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