emiGrants: A touch of ill health, some pretty roses and a new car

Thursday, 18 June 2015

A touch of ill health, some pretty roses and a new car

The work in the garden was going pretty well when disaster struck. I started feeling really unwell, starting with a funny turn on Sunday evening. I suddenly felt very giddy. It lasted a couple of hours, but then I managed to have quite a good long sleep in the night. Monday started reasonably, but again, I was very dizzy in the evening. Finally Tuesday was tremendously worrying. I felt extremely dizzy all day, unable to walk straight and almost falling over when standing up. I knew that there was a serious weather front going over the country, but it didn't seem to get as far as our village. We had no storms, only very little rain, but did have a serious drop in temperature, about 15 degrees Celsius. I always have some trouble - arrythmia, sudden jump in blood pressure etc. - when fronts are going over, but I have never felt this dizzy before. I couldn't do anything about it, but we decided to return to town a day early and I will try to see the doctor on Friday. After Tuesday, things started slightly improving, but my blood pressure is still high and I am not yet back to absolutely normal, although the dizzyness is almost completely gone. The most upsetting upshot of all this was the sorry fact that I had to cancel attending the Middle Distance Championships on Saturday and my visit to Milica and Filip in Sombor for Sunday. Shame, but considering that our family gathering in Hassocks is only 2 weeks away I have to concentrate on getting better for being able to travel.

Roy under the climbing rose's natural arch

In the meantime the garden is now almost perfect. The mowing has been finished, I tidied up, weeded and pruned the roses, watered it every other night and almost finished the weeding. The roses are delightful, even though they are not as prolific this summer as usual, the geraniums are the most beautiful we have ever seen them and even the tomato and pepper plants, not to mention the peas are fantastic. The strawberries are still producing fruit, the rhubarb is jungle like and we have even had a few raspberries. The Morello cherries, have started getting ripe and interestingly, this summer it is the new tree that is producing most of it. Unfortunately, a lot of our produce will come to fruition while we are going to be away, but that is the price you pay for travelling in the summer. The gardener have not shown his face at all, so we will have to look around for someone else, although who I have no idea. Like the whole country, our small village is getting devoid of the brightest and ablest of its citizens. They either leave for towns in the hope of work, or even leaving the country for the same reason. Sad, very sad!

A steel grey Duster

The main event of the week, however, has happened today - on our way into town we actually bought a new car. As I mentioned before, we decided to part with our sweet little Suzuki while she was still in good form and before costlier repairs were on the cards. We looked after her over the 7 years we had her and she had such low mileage that we managed to get a good trade-in figure for her. We had an idea of getting a car that one of our friends, Árpi, has and is very pleased with. Dacia is an old communist car factory in Romania, but in all honesty, it is like Skoda being practically a VW, this one is mostly Renault. I always fancied having a 4x4 and with a Dacia Duster we can afford one. I researched the Duster on the net and found a very complimentary article written by no less than the new chief presenter of Top Gear, Chris Evans, so we went for it. The salesman was an absolutely lovely chap, laid back, not pushy, very knowledgeable and helpful. So the deal is done and delivery is expected on 20th of September. We went for steel grey, aluminium wheels and one of their fancy new 1.2 turbo boosted 92kW/125 horse power petrol engines. I have never driven a 4x4 in my life, so that'll be a new experience for me.