The Lady has arrived

Nelly's old dog, Szuszi has died about 6 months ago and we were all wondering if she was going to get another one. There are lots of arguments for and against, but Roy and I were hoping she wouldn't. As she is 80 next year, walking a dog twice a day, spending all that money on its feed and the vet, being bound to the house etc., etc. would be the negatives. The positives are: company for a lonely old lady, lots of love and in this day and age - security as well. Not to mention keeping pests: stray cats, other dogs and even mice down. This is also a consideration in a village.

Well, she got herself a Golden Retriever from one of her son's friends. A little girl this time whom she named Lady. I think the choice of a bitch is actually quite a wise one. Szuszi became a real menace every time the bitches of the neighbourhood were on heat and that really caused a fair amount of hassle for her. After her maturity she will have Lady neutered and thus a problem will be eliminated. She is really sweet and is visibly growing every day. Apparently she was the runt of the litter and after initially being quite well fed during the lactation period, recently she was getting less and less food in a litter of six puppies. She only arrived 5 days ago, but she nearly doubled her weight since then, so she is catching up fast.

I had a session of chatting to her, cuddling and stroking her this morning and her fur is like silk. Very sweet and I think we will be good friends.

Chocolat

Long time no blogging. This week gone was a bit of a writeoff on account of my backache. I spent some time getting some tests done which have all come up negative, so we are back to my arthritis, which obviously has taken a drastic turn for the worse. We are back to the village at the moment, so once I am back in town I might consider badgering the doctor for a referral to rheumatology. We'll see.

I have been to the theatre twice last week: on Monday I saw the Producers for the third and definitely last time. The interesting thing, however, was the fact that this was the best of the three, even though the lead was played by my friend's husband for the second time and now I loved it a great deal more. I suppose every performance has its own dynamic, or perhaps I was in a more receptive mood. Who knows, but that was great.

The play last night was a different kettle of fish. A two hander, it was based on the age old formula of the Jewish mother and son relationship. It was funny and even witty in places, but the formula somehow didn't grab me sufficiently for the non-stop 90 minutes it was on for.

The star event of this week, however, was my truffel course.(see pictures!) I signed on last month to learn how to make truffels at my favourite chocolate shop. It was 4 hours long, cost £30, but that included taking home all the truffels we made plus the ingredients for the first batch to be made at home. So I think it was pretty good value. As it happened, I had a really good time. It even made me forget my excrutiating backache and I learned a great deal. Bea and her husband, Peter are really lovely people. The pictures above (except the last one) were taken by Peter and they show us girls making a mess on the granite slab while tempering chocolate, then rolling the little balls, finally dipping and decorating the square truggels. The last one shows the truffels I brought home (except two square ones which got eaten yesterday). The little decorated squares are plain ganache inside, then dipped in tempered chocolate and decorated. I made 8 of these and they are delicious. Even Roy likes them and tomorrow I will try them out on Nelly as well. The small pack of dark coloured balls are rum truffels which were rolled in cocoa and the balls in the cellophane bag are orange truffels rolled in cinnamon sugar. We haven't had any of those yet, as we are trying to make them last and I can't have too much sweet stuff all at once anyway. The only slightly risky thing about this is that we have not added any glucoze syrup to the ganache, so they will not keep as long as otherwise, so we need to eat them fairly sharpish.

My next plan is to go out and buy some equipment for making them at home and the first item is a big square of granite or marble for the tempering of the chocolate. That is an amazing procedure and it includes heating it up to about 40 degrees Celsius, then cooling it down by pushing it around on the marble slab to below 30 and finally bringing it back up to about 30 degrees before working with it. If you want shiny, smooth coating for your truffels, or you want to make bars of chocolate, that is what you do. The coating on my square truffels is tempered. It cracks as you bite into it, which is due to the special crystallisation the tempering causes.

The first snows

Well, the snow arrived here as well, although not nearly in such quantities as it is in Brighton I gather. I saw a lovely picture taken by Stephen looking out into his garden and drive. He was looking for his car which was totally hidden under large amounts of snowfall. It is not so bad here, but we had a lot of black ice the other morning, which is a lot more dangerous than snow.

The main event of this week has been Dylan's visit, a result of which we now have WiFi in the village as well. He even brought us a really fancy little gadget which made the new cheapo desktop we bought in Tesco have WiFi reception as well. It goes in the USB port and works like magic. Unfortunately the old desktop could not be joined to the WiFi network as it is so old that its encryption is too old to go with the new gadgetry. And this after Dylan even brought a part that would have given us 4 new USB2 ports, but the encryption question could not be resolved. Never mind, that old machine is now only for some of Roy's old programs and files, plus for using the scanner and colour printer.

The new desktop will also be having a new simple black and white laser printer and scanner of its own, and after that let us hope we will not have to spend any more on computers for a while. I was keeping my fingers crossed that the weather does not turn nasty to stop Dylan coming, but he turned up quite OK around midday. He was here for nearly three hours and finally only charged for that time, not for his travelling, which must have been another 3 hours. The whole thing complete with WiFi router, USB gadget for the desktop, his motorway pass, petrol and his labour charge came to about 130 quid, which is reasonable. Now I can use my netbook in bed without needing the mobile dongle, although the reception is not too brilliant upstairs. It is the 2ft thick walls, which stop the signal. I hope that by putting the router in the window the signal will carry across the yard to the Bunkhouse, although the Kottage is too far and through too many thick walls to work. Well, anybody who wants to use their laptop will have to sit in the Farmhouse kitchen, where the signal is OK. In the summer I can open the window and with the nice long cable can even put the router out in the corridor, so that should be OK.

All we need now is to start the backpackers hostel, as we are ready with all facilities, including WiFi. I can't see it happening before 2012 though, as next summer is already full. The tickets are bought to Canada and Scotland and it looks as if we are teaming up with Philip for the car hire for the orienteering. We are going to camp and the only ticket I am still to buy is the one down back from Edinburgh to Gatwick on the 9th August. I need to know Philip's exact itinerary before I buy that.

Must go now as I am falling off the chair asleep. I was up at 5.30am for some reason, so I should hit the sack now.

Juniper Cup maps and courses

I promised to scan the maps and courses, so here they are. I have my own day 1 and 2 courses and a day 2 W50 course, which I have because we were going to go out for Barbara late on day 2, but eventually she turned up and we didn't need the map.

You can see the amazing juniper jungle, which is hellishly difficult to correctly navigate by. It is a very accurate map, but it is still so hard to identify features on the map as against on the ground and vice versa. Day 1 had a 1:7500 map, which was slightly easier to read, but still not easy. The course was excellent, but 100% map contact was needed not to get lost. The leg between 1 and 2 on day 1 I executed mostly walking and even then there was an unnecessary hook in it when I went further in the white forest than necessary and then had to go round one bit of dark green. Still, in the history of this event (this is the 5th year of it) I have so far always had at least one control in this bit and this time I executed it with only a small mistake. I have had 20 minutes worth of mistakes in this bit before, so I am slowly improving. I got beaten by Ildi by 2 and half minutes on day 1, which I was quite satisfied with.

The real shock came on day 2 on the 1:10000 map, not because it was more difficult to read, but because W60 were given a 2 year old map and a hand drawn course. The technical challenge of this course was nil and I believe that an intelligent 12 year old would have been bored by it. Had I been well and fit I could have done it in 20 minutes, but even then it would have been a travesty of a course and an insult for us to be given an unupdated, old map. I have scanned the W50 day 2 course for comparison. That was on an updated new map and visited the juniper again, which we hardly did. 2.4km is an insult, especially as we are perfectly capable to run double that, or at least 3.5k and that might have got us away from the boring, low quality area which lay between the start and the finish. The planner was a guy whom I have always had a high opinion of before, but I will have to revise my ideas in the light of this event.

I wonder what area they will take the Spring Juniper Cup in March 2011? It will depend on that whether I will enter it or not.

Back in the village

After everybody has returned home following the Juniper Cup Roy and I stayed in BP for another 3 days to recover. I seemed a bit slow to get over my gastric flu and I also had an amazing book to read which is always easier in the flat. Less to do and easier to put your feet up. This book is a new kind of thriller (at least for Hungary) where the author is a TV journalist who put his fictional story in a milieu which is 100% accurate historically, politically and militarily. I am really enjoying it, even though the hero is a macho SAS type and the baddies are all Russians. Still, they mostly gangsters, so they can get their comeuppance any time the hero wishes to bump them off!!!

While in town Roy fetched the last laptop from Dylan, so no more Vista machines, hoorraaaahhhhh! This one acquired a second hand hard disc for £16 and Windows 7, so hopefully our problems should be less from now on. Dylan is due on Wednesday to install WiFi in Ber and after that all we need to do is to clear up the hard discs now and again, defrag and maintain them and should anything go wrong, just holler for Dylan.

We got home on Friday afternoon after quite an uneventful bus journey. The snow arrived that night. The fridge is empty, so we are living on handouts, what we could get in the village shop and what was still in the freezer. Hopefully the sun should come out tomorrow and we can go to Tesco's in Hatvan.

Callum was supposed to have had a small operation yesterday, but a few emergencies have bumped him off the surgeon's list. Hopefully, next time he is luckier and can get it over with. Today, his parents went to do some Christmas shopping and rang us on Skype to show us what they got him with the money we sent. I have also managed to take some video snapshots while we were chatting, so the pictures above are of the little fella using his new piece of cardboard with a pencil and playing with the Zany Zoo he got from us for Christmas. He is still as sweet as ever. I can't wait to see him next summer - he will be 2 years old by then.

The Juniper Cup weekend

Gillian arrived on Thursday and on Friday morning Roy went out with her to show her a few of BP's sights. I was feeling a bit sick, so I didn't go. The minibus arrived even before 2pm and after a slightly fraught trip in the rush hour we got to the airport a little bit late. Carol, Barbara and Nigel were already waiting and we made tracks towards Kiskoros. It got rather foggy and dark towards the end of the trip, but with Roy driving all was well. Except I was sick (thankfully into a prepared bucket) in the back of the bus. This was not a good sign as Roy had gastric flu earlier in the week and now it looked as if I got it.

Once at the Hotel we met up with Nick, Sarah Jane, Elizabeth and John, who then joined the crowd (minus me) for dinner at one of Kiskoros's rustic eateries. I managed to be sick once more in the night, but otherwise got a few hours of shuteye.

Next morning - after no breakfast for me - we all went to the event. The day was mild, the juniper as fierce as I remembered, the courses excellent and it looked as if everybody had a good day. Even I had a reasonable run on a completely empty stomach and no sustenance for over 24 hours. Ildi only beat me by 2 and half minutes. In the meantime Roy joined the sicklist as he managed to turn his ankle outside the restaurant the night before and was by now seriously hobbling.

We went back to the same restaurant in the evening where we all had a lovely meal. I only had half a bowl of soup, but that was more than the night before. The unexpected 30% discount of the night before unfortunately did not reappear, but we still had good value and nice food in a lovely atmosphere.

Sunday dawned a bit colder and there was a promise of easier courses. The sicklist grew further with John having severe toothache which needed early attention. After some painkillers he decided that the dentist can wait, but he didn't dare to compete. The rest then valiantly went out for the second time to wrestle with the juniper.

While most of our group had good courses, the two W60 ladies had a really raw deal. We had a rubbish, idiotic insult of a course, that was barely adquate for a 14 year old on a 2 year old map and which I am going to complain about. I finished about 3 minutes down on Ildi, so I finished 2nd overall. Considering my general state of health + the gastric flu, that was an excellent result.

Of the rest of the group Nick was also second in M21, Elizabeth 2nd in W21, Carol 3rd in W50. Barbara had definitely had her money's worth, but finally turned up just after the launch of the search party (Nigel and Gillian). Amazingly she was very happy, in fact on a high after she doggedly struggled through and did not let the juniper beat her.

Sunday's dinner was taken in a fish restaurant up country, which proved a gem of a find. The group photo above is of the 6 of us there as the younger contingent left straight after the event. The earlier photos are of Nick flogging CompassSport and Carol being pleased with her 3rd place.

Building gazing in BP

We had to go out for some shopping yesterday and combined it with a bit of sightseeing and photographing. I got involved with a new web site called I love Hungary and needed some interesting photos for the article I am writing. I chose the topic of how much artistic pleasure you can get even from ordinary buildings,if you keep your eyes open and look up high, rather than going around with watching your feet. Starting with a school which is only just round the block, followed by some gorgeous mosaics up high on an apartment block, then looking at the Basilica, the entrance of a bank, majolica decoration on an Art Nouveau building, ending up with some "boys from the black stuff" it was an interesting hour and a half walking about.

I was also involved with something very important yesterday: I circulated by Facebook and e-mail a Petition from the staff of the Philosophy Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences asking people to sign it, if they agree with its sentiments and demands. I will paste an English translation here with the link, so if anybody reading this blog feels like looking into it, nay sign it, they can.


Petition to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

To: The Hungarian Academy of Sciences

János Boros, the recently (at the beginning of this year) appointed director of the Philosophy Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has yet again declared the majority of the researchers unsuitable for their work at the Institute: he lately shared his opinion with listeners of Hungarian Radio, stating that most of them do not even know the necessary basics.

We appeal to the friends of philosophy, those working in this field and those outside it, inside and outside Hungary, that if they value the freedom, prestige, and multifaceted nature of philosophical research in Hungary, to sign our petition and thus protest against János Boros’s high-handed regime, which has so far led to dozens of unprecedented cases in the labour court.

János Boros (1) established as normal practice the total disregard of workers’ rights, daily confrontations, threats, misinformation, regularly takes advantage of his professional power and a practices a level of secrecy which the ombudsman declared illegal and against the constitution;

(2) This summer as a response to opposing opinions he unilaterally declared as “unsuitable” nearly two thirds of the Institute’s staff (amongst them professors, academic doctors and – in all likelihood motivated by political considerations – the entire staff of the Lukács Archive). He did this using such a secret process that even he had to admit later that both its legality and validity could be questioned and might only be limited. This was confirmed by his boss, József Pálinkás, the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences;

In spite of this (3) and totally disregarding both the President’s declaration as above as well as a warning from the Philosophy Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he recently started wrecking the Philosophy Research Institute by removing five researchers (Sándor Ferencz, Pál Horváth, János Laki, Miklós Mesterházi, Miklós Tamás Gáspár) and threatening further dismissals.

With our signatures we join the internal and international protest and ask the leadership of the Academy to intervene and put an end to the terror, established by the director without any professional basis and without any legality, currently existing in the Philosophy Research Institute.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned


http://www.petitiononline.com/MTAFKInt/