The ninetieth week of the pandemic

I was looking for photos to put with this week's blogpost, and there weren't any. Which is not surprising, as we went nowhere, saw nobody, other than the mobile grocer and the postwoman, so this is going to be short and sweet with no or very few photos.

Roy's immunity card

Talking of the postwoman, Roy received his immunity card in the post, exactly 2 weeks from applying for it, as the officials promised. I do love those women in the Pásztó 'Government Window', may they carry on like this forever!   What we have not yet got and are not really expecting for quite a while yet, is Roy's ID card. I did send a scanned copy of our marriage certificate, which hopefully got there, and now it is sitting on somebody's desk in BP. Once that is done, the vast majority of official stuff would have been finished, although there are a few other smaller cards and certificates to get, but they are not particularly urgent.

Likely candidate for new cooker

What is a lot more urgent is the replacement of our cooker, which is definitely on its last leg. We did see a few in Pásztó last time, so the next time we have to go, we will have to buy one. With the cold weather  came the need for seed for the tits and other little birds. They are extremely hungry, which is not only a reflection of the cold, but the drought too. Nature produced a lot less than in rainy years and they obviously are finding it hard to find food. We still have about 20 kilos of seed from last year, but if they carry on eating at the speed of last week, it will hardly last until Christmas.

One of my lovely bits of kitsch on the telly

Talking of Christmas, I have written my usual Christmas newsletter and will be sending it out tomorrow. I do carry an e-mail list of recipients, but I encourage any of you who have not received it by the weekend to send me an e-mail reminding me of the omission.

Another piece of equally lovely kitsch I watched

So, this entire week was spent indoors, mostly in front of the computer by both of us and/or reading in my case and watching TV in Roy's. The news were a bit frightening in relation to the Omicron variant and while Ros and Ian have arrived last Friday, we haven't yet seen them. One set of really bad news were that 3 of our friends caught Covid and are not having a good time of it. Still, I would not have gone to a football match, not even to see my own son play and not even in the outdoors.

I ended up watching quite a lot of Netflix this week, and I have to admit to having an appallingly ridiculous custom of going for kitsch and schmaltz at Christmas time. To be honest, we are stressed from so many directions that a bit of mindless kitsch is soothing, at least that's how I feel. To balance this out, I started reading The History of Philosophy - A Marxist Perspective, by my friend and comrade, Alan Woods, which safely arrived last week. Without any customs duty, VAT or handling charge paid. My friend who sent it is very clever at filling out the customs form on the parcel, as so far we escaped this every time, albeit we do not do this sort of thing too often.

Work in progress at David's

My good friend, David, who lives in Balatonalmádi and is doing up his slightly delapidated farmhouse has had very good news this week. His application for national settlement status has been granted. He is now waiting for the card, which is sent by registered post. Poor old David, as he is at work all day, his visits to the post office are quite numerous nowadays where he tries to pick up his registered letters. The last photos I have seen of his roof and attic conversion are splendid and I can't wait to see it in person. Not until next spring, I think, but hopefully I will see it finished.

The attic on the inside

I discovered that a large number of Who Do You Think You Are episodes are available on BBC iPlayer, but only the last series is still available for another 11 months. All the others are only available now for another month, so it is rather urgent to watch at least those quickly that are going to disappear by the end of the year. I watched the one about Kate Winslet recently and it was excellent. Some of her reactions were a tad overemotional and naive, but it was still a very good program.

Kate Winslet

 

Most of the last few weeks and months
on the book front were spent by re-reading a series of thrillers by Tamás Frei, that I have had for nearly 10 years, but due to dicrepitude have mostly forgotten. This cheered me up no end, because they were each about 600 pages long and all were enjoyed tremendously, like they were new books. If it is possible, I was enjoying them more now, than when I read them first.

The second of four books

The third of four books

 

The hero of all 4 books is a guy called Andre Calvi, who is really Hungarian and an ex-soldier of the French Foreign Legion. The genre of all 4 books is a type of topical, political thriller, with a lot of baddies who happen to be mostly rich oligarchs in several different countries, especially Russian ones. Andre is fighting a personal battle against all things and humans Russian, which is a bit daft, but the well travelled, extremely well informed and witty author keeps producing fancinating books. 

Tamás Frei, the author had written one more book since I last looked at any of his work, which I don't have. Just an hour ago that copy has also arrived, and I will start reading it tomorrow morning. That will definitely be the first time I will read it, not like the others which were forgotten. To be quite honest, I really don't mind, as this basically means that a large proportion of my library is full of new books.  😊

Other television programs that were in evidence this last week included ITV's Vera, but unfortunately, the US cop shows I love watching have gone on Christmas leave a bit early this year. I need not have rushed the catch-up earlier on, I would have a lot of time doing it now.

 

And this is all that I could think of writing about in a totally uneventful week. As we are going into town later on this week, I suppose there will be more to write about next time. Taraa until then!