Fortyeighth week of the pandemic

A somewhat miserable week, with lots of coughs and sneezes, bad nights, not enough sleep and the non-arrival of my present from Alex on the downside - and another bit of snow, the arrival of Alex's books in Toronto, the Liszt/Berlioz Marathon and the return of the birdies on the feeders on the up side.

Mickey checking out the parcel

The original arrival date of the present from Alex was 5th February, then they changed it to 9th February and as of today, that projected arrival date is now the 1st March. Considering that 70kg of books took 10 days to get from BP to Toronto, that is some fair sized delay. I wonder where it could be? On the tracking page it just says 'In transit', so who knows? If we can wait patiently for life saving vaccination, a few months' delay in the post is nothing.

Mickey's taken possession of the parcel

Talking of tracking, that is a marvellous facility, obviously not when the thing takes forever and the tracking page has no real information on it, like with the Postal Service, but FedEx was ace. I followed the route the parcel took and it went through BP-> Vienna-> Paris->Memphis, Tennessee-> Mississauga, Ontario-> Toronto. Other than a bit of superficial damage to the wrapping paper, it arrived in perfect condition. 

Lili Farkas, Music Academy student

Saturday was spent listening to 9 x 45 minutes long online concerts, mostly from Franz Liszt and a bit of Berlioz. These music marathons happen once a year and this year it was virtual, but all the concerts were very recent. With the exception of the last one from the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, were pre-recorded, but only during the previous week. The BFO one was live and this was the first time I actually saw that, as in previous years I have never managed to get a ticket to that one.

Iván Fischer

The first concert started at 10am and the last one finished just before 10pm. There were 2 half hour breaks, one for lunch, the other for tea. The soloists included some big names and also some Conservatoire and Music Academy students. It was very well done and on top of all the excellent artists and orchestras, it was even free. Thank you to the Palace of the Arts that put this on in the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, one of two performance spaces in that massive modern building by the Danube.

The courtyard

On and off we had some snow this last week, but not too much. Some days the temperature went well above zero, so it was back to the dark, dingy and miserable drizzle, but most days and nights were cold enough for snow in the last few days, so the weather was a lot more cheerful. Unfortunately, our big pottery stove, well its door, has given up, due to the acid residue from the oak stopping the mechanism working. As we are now hopefully on our way out of winter, we decided to decommission it and rely just on the central heating. Once the weather's better and we can countenance letting strangers into the house, we'll have the guy who built it to come over for a repair/maintenance session, although if it needs a new door, that would be OK too.

Front of the Bunkhouse

Talking of maintenance, the central heating boiler has been hellishly noisy this winter and I was really worried that it would give up on us. Until, I have discovered, that it was our fault. Basically, there are too many places you can control the temperatures of both the radiators and the hot water. There is the central electronic unit, there are analogue gauges on the boiler itself and also there are thermostatic valves on the radiators. We have never realised that there is an optimum way to adjust all of these to ease the boiler's workload. But, I am proud to report that it is now a lot quieter, although it still makes a bit of a noise. The optimum setting is: set the radiator temperature on the central unit, along with a reasonably high water temperature on the boiler gauge. The trouble was that the water temp was too low and the boiler struggled to heat to the temperature setting on th central unit. Let us hope it lasts until we can get our little man in for the biannual service of the boiler in the spring.

Great tit on the fat

You may remember about a couple of weeks ago I discovered a lovely 9 episode series from about 3 years ago of Grand Design. Well, recently I found on Netflix another series, this time with 8 episodes from 2013, which was also brilliant. I absolutely love these way out modern houses, and the renovations. They are all different, all a bit quirky and definitely not run of the mill. Kevin Macloud is a joy to listen to and most of the people featured are interesting and pleasant. There was one shrill, entitled and spoilt cow that got up my nose, but even her house was a fascinating design.

Restored Victorian water tower

This weekend I will spend three days at the Montreal Marxist Winter School, where Alex talked me into making a small contribution to one of the sessions on the topic of anti-semitism and the oppression of the Jews over the centuries and today. I haven't started putting the text together yet, but as you only get 5 minutes and 5 minutes for translation, it shouldn't take long.

Grand Designs from Hertfordshire

Next post hopefully next week!