A week in the country

Strange week. Busy, happy, but also frustrating and frightening in parts. The last day still in town last week was spent partly on the computer and in the evening in the theatre. I had a lovely long conversation with Alex on Skype, which was so nice, considering he never has the time nowadays.  The play Miroslav Krleza's The Glembay House was good, but pretty horrendous in its conclusions.  The decline and decay of the bourgeoisie is never a pretty sight, but the acting was excellent.

Andras Balint, playing the head of the Glembay family

On Friday I had yet another round of trying to get some Opera subscription tickets for next year online - without success. I rang Kati and she promised that she will have a try in person sometime the following week. And then on Friday we left for the village, where after some shopping, cleaning and tidying we were ready to receive our weekend visitors.  Finally, Robi didn't come as he went down with a cold, so it was just Zsuzsi, Jutka and Koxi, who arrived in the late afternoon.

On Saturday we all went off to the orienteering in sparkling sunshine. The courses were thankfully quite short, but the walk to the Start was 2.3km with 125 metres of climb, so even though they brought the oldies (including me) back from the Finish in a minibus, I have spent 90 minutes on my feet, covering about 4.5km, including the walk to the Start. My speed was not particularly fast, but the terrain was really interesting and technical, so I enjoyed myself tremendously. Amazingly, I would have finished on the podium (in 3rd place overall) had I run on Sunday as well, but I think I took the sensible way of resting that day, not to get overtired. I also bought a pair of running shoes from one of the traders at the event, as he told me that he is selling his stock off prior to giving up trading. Unfortunately he didn't have exactly the same colour I wanted, but the red one looked good too, so I bought that. It cost £50 which is very cheap nowadays.

My course on the first day's map

On Saturday afternoon, while the girls were running in a relay competition, I went geocaching on my own.  I decided to tackle two multiparter caches (each with 4 parts) first in a nearby village, then a bit further off in a town. I had incredible problems with both, but in spite of that I had such a good time on what felt like a summer's day.  In the village I found out that none of the museums were open, but the clues outside would have still given me the cache.  However, only very recently, the village council decided to close three of the museums and put all their exhibits in with the fourth one, so that they could use the buildings for other purposes. The trouble for me was the removal of the outside signs from those they closed and which contained the clues. One of them was only taken away the day before I got there.  Ahhhhhh!!  Still, I loved the village, as it had lots and lots of old venacular buildings, some of them in exceptionally good condition.

One idyllic vista at the reservoir

The trouble with the next one was two fold, one part was near a church, but all the gates leading to it were severely padlocked, so I couldn't get there.  The last bit was on a very overgrown hill, plus I was quite tired by then, so I didn't get up there.  However, the other two parts that I managed to get to were really spectacular.  The top of the hill at the end of the cemetery provided 360 degree panoramic views and the other cache was on a penninsula in the middle of a reservoir, which has been landscaped to be a lovely park and fishing area.  All in all, I had a good time and took lots of lovely photos.

Muggins, Koxi, Jutka and Zsuzsi

On Saturday evening we sat down to dinner, cooked by Roy and eagerly gobbled down by 4 hungry girls after a great deal of exercise. We had champagne, palinka and port, the meat eaters had roast pork with all the trimmings and I had roast peppers. A really nice evening was had by all, including one of the girls who is still struggling to cope with having been left alone after her 38 year long marriage.  She is not quite coping most of the time, but that evening we saw flashes of her real self, so let us hope she'll come through it one of these days!!

Sheik Hamilton in his full glory

The Bahrain GP was also on Sunday in the afternoon, but it didn't bring me much pleasure whatsoever. Rosberg won again and Lewis had to spend the whole race trying to get back up top, due to somebody sideswiping him in the first bloody corner. He finished 3rd, which shows that he never gives up, but now Rosberg has two wins and he has a 2nd and a 3rd.  Get on with it Lewis, I can't stand the tension!!

The "shitty plum" in full blossom

You have to concentrate hard between the trees!!

The last three days were spent mostly in the garden, as the weather got so hot that everything started budding, growing, sprouting and springing into life. Roy started mowing the lawn, first with his petrol mower, later with the tractor and finally with the strimmer.  It is still not done in a few corners, but otherwise it looks great. I made him promise that he will never leave it too long this summer, otherwise the machinery will clonk out and as we can't get anyone in the village to take on our mowing, we will wear ourselves out trying to cope with long grass.

My gorgeous, indestructable rhubarb is still going strong

Nelly's peach blossom

The council presented every household in the village with 10 rose plants, provided people plant them in their front gardens. So we did and that, most surely, was back breaking. We also had to do a lot of watering, Roy today burnt all the cuttings from the trees, I weeded a lot around the strawberries and roses, planted peas etc. I also had some translation work, some from English into Hungarian, and some the other way round. This work was quite welcome in between heavy bouts of garden work, as my ribs are still giving me gip and my lower back developed a fondness for ceasing up.

Monday was a mixed day, one good thing and one rather worrying one. The good news came in relation to the Opera tickets.  Kati had some time on Monday, went to the ticket office and managed to actually buy all of them in about half an hour. She is a lucky girl indeed, I have heard horrendous stories from the previous week when people had to give up after 4 hours of queueing. She deserves a medal and we will all be very pleased to get them from her next month when we see each other at the next performance.

Plump buds

The frightening event happened in the night when Roy seemed to have had a mysterious accident. I woke around 1am to the sound of some loud thud.  It was him collapsing into the upstairs shower cubicle.  When he came to he didn't remember exactly what happened, except that he had a vein cramp in his thigh which wouldn't go away. The latter mysteriously disappeared later and he seemed to recover very quickly. Like all men, and even ever increasing number of women nowadays (me included), he hates seeing a doctor, but I finally managed to bully him into a visit, just to see if we can pinpoint what was behind his little episode.  Also, as I don't want to leave him alone any more, he is coming with me and Gizi on our 3 day geocaching trip now, so that's great too.

Prunella Scales and Timothy West with their viking guide

The only other interesting thing this past week was my chance to watch a fair amount of TV. As I had to rest after the orienteering/geocaching as well as between bouts of gardening, I got my laptop out and watched my favourite American programs with my VPN. NCIS and all its variants, Madam Secretary, Supergirl, Criminal Minds, Hawaii FiveO and Blue Bloods are not high brow culture, but they are well written, directed and acted popular programs which relax and entertain me. On UK TV I love Channel 4's Indian Summers, ITV's Maigret and have just discovered that Home Fires is back on ITV, which I enjoyed last year and will do so again. It was Ch4 that had a few more episodes of the Great Canal Journeys recently with Prunella Scales and Timothy West again, which pleased me no end.  I love those two and the countryside that they travel through is sheer joy to watch. Especially with their commentary.  Finally ITV's Grantchester with James Norton is also a sheer delight. What a handsome, brilliant actor he is, so versatile as being totally credible as Count Bolkonsky in War and Peace, a simple country vicar in Grantchester and a nasty piece of work in Happy Valley. He is fast becoming my new telephone directory man.  You know: if he stood up and read the telephone directory I would still watch him awe struck!!!

James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley

James Norton as Sidney Chambers in Grantchester

James Norton as Count Bolkonsky in War and Peace

Finally, the garden is really gorgeous at the moment, so I will be sorry to leave it for a bit, but next week and after we have a busy programme in town.  An interesting visit to the War Museum's map archives and to the State Mapping Service's offices, my own O club's annual big weekend event, where we are both helping, aa couple of doctor's appointments (both Roy and me), a new friend to meet about Henrik Ripszam, a few concerts and theatre productions to see and dinner at Bozsa and Arpi's new house, to mention just a few. We'll keep you all informed of all these happenings as and when they happen! Taraaa!!