I'm afraid the first topic has to be Roy's illness again. Fairly soon after my last blog post Roy got very bad with his cough, his pulse and blood pressure jumped so high, that we had to go to the 'out of hours' medical service, which thankfully is only 5 minutes' walk from the flat. There a very nice couple of guys, one doctor and one assistant from the ambulance service, examined him and prescribed lots of medicines for him. Thankfully, it all worked and he started recovering straight away.
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| Roy before he was ill |
The meds included various things to get his blood pressure down, a Ventolin inhaler, and an emergency medication to get very high blood pressure down in minutes. Thankfully, he didn't need that, but he did take all the others. He seemed to be able to sleep better quite quickly and both his pulse and blood pressure got normal in a day or two.
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| I before I was ill |
What, however, was a bad outcome, that I had a relapse, started coughing again and still feel very weak. The outcome of this one was that I had to cancel my attendance at the geocaching hiking tour, that I planned, organised and was going to lead. That was a real bummer, but being responsible for a potentially large group of people is a serious job, and that was what I definitely wasn't up to doing. Thankfully, one of my best friends among the geocachers was attending with his wife, so they took over the leading role, plus my young friend Niki was helping them out with Henriett, another new geocaching friend. My good friends, the Bocs family have also got involved, once they joined the crowd at the top and assisted with the hidden coordinates, which was sent to them, as well as to the leader, but when the vast majority needed them, the group going the other way, that included Jankó the leader, hasn't yet arrived. It all went perfectly and I am eternally grateful to them for that.
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| Group photo before the geocaching hike |
I spent several days in bed, and that always helps me to recover quickly. As Saturday came, I was online watching their progress along the route from the caches they logged. Later I found out that they split in two, as some people didn't feel up to climbing up the ladders in the ravine, which was one of two options to get to the top. The other half braved it and ended up very wet and muddy, but loved it. Unfortunately, the weather turned wet and cold, which made it even harder, but the average cacher is made of steel and does not let slight hiccups like that diminish his or her enjoyment of hunting caches.
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| Huddle for the password of the mobile cache |
This bad weather was another aspect that made me realise that I made the right decision to opt out, as I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep up, never mind lead that hike in those conditions. That day also gave me another great pleasure, namely realising how many really good friends I have among the cachers. Several people kept posting photos, to let me know how they are progressing, some called me quite often and I really felt much impressed by their kindness. At the end of the day I put a comment up on the website, and attached all the photos they sent me, so I really felt as if I was there.
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| Boiler similar to ours |
The only event before the weekend worth mentioning here was the visit from a very nice and efficient central heating engineer, who worked like a professional, was fairly chatty and answered all our questions. He said that considering the boiler has not been maintained for 14 years it was still in fairly good condition. He found two things wrong, one was the pressure in the little tank inside that was too high, and the other the gas pressure setting, also too high, which wasted a fair amount of gas. He adjusted both, cleaned everything very thoroughly and if anyone asks, I can recommend Korka Mihály from Vaillant any day. He was even totally honest about how often we should call him again, as he assured us that in spite of what the Vaillant website says, once every two years in enough.
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Other than the 40 minutes the central heating guy was with us, I stayed in bed all the way to Sunday when we returned to Bér. This gave me the chance to watch some TV on my laptop, which slowly, but surely cheered me up. I watched the entire 3rd series of The Lincoln Layer, as well as the 3rd series of The Diplomat. I love both these shows, as they are pure entertainment, without the schmaltz. The scripts are well written, the actors are pretty good in them and the story lines are interesting.
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| Keri Russell as Kate Wyler |
Sunday was a tad exhausting, but we both survived it. Being quite unwell and weak, cleaning the flat was our last thing we would have done, but we still had to do it, as Stephen is coming at the end of this week to stay in the flat for three nights. I found all his bedding in the box room, where it was stored after the last time I washed it. We put the settee covers away, as he never knows how to put it back. The settings on the central heating control unit were also a bit mucked up, so I sorted that as well, I hope it stays that way. En route home we went shopping at Tesco and spent £200. The prices are an absolute disgrace. In a country where the average wage is about a fifth of that in the UK, food prices are now identical and occasionally even higher that in the UK. We both got very tired during shopping, so Sunday evening neither of us needed any lullabies to go to sleep.
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| My lovely almost new e-bike |
On Monday Attila appeared with my e-bike. He is so nice that he made a detour from his trip to Debrecen to deliver it. His girlfriend, the lady he bought it for, couldn't use it as she was petrified of surrounding traffic on the roads he took her to. He bought it a year ago, but it was only used twice and then he put it away. Only when I made a comment on the geocaching website about planning to buy one, did he write to me about it. I paid £700 for it, which for a practically new bike was not bad. Attila brought the charger, which goes with the bike, and we are still to get a helmet for me and a pump for the bike. I am really looking forward to joining the guys on the next caching bike ride, but I think I will give the icy ride, which they do every January, a miss. The other use I might make of having it, is getting to those caches which are along flood barriers, but are a long way from the last car park. I do have quite a few of those in the Flatlands to find yet.
Monday had a lot less fun than getting my bike in it too. I was rung by a friend who needed someone with a non-UK bank card to buy a ticket for Crystal Palace's match in France. Apparently, to control the UK supporters, the club there put a ban on UK credit cards, and he missed the chance to buy one from Palace, as the number of tickets was ridiculously small. I said I would have a go, and as it happens, I actually got a ticket for him quite easily.
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| The transaction NOT BLOCKED! |
The trouble started when I checked online whether the transaction had gone through and spotted the words BLOCKED against it in my account. I couldn't understand on what grounds they could block it, especially that the money was taken out of my account in seconds. I wasn't worried, as at first I thought it must be because I did this on the Sunday, and the Bank obviously does not deal with it until Monday. But when I tried it on Monday morning, it was still the same. The trouble started when I tried to ring them up. I tried and tried without success and was really frustrated, as the nearest Raiffeisen branch is about an hour's drive from here. I eventually gave up and started doing other things, and when I tried to ring again, I got through in 20 seconds. The very sweet and helpful young woman at the other end of the phone had a look and said that she could not see the word BLOCKED anywhere. You know what happened? Not only that obviously they do not deal with these on a Sunday, but even on Monday it takes them a while, because 1. they do not have enough staff to answer the phones and 2. to deal with foreign transactions. The BLOCKED word had really disappeared and everything was fine. Brrrrrrr!!!!
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| MSC Armonia, our cruise ship |
And now for some better news. You may recall me mentioning that the Canadian bunch and us two are planning a cruise together next spring. Things were proceeding quite slowly, partly because of Alex and Meaghan's holiday dates, plus clearing lots of question from them. Then we got ill and I couldn't face it. Finally, the last few days have got me as far as booking it and I also paid the deposit. The next step is for both Alex and co. plus us finding transport to get to Venice. Our options are either train or plane, theirs is, obviously, plane. We are now considering going a day early, as that would ease some of the pressure of deadlines for embarkation. I even found a cute little house in a very convenient location for the station, the port and the airport. Let us hope that gets resolved, after which we need to contact our insurance agent for some travel insurance and buy the transport tickets as soon as we know when to go.
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| Our itinerary in April 2026 |
MSC is a much simpler and cheaper outfit than P&O that we used to cruise with. On the other hand, the travel agent, Dorina, was very helpful and nice, so that is definitely a plus. Two cabins for 5 people for a week, in an inside cabin is costing 3500 Euros. That is dirt cheap. Let us hope that the facilities and the food etc. will be good enough. I personally only go for being with Alex, Meaghan and Callum and am not that bothered with the rest. What took me really long to organise is finding the route the ship takes, that would suit everyone. I hope I found it, as it has Kotor in it, which I wanted, Dubrovnik in it that Meaghan wanted to revisit and other than the first day, we are actually docking somewhere every day, which was asked for by Alex. Let us hope all will be well and everybody will have fun for a week.
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| The gorgeous Christmas cactus |
Locally things seem to be OK. We returned to our lovely pink Christmas cactus in full, delightful blossom. We have the bad luck with plants blossoming while we are away, but thankfully, we did return to this one in time to see it in its full glory. The pálinka mash is now ready to go to the still and I managed to catch the guy who did last year's brew and he said that he would do it any weekend we want, just give him a week's notice. We need to coordinate with Pali, but I have a feeling that this year we are going to do ours on our own, as Pali is not as with it, as he used to be.
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| Liver, potatoes and gherkins |
Now I have to close, having had a fantastic lunch of liver with a paprika sauce, mashed potatoes, mustard and gherkins, my eyes are shutting down. I need a nap. Next post next Wednesday, hopefully.
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