All changed

I'm writing this in the flat, so you might be asking what I am doing here? Well, as the title suggests everything changed this week. After we got home on Tuesday all things went OK for a day. On Wednesday I collected all the walnuts Juci shelled for us and then at 5pm we trundled over to Margreet and Joop for dinner. They are such lovely people that we had a delightful time with them. And the dinner was delicious too. However, on our return around 9.30pm we got an e-mail from Alwyn that their daughter was taken into hospital three weeks earlier than the baby was due and that they were abandoning their cycle tour to go straight home. They managed to get an air ticket for Thursday for Val and that Alwyn is hoping to get over to us with the bikes first but he was going home straight after. On Thursday Alwyn asked me if I could help with transport and then I spent all morning finding a taxi firm to pick him and the bikes up and transport them to us. I succeeded, so on Friday he appeared around 1pm, looking tired, but happy. He stayed with us there until this morning when we gave him a lift to the airport, so that is why we are here. Just to make sure that things never go without some extra excitement, at the airport there was some security emergency and after dropping Alwyn we had to hang around for a while and nearly ended up paying £10 for parking just because the idiots collected everybody on the apron, which appeared to me about the stupidest tactic you can employ when you think something untoward is going to happen at the airport. Finally we got away and got in, feeling quite relieved.

The undoubtedly happy event of the day was seeing my little Canadian monster across the sees. You may note that I didn't write that I talked to him, because I wasn't even considered worthy of a wave, never mind a chat today. Still, I enjoyed watching him doing a puzzle with his mum and sneaking a peak at the TV at the same time. We are likely to stay until Wednesday now, as I am going geocaching with Andor and Zoli tomorrow and have an Opera performance I'm attending on Tuesday night. In the meantime the painter and decorator is starting on the Kottage front wall, but hopefully he can cope on his own as we left him with a key, so he has access to both electricity and water.

Bolthole Blitz

The post title is Roy's invention and refers to one of the reasons we stayed another day in town. Primarily we stayed on Monday because we had to visit Dylan, our computer chap. Roy's birthday is coming up on Thursday and on account of his laptop having gone to its maker in the sky some 4 months ago, he is having a new desk top machine built. Therefore we had to take the laptop's disk drive back to Dylan to copy the files off, plus the lazer printer, so that he can find the correct driver to make it work with the new desktop. In the meantime we looked round the flat and suddenly realised that it must be quite a long time since we did any cleaning in it. That is not surprising, as who would be so stupid as to want to live in town in 40+ degrees Celsius? So the above mentioned blitzing had commenced on Monday morning.

We started upstairs which consists of the gallery, the upper bathroom and the box room. As we are having guests coming next week, I made the bed in the box room, told the teddy bears that they will have a couple of people to share the room with next week and then cleaned the stairs en route down.

Downstairs the work got harder. We use the downstairs more and the forest of cobwebs we found above and behind furniture suggested we have not looked in those places for a long time. When we had enough of this we decided that we take a break by getting to Dylan with the printer and the hard drive. He also wanted all the money up front for the parts, so we are now a lot poorer than last week.

On our return we started downstairs and while I was dealing with the bathroom Roy got on with the kitchen. Neither was easy, but work shared is always easier than having to battle on on your own. I have even discovered a brand new way of cleaning the shower cubicle's glass panels I have always had such troubles with. I grabbed a stiff floor brush, poured bits of cream cleanser directly onto the brush and used that on the glass. It cleaned all the hard water marks off in no time at all. Fantastic!! Why didn't I think of that before? It sparkles now as new!

The last two rooms to be done were the hall/understair and the lounge. Dusting, polishing, hoovering and washing produced a really nice, clean and tidy flat. Not that we have managed to do everything. Unfortunately we have not got to cleaning the windows, especially those two enormous 3m high ones. The other job still awaiting attention is taking out all the contents of the pidgeon holes, dusting, cleaning and replacing them. These are probably the next tasks, but we both think that we had done a sterling job this Monday on all fronts.

Finally this morning we got home to the country. We managed to get all our shopping done en route; once home we had the painter/decorator visit to discuss starting work next Monday on painting the walls and woodwork of 2 of the houses; had e-mail from Alwyn and Val that they are definitely arriving on Sunday and even Attila came and mowed the grass in our absence.

Kalocsa Kupa

On Saturday we left at 7am and pootled down to Izsak on route 51,which we like in preference to the motorway or the ordinary route 5, which goes through a thousand very slow villages. This event is always good, but this year it promised a new bit of the Great Plains with a brand new map, so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately my allergies were still at full strength, so breathing was at a premium with sneezing, coughing, runny eyes and a blocked nose. Still, I bravely fought my way round the sand dunes, the soft sand and the indistinct vegetation to come back in second place, less than 2 minutes down on my friend Klari.

On Day 2 I had the target of catching Klari, if I could manage it. The terrain was a bit less technical than on Day 1, but equally hard physically in the soft sand. While on Day 1 I made several mistakes, on Day 2 there were no mistakes and I hoped that that would be enough. And it was!! Victory was very sweet indeed, as it always is when you come from behind and conquer. I got a cute little medal and a carrier bag of such delicious goodies as paprika (the spice), two tubes of paprika paste (one sweet, one hot) and two jars of horseradish, one natural the other mixed with mayonnaise. You may think that these are rather peculiar prizes to give to the winners, but I suspect the manufacturers of these foods were amongst the event's sponsors.

On Saturday afternoon, after Day 1 we went in search of somewhere to sleep for the night as well as to do a little geocaching. We did find a lovely inn, but it was full. So we motored on and found another place which was not nearly so nice, but a lot more expensive, so we took that. Then we went out into Kecskemet to find some caches. We started with an 8 parter multicache, which took us practically the whole afternoon. Still, we got very familiar with Kecskemet in the process. Another one was found by a complete stranger after neither Roy nor I could find it at all. She asked what we were doing and after I explained she pointed to it straight away. Amazing! In the evening we went back for dinner at the inn we couldn't get a room and realised why it was full. First of all the whole place was very pretty, the food was fantastic, the environment pleasant, the service superb and to top it all - it was dirt cheap! We have their telephone number for next time. The pictures are from Kecskemet, which was a very wealthy town in the old days and thankfully some of its old buildings still stand.

The Dutch, the English, the Mill and food

To start with the food I have been photographing my lunches and some of our own produce again. Unfortunately Tesco doesn't seem to have my Norwegian salmon any more, but Auchan did something similar, so I actually had two meals out of it. Considering its cost and anyway it is very filling, so I only ever eat half of it in one go, surrounded by gorgeous salad and eaten with our home made garlic mayonnaise (aka 'stinky').

Having finished with the cefre, we are no longer scrounging around for fruit, but the garden keeps on producing them. One old apple tree has revived since Roy cut down another tree that took the light from it, plus he also cut some of its dead branches, so it produced loads of large apples. What is even more fantastic, is that some of the young apple trees, only planted a few years ago started producing and while those are a lot smaller, the flavour is out of this world. You can't get more organic than produce your own, can you? So we had a small apple harvest and are looking forward to a slightly bigger pear harvest when one of our very old pear trees gets its crop ripe enough to eat. Or perhaps I might make a few bottles of compote soon as those need slightly unripe pears to be really good.

The other day we decided to go and check on the progress of the Mill project in the village. The weather forecast was for rain the following day and we wanted to see it in the sunshine. Very wise, as it turned out, as it chucked it down the following day. They are getting on with it at an amazing rate. The fitness/game room's hexagonal building is now at roof height and the inn/B&B has had its foundations laid down. They have had thousands of bricks delivered and I am fairly sure that given a nice and dry autumn they should get as far as the roof with both buildings. Due to some rainy days, the mill pond is now full and walking along it there were lots of splashes in the water as the frogs jumped in to avoid me. The small forested flat area above the inn has been cleared of undergrowth and had been grass seeded. All it needs now is some more rain for the seed to take. Roy can hardly wait for his first drink and then his first meal in the inn. Let us hope it happens soon. Next summer is probably too ambitious, so we are hoping for 26th July 2014, St. Anne's Day. I believe that is the official opening date, so Roy has about 22 months to wait yet.

On our way back from the mill we noticed sign of life at the Dutch house. We discovered with joy that Margrit and Joop have arrived. It suddenly occurred to me that I knew about their pending arrival, but forgot the exact date. They invited us in and we had another look at their new additional room at the back of the house. A local young man built it from the remnants of an outbuilding and other local materials. The rest of the work: plumbing and electrics will not be done until next summer, but what he had achieved in such short amount of time is really spectacular.

In return we invited them over to admire our latest acquisition, the outside table and benches with roof. They loved it and on departure invited us for dinner next Wednesday. We gratefully accepted. The next bit of news this week concerned Val and Alwyn, our English friends who are getting closer and closer to us on their bikes. They left England on 12th August and are due to arrive next weekend. We are in e-mail contact with them almost daily and get lovely reports of their progress. The theme of their bike trip is "rivers". They followed a variety of rivers in France and Germany until they got to the source of the Danube in Donaueschingen. Since then they are following the Danube accompanied by some friends of theirs they picked up in Germany. Currently they are in Austria, so hopefully they should be with us in just over a week.

Tomorrow we are off to town, followed by some orienteering in the South. On Monday we are staying in town to deal with a fair amount of stuff, shopping and seeing Dylan re: new computer. Roy has already got a nice new watch last week which was his early birthday present. Amazingly, he allowed me to spend about £25 on a watch for him, which he considers very expensive. He has been wearing it proudly, so I am happy. His main present will be a new desktop computer, after the demise of his laptop months ago. Dylan, our wizard from New Zealand, promised to build him a new one for less than £300, which is very reasonable indeed. We have an old keyboard and an old printer, so we only have to buy a new monitor and mouse and it's done. Should be back home by Tuesday for the dinner with the Dutch neighbours up the road.

Too busy having fun!

The much awaited hiking group duly arrived on Saturday morning and they were almost completely on time. We left about 20 minutes late. Getting to the start of the hike was a bit less efficient, though. First of all somebody got lost from the convoy and we had to stop for them to catch up. Then somewhere along on the route suddenly the whole convoy turned into a petrol station to fill their tanks and buy some grapes. Funny combination, I know but there was a local selling glorious freshly picked grapes in the entrance to the petrol station and most of us bought some. Finally, after about an hour and a bit, we arrived in the appropriate village and this time we got up to the rhyolite very quickly. Funny how your memories play tricks, I could have sworn that it took a lot longer last time, but it was pretty swift this time. And that included Andor getting lost with his GPS again.

Marica was playing silly buggers on the photo, but the landscape still amazed me. The group put their bums down and started eating their sandwiches there and then, but we managed to convince them to go another 200 yards to a picnic spot, only to find 2 guys ensconced in it complete with couldron, open fire and the whole kit and caboodle. So we went on a bit and found a top where we ate our lunch surrounded by juniper trees.

We returned to the cars on a different path and moved on to the second location of the hike. The goal was to get to an acient pilgrimage site, above which there are some hermit caves and close by an interesting group of springs near a pretty ravine. It turned out that the site had some special event, so we had to park up in the nearby village, which added 6km to the hike. It was only towards the end of the return leg we all realised that the distance was a bit of a challenge to most of us. We started off from the lovely old church in the picture and followed a sometimes steep, other times less so path for about 3km. At one point we heard some beautiful church singing in the woods and it turned out the pilgimage site was having an open air mass. We tiptoed past to the hermit caves, which were quite interesting.

After that we found a geocache and discovered a nice spring site by a stream. There was another geocache there, which we also found after a nice rest by the stream.

The route back to the cars was quite long and most of us had a few parts of us hurting, in my case my toes were really suffering from the long steep descents. After we got back home I was really glad the group decided not to stay for the night as I was pretty much done in by the long day.

Today started in a leisurely manner, doing some reading then gardening. The last winter was pretty severe and it killed all my old roses. We bought 6 new rose bushes and planted them today. It is quite a scientific process with digging the hole first, then watering the hole, then put in the peat, then the rose, surround it with more peat, then fill the hole round it, tap it down, water it again and then it's done. We did this 6 times and were ready for lunch afterwards. You can see my lunch in the picture. It consisted of smoked salmon, 3 types of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, beetroot, peppers, cauliflower and spring onion. I had our famous garlic mayonnaise with it and it was delicious. I also had some peas, sprouts and boiled potatoes, which did not fit onto the plate and it was altogether a treat.

And then came the highlight of the weekend. Callum on Skype in a fantastic mood. He did wave hello and good bye to me this time, but the real fun happened in between. Just in case you wondered about the title of this blog post, that statement could sum up Callum's little life: He is definitely too busy having fun! I was with him for over an hour and it was a joy to watch him. Apparently, recently he went up to his Mum and told her that he was ever so happy! I hope he will carry on being this lovely and happy for the rest of his life.

It was really fun for me too watching him being very active and talkative. He played with his cars, watched TV, played peek-a-boo under a towel with his parents, stroke the cat, did some serious DIY with his toy tools and cooked breakfast for his Dad on his toy cooker. Thankfully Alex's mobile had a software update recently, so it was possible to take tolerable snapshots of the little monster.

Now I am off to watch television: DOWNTON ABBEY IS BACK!! Series 3 takes place in the 1920's and it starts with the arrival of Shirley McLaine as Cora's mother. What pleasures to look forward to!

Broken bones, shopping, Elian and the end of things

Puzzling title, isn't it? It has been a strange week so far. One of the bad news is that little monster from Canada managed to fall down the stairs and break his collar bone. When I talked to him on Sunday I was told that he hurt his shoulder, but he looked quite OK, albeit in a bit of pain. By Tuesday it was quite obvious that something more serious happened so they took him to the clinic and the X-ray proved it. Apparently, he must have fallen on the toy he was hanging onto for dear life and that did the damage.

They provided him with a sling, which he wore for the total of 10 minutes while he was asleep in the car on his way home from the clinic. They can't do much with it, so let's hope it heals soon. I also had a phonecall from Nelly about the gas meter reader coming again on Tuesday, so we decided to jack in the Family History Group meeting we were planning to attend on Tuesday evening and departed for Ber on Tuesday morning. As it happens, the Family History Group had given me access to the registers without being a member as I am doing transcription work for them and also offered to help with the English translation of the pages on their web site, so there was no urgency to go to the meeting anyway.

On our way home we managed to pick up a couple more geocaches, so the grand total for the weekend was 10. The first that day was in the park surrounding the palace at Gödöllõ (remember Renee?), the second one in Máriabesnyõ behind the cemetery in the forest. Walking through the lovely old sylvan cemetery I saw some interesting graves, especially the one belonging to one of Hungary's past Prime Ministers, Teleki Pál, who killed himself out of shame for breaking a non agression pact with a bordering country back in the 1940's. There is no honour nowadays amongst Hungary's politicians, even though these are the times when honour is badly needed. I thought of him, unable to live with himself and giving up his own life to save the country's reputation. As all this transpired on the 11th of September, remembering the past - local or half way round the world - was very poignant. Shopping was also quite exciting as with the exception of my favourite salmon, which was still missing, all other recently unavailable foodstuffs, like Greek feta and our favourite brand of Cornflakes have turned up again in Tesco, so we stocked up, just in case they disappear again. I know, it is hoarding like this that cause shortages, but I don't want to be caught short again!! Once at home the gas reader chappie turned up, dutifully photographed the meter and pootled off happily. They only read the meter once a year in these parts, but then they insist on photographing the numbers on the meter.

This picture is not mine, but couldn't resist saving it off the net, as I am going hiking this weekend with a group of friends and hope to see something like it. I doubt if it will be that golden, but due to the drought the trees have already started to change colour and drop their foliage. By the way, the group that was coming for the weekend are not coming after all, we are only assembling at our place, going for a hike and then everybody goes home. It is debatable whether we are happy or upset about this. On the one hand it feels like a snub, but on the other hand everything has to come to an end one day and this way we have a lot less work. This group has been coming for years mid-September for a weekend, but if they don't want to come again, that's their lookout. Talking of endings, I had a feeling that our trips to Robert and Volker have run their course too. Nothing too drastic, just a slight feeling of not being as welcome as we were years ago when the friendship started. I suppose they hardly ever come this way, so we cannot return the compliment in kind, so we think this was probably the last one of those as well. Such is life!

And finally, so that I can finish this blog post on a high: we had a call from Elian on Thursday and he was in a fantastic mood. I took quite a few snapshots on Skype, but since Stephen and Lucy have put some much better quality pictures up on Facebook since,I will put some here from those. This first one is really cute. While I was chatting to him and Stephen, suddenly he started yawning and then went very quiet. He went to sleep on Stephen's shoulder. This photo was obviously taken by Lucy in a very similar situation, except this time Daddy is fast asleep as well.

He is nearly 3 months old now and can giggle with the best of them. Stephen manages to tickle his nose, which makes him happy. I don't know what he'd done to him for this sweet and happy photo, but he looks very cute.

And finally a rudey-nudey picture to wrap up this post. He is developing very nicely. He is happy, relaxed and very laid back for such a young baby. Sleeps through most of the night and is a joy to look after, as I read his other Grandma's comment on Facebook lately. Now I have to go to pack for tomorrow, so they don't blame the late departure on me. Assuming they all turn up for 9am as well! (Highly unlikely, methinks!!)

Weekend at Roberts + orienteering + geocaching + the little monster

We left on Thursday after lunch, picked up a cache in Gödöllõ and shopped in Auchan. We were very glad to discover that Auchan had real Greek feta, which seems to have disappeared from every other shop in the last few months. The flat was very stuffy but after a few hours of every window and door open it smelled all nice and fresh again.

Friday we decided to pootle down to Robert's slowly, picking up some more caches en route. The first one was in Gorsium, which is an amazing place. It was first a military camp, then a place of emperor worship, finally just a settlement and it even had medieaval churches after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately the money had run out for further excavating and the fabric is suffering from neglect, but it was still imposing in its scale.

The next two caches were quite nearby, the first being an imposing old tower, which originally was built in the XIIIth century for collecting taxes on the river, later fortified against enemies and finally used as a grain store. In the same village there was a lovely little lake and park where a romantic little bridge created such a beautiful vista. We had our sandwiches at Gorsium and after the other two we journeyed on. The next three caches were all around the Balaton, the first of which was quite difficult to find, but it was worth the bother.

Even Roy got totally enchanted by the environment and history of the lovely old ruined church with plenty of evidence of the past in its walls. The cache was in a big hole up in a tree and the description was so good, we found it straight away. The GPS doesn't always work accurately, not to mention those silly twerps who give incorrect co-ordinates just to make it more difficult. That is one aspect of geocaching I do not enjoy.

The next cache was by an old water mill and the last one in a fascinating old cemetery with weird looking heart shaped graves. I have seen these before, but they are so unique that I enjoyed looking at them again.

Finally we arrived at the place where I had to register for the orienteering, which actually I couldn't do because they wouldn't let me do it just for myself and I refused to pay for everybody in my club. As it happened, it was all sorted later, so there was no further hassle. We managed to pick up one more cache in the vicinity of the orienteering, so that made the total haul for the weekend at 8 caches, which isn't bad. We are planning to pick up two more en route home on Tuesday, so that should make 10, which I will be very happy with. We arrived at Robert's bang on 7pm, as agreed, after a delightful fish supper in a lovely rustic restaurant close to the lake shore. Robert and Volker were very hospitable, as usual, and we chatted well into the night putting away copious quantities of wine and palinka.

The orienteering on Saturday was less successful than usual. As you can see from the map I made no mistakes and went fairly straight to most controls or only a bit round. The trouble was that I am still seriously suffering from a variety of allergies which make it difficult to breathe when I am running (or trying to run) fast. So, no mistakes, just a lack of speed that made me miss the podium, coming 4th out of 12. Not bad, but could have been better. On the other hand, not having to hang around for the medal ceremony has its compensations, in that we managed to get to the same lovely restaurant as the night before in good time. This time I put away some lovely bread crumbed mushrooms stuffed with ewe's cheese, yum, yum!! On Sunday morning we got up, had breakfast and departed in time to get home for the Grand Prix. I never thought that the boring old style Monza circuit can produce as many excitements as it did today. Lewis won and there were a few very eventful break downs and overtaking moves. Finally, I even managed a little chat with Callum after the Grand Prix, although his majesty did not honour me with a good bye at the end. He was busy making a birthday card for Michael, one of his friends who lives on the estate. Obviously, his Sunday afternoon was then spent at Michael's birthday party.