Fiftyfirst week of the pandemic

Crumble

I think I left you with the news that we were planning our first foray into BP for about 2 and half months this week. I booked a variety of appointments, we were going to check the flat out and generally do a few things. Then the third wave hit. Suddenly there were 4 to 5000 new cases daily in the capital, one of the Nógrád towns on the Slovakian border had a massive spike in infections and hospitalisations, including this time children. So we cancelled everything and decided to stay put. In fact, the one important thing, which was the arrival of the new digital TV box on Thursday, just got postponed by about a month, the rest were cancelled, plus my appointment with Zsófi, my homeopath, was also rescheduled for the end of March.

Roy and his pancake

Shopping is going to be done locally, now that we have discovered the open market and CO-OP store in Palotás, that might be totally OK. In fact, one of the discoveries last time, which I failed to tell you about was another food store, which had my favourite cornflakes in. They only had one box, but the guy promised that he'll order me some and will let me know when they arrived. So, that is only a 20 minutes' drive, so no great shakes, and the fruit and veg that we bought in the market was 100% fresh and delicious, so I am sold on the idea. Unfortunately, sooner or later we will have to go back to Tesco and Lidl for stuff that is not available anywhere else, but I think from now on the interval between visits to those two big supermarkets can be extended to 6 or even 8 weeks.

Healthy snack from the garden

We have just now run out of special fruits we bought in the market, but no bother, we are back to our own apples, of which we still have about 6 traysful. In fact, Roy rediscovered his apple crumble making skills, and we also have chopped apple on our cornflakes in the morning. We have also made some pancakes on Shrove Tuesday filled with our apples, that I forgot to include. Here they are, tribute to those lovely apple trees that we have.

János Balázs

Andra Végh

 

Last Saturday I also had a lovely online concert from the home of one of the soloists, János Balázs, the pianist. Also there was Andrea Vigh, a harpist and director of the music academy, and the whole thing lasted about 90 minutes and was full of lovely pieces of classical music. I didn't ask back for the money of my subscription ticket of both 2020 and 2021 which were completely cnacelled, so I am allowed a few of these online concerts free in return. I hope they carry on with these, as they are really delightful.

Lots of tits on a mug

Another great happy event was the arrival of another present, this time from Stephen and Hannah, in the form of a tea mug with lovely little tits on. Roy was hoping for different tits, but I was, and stil am, totally satisfied with the feathered variety.

Another significant event has delighted us this week, namely our first foray into the garden to do some tractor mowing. At the end of last autumn we ran out of energy and good weather to pick up all the fallen walnut leaves, so Roy decided that while the grass was still short, if we mowed it, we would chop up the leaves and then he could burn them. That is exactly what happened, and while we were both done in by the end of it, we felt we have really achieved something.

The resident tractor driver

I finished The Fry Chronicles and went over to More Fool Me by Stephen Fry. This is equally funny, perceptive, a bit obsessional in places, but always enjoyable. As I had a few very bad nights' sleep this week as well, and that book came in handy in the early hours of the morning. Unforgotten's 4th series is going at the moment, but unfortunately Channel 4 has fouled up as well. I am a bit sad, but with the good weather coming, watching TV will not be a prominent pastime, like it was in the winter.

Nelly's snowdrops

And finally this week's start event:

I GOT MY FIRST DOSE OF THE PFIZER VACCINE THIS MORNING!!

 

It was a couple of days ago that I got the telephone call, that I have to go to the local hospital a half an hour drive away and will get the Pfizer vaccine. I was over the moon, although there was a small amount of anxiety too, as recently I have had my sneezes and coughs back again and was worried that they might not vaccinate me if I admit to it. As it happens, I have a lot of anxiety, stress and depression, when I have to live with high levels of stress for any length of time. One of the symptoms of this is precisely like a cold or flu. It comes and goes and it has been around for quite a while, so I decided to think positive and forget about it. I was fine, the jab was almost unnoticeable and so far, (about 4 hours on)I'm fine. My arm hurts a bit, but that's all. Some friends of mine said that they had headaches or diarrhoea, but so far nothing. I hope it'll stay like that and I can relax for a short while. The next dose is in 5 weeks, and it is normally thought that one more week at least is necessary for full protection. Then, of course, comes the question of how long it lasts, but I'll think of that later, as I have enough to worry about now.

Our lunch today

Prawns and stir fry with rice

The bottle of champagne we consumed

I don't think we bought this, it must have been a gift

 

Once we were at home, we realised that today is our 51st Wedding anniversary. So we celebrated with prawn stir fry, washed down with a glorious bottle of extra dry champagne. It was delicious and now Roy is sleeping all this morning's excitements off and I am typing this blog. Let us hope that with this bit of positive news, Roy and I have entered a new news cycle, which will cheer us up and help us towards some normality. May I wish the same on to you all out there and between us we might even meet personally some imte! 💗💗💗💗