle ruins and the Stages of the Cross, followed by a look at the Szirák Chateau and the water mill project in the village, while the plums were fetched. Roy was happily mashing them in their barrels by the time we got home.
And then came one of the highlights of the weekend: Roy's curry and the whodunnit. The curry was fantastic, so was all the booze (beer, wine and palinka), but the game of "Who killed Colin?" was probably the funniest thing on the planet I have ever taken part in. Nobody guessed that the culprit was Roy, not that I would have suspected that he suddenly developed murderous tendencies, you understand! I retired by about 11pm, but I was told on Sunday that many carried on until 2am. The two chief culprits of heavy boozing were Hulk and Rabies, who looked only slightly better then dead the following morning, but there were no sympathies offered on this self inflicted malady.
On Sunday the actual Hash run and then my naming went off without a hitch. The name they gave me was an excellent choice, showing some good research and wit. My Hash name from now on is Red Haring. For those that are puzzled: Red is reference to my politics and Haring is on several levels. I was the hare on the Sunday, but I also live haring around and run in forests like a hare. The weather was perfect, the run was perfectly mismanaged and we didn't even get run over by the quad bikes. The beer and flour that was poured on me was rather difficult to wash out of my hair, but I believe there are no more little bits appearing on my comb, so I survived the ordeal unscathed. By all accounts this was the best ever Hash weekend away and all those that didn't make the effort to get out here have definitely missed a very special event.
In the meantime Lewis won the Singapore Grand Prix with the panache all his own. He is back in the overall lead for 2014, but only by 3 points. There are another 150 points to be won before the end of the season, so I am not celebrating yet. Rosberg had an electronic failure, which was about time, considering that Lewis's car had broken down twice as many times this season than his.
On Sunday I had a lift into town from one of our guests and made my concert in good time.
The Holland Baroque Society entertained us with 4 of Bach's 6 Brandenburg Concertos. They are young, enthusiastic and superb musicians, every one of them. I loved it and even stayed for the discussion afterwards which confirmed my already very good opinion of them. I hope they come this way often.
This week started with a superb free concert within the Ars Sacra festival at the MOM centre, given by the Anima Musicae ensemble and Kristóf Baráti. You may rightly suspect that I was in seventh heaven, but I was not alone in that. I managed to book 12 tickets, so quite a few of my friends were with me, including Ros and Ian, who were squeezed in to celebrate the purchase of a flat that day. This company was formed only 4 years ago. Again, a case of young, talented musicians who wanted to play together in a way that is unique to them. They are excellent and Kristóf was not only playing but conducting as well. Brilliant night!
On Tuesday Klári and I went to place the cache boxes and then just before midnight my two new caches went live. The weather had turned cold, but the sun shone brightly and we had a lovely time. I took Klári to the Jelen for lunch as a thank you for the lift to my caches. In the afternoon we visited the old house of Miksa Roth, a brilliant Art Nouveau stained glass artist where they are showing a lot of his works and his old apartment as close to as it was 100 years ago. I have never thought I would get that enthusiastic over leaded and painted glass, but it was magnificent. I will have to go back to show it to Roy some time.
The day was rounded off by a superb performance of Cavalleria Rusticana and Paglacci at the Opera with Kati and Andor. If you got this far reading this, I am sure you worked out that this has been a rather full 10 days. I am now back in the village and am hoping for a bit of peace. I think I deserve it. A few lie ins, some TV watching and catching up on the computer. Hopefully the weather will not get any colder, as it is getting rather autumnal otherwise.
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