Back to the village, gardening, getting ready for the hike, dealing with some annoying paperwork, visiting Johan and the US midterms

Hello all my friends, relatives, fellow hashers, geocachers and hikers! Another week went past and now we are in Bér and busy as ever.

A pretty rose bud at the end of October

 

Last Wednesday I felt well enough to travel, so with some delay, but we got back to the village. We did a 10-12 day food shopping at Aszód Lidl and arrived in reasonably good weather. Talking of the weather, it is still quite nice and sunny most days, but now we are having some rain too, so the grass is beginning to change to green again. At night we are having low temperatures, and it will not be too long before there will be sub zero temperatures at night. Amazingly, our roses are still producing blooms and some of them are really pretty. 

One of the lovely white roses

Thankfully, the houses were fine, no leaks or any other structural problems and we also had a go at turning on the central heating, which started working perfectly. We usually have the boiler serviced in the spring, so that should be fine. Plumbers are like gold dust in these parts, although I did managed to talk one guy into coming over to us by offering to pay him extra for travel time and for his petrol. He turned out to be a fantastic, very skilful and fastidious plumber, so whatever he costs, he can come again. Keep your fingers crossed that I can talk him into it next spring as well!

A slow burning pile of walnut leaves

Roy started burning the dead leaves and other garden rubbish on Tuesdays and Saturdays, which are the only two days we can do burning outside. The garden is looking reasonably tidy, although I must do something about the herb garden next spring. It got so overgrown, that I do not think any of them are still going under the weeds. It needs digging over, top soil removed, new soil put down and then replanting. Will do next spring.

View to the hills from the patio

Both of us still coughing and sneezing on occasions and need a lot of cat naps, as we still don't sleep well at night. I think this lurgy that got both of us this autumn will be an absolute bugger to get totally rid of. Still, we are getting better and I try to rest as much as I can, so that I will be able to do most of the big hike coming up this weekend. We got the Bunkhouse into order, so people who want to come a day early to do some more caching and then sleep there can do so. It looks like we will have about 25-30 hikers and about 10-12 staying overnight on Saturday.

Scott Caan and LL Cool J in NCIS NY

I am also enjoying watching my 10 US procedurals, which are quite easy to follow this time, as they turn up every week. Later on, especially in the new year, there will be lots of gaps in the stories, when not every week has an episode and I will struggle to remember what happened weeks before. Most of my serials that I watch are either thrillers, police  procedurals, marshals' stories, FBI and CIA chases, some fire fighters putting out fires, a sheriff in the same town as the fire fighters and one guy doing a lot of searches for missing people. NCIS this year has three different versions, one is the old one into its 23rd or 24th season, then there is the new one in New York and, of course, the one from 30 odd years ago when Gibbs was young. Interestingly, they managed to include Mark Harmon as old Gibbs in that one, and I must admit it works very well.

The dining room in the Bunkhouse

Roy is having another go at commenting on things that we are having on our "estate" in Ber, which includes things we have found in the attic or anywhere else in the houses on the garden, as well as the look of the interior of the houses. We started with a bayonet and old bibles and ended with the downstairs of the Bunkhouse. He also put those photos up on I💓Bér group on FB, and started an interesting chat with others in the village.

The Bunkhouse kitchen from the washroom

 

Admin this week included a funny stuff with my Hungarian bank, the need to get in touch with the distiller for the pálinka and getting ready for the hike. Additionally, I also had some hassle with HMRC, which usually comes out of hiding around this time of year. Thankfully, they no longer hassle me for doing a tax return since the introduction of the Simplified system, where for those people who have no significant untaxed income get taxed by them on the basis of already knowing the sources of our income, therefore they do not need me telling them. 

An ox yoke from the old days

Needless to say, that this time last year having had a problem I had to ring them up, and I told them what it was. Suggested that they change their system a bit to eradicate the cock up. You will not be surprised to hear that they did not, so this year I will not attempt to pay immediately after getting their e-mail, but leave them to change our tax code and take it that way. Personally, I much prefer paying at once in one sum, because that way I know exactly what I paid. When they deduct it monthly, God only knows what goes out, but thankfully, it is usually such a small sum, well under £1000 for the year, so I do not bother to check it. 

The antique pottery stove

 

By the way, the cock-up both last year and this year was and is, that you cannot pay online without quoting the code that came with the letter about your Simplified taxation. They have forgotten that not everybody gets a postal letter, because many of us opted for e-mails instead. No e-mail contains said code, so you get stuck, which is why I didn't even try it this year, and I did not ring them up, because that takes hours to get through. 

The route of the hike on Sunday

Preparing  for the hike includes gathering the passwords for all the caches en route, so should there be any problems with the boxes I can tell the group what they are. Also I had to print out the password to go with the event cache and now I also have to work with and help those guys who are bringing moving caches. We need to find places for those boxes somewhere on the hike or fairly near it. I am so grateful to people when they bring those, because for me there will be no caching without them. I am taking them on a route where I have already found all available caches, so I can only log the event cache and any moving ones brought by others. The weather forecast is not brilliant, but not too bad either. It is getting quite cold, but mostly sunny, although Sunday will be overcast at times. No rain is forecast, so I am really praying that it is correct. 

Some rustic plates on the wall

The funny stuff with my Hungarian bank was that they declined paying one of my yearly payments, because they issued me with a new type of card and that was not registered with the payment. I forgot to do that and was quite puzzled about it. Thankfully, I got a very nice, knowledgable little woman at the other end of the phone who explained it and it all went thorough fine.

Johan and is lady in their kitchen

November is also the month of the pálinka mash going to the still and getting hold of either the guy who does the distilling or the guy with the small truck that does the transport of the mash is not one of life's enjoyable activities. Added to that were some confusing telephone numbers and an ill tempered guy who answered the phone, so I will not bore you with this any further, just to stay that hopefully the stuff should be organised either this week, or at the end of the month. The reason behind the long time in between, is that the still only works at weekends and this year every single weekend in November is taken up with some activity, so unless he can do it quickly at this weekend, it will be postponed until the first weekend of December. 

Roy in Johan's living room

In the meantime, we also had a get together with Johan, our Dutch neighbour. He came over and brought his lady with him, whom we were very pleased to meet. I put away half a ton of gorgeous cinnamon biscuits while drinking tea and chatting at their place yesterday. They were supposed to come over for lunch today, but their plans have changed, so that was put off until they come again. Johan has a really lovely old apple tree, which has the cutest little deep red apples on it, and he brought over a whole carrier bag's full which I started  eating. I am absolutely sure that the old type of apples, like all old types of fruit were and are much more sturdy in resisting pests than the modern versions. I don't think Johan had time to look after his fruit trees and in spite of that this particular one produces perfect apples, tasting gorgeous and with no disease or worms or anything, just lovely apples.

Projections for the US Senate result

And now I have to finish on the most sensational news of the week, namely the US midterms. An absolute whitewash of the Republicans, which I have hoped for, but not expected to be this successful watching interviews, listening to analysts and just reading all Trump's crap, of which there are tons of every day. Mind you, I have no illusions in the Democrats either, but it was still very enjoyable watching the orange man not looking very happy.

Somoskő Castle on the banner for Sunday's hike

Our guests for the hike will arrive this Saturday and then we will all go the the Medves-plateau for nice 22km hike. I hasten to add, that there are short cuts all over the place, so it is very likely that I will only do a shortened version, but still I am tremendously looking forward to it and hope that the weather will be friendly.

Next post on Wednesday again, if all goes well.