A busy week in town and country

Peter Dobszay

The week before last was very hectic as the last post described it.  However, the following week was not a lot less hectic and with spring arriving, now in the village we are also working a lot. Monday of last week we were still in town and it started with a free concert which was also the conductor's final exam at the end of his Music Academy studies.  He was brilliant. Most of my friends were there, some sitting next to me, others up in the gallery above us. Peter Dobszay is a charming and very able organist and now a qualified and very competent conductor as well.  I hope we'll see more of him than we did in the last period from now on.

On Tuesday Roy had his dental appointment.  The dentist was very pleased with his progress and decreed that after another couple of weeks he will be ready to have the upper set fitted. That suited us perfectly as we were planning to spend 10-12 days in the country before that.

Gregory Sokolov

In the evening there was another fantastic performance from Gregory Sokolov in the Palace of the Arts. He was playing Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.  He does have a strange manner with very little emotion, but his fingers on the piano do the talking instead of him. He is also well known for the endless number of encores he gives and that night was no exception. I have never been to a concert with 7 encores before, but last Monday put that right.



On Wednesday we departed for the village, rather unexpectedly making a detour to pick up Nelly.  She phoned while we were in Tesco's mentioning the fact that she was also shopping in another town. There was no problem, but unfortunately we couldn't pick up Claudia from across the road as well, due to the car barely having space for Nelly, never mind anyone else.

The great delight of watching someone else working

The fair sized pile of earth, s..t and rubble on the patio.

The first couple of days in the village were spent having a rest and planning further activities later on in the week and at the weekend. Roy got it into his head that the collapsed cesspit had to be done at once, so we put a shopping list together by Friday and ordered about £250 worth of building materials for the weekend.  He found three guys to come and do it and as it happened, they ended up an excellent little brigade working together very well.

The first job was to break up the top of the cesspit, then dig out the collapsed wall and all the earth that fell in, as well as some of the yucky stuff from years ago that thankfully by now was totally dry and not at all smelly. Roy was amazed at how much came out of the hole.  It is currently covering up almost the entire surface of the Kottage's back patio, but hopefully should be shifted later on this afternoon.

Once the guys started actually building the walls, it was quite quick.  The idea was to get some hollow breezeblocks, which are considered very suitable for cesspit building, do a brand new wall where it collapsed and build the other three in front of the old, still standing ones.  As this would have reduced the capacity quite drastically, they had to extend the cesspit beyond the collapsed wall to make up for the loss.  That would partly explain why the rubble/earth that is still covering that patio was that much, although the main reason was the fact that Roy underestimated the quantity.

Roland, being the youngest, got all the hard work.

6 rows of breezeblocks awaiting being filled with concrete.

Once two rows of breezeblocks were laid they started filling in the hollow middle with concrete and reinforcing it with iron bars. It went up in no time at all. Saturday was spent digging, Sunday building. Currently the top of the cesspit is not yet done, they are coming back to finish it on Saturday this week. I will not be here as I am going orienteering on Saturday, hashing on Sunday and probably geocaching on Monday, but Roy will hopefully join me on Tuesday, as he has his next dental appointment that day.

The chives are the first to start growing as usual.

On Monday of this week the sun was shining so beautifully that we risked doing a bit of gardening, the first session this year.  We tidied up the herb patch and the strawberry patch. It took about and hour and a half, but that was more than enough as both of us started flagging by then. I have also taken on three jobs/activities for this week or two and after outside activities, always finished the day doing one or more of those.  They are: 1. proofreading a book for some friends prior to republication; 2. finishing the marriage register transcription from 1939 which I have been working on for at least a couple of years and the owners of which were getting a bit shirty with me for the delay; and finally 3. reading a book that we printed off the internet and which was sent by a family history research contact of Roy's. In it the lady, who is of Hungarian Jewish origins, but now lives in Australia, recalls her own life before, during and a bit after the second world war and all the suffering that she and her family went through.  I am only a little bit into it, but it is very, very enjoyable, if such tragic events can be enjoyable.

Sprouts from last year.

My old faithful rhubarb still going strong.

On last Sunday Alex rang from Toronto and we had an interesting chat on family matters. I often think that even the most ordinary families have some interesting stories to tell and feel that ours would produce a really fascinating saga.  Then again, I usually change my mind about writing it all down, as I don't fancy the lawsuits!!

The text says: National Tax and Customs Office

I also found on the internet a fantastic T-shirt shop and went ahead buying some. The business is run by some young guys who are somewhat on the left or at least anti-establishment, which endeared them to me on top of their T-shirts being brilliant too. The one I copied to here alludes to the fact that the Hungarian equivalent of the British HMRC is so corrupt that a comparison with the Godfather is spot on.  I think the only inaccuarcy in that is that this one is ruled by a Godmother. I have just heard that the shirts will be delivered tomorrow, I hope they fit.

Aidan Turner

And if there was any time left on any day to watch TV I did that, although I must admit, no matter how much I like some programs, television is definitely the best sleeping tablet around and I often had a hell of a difficulty staying awake.  My current favourites are BBC's Poldark and Channel 4's Indian Summers. I especially like Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson in the roles of Ross Poldark and Demelza while Indian Summers has quite a few great actors who are totally new to me: Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Jemima West, Nikesh Patel to name but three.

Eleanor Tomlinson

I have just gone outside to see how shovelling brigade is getting on and they seem to be getting on very well. Two of them are shovelling it into the wheelbarrow, one then wheels it to the fence and the third one shovels it over the fence straight into the truck that'll hopefully take it away later.

Roy saying good bye to the rubble as it leaves on the truck.

The rest of the week will be spent with gardening (if the weather's good) and my various jobs on the computer. On Friday or Saturday I am going in to town and Roy will join me on Tuesday for his dental appointment.  If all goes well we'll both be back by next Wednesday.