The last week was mostly spent at home, with only one outing and that wasn't too far either. I was busy online, again, occasionally having to alter what I thought I have already finished. On my GCWALK page, having played around with the location of the car park last week, now I had to respond to somebody else's changes on my page. Somewhat irritating, but I suppose the guy must have thought that he was helping, so I let it go.
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| The final version of the GCWALK banner |
This whole thing started from another cacher who also organises GCWALKs, but in good Hungarian fashion, leaves everything to the last minute. Mine is in November, hers is in less than three weeks. But numbering goes based on the date you put it online, so hers ended up being the 40th and mine the 39th. This happened once before, and while it is a bit confusing, nobody complained. This time, for some reason, she arranged something with a guy where she lives and he just unilaterally changed mine to 40th. I was somewhat miffed, but let it go. However, it gave me some extra work, because the number was wrong in a variety of places where the guy could not change it, as only I had access. I did that and moved on to other work.
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| The blue boat at the front is Alex |
Alex didn't ring at the weekend, as he was away at the trailer and having fun on the water, as usual. I do miss his voice when he doesn't ring, but I understand that he must have some time off and fun, considering that he is holding down a full time job, as well as his kayaking business at the weekends. And on the odd occasion he goes out with friends to have a whole day kayaking, he deserves it. While I am writing about him, must mention that on Monday he went to the Hungarian Consulate in Toronto to submit all his paperwork for his new Hungarian passport and the application for registering Callum's Hungarian citizenship, followed by a passport for him later. They said it would take a whole year, and that is spot on. Stephen's took a whole year, and then another month for the passport.
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| The Hungarian Consulate is here in this block |
The only day we went out anywhere last week was Thursday, when we had to go out for a variety of reasons. With the tropical downpours a couple of weeks ago, we had some water ingress downstairs in the Library. We worked it out that it must have been through holes in the covering of the patio and in other deteriorated concrete edgings. We also noted that the bottom of one of the pillars holding up the porch at the back has disintegrated and underneath there was a large hole. So, Roy insisted at going to the builders' merchants in Palotás and as we were running out of bread and milk, we then also went to the market there and the Coop. We got the sand and cement, some new brushes for the upcoming painting planned and a few other stuff. The market in Palotás was a shadow of its old self, hardly any stalls selling anything. The Coop is still as useless as ever, but fundamental foods are still available. I was feeling really unwell at the end of the shopping trip, so we got home quickly.
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| Palotás Market when it was new |
Talking about feeling ill, I was wondering a few days later, if we both had Covid lately? I read of a very fast moving, very infectious latest mutation of the Covid virus being rampant in the UK. If it spreads that fast, it must have already arrived in Hungary too. What made me suspect it, was not so much the symptoms, because Covid is famous for changing drastically in terms of symptoms all the time. It was the fact that Roy was unwell too. He was less ill than me, which is normal, but the symptoms were identical, which doesn't happen very often. I still have some test kits from Canada, but those must be quite out of date by now. Still, if I thought of this earlier, we could have tested ourselves, as even out of date test kits, if they show that you have got it, are correct. They only become unreliable if they show you haven't got it. Still, it is too late now, so we didn't bother, but it might have been Covid, or something similar. Roy seems OK, but I am still hardly sleeping, often weak and shaky, perspiring and get far too tired far too quickly.
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| The caches around Mórahalom and Szeged |
Having long rests hoping to recover, I finally managed to finish the very long cache list for our trip to Szeged at the end of the month. Celebrating Roy's birthday will be done at his favourite steak house in the city, let us hope he'll enjoy it as much as he did last time. Once I finished the list, I realised that we will have to have an overnight stay the night before we get to Szeged, so found a place in Mórahalom, West of Szeged, a place I have been before in my orienteering days. Hopefully, we will not get caught by the border guards, as some of the caches are pretty close to the border with Serbia, a sore point due to the razor wire fencing erected by Orbán's regime.
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| Denzel Washington in Equalizer 2 |
I watched some Netflix this week too, namely two Equalizer films, which I enjoyed, in spite of the violence. Denzel Washington is always good, whatever he is in. And then came an interesting day in the garden, which was a tad dangerous, but we got away with it. Over the last month we have collected a large amount of fallen tree branches, including those that broke on the plum trees and others that Roy cut off. He collected them over the stump of the gypsy plum tree, which still needs burning, as it sticks up a bit. He might have a go at it with his chain saw, but I always prefer different methods to chain sawing, as I think it is far too dangerous in the hands of someone as untrained and inexperienced in using them as Roy.
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| The fire only 2 minutes after it was lit |
On Saturday morning, which is one of the only two days when you are allowed to burn things in our village, the wind was up. In fact, for a while I insisted that we do not burn anything until it got a bit calmer. About a couple of hours after that we decided to do it. Roy went to connect the hose, in readiness just in case we need it, and I got the fire going. You will not believe it, but the entire enormous pile went up in about 2 minutes in massive flames and smoke. It was so quick, that by the time I thought of photographing it, you could hardly see flames, it was all smoke. In spite of the recent downpours, the wood in the pile was so dry that a job that usually takes a whole day, was done and dusted in an hour.
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| 1905 Russian Revolution poster |
On Sunday there were two events, one was great, the other less so. First I had my my reading group, which after a hiatus of more than three weeks was most welcome. We returned to Alan's Bolshevism book and discussed the details of the run up to the 1905 revolution in Russia. The book is about very good real events in these paragraphs, so it was easy reading and a wide variety of aspects to talk about. I always like to compare some of it with today's current affairs, and you would be surprised how relevant is that bit of history to today's events all over the world.
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| The glorious Bood Moon somehwere in Asia |
The next event that I was equally looking forward to was a let down. Mostly my fault, as I didn't realise that immediately after the end of the reading group I should have been outside watching it. I am talking about the Blood Moon that was supposed to have been visible all over Europe. Well, by the time I remembered to get out, we have just missed it. It was still very slightly red, but slowly returning to normal. Never mind, since then I saw some gorgeous photos done by professionals, so I enclose the one I liked the best.
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| Hoppers full of plums 2 years ago |
A couple of other things come to mind that I also did recently, one was ringing the guy whose plums we usually buy when we don't have enough of our own plums to fill all four of the barrels. This year we need 100 kilos to fill the last barrel and I want about 20 kilos for jam. I told the guy we need a 120 kilos and he said that if I ring next week he should be able to tell me roughly when to go over for it. The good luck this time is that 120 kilos we don't need to take barrels for, but our small hoppers will do and then we will not struggle removing them from the car, as we usually do with barrels.
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| The cause of my latest problem |
And finally, the thing that happened last night: Linda wrote that we had our replacement bank cards in the post, about two months early. In the last 10 or 20 years the postal services of both UK and Hungary had become so dreadful that we never dare to trust them to the post. So, the hunt for a courier is on. I think I found someone, but I'm not sure if she should do it, while another person who travels frequently between the two countries has just recently gone back, so she is out too. Keep your fingers crossed that we can solve it somehow.
Next post on next Wednesday, buy which time we have Manet with us and should the weather oblige, we will be up on ladders painting the woodwork on the outside of the Bunkhouse and on the gate.
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