The curse of the Grants and a few slightly happier happenings

The last week has been probably the fullest and most stressful for quite a while. If I want to be scientific about it, rather than joking about the above mentioned curse, I think what is going on in the world is a reflection of the last 3 or 4 years. Most people can't and won't connect the personal to the general, but as a Marxist, it is easy for me. Understanding the general trends, the causes and then consequences of the events, traumas, wars, etc., is vital not to immerse yourself in an apocalyptic drama, which produces mental and physical sickness, depression, suicides and all the tragic results of the turmoil the world is currently in.

The Forge, Stephen's new comedy club

John Bishop at the Forge

 

You may remember what had happened to Stephen nearly 2 years ago, when The Komedia in Brighton, without any warning, cause or niceties, cancelled his 25 year old contract and he lost the club that he created and made famous all over the country and beyond. He, being a brilliant, resilient and resourceful guy, and with the help of his friends, family and his enormous fan club, survived and is now building an equally - or possibly even more - famous club of his own, also in Brighton. Note the figure of 25 years!

Alex in his favourite kayak

This number seems to be favoured by disloyal, unfair and outright evil people and organisations, which this time round did the same to Alex. I can't and shouldn't go into details, as this round of his existential fight by someone I love, is still ongoing, and anyway, I wouldn't honour them by writing about them, but he is now in the same, possibly even worse, position than his brother was nearly 2 years ago. However, I have no doubt he will survive, come back full of life and will benefit from it in the long run. 

My Canadian family

 

Needless to say, this has been awfully stressful for me, but in trying to see the good in every bad turn in one's life, which is actually the only survival technique I can recommend to anyone, I found out new things about my boy I have never realised were there. I am incredibly proud of him for handling this trauma the way he did, and wish him the best outcome possible. His forbearance, his belief in the good in himself and in others, are fundamental to his being and no matter how much suffering he went and still going through, he did not allow any of it touch his inner self. Good on you Alex, we love you and just to quote your father: "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"

The ominous half fallen tree branch

Just to stay with family: You may also know some bits of the less than harmonious relationship with my sister. We have been estranged for decades, partly due to her bad relationship with our mother, and partly due to the physical distance between the UK and Hungary, until in the late 1990's, when we met up again and ended up living a few doors from each other. I was then really pleased to pick up the relationship and hoping to have a close, neighbourly and sisterly friendship with her. Well, that has never happened. For whatever reason, she had never considered me a member of her family, or at least, it seemed to me that she felt like that, judging from how she treated me.

Still, I hate discord, and in the years since Roy and I have tried to maintain at least a good diplomatic relationship, which naturally had its ups and downs. Until yesterday, when I have decided that I do not wish to know her and her son any more. She had been in a bad mood, getting at me for the noise our air conditioner delivery van made and having had a very stressful week behind me, I responded in kind. Roy was absolutely outraged at her being rude and aggressive, when we tried to help her about some fallen tree branch, which endangered her life in her garden, followed by a phone call from her son, which implied that I was bothering my sister. That was it. I returned her house keys to her and wrote to her son about our decision. God knows what will follow, but as I had written to her son, I am also quite elderly now and have a heart condition, so need to reduce my stress, not increase it. Some aspects of life are beyond my control, but this one isn't, so I am exercising my right to look after no. 1 for once.

Zsófi, one of the leading comrades of Fáklya

Phewwww! Having got all this off my chest, let us look at some happier happenings in the last 7 days! I left last week by mentioning that we were off to BP and I was going to attend my first proper IMT branch meeting in Hungary with those lovely youngsters I met recently. Well, that was quite a good meeting, the discussion was about the organisational methodology of the IMT, which was proposed by Levente, one of the leading comrades and I made a few comments, based on my experience, and they were well received. I paid my subs for the first couple of months and am now a proper member of this lovely little group. 

Levente, the other leading cde

The absolute highlight of the evening, however, was that they invited me to go to the Gólya with them for a chat and a drink. The Gólya is a fascinating place with an interesting history, which Zsófi, another leading comrade, had told me about. The building was an old industrial storage unit, which was in the process of falling down, when a bunch of young left leaning friends have bought it to provide a base for those groups, both commercial, cultural and political, that could not afford anything else. They renovated it with their own hands and to this day it houses as many left groups as they can squeeze in. They did need a bank loan, which they are still paying back, but having shown a sharp commercial as well as social and political good sense, it is still going strong.

Gólya roof garden

 

They asked me questions about the past, how I joined the IMT all those years ago and listened intently to my answers. You cannot imagine how much I enjoyed this. These young people need my experience and perspectives to thrive, and this makes me happy. At the same time, they are doing so much for me, making me feel wanted, useful and intellectually stimulated that this is definitely a win win situation, if I ever saw one. We spent most of the time we were there, sitting on the roof, which is a nicely converted bar garden and in the high heat that was around that night, was a good place to be. The bar is further down in the building, but run by volunteers, and selling cheap drinks and snacks, that is the part that provides the finance to make the whole enterprise run well, and has also become a central focus for left leaning organisations of all sorts. En route home the skies have opened, and it was a very happy drowned rat that got home, but I didn't mind, was really happy and adrenaline helped me last until past midnight, which is very rare for me nowadays.

One of the books I recently bought

We stayed an extra day last week after the branch meeting, as we had quite a lot of shopping and other matters to attend to. So, on Thursday we bought some light bulbs, logbooks for geocaching,  3 large loaves of sourdough bread from Doktor & Pék, fetched a couple of books from the bookshop that I have ordered online, bought some groceries from the COOP and picked up all my medicines for the next 3 months from the pharmacy. 

Our pristine new mobile air conditioner

In the afternoon the AC guy came to measure up for having air conditioning, finally, and we're also buying two mobile AC units, one for elsewhere in the flat, the other for Bér. He was quick and efficient and promised we'll get a quote in due course. The quote has arrived the following day, and yes, it does cost an arm and a leg, but I don't care. We are both suffering from the extreme heat the summers usually bring nowadays, and the cost is not the first consideration. I only discovered later, that the quote did not include VAT, so I had to add 27% to the total. At current exchange rates the static one with installation, with the two mobile ones came to about £2000, which is about the going price for a good quality AC. Needless to say, it was made in China, like everything else is nowadays, but we do have  5 years' guarantee on it, the last two only for the compressor, so it is a fair deal, I think. Also, both the chief guy and the service manager on the phone sounded great. You know, when you have the feeling that somebody is professional, knowledgeable and has a nice manner and even a bit of a sense of humour, that usually makes you trust the outfit. Let us hope, they do not prove my impressions wrong!

The rest of the day consisted of watching TV and Netflix on the computer. We could have watched Netflix on the TV too, but I didn't have the laptop with me and I can only have the connection established from that piece of kit. I watched the program about the Chicago 7, which I found fascinating. Exciting bit of history, good script, acting and direction. It really took my mind off my troubles. Alex was on Messenger every day by that time, which was stressful, but I was so pleased to be able to help to him. He has been reticent in the past to use me for stress relief or advice. Well, his stress was overwhelming this time round and finally he found me and used me for survival assistance. It was hard work, but I was so pleased, and still am helping him.

En route home we went past the Zila Restaurant, where I have a cache of my own and which was reported to have a full logbook. Well, the visit was a bit of a waste, but very useful too. The Zila had developed over the years, from a patisserie into a patisserie and restaurant. They are famous for their cakes and ice cream and the weather being hot, Roy fancied one. While I was sorting out ordering my birthday cake and dealing with the geocache box, he went to order himself a blueberry and lemon ice cream, spotting in the process that they have a vegan chocolate ice cream too. I have tried it, and had never tasted a better chocolate ice cream in my life. As for the cache, needless to say, that almost every back page in the book was empty, so there were a lot of places still to write on, but we still left a new book too, so that we don't have to come back for a while. Having said that, as long as they have that vegan ice cream, I will be back quite often, even though they are way out on the edge of the city, close to the airport. Plus, we will have to fetch the cake in a couple of weeks, but that can be done en route back to Bér, just before the birthday weekend.

When we got home, we realised that the busy July events in the offing are getting closer and closer. Alex is coming to visit us in less than a fortnight, I am organising a visit to a cave for a group of about half a dozen, to get the geocache down there, then we will have my 75th Birthday weekend in Bér, and 2 weeks later we are having another one, this time with old orienteering friends. So, there is plenty to be getting on with.

Left: as it was; Right: after scrubbing it

We started doing things in the garden, first job was to clean the back patio, which got quite badly discoloured by acid rain over the last few years. The next job was to cut down the jungle that grew up over the last few years on the outside of the back gate. Ever since that was built, we hardly ever used it, either as a personal or as a commercial entrance. It is big enough for a small to medium size truck to drive through it, but as we didn't have a need to have anything large delivered, it ended up unused. The scrub is ferocious in these parts and especially recently, with a lot of rain and then high heat, it looked impassable and it was.

The back gate after clearing the scrub

One morning when Roy was too quiet, I found him missing, and eventually found him fighting the jungle at the back gate. I joined him and between us we made a quick job of it. I also cleaned my parents memorial near the back gate, as in spite of the fact that it is covered in a slab of marble, that also ended up rather black over the last few years. Unfortunately, the fruit harvest is going to be, and has already been very poor. There is some malady that causes shriveled up leaves and no fruit in quite a few trees. I think we will have some apples, pears and had half a dozen edible Morello cherries, but everything else has either been and gone with nothing or is not promising anything good.

Salmon rose by the gate

On the other hand, the roses are lovely. One bad downpour unfortunately damaged the climbers a bit, but generally speaking the roses are very pretty again, good to cheer me up outside my window. Talking of outside my window, methinks we will move back up to our old bedroom sometime soon, especially after Roy installing the air conditioner, that arrived yesterday. We need to work out how to fix the hot air extraction pipe, and then we will have a cool bedroom upstairs. Carrying the beds up will be quite heavy, but I am really thinking that 3 years and a month is enough for both of us to sleep on the ground floor.

Elian on his  birthday present

Another lovely event this last week was Elian's 11th birthday. Unfortunately, Stephen was in Singapore on the actual day, so we didn't get a call from them, but a few days later we could see him opening his birthday present from us. It turned out that Stephen bought with the money we sent a gadget, which looks like a climbing frame, but is basically a frame where they can do pull ups and other useful strengthening exercises. Elian is now so heavily into rock climbing, that he needs it. 

One slightly less happy bit of  news on the other hand is that Stephen and the kids will not come to visit us before next year now. Apparently, airfares have gone through the roof and it is unaffordable. Stephen is hoping to book really early next year and turn up in February half term. We are keeping our fingers crossed, as we are no longer planning trips going the other way, on account of our advanced years. Neither flying, nor sleeping in anything other than our own beds is not easy for us nowadays.

A glorious red rose in the yard

Well, I did warn you that this is going to be a long saga this week, and it most certainly is. Still, I am only really writing for myself, as an online diary of happenings and thoughts, and should anybody else read it, that is a bonus. I have to watch TV and Netflix in the summer, as my favourite programs are not online at this time. However, the other day I realised that there are still some episodes of regular programs that I don't normally watch and ended up realising that I have been silly not watching the new Equalizer with Queen Latifah, which was brilliant. Only the last three episodes of series 3 was available, but I will put it on my regular watching schedule next year, I enjoyed it so much.

Queen Latifah

Must stop now, hopefully I'll be back next week, but promise you a considerably shorter saga then. That's assuming that anybody had read this one to the end. 💖

 

IMT Hungary plus coughing and spluttering

You may have noticed that I gave up mentioning the pandemic in the title. I got as far as 170 weeks, which sounds an incredibly long time. It is approximately three and a quarter years. The WHO declared the end of the "global emergency" back in March, downgrading it to an epidemic, with Covid 19 heading towards becoming endemic. These are the stages that all known pandemics in the past have gone through, in other words all of them are still with us, but in a much less lethal form as in the beginning.

The courtyard 

This is all and well, and some of it I already knew from Alex, but it is still somewhat disingenuous to cancel the "global emergency", not the pandemic. I have looked up the meaning in the dictionary, and a pandemic is simply meaning a disease that has spread all over the world, with no mention of how lethal or otherwise it was or is. Still, now we can suffer from all those other viruses, like RSV, that were overwhelmed by Covid 19 and couldn't spread due to the lock downs, but are now back with a vengeance.

A pink beauty

This takes me to the coughs and splutters mentioned in the title. Roy has been coughing for months and it looks as if I will have to drag him to a doctor, whether he likes it or not. Plus, I am feeling rather weak, having had shakes, headaches, and severe arthritis this last week. How annoying that with summer coming and quite a lot of events on the cards, we are both getting sick.

Fáklya (Torch) logo

After this unpleasant note, let me tell you about a most welcome development, which cheers me up no end. You may know that I have been very active in IMT, a Marxist international, in the UK, and have been missing it quite a lot since we retired to Hungary. Over the last couple of decades there have been occasional false starts over here, eventually coming to nothing. And then a few years ago, my Austrian comrades came across some young Hungarians on a demonstration and I met up with one of them who seemed promising, but the pandemic intervened.

 

Unbeknown to me, though, one of them, the very young man that I had a discussion with, has spent some time in the UK, joined the IMT there, and when he came home started organising those friends of his that were receptive to his ideas. This group of youngsters finally established their own group, called themselves Fáklya, meaning Torch, and are doing some good work. As I'm still a FB friend of the guy I saw 4 years ago, I noticed that he was advertising a public meeting about the state of the world in capitalist crisis and the way out of it, with the speaker coming from London. That comrade I didn't know, so he had to be a youngster himself and I was quite enthusiastic to go.

 

The public meeting 3 weeks ago

Well, I did and it was a great meeting. As I had to come in from Bér, I couldn't stay behind for⁰ a chat in the pub, having had to drive home straight away. However, I got to know a lovely young woman, Zsófi, a little bit and her and I started communicating through Messenger. The other leading comrade, whom I have known from 4 years ago, Levente, also wrote to me and we all agreed that I would join them in their activities, attend as many meetings as I can and become a member officially after attending my first branch meeting.

Last Wednesday, when we were in BP anyway, I went and attended their Marxist reading group, where they were discussing chapters 6 and 7 of Lenin's Imperialism, the highest state of Capitalism, which was great. Today we are travelling in to BP, so that I can attend my first proper branch meeting. I hope that I can be of use to these lovely young people, and while I am around them, I can make myself happier by seeing their enthusiasm and serious attitude.

The short cut grass at the back garden

Other activities last week included a lot of garden work, including an amazingly fast and successful tractoring effort one evening, when I managed to cut the grass in the back garden down to setting 2 on the tractor, without a single stop, in about an hour. The reason behind this efficiency was partly due to me not having started to feel ill yet, and partly to the fact that the grass was absolutely dry and not too high.

Using the new strimmer in the courtyard

Since then, having bought a really nice electric strimmer for the edges and where none of the other machines can get near the buildings, we started using that as well, making the garden looking great. The roses are blooming very nicely, including both climbers, so it is starting to look really nice outside.

The climber invading the corridor

Unfortunately, we are having some other bad news within the family at the moment, which I am trying to bear with fortitude, but am not always managing. Alex is having problems at work and by all accounts, (naturally I have only heard what is happening from his point of view), there are some very nasty moves afoot to rob him of his beloved job of the last 25 years. I hope this is just the stress talking and things will be sorted in a fair manner. The crisis is coming to a head hopefully soon, so then we will know what the future holds.

We might take Alex here to do some kayaking

One positive side-effect of all the above is that he is coming to see us in a couple of weeks' time. He needs to go and have discussions at the London HQ and once already in Europe, he will come and stay a couple of weeks with us afterwards. This is really something to look forward to, even though it has been caused by something rather sinister, which I am not quite sure yet how to deal with. He is dealing with it the best he can, but I am finding it hard not to be able to help him. I cannot see totally clearly, simply because he is being kept in the dark too, thus causing anxiety for him and now for myself too. I am not saying that he is totally innocent, but I can see no sign of natural justice in their dealing with the problem and that is not OK. Hopefully, I will know more by next week, and once Alex is here, I should give him some good times over here, helping him to cope.

Talking of family, Stephen unfortunately couldn't find a reasonably priced set of flights for him and the boys, so is not coming to visit in the summer this year. Hopefully, he should be able to bring the boys over for autumn half term, like he did before, but this needs their mother's agreement and might not work. In the meantime, I saw some gorgeous photos he put up on FB about Father's Day, showcasing the sporting talents of Elian and Xander. Not only the latter is now a superb young footballer, who has been noted by quite serious talent scouts, but Elian has now started taking climbing very seriously and is very good at it.

Elian on the wall

Callum had his graduation from his primary school yesterday, looking seriously grown up in both physical and personality aspects. He is really tall, obviously taking after his father in shooting up in early adolescence. I would so much like to see him, but it doesn't look likely that we will see him very soon. We are not likely to be able travel a long way any more, but hoping that the rest of the family spoils us by visiting us.

Walking up for his graduation certificate

Other good news on the travel front are the following: I am going to Scotland in the first week of September, with a good friend from Hungary, staying with our English friends, Alan and Steph. Laci, my old orienteering friend is a great traveller, and he asked me if I would go with him to Edinburgh and perhaps we could stay with my friends there. Alan and Steph are now retired and after leaving Brussels a few years ago, settled in Edinburgh. I asked them and they said YES!!! We are there between the 3rd and 7th of September, hopefully the weather will be kind, but I know that my friends will do everything to make it lovely for us.

Edinburgh castle

 

In the meantime, I have been organising a few events for Bér and elsewhere, for this summer. I have to chase up again Toti, another of my geocaching friends, as he has been promising faithfully this time, to really put together a few hours worth of caving for us, in order to find a multi-cache in a cave. I have asked a few caching friends to accompany me, and they are all enthusiastic, and hoping that this time it will finally happen.

Aerial view of Bér

The two Bér events are both concerning my 75th birthday. I may have mentioned before, that we will have a gathering on 15th July for my geocaching crowd, during which we will go on a small hike in the morning and will plant a tree in the afternoon. I also tried to invite some other friends for this event, but the date didn't fit, so they are coming 2 weeks later, at the end of July, for a weekend of cooking, eating, drinking, hiking, talking and especially switching off.

 

Back garden, looking towards the house 

I must go now, as I have a few household chores before having lunch and leaving for BP. Hopefully, the next post will have a lot more good news than this one. 💖

The hundred and seventieth week of the pandemic

Eventful week yet again. Last Wednesday Heino and Manet have left for the Netherlands and we left to come into BP, where we still are. Also, the weather turned quite nasty, strong winds, lots of rain, which had some destructive force. We found out later that the Dutch had lost their walnut tree in the storm. We didn't know much about the destruction in Nógrád, as we were in BP. Apparently there were flash floods in Bér, as Anna's video of the millstream on FB had shown. Gyöngyöstarján, a village between Gyöngyös and the Mátra Mountains, had a worse deal: the Mátra sent them a flash flood which killed two people and ruined dozens of houses, gardens and businesses.

Flash flood at the Mill

We came into BP, as I had a dental appointment, which unfortunately caused me a fair fright. The actual drilling and filling went OK, but as I got home afterwards I noticed that the left side of my face was drooping, as if I had a stroke. That was really frightening, I couldn't get the surgery on the phone, so we jumped on a tram and went back. Thankfully, I was assured by the chief of the surgery that these things happen, if not too often, but they are nothing to worry about. My pain relief injection obviously was too close to the facial nerves on the left and this was the result. I got some pain killers and antibiotics, was told to drink lots of water and move the facial muscles and it will be gone in a day or two. It did, but as I started the antibiotics I have to finish them which will not be until Thursday evening this week.

New electric strimmer

Last Thursday we also went to OBI and bought an electric strimmer for the courtyard and front. We decided against a battery driven one, as we didn't think they were robust enough. So close to the house we should have enough cable, and we will not have to fuss about charging it.

The puszta under a big sky

 

The main events this week were my two days of geocaching. On Saturday I caught a train at 6:30 am to Szolnok, where Viktor picked me up and we travelled to Mezőtúr. Nice, traditional flatlands type town,  surrounded by the puszta, with its rivers, canals and flat sandy lands. We started with two moving caches, then moved onto two multiparters in Mezőtúr, we also caught a cute little train one stop to practically nowhere in the puszta, where there was an inn for fishermen and kayak/canoe people. We only had 20 minutes to find the cache, but it all went well.

Train tracks across the river in the puszta

Later we visited a floodgate complex, some other water controlling place, and an abandoned old chateau. Viktor was such good company, the weather was perfect and we ended up walking about 7.5 km in three hits. The flatlands are always a bit difficult for geocaching, because you cannot drive on the flood barriers. Theoretically there are some places which you could drive on, provided you have bought a permit beforehand, but the system is chaotic, and we were caught out some time in the past, when we had the permit, the gate over the flood barrier was padlocked and nobody in the waterboard offices was nearby to open it. So, this time we drove as close to the cache we dared and walked on the flood barrier to the cache.

Viktor and me in a selfie

 

Unfortunately, for some reason the Hungarian Railways were having a bad hair day on Saturday and I didn't get home until 9:30 pm. It was a bit hectic to pack for Sunday, but fortunately, the suitcase with the spare clothes was untouched, on account of the good weather. As it happens, it was badly needed on Sunday, but all about that later.

A sodden meadow on Kab-hegy

Sunday I caught a train at 7 am to Veszprém, where Edit waited for me and we were straight  away leaving for Ajka, where we did a hike on Kab-hegy to get to the two caches I didn't get on the day of the Festival a few weeks back. That was due to the forestry gate being closed on the road we needed to get to them. We parked by the Forest School, which was the event centre for the Festival, and got going on the yellow cross markings.

The giant sinkhole on Kab-hegy

 

After a lot of rain recently, the tracks were waterlogged in many places. The other handicap we suffered was from neglected waymarking, changes in the forest and barbed wire, surrounding some special areas in the forest. Eventually, we got to the first cache which was by a geological wonder, that was well worth the long climb, overgrown vegetation and marshes. It was called Cat-hole. Basically, it was a sinkhole at the bottom of an enormous big depression, with a cave underneath it. I found out from the information board that Kab-hegy is volcanic, but not all the way through. Its base is karst and the lava that formed the basalt, is only the covering. Therefore, in places where this covering was missing or very thin, sinkholes and caves could form. It was impressive and I was really glad that we made the trek to it.

Edit, bringing the cache after she found it

The weather this far held, so we moved on quickly, after munching on our sandwiches, to approach the other cache. This one was placed beside another sinkhole, but that one was not nearly as impressive as the first one. Its name was Old Stony Sinkhole. The forest was very thick around it and we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes, so we were pretty quick in and out. Unfortunately, as soon as we were back on the road, the skies opened. We tried to hide under trees, waiting for it to stop, but it didn't. By the time we got soaked right through, there was no more point in waiting, at least walking you keep yourself warm, rather than getting cold hanging around.

Interior of the Paper Dog

An hour later we arrived back at the car, looking like two drowned rats, even though the rain stopped by then and the sun came out. I had a complete change of clothes, which was most welcome, and Edit suggested that we go to eat lunch in the Paper Dog. This restaurant was a modern one with an interesting menu, including vegetarian and vegan food, as well as meat and fish dishes. I chose a vegan tapas, which was delicious. Needless to say, the trains were late again in Veszprém too, although not as much as on Saturday. It arrived about 20 minutes late, and it stopped at so few places and went with such a speed, that it nearly made up the whole delay. 

The profile of our hike on Kab-hegy

The GPS measured our trip on Kab-hegy as 1.1 km long with about 180 metres of climb. The  weekend's tally of caches came out at 9, which now takes me up to 2785 finds in total. A most successful weekend, with two lovely friends in mostly good weather. I am hoping to get to 3000 total finds by the end of the year, but that looks a bit of a tall order. 215 further finds in 6 and half months is possible, but not likely for this year. However, if not this year, I am sure I will get there next year, and that'll be fine too.

Fáklya (Torch) logo

 

We were supposed to go home on Monday, but I was invited to Fáklya, a Marxist reading group, that meets on Wednesday, so we are now going home on Thursday morning. This reading group is part of that young group of students and young workers, who organised that meeting I mentioned in my last post. I think I am going to officially join them and attend their meetings as often as I am in town. The topic for this Wednesday is Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism, chapters 6 and 7. I am looking forward to it already.

Recent demo by teachers and students in Budapest

The hundred and sixtyninth week of the pandemic

The day after my last post we had an interesting day out. I have a moving cache, which basically means that it has to be moved from place to place by the cachers. Some have a theme, like stages of the cross, or springs, or mills or ancient churches and church ruins, and that means that once you found it you have to take it to another one. The other type of moving cache is one that moves along a set route. These could be along a particular paths with the same markers, or a pilgrimage route. Mine is the latter one.

Maria route symbol

Suddenly, I found out that it is coming to its Danube crossing, but the ferry, that has run there for decades has packed up and is no longer there to cross the river on. There were a few alternatives: either to go down river with it to the next ferry and cross there, or go up river, into Slovakia and use the bridge there, which is definitely the cheapest solution. So we went for that. I found the box in a bit of roadside jungle and then we crossed into Slovakia, then placed the cache further along its route on the Western side of the Danube, and then travelled back the same way.

The we crossed in Slovakia

Roy was a bit grumpy, so I asked if he wanted to visit a restaurant we haven't been in for ages for lunch? Of course he did, and we had a very pleasant lunch in their new extension, which was all glass. He had a beer with his meal and I drove home from there. We did a bit of food shopping en route and the day was really pleasant and successful.

Roy's happy with his pork and chips

Another interesting development concerned the mystery fault on my new mobile phone, which has still not been properly fixed. To help you catch up, here's the prehistory: a short while after purchase, but very soon after coming down to the village, I discovered that I couldn't make or receive phone calls on it. In the following weeks I tried anything and everything I could think of: personal visits to Yettel shops, (one in Hatvan, the other in BP), telephone calls to customer service, but nothing they tried or suggested worked. I even wanted to exchanage it for a new one, but failed to return the box when I tried, and everything that came with it, so that was out. I was running out of time, as you can only do that in the first month.

My infamous A34 phone

So, the only realistic option was to persevere and try to work out what the trouble was. The mystery thickened, when having come back to the village from Budapest, we found that the phone worked in Bér again. Yippee, I said, it obviously corrected its fault all by itself. Come the following day, however, it wouldn't make phone calls all over again. Roy, with his analytical brain, sat down and tried to work out what has changed between the day before and then? The only thing he could think of was that I turned it off for the night. So when we went out to move the cache to the other side of the Danube, and out of the village the phone worked fine, he suggested that I leave it on, and see what happens on the following day, and YIPPEEEE!! it worked. So the trouble must have been with the connection to the local tower, but once connected elsewhere it carried on working.

A pretty forest flower on my hike

We were both very happy, and I was trying to remember every evening not to turn it off. It worked for several days, when one day, I have just woken up and my phone offered me an update. Automatically, and still half asleep, I clicked OK and it started the update. Suddenly, a feeling of horror hit me, I forgot that a telephone always turns off and reboots after an update, so my telephone connection was in danger of disappearing again. BUT!! I thought, what if the fault was a software fault all the time and the update might fix it? And Hooray!! I was right. To be quite honest, I blamed myself of not thinking of something as obvious as that, but the shame is still with all the Yettel personnel, who either in person or on the phone, never mentioned that option. Having got used to not turning it off for the night, I am now carrying on with it.

The next really marvellous event of the last week was on Thursday. I have been in touch, on and off for the last 4 or 5 years or so, with some left wing students, who had some contact with my comrades in Austria and England. They were always against the current regime in Hungary, and considered themselves Marxists, but didn't seem to be able to put together a group to organise themselves. Then, this week I picked up an advertisement on FB, about a meeting being addressed by a British comrade and inviting all and sundry to it.

Jack leading off at the meeting

So I went and it was probably the best decision so far this year that I made. In the last few years, while I kept an eye on them, but did not get the chance to have face to face meetings with them, they have come a very long way. One of them has spent a few months in England, attended branch meetings there and learned the basics of how to organise a Marxist group from scratch. Unfortunately, his stay in the UK got cut short by the pandemic, but it looks that even so, he learnt enough to put it into practice back here.

The audience at the meeting

They invited me to attend their meetings: they have weekly ones - every other week organisational matters, in between reading groups. It will not be easy travelling in every week form Bér, but hopefully I should be able to organise myself to be in BP on the odd Wednesday, so I don't lose touch with them. The atmosphere was great, the enthusiasm infectious and I am really happy that my homeland now has the embryo of a truly great Marxist group, which can only develop to have more of a voice in current affairs.

Apc quarry lake, Heino and Manet's hike

On Friday, we had Heino and Manet for lunch, which was, as it always is, a lovely affair. The weather turned really warm, so we had it out in the pavilion, with Roy cooking a curry, both chicken and veg, and me making Somlói Galuska. They are going home tomorrow, so this was a short visit, but I hope they will be back later on in the summer. Let us hope it will be a longer visit and not at a time when we are not around.

Gathering of the Hash on Sunday

On Sunday, I was due to go to the Hash, as it was the 40th Anniversary special weekend, but didn't feel up to it. I was trying to stay strong for a day of caching in the Mátra with Roy on the Monday, and that is what we finally did. You may recall that I had a bit of a disaster last October, when I had a funny turn right at the beginning of a big hike, which I especially organised to pick up some difficult caches in the Mátra. Thus missed most of them.

Sandstone rocks by the path in the Mátra

So, yesterday we went to the Mátra, where Roy discovered, much to his dismay, that I was expecting him to go round the mountain range to the Northern side to pick me up. My hike was a mostly downhill trip, starting in Galyatető at the top and finishing in a small village at the bottom on the Northern side. The other reason why I was very keen to do it this Monday, as the long range weather forecast predicted at least a full week of rain in the region starting today. And it did, it's pouring outside as I write this.

Table and benches by the first spring

So, Roy dropped me at the trail head, and I started my very steep descent, occasionally peppered with a short bit of steep uphill, that was not too bad. Overall, I did more than 400 metres of descent, which on this amount of gradient, with scattered rocks, boulders and swampy bits, was quite testing. I am half dead today, with every joint in my body complaining, but I must admit, having a hard hike, after not much exercise in the last 6 months, was most satisfying.

A lovely view to the North from the forestry road

First I went to a spring, along glorious oak and beech forest, then to a couple of old remnants of forts/castles, trace of either long gone, and one of them was in a real jungle with no paths at all. Nowadays, nobody hikes off marked paths, therefore those which are unmarked disappear and get overgrown with time. Still, while physically hard, emotionally I was in seventh heaven. Forests and mountains are my true element, and I had a fantastic time. 

Mátraalmás footie pitch in the forest

After those two came another spring, followed by a 4km boring traipse on a forestry road, where the only break in the monotony was bird song and the occasional lookout point, offering fantastic views all the way to Slovakia. At the end of this forestry road awaited Roy, my kind chauffeur, in the village of Mátraalmás. The village is getting really pretty, which is good and bad at the same time. Good, because tatty and almost ruinous old peasant houses have come back to life, by being beautifully renovated and therefore saved. But bad, because all those houses now belong to incomers from the neighbouring and even further towns and are used as weekend and holiday homes only. Still, I found the cache there easily and we moved onto my last cache of the day.

Forest path in the Mátra

The road to it, well, the last 2km of it, was on another forest road, which as far as I knew, was strictly off limits. However, I couldn't see any signs forbidding entry, so I was hoping Roy would save me 2km x 2 of walk on hard gravel, which did nothing for my joints. We were very unlucky, while we were pondering the question, there were no vehicles going in or out of this road, proving that you can drive on it, so finally, I offered that I would walk in.

Shelter and BBQ pit next to the footie pitch

Needless to say, there were no restrictions and later on we saw several vehicles, cars, motorbikes and large lorries travelling on it. Still, while my joints were seriously suffering, I had a beautiful walk, in thick broadleaf forest, saw a little holiday village with pretty houses, a lake and even met some dogwalkers, who helped me find the spring, where my last cache was. It was quite overgrown, and the enormous beech tree from underneath of which the water used to come, had dried out and had to be cut down. There was no water there either, but at least I found the cache box, and walked back to Roy happy.

En route to my last cache

The plan for the rest of the week is also a bit too full of stuff, but I can't complain, at least neither of us is bored. We are off to BP tomorrow, I have a dental apointment on Thursday, a day out caching with Viktor on Saturday and another day out caching with Edit on Kab-hegy on Sunday. This latter one is to find the two missing caches on Kab-hegy that we couldn't get to a few weeks ago, as the foresters blocked it for through travel on the day of the Geocaching Festival/Competition. Let's hope that my joints last and I can do both days justice.

The planned route on the Kab-hegy

 

Next post, hopefully, next Wednesday. 😊