The sixtyfifth week of the pandemic

Yet another tumultuous week, but do we have anything but those? I left you with the great news of having got Roy's TAJ card number and having registered him for vaccination, now we needed to check every day if the registration had been approved or not. Well, this was easy, I could do it online. On the one hand you need to know straight away when it is in the system, so you can look for an appointment for him based on that. On the other hand, waiting for it desperately and have the webpage tell you NO every day is such a disappointment, that life suddenly becomes so stressful that it is bad for my health and, to be honest, for Roy's as well. He hides it well, but I can tell that he is coming to a crisis point soon, if things don't turn up better than they did so far.

MOL headquarters being built

And while pondering this I had a phone call from my neighbour in the block of flats where we live in BP, that while checking our post box, she found a notification that the postman tried to deliver a registered letter. It was obviously the TAJ card, so I went back into town again, the following day.  Roy got very agitated and I decided to go back to BP to fetch it and do some more geocaching, this time on my own, to cheer me up even more.

The new railway bridge being built

If only I stayed one more day, I could have saved myself this bother. After all, the lady in the office, where I got Roy's TAJ number, told me that it was posted the previous week, but sod's law tells me, that when you hang around, things never arrive, while if you leave it, they come the following day. The news were so good, I was over the moon and refused to play the "if only" game. Plus it gave me some more chance to do some caching, so I was happy.

The Athletic Stadium with those giant cranes

Amazingly, the queueing  was minimal and I managed to fetch the card in no time at all. The geocaching was somewhat less successful, as there was a sudden increase in temperature and I was suffering from the heat. Every year I take at least a week or two to acclimatise to sudden heat at the beginning of the summer. It was just unfortunate that I was in a big city, with white surfaces everywhere to reflect the heat back, when this happened.

The reclaimed park with lake and mountain bike trek

I still managed to get a few caches, one by the building site of the new athletic stadium, another two in a suburb of BP, covering the old centre of the place with lovely old buildings and another showing a new development of land reclamation and its use for rest and recreation. There was a lovely lake, a running track, a children's play area, an event tent and a few other delights. I ate my sandwiches there and then took myself home, carrying the precious card in my bag.

The giant slike in the playground

Roy was happy, even more when I told him that in the meantime I arranged with our car mechanic in the village to finally change our winter tyres. Tomi was so kind and was prepared to do them before his dinner in the late afternoon. Summer was so late arriving that I thought we would never change to summer tyres, but at least now that job is done as well, shortening my "to do" list further.

Poppies

The main event of the last week - other than getting the TAJ card - was the Geocaching Festival and Competition on Saturday. I never take part in the competition, but it is always nice to turn up for meeting up with caching friends you haven't seen for a while and to log the event cache. I was there by quarter to nine, but the centre was not very full yet. Still, I had a chat with Ica and Géza while hanging around, waiting for Mariann, Gabi and Wilka.

At the Forest Camp

They arrived just after 9:30am and we left to go caching together just after 10am. We got seriously unlucky with road closures, due to about 5 different events going on in the Mátra that day. There was a car rally, a long distance hiking and/or running race, plus one by bike and another by motorbike. So we sat for nearly an hour at a junction, and then the other three went to get a multicache that Roy and I got a month ago. So I sat in the car pondering the meaning of life, as you do.

 

Nice new buildings at the camp

Finally, well after midday I found my first cache. There were three of them in quite close vicinity of each other. For the first one, which was by an impressive ravine, we had to climb up a steep forest path, but thankfully not too far. The second one was by a spring in the same village and the final one on top of a small mountain, where you had to get by a murderous steep, but thankfully also quite short, climb.

My good friends Ica and Geza

 

All three were great and I took a good few pictures. It also made a change to cache with friends, as I usually do it with either Roy or on my own. After I parted from my friendswho then went ont to find caches I have already found, I took off towards home, thinking that the main road across the top of the mountains was now open. Needless to say I was wrong and the coppers turned me back mid-way. So, I thought, once I had come this far, I must find some more caches to make the extra distance worthwhile. And I did.

At the edge of the ravine: Mariann, Wilka and Gabi

First of all my own moving cache that travels along the Virgin Mary pilgrims' route was really near. I went and fetched that, followed by a kilometre walk with it along its route. After that I went to an interesting place, where there was a metal lookout tower, which wobbled. The cache was down about 10 metres on a practically vertical rock strewn mountainside, which was somewhat precarious on my own, but I managed it. Took some more lovely photos and finished my leftover sandwiches before I did some shopping in Lidl Gyöngyös en route home. It was a long day, but very much enjoyed all round.

Muggins and Wilka

Sunday had two events in it, one quite useful, the other seriously aggravating. Let's start with the latter. It was time for the F1 race from Baku, and while Lewis did not have a good time qualifying, eventually he recovered to start from 2nd place. He was having all sorts of troubles with the car and some other form of bad luck, but by the last few laps was back into 2nd place and even with a vague chance to overtake the leader, when after a gap in the race to clear up the debris on the tarmac they restarted. He got off fine, and then for some unfathomable reason simply drove off the track, thus throwing away a chance to get his lead back in the overall championship race for 2021.

Lewis in happier days

At that time I didn't know, but since then it transpired that Mercedes has a 'magic' button, which in the case of some serious, life-threatening incident can shift 90% of brake power to the front. Apparently, Lewis accidentally touched this button and this locked the car up and he just sailed straight on, right off the track. Good job it didn't cause an accident or injurity to him or anyone else, so I am fine. Toto Wolff has since explained that Lewis does not make mistakes, this was a misfortune and they do not blame him. If anyone or anything is to blame is the entire team. For two GP races now they were way below par and they have to up their game to come back and win. I am sure they will, as in their long history they have been known to come back from a lot further down.  But even if he doesn't, I still love the guy as he is a superb driver and a very decent human being. I could not ask for more.

The boiler

The other event was, while not particularly enjoyable, very necessary and useful. We had a visit from our boiler engineer to do the year's maintenance of our two boilers. As it happens, it was 4 years ago last that he came, and it was definitely time both boilers had some maintenance. The one in the Farmhouse has been hellishly noisy for ages, but he turned up and fixed both. My only complaint was that he wouldn't wear a mask and kept trying to come within two metres of me, like the ignorant twit he is. I tried to avoid him as much as I could, but he is a chatterbox and forever invading your personal space. I knew that of old, but he is otherwise a good, reliable mechanic, and those are very few and far between in these parts, so I put up with his idiosyncratic ways the best I could. Unfortunately, his prices were much higher than I remembered, but I suppose inflation in the last 4 years, and his aim of recovering some of his COVID losses must have played a part in his bill of £125.

Adam Balogh being interviewed by Andrea Vigh

On Monday I checked the vaccine registration webpage, but Roy's registration has still not been approved. I read that it needs a few days for that to happen, but after these number of months, one can be excused for a touch of impatience. I went on with housework as usual, did a load of washing and put it out in the now ferocious sun to dry. In the evening I listened to yet another concert, which was absolutely delightful. Ádám Balogh, a young titan on the piano, gave a superb recital of Haydn, Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel. He is a genious of a young man, having won many competitions, and still stayed unaffected and lovely. He was interviewed by the Director of the Music Academy, who got him talking about his passions and he came across very well. His playing was with his usual inspired brilliance, and I enjoyed mysef a great deal.

A two-tone yellow and pink beauty

Another joyful event was the discovery of our very first fully out rose this year. Nature is about a month late, so it came to being June before we had a fully open rose. It happened to be one of my favourites, the two tone yellow with red edges, which has such a photogenic profile. There are hundreds of buds on most of the other roses too, so very quickly we should have an orgy of colour outside our windows. Unfortunately, this year the green fly are abundant too, so I had to wage a relentless fight against them yesterday and I wouldn't be surprised if the situation was similar again today.

A snow white glorious bloom

You may remember from my last post that Roy managed to remove the broken door wings from the stove last week and set about mending them. He was hopeful that he could manage, but eventually found that one screw was missing and needed a specialist to replace it. So, I rang the guy in Salgótarján and he told me that if we take it in, he'll fix it and sends it back by a delivery service, cost of which will be in the price of repair. We haven't done it yet, I plan to do a bit of caching near there sometime later on this week or next, and combine pleasure with duty.

Stir fry with king prawns and potato/onion salad

Cooking took a centre stage this week, as when we are anxious or stressed, we both find solace and a distraction in cooking. The start attraction in the culinary world of Roy and Julianna  this week was our Asian stir fry with king prawns yesterday. It looked good and it tasted heavenly. The big bag of prawns that I bought at the end of April, has just finished and the last lot was a bigger portion than normal. We chomped away on it with delight and are already planning to buy another bag just like it when next in town.

 

Mower before action

Yesterday, we also enjoyed an active day in the garden. After the joy of the first rose earlier in the week, this time we had to do some mowing. All this heat, coupled with a fair amount of rain earlier, caused the grass growing like there was no tomorrow. Roy was using the petrol mower, I was on the tractor again. It took us barely an hour to do almost all of it. Only the tops of the cellars were left, which we might attempt today. There is still no sign of that guy who promised to ring about coming and doing our edges with his strimmer. I tried to ring him, but he didn't pick up. 

Cheers!!

And then I have to finish this post on a high. Ever since I got Roy's TAJ number, I have been trying to reach the practice nurse to let her have all Roy's details over the phone, for having him registered at the surgery. She must have been on holiday all last week, as she wasn't picking up. Then I got her on Monday, but she was driving and later she wasn't picking up again. Finally, yesterday she rang me and I dictated to her the TAJ number, his birth place and date and address. After that was done she told me that in the neighbouring village there is a foreign guy without a TAJ card and he managed to get an appointment at the nearby hospital and has already been vaccinated. 

Cheers (2) !!

I got very excited at that and I asked her how that could be possible. She gave me the URL of the relevant webpage and I thought I'd better investigate. I must mention at this stage that in all the busy time that morning I completely forgot to check whether Roy's registration was accepted, but I quickly had a go at looking for an appointment for him at the nearby hospital. It was ever so simple, straightforward and easy, adding to my shock, as things in Hungary are never easy or straightforward. I suppose, even those idiots might have finally mastered how to do this after nearly 6 months.

 

The first crimson beauty of the season

Anyway, there I was getting a vaccination appointment for Roy for THIS THURSDAY. I could not believe my eyes. But then I thought, I must check if his registration has been accepted or not. And it was. So, I couldn't have done it sooner anyway, but it's typical sod's law that it was accepted on the one day I didn't check. So, we are now getting excited about his vaccination tomorrow, although we are both superstitious enough not to shout any of this from the roof or even publish this blog post until after the event. When you had so much disappointment over so many months, it is difficult to believe that finally your luck had changed. So, I'll return to report on the happening, should it really happen, once we have something to report.

Paszto hospital, vaccination centre on right

PS: Yippeeee!!!!  Roy had his first Pfizer jab yesterday. He was so excited that his blood pressure was sky high, endangering his vaccination. It was also high as we parked about a quarter of a mile away and the walk to the hospital was in high heat and uphill. Thankfully, the lovely nurse believed my explanation of heat, walk and hospital phobia and he went through. Felt nothing, as the doctors in that hospital are excellent at diverting your attention, and then jabbing you. He felt nothing and had no rection to it either.

Another two-tone beauty: white and pink

Now we can start planning our life for the rest of the summer. I was getting ready for having no summer at all, but all in all, he should be fully protected by the 1st of August. In the meantime, we have to go into Budapest as yet another cable TV, internet anad phone box is coming from Vodafone. This time it will involve some cable installation, so we will have to be there to move the furniture around. I have also decided to give up on waiting for the yearly card at the Duna Medical Centre, and so we are now having two appointments for 23rd June, Roy for a general checkup, me at the dermatologist.

Third lady from left, my lovely dentist

 

I have also booked my hygienist (about 3 months late), to make sure that we use the few days in BP well. I am now going to tidy up in the Bunkhouse, as I said YES to a set of orienteering friends to stay there on Saturday night. The middle distance championship is near Salgótarján this weekend and they are competing there. Next instalment is next week and apologies for this one being late. You now know why. 😀