My first leadoff, Roy's new project and Stephen

We are mostly staying in Bér nowadays, except when we go into BP for the discussion group and the branch meeting. Two of the apple trees have born fruit, and we have been doing some preserving from the apple trees and the little pear tree. There have been a lot of apples on just one tree and we harvested the usable ones for Roy's apple crumble for the weekend.

The latest apple harvest in the basket

The garden work mostly consisted of pruning the roses, mowing, watering the two new trees and tractoring. Thankfully, the horrible heat has finished, although it can still be quite warm on a few days, but the nights are now getting quite cold and the first frost is forecast for next week. On Saturday I had an online meeting with Levi, which went quite well.

I had finished working on my leadoff on The Origins of Class Society quite early and got lumbered with another one. On Saturday during the study weekend, I am supposed to lead in an article from IDOM, written by Alan on the Are you a communist? campaign. Alan is a bugger to translate. So many colloquialisms, sayings and sarcasm in his articles, that it is extremely difficult to find an equivalent in Hungarian. Still, I did it.

The Bunkhouse, where the comrades will stay

The program has finally been put together for the Bér weekend for me and my comrades this coming weekend. We will have a dinner of potato paprikash, cooked by Hanna, on Friday. Saturday morning we will be reading Alan's article from IDOM magazine. I will lead off for about 10 minutes and then we'll read together with translation. I have already done the translation and have a printed copy.

The world famous andesite columns

Saturday afternoon we will go for a hike up to the andesite columns, followed by an English roast, courtesy of Roy. On Sunday morning we were going to read some more Marxism, this time the pages 15 to 30 from our own World Perspectives. But in the light of the recent in Israel/Palestine, we are now reading an excellent, but unfortunately unsigned article on this topic from marxist.com. I have to admit that this article is probably the best I ever read on this website. The quality implies Alan, but the style is different. I'd dearly love to know whose work it is. 

Marx's article from 166 years ago

Hopefully, the whole weekend will be enjoyable, I have even made a somlói galuska and Roy will work hard on his roast pork. On Tuesday we had a visit from Daniel and Lilly, the couple running the tea house in the village and are need of some bed space for their visitors at the end of the month. They seemed quite nice and we agreed on 15,000 Ft a night, irrespective of how many sleep there. This will happen at the last weekend in the month.

Roy's steps from below

During the week Roy started a new project, namely a set of steps down to the road from the highest part of the crescent. He made the steps out of earth, wood and metal pegs. They look fantastic, but he has only done the bit along the cesspit. The route to the road is under debate at present. I wanted to go left from the current end of the steps, as I felt the terrain is less steep and uneven that way. Roy seems to think we should go right, in front of Irénke's cellar and then down. We'll see who wins this battle. 

Roy's steps from above

At 4 o'clock on Tuesday 10th, we had an EC online, which was quite good. I am getting to know the comrades better and better every week. I think these young people are under so much pressure from work, from home, from illness, the political work etc. that I am amazed they can cope with everything as well as they do. The trouble in the branch, though, is that there are a few people who are no good. No contributions, lots of doubt and questions, which don't come from being new and green, (those are usually very good questions and we welcome them), but from having very bourgeois, deeply held and very useless ideas, which will  a lot of effort take to get them out of. Somehow the old Brighton curse of attracting weirdos is valid in BP as well. This may sound very hard, but it is a general rule, that in the beginning, when there are only a few of you in a raw, brand new organisation, you need rock solid types, as the work is hard enough to establish yourselves, to bother with weirdos. Needless to say, the comrades do not understand this, but hopefully they will learn it without too many disasters caused by softness.

One of the 8 pages of the first edition of Fáklya

On Wednesday we went in to BP. and I also offered our flat as the venue for the meeting. It was also the time I did my first leadoff. I am pleased to report that everything went well, and we achieved quite a lot within the meeting. We are on the cusp of producing and publishing our very first newspaper. It looks to be well done and I can't wait for selling it. Finally, 12 people said that they were coming to Bér for the weekend and now all we have to do is keep our fingers crossed for good weather.

Xander last year on the chair lift in the Buda hills

 

In the meantime Stephen appeared for a flying visit. He flew in on Wednesday evening and went to the gig straight away. As we had to leave fairly early in the morning on Thursday, we didn't see him, but he went to the flat for a rest before flying home. Thursday was also Xander's 10th birthday. I hope Stephen will ring today to give us a chance to talk to Xander and wish him a happy, albeit late, birthday. We sent money to Stephen to buy a full set of Seagull's kit for him as a present from us, I hope he'll like it.

We did a massive shop in Tesco's en route home, some for us, some for the comrades. The first car with 3 people in it is due to arrive somewhere between 3pm and 4pm this afternoon. I presume Hanna will set about cooking straight away, I hope the cooker is up to it. I will have to deadhead and prune the roses before they come and put the central heating after 3pm, when the scheduled power outage is hopefully finishing. I'll try to publish the next post on a Wednesday again and keep to it there after. 💖