Well, last Tuesday's worry about Roy was quite well founded, but he was stubborn and insisted to go to lunch with Heather and Lyle. I could understand this, after all we haven't seen them for 3 years and it would be very embarrassing to call it off at the last minute. I reckon Heather and Lyle would have understood it, but never mind.
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| Lyle and Heather in the Vigadó, having lunch |
The time we spent with them was really lovely. Even in his fragile state, you could see that Roy was enjoying their company and we definitely did some catching up during lunch. We went to the Vigadó Restaurant near Batthyány Square, opposite the Parliament on the Buda side. This is a restaurant we quite like and it was a few minutes' walk from where Heather and Lyle's ship docked. Afterwards we went for a short walk, but I could see that Roy was in a bad way.
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| Roy, I, Heather and Lyle with the Parliament for background |
By the time we got home he looked quite done in. I was very concerned, but knowing him, I knew he would refuse to see a doctor, no matter how bad he felt. So, I managed to buy a cough linctus for him, which helped a bit, but there was no way we could go home before the weekend. I am absolutely sure that the virus he caught was the latest version of Covid, and for once he caught it a lot worse than I did. I spent a couple of weeks coughing and sneezing before, but did not get the really bad cough, like Roy did.
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| David Grimal performing |
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| My beloved dr. Lakos |
On Wednesday I went to dr. Lakos's surgery to have some more blood taken for keeping an eye on my Lyme's Disease. He is such a nice guy, both him and his assistant are what medical staff should be: knowledgeable, caring and a bit of fun too. The results arrived 5 days later by email and it showed that I was negative. That is good news, but I still have to go back in another 6 months' time, when he takes some more blood and analyses it against the previous two. That is what can give you a true all clear, if that is negative too. I trust him, and while he is rather expensive, I think he is worth every penny of it.
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| World Perspectives 2025 |
In the evening I had another online reading group session with Márkó and Levi, discussing the second half of the 2025 World's Perspectives document. It was a long, lively and very enjoyable session again, I do hope we will be able to keep this up for a long time. It forces me to read political text, sometimes in books, at other times in papers or journals. It is helping me to stay in touch with what is going on in the world, and at the same time, I can keep in touch with good friends, whom I wouldn't see any other way. The next session is in a week tomorrow, when we return to Alan's Bolshevism book, carrying on from where we left off a couple of months ago.
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| Alan's Bolshevism book, available 3 ways |
On Thursday and Friday Roy showed slight, but noticeable improvement, but his appetite was still not back to normal. The cough medicine seemed to help, although one never knows whether it would have got better without it as well. He was grumbling that his favourite cough medicine from England, Benilyn would have cured him in a couple of days. Perhaps, although I couldn't be sure, until I realised that Benilyn and other similar cough medicines have been banned in the EU, as they have a drug in them, which can be cooked up to be an illegal substance. That is, obviously the reason why you can't buy it here. At the beginning we found an old bottle, which must have been brought over some years back, but there was not enough of it, or it was just simply so out of date, that it didn't have any effect.
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| The lookout tower on the lake |
We were both planning to go to the Tisza-lake on Saturday, as Roy seemed quite a lot improved and I didn't dare ask him not to come, as he might have taken that as rejection. So I was seriously pleased when early morning on Saturday, while preparing sandwiches, he asked if I would mind terribly if he didn't come. For once he was realistic at judging his inability to travel and realised that it would be unwise to come that day. I said that it was very wise that he called it off for himself and if he didn't mind, I would go alone. He looked very relieved, so I went on my own, which was a bit lonely, but the event was so fantastic, that I didn't mind.
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| The next transport arriving by the lookout tower |
This event was organised by Marcsi, a cacher who is a classical busy body type, but very nice with it. She can get a bit into the odd tizzy, resulting in some chaos, but most of the time, it is fixed quickly and the fun carries on. The program was full of activities, all relating to geocaching, but also having a good chance to catch up with other cachers and having exciting boat trips on the lake and chasing after lots of moving caches.
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| Our return trip from the lookout tower in the smaller boat |
This was the second of these events round the Tisza-lake, and if it is possible, it was even more fun than last year. We had two boat trips: one from a harbour at the Northern end of the lake and another one from the Southern end, by the big dam and power station. The first one was quite short and about 45 of us were taken in two boats, with the boatmen having to turn twice to fit us all in. The aim was to get to a fairly new geocache, which was on a lookout tower. The sun was conspicuous but its absence, so the photos are a bit dark, but it was still very nice indeed.
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| Lots of birds in the reservation |
On our return, we found the event cache and the first one of seven moving caches which were in and around the lakeside during the day. The harbour master was a nice bloke and the two guys guiding the boats were nice too. I had to buy a flood barrier permit for the princely figure of 80 pence, as about a kilometre of our approach to the harbour was on the flood barrier.
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| One of four little boats in our flotilla |
Once we finished at the Northern end, we all had to drive 45 kilometres to the Southern end for the rest of the program. As the weather was quite good, the general opinion was that in the South we should start with the other boat trip, which went to pick up a moving cache and gave to those that haven't yet found another one to walk to that one as well. I have already had that one some years back, so I stayed in my boat while a group went for that one too.
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| Feri, our guide at the helm |
This actual boat trip was a lot longer than getting to the lookout tower and back in the North. We saw some birds, a lot of fishermen, some fast travel on the river and then in narrow, overgrown channels too. It was exciting, and finally the sun came out too. We were out on the lake for about a couple of hours, so I thought I was very wise to eat my salmon sandwiches before we embarked. I took lots of lovely photos, but as if the weather gods knew when I was trying to take a photo, the sun went in at those times with monotonous regularity. .
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| Looking for the GCKV cache in the jungle |
While the second group was out on the lake I sat down in the one and only still open cafe and chatted with cacher friends. One of them, Attila, was very kind and bought me a coffee. Once we were back together again, the first activity was to plant a tree. There is a cache that goes with tree planting, so about 25 to 30 of us helped with planting, watering and protecting the little tree and had a cache to log as well.
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| The group gathering for the trip to GCBELO |
The following activity was picking up rubbish, as that goes with a cache as well, plus that is always a useful activity. And finally, we went to the Island of Good Hope, which was a small spit that stuck out into the lake, not far from the cafe, where somebody placed the moving cache that goes with lakes all over the country. I was getting worried about Roy, who actually sounded very chirpy the many times I rang him, so perhaps I shouldn't have worried.
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| The group photo of the tree planters |
There were two more moving caches, which were put out in the area, one by a lovely little chapel and another one by an 400 year old oak tree. They were a bit further away from the lake, so one had to go by car, rather than on foot. I was lucky, as at both places I ran into others, also looking for the caches, so I didn't feel alone. The sun started going down a bit and it started getting quite cloudy, so I was happy that I had company at both places.
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| A busy couple of trash collectors at Good Hope Island |
The little chapel I have remembered from last year, then I found and logged its permanent cache. This time there was the moving cache that goes from chateaux to chateaux, which in this case was a bit of a stretch, because the local chateau has burned down decades ago, but the little chapel, having been the estate chapel, had to do.
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| Logging GCTO in the hut |
The oak tree, however, was an absolute revelation. I have never seen a prettier ancient tree than this one was. Once we all found the box, logged and managed to climb back up onto the flood barrier, we all went on our way. The friends that I was together with at the tree were not going home until Sunday, so they took off in an Easterly direction towards Hajdúszoboszló, which is a spa town, and I headed towards to M3 to get back to the flat and to Roy.
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| A magnificent view from Good Hope Island |
I got home by about 7:30 pm and even found a parking space near the flat, which was quite miraculous. I slept like someone who went several rounds with Mike Tyson, nearly 400 kilometres of driving and running around all day had its good side. On Sunday morning we got in the car and came home to Bér, via Lidl in Aszód. In the late afternoon I had a short call from Xander, so I could say Happy Birthday to him, and he said thanks for the presents to us. He is a big boy now, aged 12 he counts as a "small adolescent" in Hungarian.
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| The little chapel |
I have just thought that also means that I will have a few fractious and complicated sessions of form filling with Stephen, as he now wants to apply for both boys' Hungarian passports. What fun, but I am glad that the entire family, with the exception of Meaghan will have a Hungarian passport eventually. Meaghan, not being born Hungarian, would have to pass a language and cultural exam, which she thought she won't bother with. Very wise, methinks. If you are a negative person relating to world politics, you would probably feel that with the EU en route to falling apart, there should be no special effort put into gaining an EU passport. Still, with all three of my grandsons being considered Hungarian, even though they don't speak the language, makes me happy.
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| The majestic 400 year old oak tree |
The last two days went by quite quickly. Roy is still coughing, but his appetite is back and he sleeps better now. If what I heard, that this lurgy leaves you coughing for at least a month, there are several weeks are till to go. I have done all the paperwork relating to the found caches: extending the text and uploading photos. I also put up some of those photos to FB, which got a lot of Likes. I organised a maintenance engineer to come the next time we are in BP, to do a service on the boiler. Apparently, we were still in the database, which told the lady on the phone that the last time they came to us was in 2011. Methinks it was about time to have some maintenance on the poor gadget.
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| Oak bark in close up |
I also had a slight panic, as the final yearly meter readings of water, gas and electricity come in around now. They were all in the £250 to £300 bracket, which is quite high, as this is not the total sum we were billed for over the year, this is the final balancing payment. We have paid monthly, or quarterly in the case of water, regularly, so as not to get enormous bills at the end of the year. Interestingly, the BP waterboard was a bit crooked, as they wrote on the balancing bill that the meter was read, when I knew that it wasn't, for two reasons: 1. I do remember not having anyone come to the flat to read the water meter; 2. the figure quoted was sky high compared with what was on the meter.
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| Vaillant BAXI boiler |
The good news with the water meter is that I didn't pay the high bill and I noticed yesterday that they gave us a fair sum back on top of that. So that is sorted. However, the panic was about trying to get online to see my Hungarian bank account to see which payments have been drawn from it by the utility companies. I tried, but I couldn't log on. Every time I was waiting for the security code sent by SMS, it didn't arrive. To cut a long story short, eventually I found a lovely, kind, patient and very helpful woman on the telephone, who explained to me that if I accidentally blocked their number, how to unblock it. So it is OK now, and I hope that we have finished all this hassle for another year, that always goes with the end of year utility meter readings and the bills that follow them.
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| The location of Alex's Level 3 kayak course |
There are two more happenings that I must mention here. One is that Alex had just gone on his Level 3 kayak course in Nova Scotia, where they will be out in 6ft waves in the Atlantic Ocean, which frightens me a bit. I did see on FB some photos put up by his friend, Virgil, but I could not see Alex in any of them. I hope that doesn't mean that he went down with some lurgy in solidarity with his father, or anything bad had happened to him. This is a full week's course, so he should be healthy and strong to benefit and pass it. I will keep my fingers crossed all week.
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| Alex, owner and chief coach of Lovesick Kayaking |
The other thing related to the cruise that we are hoping to have next March with the Canadian mob and which has so far been absolutely impossible to find in the right place, at the right price and especially at the right dates. The place has to be where the Canadians can fly to, the price is also important not to be in the ridiculous sphere, and the dates have to fit in with Callum's school holidays. After having tried for the last two months to come up with something, I have thrown in the towel and contacted a travel agency, which I have read lots of good reviews of and which has only been around for about 2 years. I don't know whether that is a good or a bad thing, but I do hope they come up with something. I finish now as this has got quite long, even though a lot of the week was spent being ill. Hopefully Roy will be closer to normal this time next week, than he is today. Next post on Wednesday, as usual.
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| An MSC cruise boat on the Mediterranean |
PS: Had communication from Alex. He is fine, just not having enough data on his phone stopped him posting photos. That was a relief. Also, I started communicating with Meaghan about the cruise and it looks that we might change the dates, so that we can take the cruise that I fancied right from the beginning. I will keep you in the picture relating to cruising in future.
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