Fortysixth week of the pandemic

Yet another traumatic week, but not all bad. The first good thing was the inauguration in the US, which while I have no illusions in Biden, like millions might have, at least it saw the orange lunatic's departure. I must have mentioned that famous Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times!" a few times before, but you have to admit we are most certainly living in (or more like surviving) interesting times. What is even more "interesting" is that I am already sort of looking forward to the time , when all those 81 million US citizens that voted for change, realise that even Biden cannot perform miracles, and after the initial honeymoon they'll see that not much has changed. I would be completely and utterly prepared to admit I was wrong, but I very much doubt that I will be.

Biden being sworn in

The major upset in the last week was what happened about my cardiac CT. My lovely doctor, whom I have known for over 5 years has been under so much pressure, that I suddenly realised that I can' trust either him or his hospital to be safe and therefore I decided that I will not attend. The story itself is very sad and long, so I will not go into details, but now I have to plan what to do, as the investigation planned is still necessary, but I have to find another way.

The private hospital we like

Private medicine is available in Hungary, and while it is not cheap, it is well worth it. When a few years ago Roy had a prostate operation, I did say that to get a guy like him, a complete hospital-phobic, not only into there, but actually not being afraid, not panicking and most satisfied, was worth any amount of money and we should really use them whenever it is possible. So now I have written up a list of specialists that I think I need and have decided that I will buy a yearly pass to that lovely hospital where Roy was, and use it to its maximum extent, having a general checkup. If the cardiologist there also says that I need a CT, I'll have it there and hope that all will be OK.

The only drawback now is that Roy and I were hoping that we will not have to go into BP until the spring, when, hopefully the infection figures would have reduced sufficiently for us not to feel too unsafe. Roy needs his dental works done as well, but he is not planning to have them done until the spring either. So, we are in a bit of a limbo with regards to medical matters, but I am sure we will be able to sort them soon.

Heather and Lyle

One very joyous event recently was the Golden Wedding Anniversary of Heather and Lyle Turner of our Canadian family. They are Alex's wife, Meaghan's parents, and we know and love them dearly. Although we have half a globe between us, we talk frequently by e-mail and Facebook. They put some lovely photos of themselves up on FB, I have included one here. We wished them all the happiness for the next 50 years and are looking forward to seeing them soon. As soon as we have all been vaccinated and travel restrictions eased, we are planning to go to Canada and spend some time with all the family there.

 

The trailer in winter

Talking of family in Canada, Alex didn't ring at the weekend, like he usually does, but called yesterday to apologise and explain that they have gone out to the trailer and ran out of time to call. This trailer is a lovely thing, (see photo!) and they only just  bought it at the end of last year a few weeks before the trailer park closed for the winter. So he is anxious to get back there, and to counteract the claustraphobia of being at home forever, they went out for a drive to it. It was somewhere between 2 and 3 hours' drive in lovely, bright snow covered countryside and the trailer was OK. The deck has nearly been finished before the bad weather stopped them, but by the time they open up again in May, hopefully everything will be OK.

Vit B for oldies

Returning to another bad, frustrating experience this last week, I had a hiccup with an online order, which was impossible to fix. I take vitamin supplements and a probiotic, plus some other stuff, and usually I order them once every three months online. Normally it is delivered by courier and I pay either by cash or card on delivery. This time, fool me, I clicked the payment by card online option and needless to say, the bank's website the payment went through crashed, no message, nothing. And that was on Saturday, so I couldn't even ring their customer service.

My probiotic

The really appalling thing was, that unlike decent banks, that when they have a problem, do not let you start filling in everything, including all your card details, etc., but put up an error message asking you try later. Or, if some problem came just as I was doing it, an error message should come up telling you that you didn't get through and repeat it later. No, not a sausage. So I was stumped, because I had a situation like this before, and once I repeated it and got everything twice, because in spite the crash, the payment went through, unbeknown to me, because there was no feedback there either.

The almost finished house after ten years

Finally, I had to wait patiently until Monday, when everything was solved. No thanks to the bank, but I kept watching my bank and card accounts to see if the money was drawn or not, and didn't seem to, plus the people I ordered the stuff from were so helpful and efficient that I didn't have to reorder, they just reactivated the order with Pay on delivery, and it arrived the following day. The stark contrast between the organic food website and their service, compared to that appalling bank, was very obvious.

 

The central living space

A very pleasant TV event was discovering a program from two or three years ago on Netflix, in which people build unusual, interesting and grandiose houses for themselves. It is called Grand Designs and the guy who runs it is much loved by us. I binge watched six episodes one day and the last three the following day. Needless to say, it was the last one which was the really magic one. A guy, who is good with his hands, took 10 years to build it with very little help from professional construction firms, and he also used materials that grew on his land. Mostly wood, but other scavenged stuff too.

The kitchen

His long suffering family was also delightful and it was such joy to watch an organic house, which was climate friendly, easy to run and at the same time magnificent in appearance. After 10 years it was still not finished, although I think there was only one room unfinished which was at that stage used as a storage area. 

Roy sorting the books by size

And then came another vaguely stressful, but otherwise very positive task that we have been involved in. I may have written about the fact already, that we are planning to send approximately 200 books, mostly politics and phylosophy and pamphlets to Alex in Canada. It has been in gestation for quite a long time, but this week we got round to packing them up. A couple of weeks ago Roy came up with a lovely, sturdy and enormous box for this purpose. The lawn mower came in it last summer and it was ideal. It took us a couple of hours to fit about 200 books and pamphlets into the box, and then this week about 4 hours of hard labour to finish the packing. 

They're in, now fit box to it!

FedEx was coming to pick it up today and both Roy and I have been somewhat concerned about how the guy is going to lift it into his van? We cannot help him and if he is on his own and without lifting gear, it will not be easy. Well, we need not have worried, as a very lovely young guy came, simply lifted all 70 kilos of it into the wheelbarrow and used the big side door on his van which opened almost all the way to the ground. There was lots of paperwork, form filling, ringing head quarters to pay by credit card etc., etc. but after about half an hour the guy, and the box, weree gone. Phew, I won't do one of these in a hurry, that's for sure.

Reinforcing the edges with tape

We then had lunch, which was lovely, Roy had some leftover pork with mashed potates, beans and beetroot, I had a couple of fried eggs, some smoked salmon, mashed potatoes and beetroot. For afters we had some pear compote with yoghurt and nuts, which was also delicious. The other really lovely happening was the return of the birdies onto the feeders. It is quite  cold again and it snowed a bit too, so they need the food. I have seen the first goldfinch of the winter, but most of them are still the tits.

Great tits on the feeder

Must get back to my book now, as Messrs. Dalziel and Pascoe await me with their antics. I am about half way through Death's Jest-book, which is yet another completely different story and style from all the others. I absolutely love it. In fact, there was an interesting discovery the other day, while reading it. I have always suspected that the author, Reginald Hill was a socialist. Or if not quite, at least leaning that way. His origins from Scotland, his upbringing in Yorkshire and a fair number of allusions in his books to politicians etc. suggested it. Well, I can quote you this sentence from page 364, that with humour and sarcasm confirms my assumption: "Mrs Eel pronounced this punchline with all the revulsion of Tony Blair discovering that one of his cabinet was a socialist."

The final fully packaged box

The driver putting it into the van

Fortyfifth week of the pandemic

This was a mixed week, with some fun and some stress as well. Initially, I was worried about the snow and the cold. It did really come and produced a little of bit of the white stuff. You may know that I was getting ready for a hike at the weekend and were looking forward to it. The temperatures got lower and lower, but with only an inch or so of snow, we were going.

The route

Snowy road, big trees

I drove to the village where we were starting from and the others have arrived about 5 minutes after me. We left the cars at the end of a little road at the edge of the village and got going. The ground was frozen solid, which was a bit dangerous, as tractors, forestry trucks and other 4-wheel drive vehicles made really deep ruts in the lanes. Still, we got to the forest in one piece and started climbing up with a big field on our right and high fences on the left.

Apparently, behind the fences there is a bit of privatised forest, which is supposed to house a wild boar reservation. Well, I am not sure if there were any boar there, we didn't see any. At one point, the lower half of one of the gates was tied open, so even if there ever were some boar there, they must be long gone. Forests should be everybody's, but in a country as corrupt as this one, you can buy anything, if the bung is big enough.

A frozen lake in the forest

Lovely clear forest

Due to having to go round the fenced off bit, we had a lot more climb than it otherwise would have been. Still, that path ascended very gradually, so it was no hassle. On the other hand, after a left turn we were faced with a really steep slippery descent into the bottom of the valley, which was scary but fun. We first came to a small lake, which was frozen solid.

After the lake we went and found the spring, which was called Rose-well. It did not look like a well, but there was crystal clear, tasty and drinkable water coming out of it. Right opposite the well there was a way to cross the stream, and we returned on the other side slipping and sliding on the steep bit, which got thawed in the sun since we descended on it some time before.

My hiking companions

En route back to the car we found the geocache, which had a really clever hide. A large tree in the middle of a large meadow had a long bare bit where the bark was missing. Inside the tree there  were a few cavities and the box was in one of those. 

The forest in the sunshine

The weather was, as you can see in the photos, really nice, and I was wearing my mask all the time, not because of Covid regulations, but because it was sheltering my throat. Poor mask got rather damp, but it stayed warm. And so did I.

FB has come up with a photo from 12 years ago, which showed the changes we have made since then. The wine press is long gone. All the trees in front of the barn have also been cut down to make way for my herb garden, and those beams on the right that are holding up the garden above, have been removed too. Otherwise there is not much that has changed in the back, except, of course, the gazebo, but that is not on this photo. 

The barn 12 years ago

The other major event of the week was my need to get in touch with the cardiologist and him insisting that I have a CT of my coronary artery. That should be quite straightforward, but in these parts, (and many others no doubt), you first need an appointment for the blood works, then for the CT. The CT only works ONCE A MONTH, so should you miss this month's, you have a whole month to wait. He told me that the CT works on 22nd this month, but I could only get an appointment for the blood works for 27th. So, he got so annoyed that he told me to visit him tomorrow at the hospital, he'll take the blood and will have the test done in house, so I can have the CT, assuming, of course, my kidneys are up to it, on Friday. I will report back what, if anything, has happened.

Cardiff Castle as the sun sets

On Netflix I found a lovely old series of programs about British castles, commentated by Dan Jones, who has an easy way of presenting. The series consists of 6 episodes and 3 of these castles I knew, but the others I didn't. So it was just about the right balance, revisiting those that I know, and finding out new things about those that I didn't know. Occasionally it is a bit sensationalised and repetitious, as if the makers of the program patronised the audience by dumbing it down, but it was still quite interesting and entertaining.

Judit's house in the winter

And finally, a photo from the blog of a good friend of mine, who has bought herself and family a run down rural house for summer vacations and is in the process of modernising and renovating it. I sympathise totally, as Roy and I have been there and done that, albeit quite a time ago now. Her photo is also taken at night and it has a welcoming, soft and warm atmosphere that I love.

Fortyfourth week of the pandemic

This last week finally winter arrived. The temperatures started really dropping, the sun came out and the birdies were at least partially back on the feeders. Unfortunately, while quite a lot of the country had lots of snow, not a snifter of the white stuff got this far. Having written that, Roy tells me that there was a sprinkling of it this morning, but looking through the window it is hardly visible.

View up the hills to Virágos

As I have decided to take some exercise, even when I don't feel like it, the good weather enabled us to move outside occasionally. Before that I did at least 20 full length of the house, which adds up to about 400 metres. Not much, but more than nothing.

View from the top of the back garden

Then we needed to split some logs again, the downside of the drop in temperature is that we use the logs much faster. I was only doing my exercise and assisting in a small way, this time only Roy did the splitting. I usually help by taking the logs individually from him, over the railing in the corridor and stacking them along it.

Roy and the splitter in action

Lately, I have been doing the odd bit of binge watching on Netflix, and this week it was the turn of a BBC 6-parter from 2018, the Bodyguard. I have always loved Richard Madden and he didn't disappoint. The storyline was pretty involved, but it did make some sense at the end. Keely Hawes played the hawkish, while progressive - so called - Home Secretary excellently. So, all in all, it was a good 6 hours spent indoors, where I am beginning to show signs of stir craziness.

Richard Madden

The reason why I didn't do any log splitting this time, was that I was quite ill after the last effort. Admittedly, it is never known for sure why my blood pressure does its tricks, but it could have been extreme physical exercise. The drop in temperature during the cold front, might have been another culprit, but I promised my good friend Linda to take it easy, hence no log splitting and binge watching instead.

Roy and the wheelbarrow full of logs

I also managed to finally catch up with my cardiologist and he prescribed something, which the village social worker got for me from the pharmacy straight away and I have been taking it for 2 days now. I seem to be better, although I am not entirely sure that that is due to those pills. I have noticed that immediately after talking to the doctor, I started feeling better. I am and have been an expert of instantly improving when the doctor or medicines are coming. I have to ring him on Thursday and then we will know how to proceed.

Proposed route of hike

I would like to get definitely better by Saturday, as I am supposed to be going on a hike with some new friends I met on FB. There is a group there, who celebrate the beauty of the countryside I am living in and proposed a get together sometime in the winter. I suggested a walk from Erdőkürt to the Rose-well, en route to which there is a geocache I haven't yet got. They agreed, but previous dates have been cancelled, first somebody catching a cold, then having a broken down car, so this Saturday is finally the date for the hike. I hope I will feel up to it.

Sorting by size on the table

And then finally, today has been an interesting day so far. I may have mentioned before that I am planning to send all, but a few copies, of my politics and phylosophy books to Alex in Canada. Having managed to get hold of FedEx for info last week, I started taking the books off the shelves and storing them on the floor in one corner. I mentioned the need to think of packing materials to Roy, but he didn't seem interested. I thought I would leave it until he shows some interest and lo and behold, he did this morning.

More and more books are getting sorted

 

I dropped everything I was planning to do, as one doesn't know how long it would be before he feels like it again. First we did a size sort on the table. Roy is really good at this. Then we put the big box that the lawn mower came in on the floor and started to fill it with books. It is more difficult than you think. No such thing as a standard book size. Still, it is looking like it will get done today, and then we will have to think of buying some brown paper and parcel tape.

All books in, now box needs to be cut down

 

Currently I am sitting down as I started getting very giddy. I suspect these pills have now pushed my blood pressure too far down, as weekness and giddiness is definitely sign of low blood pressure.  Still, I am really happy the books, hopefully, should be enroute to Canada soon.

Now comes the padding

 

Fortythird week of the pandemic

 Happy New Year to all of you out there!!

This last week was full of stuff, some good and some not so good. One of the very enjoyable good events was my binge watching all 8 episodes of Unbelievable on Netflix. I wasn't feeling terribly well some of last week, so I decided to relax and binge watching anything is a good way of achieving that.

The two  detectives

Horrendous true story about a rape case in Lynwood, Washington and the eventual hard fight by two female detectives pursuing and finally catching the rapist. Well written, well acted, and even the real person whose story it was, said that the portrayal was faithful to her and what happened.

English breakfast for two

We had some nice and interesting food during this week, which is also a good thing, although sometimes I have eaten too much, precisely because it was so delicious. I made Roy a full English breakfast, which he put away at high speed. He cooked both of us a prawn stir-fry, which was also yummy. We have also lived on Roy's roast pork joint for two days, with me having roasted peppers one day and smoked salmon on day 2. 

The assistant wood splitter

When the weather got nice and sunny we also did some splitting of fire wood and bringing it down to the corridor. The new moderators have started flexing their muscles, needless to say, I couldn't stay quiet, and thus have already had some run-ins with some of them. Some people think that 4 women (a third of the total) on the moderating body, after years and years of only one or mostly none, is a step in the right direction. I disagree, and not because one of the biggest pain in the a..e amongst the new moderators is a woman, but because I prefer to elect people for their suitability for the job, not their gender.

The Bér navvy with his wheelbarrow

Equally fantastic was another instalment of Alex's appearances on the Radical Reverend radio show in Toronto, where he represents the most leftist opinions, and he does it very well. This time the program was nearly a full hour and the protagonists were a communist and an academic leftie, neither of which was any competition for Alex. Very clear and concise, as usual. I enjoyed it, even though the other two were hellishly boring most of the time.

The new step in and out of the shower

On the DIY front, Roy managed to throw together a really nice new step for  coming out of the shower. All we have to do now, is to get some yacht varnish to treat it. Paperwork was a great part of last week as well. One went quite well, the other not. 

The successful one was that finally I managed to get through to FedEx about the shipping rates and conditions to Canada. I actually rang on the dot at 8am and got through straight away. The guy on the phone confirmed that they would come and fetch the parcel, although the cost he quoted was more than on their website. Apparently, it not only depends on the weight, but on the dimensions as well. Now we have to find a box big enough to take 70kg of books and then pack it.

Ahhhhhhh!!

The really frustrating event was relating my correspondence with the Tax Office, which was not only annoying due to their procrastination, but because it was just plain crazy. I copy here the post from Facebook, to save me having to type it all over again:

1. First letter advising me that I have arrears. Totally flummoxed as it is being paid by BACS on the 1st of every month and my bank account confirms said same fact.

2. First phone call enlightens me that they, the Tax Office have changed the number of the bank account it goes into, hence the arrears. Wouldn't it have been sensible to let me know, so I could deal with it in time not to accrue arrears in one and overpayment in another? Yes, but being sensible, timely and user friendly is an unknown concept for those who devise systems in any office over here. On the other hand, the lady on the phone was most helpful, explained said facts and suggested that she sends me a form for requesting the transfer of the overpayment in the old account into the new one. In the meantime, I change my standing order, using the new details I was given over the phone.

3. Letter with form arrives, I fill it in and send it back.

4. Third letter arrives telling me that I still have arrears, because the overpayment does not cover the monthly figure for that month.

5. Second telephone call, in which I ask a question why the overpayment is less than the monthly figure. Again, very helpful nice lady tells me, that somewhere years ago I failed to update the monthly figure and thus accrued about £5 worth of arrears. Amazingly, they didn't chase me for that sum, so I didn't know about it, but this time, when this whole kerfuffle started, they deducted it from the overpayment.

6. Fourth letter, this time a registered one, tells me that my request for the transfer has been granted, but still reminds me that I have still not paid the £5 shortfall. So, I quickly transfer it on the net and hope that's the end.

7. Third phone call just a couple of days ago, this time just to check if £5 was received and credited to the correct account, and can I hope that the whole affair is over? Usual little lady assures me that it has arrived and been credited and that's the end.

8. Fifth letter this morning, registered again, letting me know that my request for the transfer of the overpayment to the new account is denied, due to the fact that there is nothing there to transfer. Now, you should have seen my face at this point. It was a mixture of hilarity, anger and a certain amount of WTF?

9. Fourth phone call to the lady whose name is on this morning's letter and who is a different one from my usual one. She is not nearly as friendly as the previous one, but still quite polite and informative. She said that the reason why there was no money in the old account to transfer is because that was automatically done by the Tax Office, therefore my request was denied.

My gut reaction was to scream at the top of my voice and send her to some funny place where the sun doesn't shine. But, of course, I did do no such thing. It isn't her fault, just the same as it wasn't the previous lovely lady's fault either. It is the system, which is based on XIXth century Prussia, and which operates on the principle of covering your arse at all cost.

The fact that even a fairly educated, literate, and computer literate person took five letters and four phone call to sort it, considering that the entire monthly transfer is less than £20, explains why the standard reaction in these parts to a letter from the Tax Office is to throw it in the bin.

Had I done that, none of this would have happened. The system eventually would have transferred the overpayment and things would have sorted themselves automatically.

I can't fault the staff, they were patient, kind and helpful, all of them. On the other hand, I can blame the system which is a nonsense, with obviously no communication between departments, but plenty of extreme heavy handedness.

PS.: By the way, the account number has not changed, just got into a more modern, European form, which then occasioned the three number code that identifies the purpose of the account on their mainframe. In other words, the only change was a purely admin one, which should have been done months ago, in house, having nothing to do with the clients.

 

The Confederate flag in the Capitol building

And finally, the most obvious star attraction of this week, was (and still is), what happened yesterday on Capitol Hill in Washington, when Congress tried to count and then ratify the electoral college votes from the presidential election of 3rd November. I went to bed rather early yesterday and had a reasonable night's sleep, for once. I woke up around 6am and looked at my phone, FB, e-mails etc. Some of the posts were a bit cryptic, and I quickly realised that something must have happened.

 

Voting in Congress

 

 

Roy and I got up and started watching CNN and then everything became clear. Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon were a bit hyper, but very watchable, and while I enjoyed it tremendously, it brought it home to me that:

1. the  crisis of capitalism has well and truly arrived in the US and it will only get worse

2. no matter how nice is Joe Biden compared to Trump (and who wouldn't be?), he is in no position to defeat the extreme right and improve the life of millions in the US, including the rioting morons

3. that you need a working class party with a socialist program to have a cat in hell's change to defeat the right and provide jobs, homes, Covid relief etc.

 

 

The mob climbing the roof

And the walls

None of the challenges to the correct result succeeded, but that was obvious. Many republicans deserting Trump, like rats from a sinking ship, don't alter the truth - US capitalism is rotten and neither party can provide, not even the essentials, for everyone. The working class, black and white, will have to fight and win a better life for themselves and the world. I hope I live long enough to see it.