The eightythird week of the pandemic

Busy week with lots happening. Having been away for over two weeks, we were ready to get home asap. The last two appointments were an MRI for my brain and the placing of Roy's temporary bridge  which from now on will have to last for at least 6 months. Both went OK, so we were ready to depart early on Friday morning. The car was out in the XVth district, so there was no hurry, but we were up so early that we managed to leave bang on 8am.

En route to the dentist

Needless to say that our good friend, Murphy, made sure that the news we have been waiting for for over 2 months came 2 hours after we left. Anna, our neighbour, who is a really lovely lady and who has been guarding our postbox for several months now, phoned just as we were parking in Tesco. You should have seen me doing a victory dance to the amazement of several shoppers. Anna read it out and it said that Roy's application for permanent settlement has been granted. Yippeeee!! We had a nice lunch and a glass of good wine to celebrate when we got home.

My favourite two-tone rose

 

The combined shopping in Lidl and Tesco ended up about £250 worth. Mostly, because we hate shopping for food and anything that keeps, we usually buy at least 6 of, so that we won't have to go back too soon. The list of the multi-buys started with wine, then went onto cornflakes, litre cartons of Oat Drink, tiny cartons of whipping cream, wafers, bottles of kefir, (which is a Hungarian speciality, a bit like drinking yoghurt, but with a sour taste), boxes of herbal teas etc., etc. Hopefully, we can get by using local shops in BP and the mobile shop in Bér when it comes to bread, milk, crisps etc.  

The old-timer deep red

Monday had a few specifics in it, like the village social worker coming for my doctor's papers, which if I am lucky, (and I''m not yet celebrating), will reduce the price of my blood thinners from £50 a month, to £20 a month. She took it, but I have not yet heard a word. I'm fully expecting some excuse why a totally legal and proper recommendation from a state registered cardiology consultant is not valid, just because she gave it to me in a private hospital. I have the feeling I have got a fight on my hands.

 

The other thing was the delivery of an online order, which arrived, as expected. I ordered 5kg's of KONIX, which is a stuff that helps getting the tar off the inside walls of our pottery stove. Most people only have soot, but the acid in the wood we have been burning in the last few years produced this tar, which is awful. Apparently, all you have to do is to sprinkle a bit on the embers at the end of the day and it will do its work overnight. We'll see, I say.

Plum pickers

 

As soon as we arrived I rang the guy in Galgaguta about the availability of his plums again. Last time he rang,  but we were still in town and there was no way to postpone the dentist. Luckily, the forecast was good for Saturday and he managed to get some pickers, so we hooked on the old English trailer and off we pootled to Galgaguta. It was a very interesting experience.

The still empty trailer

We have been buying his plums for several years on and off, but it was only this time that he called me by my first name and everybody was very friendly indeed. Was this a recognition of how welcome my custom is, or just a sign of the change everybody had gone through during the pandemic? Probably both. 

We're safely home

 

All the pickers were out of work gypsies. There was a foreman, who kept an eye on the pickers and his son was his assistant. He struck up a conversation with me and I got to know him a bit. It is fascinating to watch the social strata in situations as this. The owner is white, the foreman and his son are middle class gypsies and the rest are all very poor, mostly unemployed, declassed rural gypsies.

The plank to slide the barrels off on

One older guy told me that he used to work in a big construction firm in the old days, where he progressed to become a superviser by the end. You could see in his face, that he now finds himself degraded, trying to make a living from temporary, insecure work, like fruit picking. It looked as if they were all very interested in us, I suppose because they heard me talk to Roy in English. It was also nice to see how their faces lit up that I was prepared to converse with them. There is nothing worse, that being looked through, and most gypsies live with that all the time in this country.

The three buckets

The drive home with 400kg of plums in 4 barrels and 3 large plastic buckets was a tad hairy. As Roy can't drive, and my experience of towing a trailer is sketchy at best, add to this the state of Hungary's country roads, it was a miracle we made it home in one piece. My tour de force, which I will be proud of forever, was the uphill and at speed 90 degree turn into our courtyard, without hitting anything. I actually judged the distance between the two gate posts and the edge of the rose beds perfectly. Phew!

The  chief whizzer

Since then Roy is busy whizzing his pálinka mash, which will have a hard job to ferment, as the weather has now turned very cold. That is always the problem with late harvests, that the sun has no strength any more, and that is when it is shining, which is not very often now. Roy is thinking of putting them into the workshop, where there is no heating, but it is still warmer than outside, especially at night.

Second harvest of the one producing apple tree

 

We have also discovered that our poor apple trees are still producing apples, albeit quite damaged and small. The tree that I thought would never produce ripe apples, suddenly did. They are still very small and blemished, but perfect inside and absolutely ripe and delicious. We also picked some from another two trees, so a rather full basket of apples was gathered this morning.

While we were away, Irenke across the road had signed for and took in our Nespresso capsules from the delivery driver. I was very grateful, as we were coming to the end of our stock of capsules and Nespesso had a special offer of a variety of things if we ordered 250 in one go. It is amazing how nice coffee can be had out of capsules, especially that I can only have decaf. Ristretto, which is dark, strong and very bitter, is Roy's favourite, so I have the same as well, just in a decaf form.

Roy's three birthday cards

 

On Monday we also had a very good delivery, which was another birthday card for Roy. You might note that it was a full fortnight late, but it had a special reason for that. To explain, I have to let you into a really aggravating result of Brexit, which is insane completely, not only because the whole lot is insane, but because it has been aggravated further by Hungarian bureaucracy. Apparently, starting with July 1st, all post from a so called "third country", (the UK is one of these now), is subject to customs, VAT and a handling charge. Theoretically this should only apply to commercial items, but I have been reading on my FB expat groups that people had been charged for birthday cards, old family photos and a replacement UK credit card from the bank.

Linda with her mum

So, as we were awaiting 2 of those this month, I told Linda, who deals with our post, to take it out of the envelope and put it into another one. And the darling, clever girl that Linda is, put it into a birthday card. And, she also put a Customs Declaration Form on it, marking it as a birthday card to the value of £3.50. It came through with flying colours in 6 days, 2 of which were the weekend.

Heino's little chainsaw

One of the funniest stories of this week concerns Heino, our Dutch friend, who ordered a handsaw without telling us, so I wasn't sure whether it would be safe while we were away. I have done my damnest to secure delivery, by having a word with the post lady, but it turned out that no enquiry could discover where, if anywhere, it has been delivered to. So, I wrote to Heino and by return of post he told me that the message on his tracker online said that it had been delivered.

 

The climber still has some blooms

Oh dear, I thought. Somebody nicked it, obviously. Then one day, when Roy was outside in the courtyard whizzing up his mash, he looked at me and suddenly departed towards the front of the Bunkhouse corridor, where we store our third, and currently unused, dustbin. And on top of it, large as life, was a parcel. Inside it sat Heino's little saw, which I have since ascertained was delivered a few days after we left and right on Roy's 80th birthday. It sat there for over two weeks, in rain, wind and shine, unharmed, which is a miracle. If that was in BP, it would have been gone in about 5 minutes. In the village people are better, although the good cover afforded by thick trees in front of the house must have helped.

The planned hike with Ros and Ian

On Sunday Ros and Ian arrived, but due to their busy social life, combined with the fact that we have come down to the village roughly at the same time as they arrived, we have so far not been able to meet up with them. We communicated by e-mail and now we have fixed a hike with dinner afterwards for the national holiday of 23rd October, which is a Saturday. I think the plan now is that we will go to the Börzsöny, with Roy coming with us and finding something to do in the village where we start the hike from. Thankfully, there is a railway line, which is reasonably frequent along the Danube, so once we finished the hike, we can catch one and rejoin Roy, and have something to eat somewhere along the line.

The planned Vértes hike with Mariann and Gabi

 

Other plans are currently in place include the geocaching hike we have postponed for the last 18+ months with Mariann and Gabi, plus another hike with Anna, my new friend from Vác, but I have a feeling that one will have to be postponed, due to the family descending on us on 25th. You know the 3 bus syndrome? You wait for hours and nothing and then 3 come at once. Our life is normally not that hectic, but three hikes within 3 days is way beyond my poor joints and heart. The caching hike with the girls will be on Friday 22nd to the Vértes, I hope I am up to it. 

The Immigration and Nationality Office

And finally, the biggest sensation of the last week was yet another phone call from Anna, our neighbour in BP. Having had the approval letter on Friday, she then took possession of another letter yesterday, which, once I asked her to open, produced the card itself. Only 4 days between the letter and the actual card seems to be a record, but all in all, from application to the receipt of the physical card it took 10 weeks, which isn't bad. It is definitely longer than some had it, but even more definitely shorter than many, that are still waiting for it. Unfortunately, I can't enclose a photo of said card, because we will only actually receive it next Wednesday, when we are due to return to BP.

A recent footie photo of Xander

 

Yesterday was Xander's 8th birthday, but I haven't talked to him yet to wish him happy birthday. I didn't dare phoning him too early, and when I did he had just that second went offline. I presumed he went to school. Then in the afternoon and evening I couldn't get through, and the Messenger message Stephen sent me was an hour after I went to bed. I will try again today, but as he is with his mother, I am not hopeful. Lucy can be very nice and friendly, and she sends me their school reports and rings on Messenger now and again, but the fact that she never thought that I might want to talk to him on his birthday shows that she is also quite scatterbrained.

David Caves, Emilia Fox and Genesis Lynea

 

Since my VPN decided to work again, after a fashion, with lots of breaks and spooling, but working, I was looking for something not too taxing to watch and this week ended up with Silent Witness. I didn't realise that the 24th series was back at the beginning of September, but now I had the pleasure to watch 10 episodes in one go. It took me two days, but I really enjoyed it. Grantchester is still going, I think the last episode is later this week. I am still reading Sense and Sensibility, which also gives me great pleasure, especially that having watched the 1995 film recently, I can compare the storylines and list the characters left out of the film script. Not that I would disagree with Emma Thompson's lovely script, but it is still interesting all the same.

The terrible trio - we'll see them soon :)

Must finish now, the upcoming things to look forward to include the geocaching festival, which is at the end of the month, the postponed hike with Anna from Vác and, of course, the visit from Stephen, Elian and Xander. Next post sometime next week, although it might be late due to a myriad of activities. 😀