Another busy time in both town and country

About 2 days after my last post we went into town, as we had a meeting with Tessa, an old friend's daughter, who was in town attending a hen do. We have not seen her since her childhood and as she is now nearing 40 and is a mother of 4 children, that was quite a time ago. She was absolutely delightful and we had a good 2 hours' worth of chinwag about all sorts of things.  We invited her to come back sometime in the future, either alone, or with her husband or even the whole family and we both hope she takes us up on our offer.

Roy and Tessa in one of the ruin pubs

On Sunday I went to the Hash and thankfully, this time, there were a few others around.  Unfortunately, we only had the Incredible Hulk as a runner, so the four of us just had a nice hike followed by a lovely lunch in the Ski House. The gorgeous restaurant that is, I have never realised that you can get haute cuisine up in the hills. The weather was a tad unpredictable, warm and cold, dry and rainy - we had the lot.  Still, I loved both the company and the nice forests and hills. Unfortunately, the December ice storm had done dreadful damage everywhere, but hopefully once the foliage comes out it'll hide some of it.

Haggis, Run By Battery, Incredible Hulk and Red Haring

Glorious violets on the forest floor

Haggis, Hulk and RBB

One of the views looking West

Makkosmaria church

A nasty big piece of rock in the forest

The Ski House where we had a gorgeous lunch

Roy joined us just for the food and drink!!

In the evening I went to the theatre with 3 friends to see Richard Baer's Mixed Emotions.  It was at the Downtown Theatre, which used to be a cinema where I used to go with my mother to see 1930's and 40's American films. Inside it hardly looks different, except that it is now a theatre. The two principal characters were played by two of my favourite comedy actors and in general I loved it.  Sometimes you need to be cheered up and this was one of those occasions.



Monday was a bit hectic: I still had my marriage register transcription to finish, as well as my proofreading job, which had a deadline looming. I also had to go and see my doctor for my pills and thought I might also mention that I am feeling all crook again. I am glad I didn't, as it happens, as it turned out later that there is a THIRD bout of influenza doing the rounds and needless to say we both caught this one as well.  Neither of us was or is very ill, just not quite right. Roy is still coughing quite badly I, on the other hand, was affected in my tummy and digestion.  They say that most bugs attack the bits of you that are the weekest.  I don't know about Roy, but it was definitely correct with me. For several nights I couldn't sleep properly, nose was bunged, I was sneezing and having really nasty tummy aches. Unfortunately I felt worst on the day we travelled home to the village yesterday.  While I am not 100% yet, but hopefully I am on my way out of it.  Last night I slept 7 hours and today I could eat small meals without any ill effects.

Tuesday we went to the dentist again and hopefully and with a bit of a following wind, the whole affair should be over by next Wednesday. After paying £800 we departed a lot poorer, but very much happier as the end was coming into sight.

The Szirak Jewish Cemetery looking North towards Ber

Wednesday and Thursday were spent finishing the work on the computer. The first to be completed was the voluntary work for the Family History Group: I sent off the finished marrige register (about 2000 marriages in 1939/40) proudly and with relief.  The next job of this type will be one for my own village, registers of which have been sent, but not downloaded yet.  Unfortunately, my village never had its own registry, so I will have to go through those of the next big village and extract those that were either born, died, married or were living at the time in Ber. Long job, but I will love it.  Especially, that Roy had taken on a new project in that very same neighbouring village, namely a survey of its Jewish Cemetery.  We never knew there was one, but recently it has been cleared from the inprenetrable jungle that grew up around it in the last few decades.  The most recent burial that we could find was from 1940 and as the entire Jewish population of the countryside was exterminated a few years later, it is not surprising that the cemetery got forgotten. The gravestones are currently in a dreadful state, some are missing, some are broken and in pieces, many are lying on the ground.  But its location is magical, you'll see from the picture. As registers show religion too, we will be able to produce a separate Jewish transcription file and send it to JewishGen, providing we can work out how to fill out their God awful form. Why do people make the job of volunteers so hard?  Almost as if they were trying to put you off offering your work for nothing to them!

Kristof Barati

Returning to Wednesday, when we were still in town, I had a fantastic concert to attend in the series of chamber music performances.  This one had the title Kristof Barati and his guests. He invited his good friend Istvan Vardai who played the chello, Kim Kashkashian on the viola and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet on the piano. The program included J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Martinu and Faure. Martinu was new to me, but all of it was phenomenal. Not just the quality of play, but the personalities of the artists. We had a glorious evening.

Yevgeny Korolyov

On Thursday the venue was the Music Academy and the pianist was Yevgeny Korolyov who entertained us with J. S. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. He had a very interesting and unusual style of playing, which was very soft and seemed quiet even in the loud bits. Somebody said in the interval that his Bach sounded like he was playing it on an organ, not a piano.  I think his pedal work had a lot to do with this, but both Bozsa and I loved it. I nearly forgot that earlier in the day we went shopping for shoes and both of us got a pair: Roy for working in the garden and doing DIY, me for hiking in the summer, as my big boots are too heavy and warm then. It was really silly how cheap they were and on top of everything else we also had 20% off. Why, we had no idea as there was no promotion of it or any mention by poster, sign or verbally.  Neither of us dared query it, just in case it was a mistake and by mentioning it we might have lost it.  His shoes have been tried out today in the garden and had the Roy stamp of approval!

The £10.50 work boots which I think are too good for the garden

And finally on Friday we travelled to the village, giving a lift to Nelly who happened to be in town doing some shopping. That was the day that I felt really unwell, so trying to hide it from her was not much fun and unfortunately I wasn't up to much shopping, so we are living out of the freezer currently. And on vegetables, which we always have in abundance.  Tonight's dinner is a baked potato with butter, corn and green beans plus a side salad.  That should be delicious and healthy.

To develop the idea of the garden further, yesterday I took some really gorgeous photos of the state the garden is in at the moment.  It was a sparkling, sunny, bright day, so everything showed itself at its best. The two gypsy plum trees and the forsythia were in full blossom, the wild garlic was growing beautifully in the little woodland at the top of the garden, the rhubarb was coming out strongly and while the herb patch is still a bit dormant, the chives got going already. Strawberries, raspberries and Brussel sprouts have survived the winter and we are hoping for a good crop with any luck this summer.  The losses were one or two roses and a couple of fruit trees, which will have to be replaced.  Roses are not difficult to replace, the two little trees (one a pear the other a cherry) will be harder. I'll have to ring the grower in a village 3 miles away across the forest but 10 miles away on the road to come and bring me some in the autumn.

The gypsy plum in its full glory

Wild garlic

Forsythia

Young peach tree blossom

Two of Nelly's Dutch tulips

The old pear tree nearly in blossom

Chives are always the first out in the herb patch

Nelly busy gardening next door

I am seriously proud of this Brussel sprout plant!

As we are still a  bit weak from all this coughing and tummy troubles, in spite of the glorious weather, we could only work in short bursts in the garden.  In my case that didn't matter, as I still had to finish my proofreading and was given a new job of translating the final details for the Postas Cup which is next weekend. I am glad to report that both these have been finished and gladly sent off to their respective destinations, so I could get down to watching the Chinese GP qualifying today, although we forgot about the Grand National.  Not that we are that much into horseracing anyway.

And while we were watching the qualifying Callum called. The chat was not very long, but I managed to take a few pictures while Callum was playing happy hippos and Micky the cat was interfering by walking all over the game. Later Alex took Callum to the Rainbow tunnel and I nicked a few of those photos too.

By the rainbow

The lonely wanderer

Now I have to go as I have been writing this all day. Probably this post has the most photos I have ever put on my blog all at once. We are here until Tuesday and then we are off again to town for the last two dental appointments (hopefully!). We are planning to be in town until the following Monday, after which we should return and stay in the village for about a fortnight as there is a great deal to be done in the garden and elsewhere as well. Speak to you after that. Taraaaa!!

PS: I nicked another photo from FB just after finishing this post.  Elian and Xander are an absolute delight and one can hope they'll also be good brothers. This cuddle was totally unprompted, in fact they did it while Mummy was out of the room. Admittedly, you could take the cynical view that they were not at all loving and turned it into a cuddle upon hearing Mum's approach, but I'm inclined to believe the lovable version!