Another week

On Sunday we watched the Spanish Grand Prix which was a bit of a procession with the occasional exciting interlude. Alonso won which didn't make me too happy, Raikonnen was second and Massa third.  Vettel was only fourth, but he is still leading by 4 points from Raikonnen and 17 points from Alonso.  The next one is in a fortnight in Monte Carlo - one of my favourites.

On Monday we went down to the village via Tesco as well as my favourite garden centre.  Bought some more geraniums and a couple more herbs.  During the week we have been occupied with typical country pursuits: weeding, planting, watering, making a support grid for the peas, harvesting and preserving rhubarb, filling window boxes with geraniums and then watching our first rose of the season bloom.  There are two pictures below for the following reason: one is from the morning, the other from the afternoon.  Amazing how much it changed in those few hours!

On Monday another unusual thing happened.  I had a post published on a blog which I have been following for a while. Unfortunately, the experience turned out to be a bit harrowing when I discovered that these blogs are usually inhabited by trolls who enjoy nothing more than attacking people who post on their blogs, irrepective what they write.  Since then I discovered that there are some worthwhile characters on there, but I am not likely to post again. Recently I find that it takes so long to follow all the interesting things I love to read on FB, on blogs and some other forums, that there are not enough hours in the day.  Especially if one has to garden in between bouts of surfing.

These peas now have support, by Roy manufacturing some with sticks and the remnants of the old orienteering string course. On Thursday, other than gardening I also had to ring up an RC parish somewhere in a town where the clerk had to be buttered up to look up some data in a register.  Roy is doing this research for someone in Canada and I managed to make friends with the lady.  She finally coughed up a lot of stuff, even though she wasn't very friendly to start with.  On Friday a funny little chap arrived at the gate and it turned out he wanted to inspect all our chimneys.  If you count the metal flues of the two central heating boilers we have 6 of them. He was a very nice little fellow, but his visit highlighted the utter hypocricy of these chimney inspections.  He only inspected 4 of them and even that was cursory and took about 5 seconds each.  The other two were left, as he didn't have the gadget for one and the other was inaccessible.  I had always known that these inspections are a total sham and their purpose has very little or nothing to do with safety and everything to do with money.  The charge goes per chimney, not per household and he happily departed with about £30 for 20 minutes of a pleasant chat interspersed with about 5 minutes of work. AND he will be back in the autumn as the wood fired stoves' chimneys have to be inspected TWICE a year. Considering those are always used for heating, how much use do you think they could have between now and the autumn?

And finally Saturday came and I went orienteering for the first time in a couple of months. It was supposed to have been a sprint course, but the climb and the roughness of the ground made all the times a lot longer than it's usual in a sprint competition.  I couldn't enter W65, so I ran in what is called Open Technical in these parts. It was 2.6km long with 130 metres of climb, which as you can see was bang on the 5% limit. I finished in the midfield and the 5th woman out of 11 in a field of about 35 in all.  Both my left leg and my damaged rib were hurting afterwards, but not too much, so I was OK. The main problem is the total loss of fitness due to the 2 month layoff, which will not be easy to get back. I will have to start going again to the baths, start those remedial exercises that I was prescribed a couple of weeks back and then start running training. I have just entered both the Night and the Middle Distance Champs, so I'd better start getting fit.

Tomorrow I'm off again orienteering then straight into town for a performance of an old forgotten Erkel opera "Stephen, the King". On Wendesday I am going to a concert by Kristof Barati and his friends and finally on Thursday Alan is coming, so this week will be quite eventful.  In the meantime another set of Dutch had arrived in the village, so we will have to visit them on my return, taking Alan along with us. Must go now as it is gone 11pm and I need my beauty sleep! In the meantime I leave you with this utterly cute little video about Elian and his sunglasses.  Sleep well!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vainn6QOXO8

The last week

Nothing too spectacular happened since last Saturday. Weather got a bit colder and rainier, especially at night when we had a few thunderstorms.  However, some other parts of the country had hailstorms, so this time we got away with it.  Roy is happy when it rains as that is the excuse for not watering the garden.  The new lawn looks luscious and the rest of the stuff is growing.  Birds have taken to nipping off the heads of some of the roses and all the buds on the lavender, which is a bit annoying, but such is life.

This lovely pea plant, however, has grown tremendously over the last week, so I am already looking forward to picking my own peas soon.  In fact, most of this garden is being prepared for visiting grandson Callum, so that he can pick his own when he arrives.  I do have vague memories of his harvesting habits, when he seemed to pick all the cocktail tomatoes in the gardens round their apartment in Toronto, whether they were planted by his father or anybody else.  In our garden he can pick whatever he likes with impunity.

On Tuesday the Dutch came to dinner which was fantastic. They were good company and my chocolate desert went down as well as the mushroom paprikash, cucumber salad and fruit salad did.

On Tuesday I departed for town with Roy staying behind to host a couple of coppers who came for a meeting organised by Ferenc Banfi our friend who is building the Mill Complex in the village. I had a concert that evening with my favourite violinist, Kristof Barati accompanied by Klara Wurtz playing Beethoven's violin/piano sonatas, including the Kreutzer. That was such sheer enjoyment that I wished it went on all night. It was also a bit of good news that the price they wanted for the CD's was about 2 and half times what I paid for mine on Amazon.

On Wednesday I went shopping for a wide variety of things we were out of.  A couple of locks with keys for the two front doors in the Farmhouse, as the originals were crap to start with and now got even worse. I also bought some lightbulbs, which are fast going out of fashion, soon only those newfangled expensive ones will be available. I visited the market, had a lovely Japanese meal for lunch and then went to see my GP to get my prescriptions, so I managed to get a lot done all on my own.

Thursday was opera day, where we saw Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which I last saw when I was a kid.  It was fun and the production was excellent.  Again, we saw it soon after the premiere, I think ours was the next performance. I handed out all next years subscription tickets to Andor and Kati and got the money in for them, so that's was yet another chore that was done.

On Friday I went geocaching with Andor and he chose Szentendre, which had quite a few of them in and around it.  We started with the Transport Museum, which had these cute old trams and choo choo trains. Then we walked round the town and even got to outside it up a steep hill, which was a bit exhausting on account of the heat. In the evening Roy came in after our guests in the village have departed and amazingly we managed to arrive back at the flat at exactly the same time.  Him from the country and me from geocaching.

And finally today I had my usual call from Toronto when Callum presented me with one of his monologues which was hilarious.  The self generated topic was how kitties are afraid of spiders.  He was showing us what size the spiders were and that he was not afraid of them.  There was one under the door apparently.  He is an absolute hoot and according to his father is not putting on a show for me, but is always like this. Sometime during the week (I forget which day) this video also arrived from Elian, so click on this link and see him playing peek-a-boo!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trstAErkfFg

After my chat with Callum I departed for the afternoon's entertainment. I had tickets to two events, which made me very happy.  In the afternoon I went to the the Palace of the Arts for a concert where the program included a little known Finnish composer, Bartok and Prokofiev. We were sitting at the back, above the stage high up, giving us a fantastic vantage point. (See picture! We were right above the stage, but a floor below the organ in the first row out of the three rows visible.) We could see the conductor's face and while most of the musicians had their backs to us we were so close to the orchestra that it felt very intimate. Perhaps the one disadvantage appeared during the Bartok piece, which was his first piano concerto.  The piano was open towards the audience, therefore away from us and at the front of the stage.  The orchestra was very large with the percussion instruments the closest to us, so they drowned the piano out somewhat.  Still, I had a really good time again.

In the evening I went to a completely different play.  It was held in a cafe upstairs above a lovely old bookshop in the centre of the city. (see picture!) The idea was to recall the history of the cinema with clips from famous films and actors on a screen, but mostly the two performers (see pictures!) singing a lot of famous music from films.  The atmosphere was brilliant, intimate and friendly and I had a lovely tea before it started. All in all it was a successful Saturday. Now we are staying in town for the Sunday, watch the Grand Prix and then return to the village via Tesco on Monday. Next weekend I am planning to try orienteering for the first time since my fall down the stairs. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

A couple of Elian videos for balance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNn_Gosxrq8

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bvJdXk4f7o

I hope these links work.  I think he is so utterly cute.

The latest Callum video and the repaired swing

Have a little watch of this video and enjoy the unique personality of my grandson Callum. I think that this video just about sums up his personality.  How much he loves his mum, how helpful he is, but also how bossy he is and there is no way stopping him when he puts his mind to something. The other bit of news about him is that at his daycare there was a three dimensional puzzle which he put together without any instructions in a very short time. At about 3 and 9 months that was an amazing achievement which impressed his teachers. He very proudly told me today on Skype that soon he is going up into the top group at daycare. Considering that he is still nearly 2 and half years away from going to school, that's pretty good too. He has an amazing little mind with a lot of original thought and initiative.  Quite a little character, that's for sure.

You may recall me reporting yesterday that I wrecked the swing by putting my elbow through the canvas.  Well, blow me down, Roy had a brilliant idea by turning the seat section round (thankfully the bottom and the back were of exactly identical proportions), so that the back is now the seat, as the canvas was still OK there.  That, of course, left the problem of how to produce a new back? We got out the old children's orienteering string course, which still had a kilometre of string on a drum.  We wound quite a lot of string from one end to the other end and thus created a netting for the cushions to rest against.  I have tried it this afternoon and it is great. Mind you, I now know that the canvas is a bit old and fragile, so no fidgeting or jumping about on it!!

Long time no post :-(

Well, I am not sure why this was so long coming, but mostly because summer broke out and there was a lot of work in the garden. Plus I started reading the Ted Grant book and couldn't put it down. Plus I have been in town the last few days, extremely busy and no time for posting. SENSATIONAL NEWS!!! My rib is NOT broken. You may recall that the original doctor in A&E was a bit mysterious about what was wrong and what he saw (or didn't) on my X-ray. However, when I saw the abbreviated work 'fract.' on the piece of paper they gave me afterwards, I was sure it was broken. And, of course, the pain was also pretty severe, so no doubt, I thought. Well, yesterday when I went to see the rheumatologist and she could get my X-ray up on her monitor as the entire hospital, all departments, are on an internal network, she confirmed it. No break. Well, considerig that, the bloody thing still hurts and the general consensus is that it will do so for a bloody long time yet. Drat!! This up side down piece of machinery is Roy's little tractor after the engine was taken out. The starter wouldn't work and since then we also found out that there is seepage of petrol into the engine, thinning the oil and generally making a nuisance of itself. So all that went to the mechanic, who is (we hope) working on it. At least Roy took the chance of the weight being more manageable and cleaned everything that was cleanable on it and repaired small bits that he could. In the meantime we are back to the push type mower, but the garden still looks great. The last veg patch acquired tomatoes, peppers, kohrabi and strawberries. The other picture is the new herb patch, consisting of chives, basil, tarragon, thyme, parsley, rosemary, marjoram and oregano. At the far end we also planted a lavender bush, but since then we found that some bird or other took exception to it by nipping off all the flowers. Well, this garden is a 'sink or swim' type of a garden, so if it recovers, fine, if not, too bad. Oh, and we established a lawn by the Kottage over what used to be the rubbish dump in the past and that is coming on nicely too. The lower veg patch still has the rhubarb, which is thriving, plus peas, potatoes and onions. We are really looking forward to the little Canadian monster coming in July and harvesting some of it. We both recall that nobody's tomatoes were safe in their communal gardens in the Bain Co-op, so he should make a good harvester. This picture is that of the other disaster of this week. I was turning over on the swing from one side to the other using my elbows. Big mistake as said elbow went through the canvas. Well, I suppose this swing is now 6 or 7 years old, having been left out in all weathers and strong sunshine, not surprising that the material had got a bit old. Roy is currently considering a variety of solutions to make the swing usable again, but in the meantime I have to sit on a chair from now on. And then on Tuesday I went to town. Had to see the traumatologist, the rheumatologist, the clinic for a checkup on my rib and finally a physiotherapist for my back and leg. There were also a variety of other chores in town as well, plus on Wednesday I went geocaching with Klari. This tower was the home of our first cache. It was at one end of a restored castle with glorious panoramic views in all directions. The next cache was down a very beautiful stream valley by a waterfall. The first part was easy, but the second nearly beaten me. There was a big fair on at the clearing where I was looking for a memorial or plaque with text on. It turned out that I had been close to it for ages, only for the crowds obscuring it from me all the time. The third one was up on the top of a wooded hill, opposite of one of the stages of the cross. The view from there was glorious too. The fourth one was a bit of a pain, as the cache owner considered it essential to hide the small jar in one of the most overgrown, nettle infested bit of forest I have ever been in. It was on a spur, both sides of which had a deep, overgrown ravine. Finally we found it but not before we both got eaten alive by mosquitoes. At the end we were so tired that we gave up the last one and caught the bus back to the car. Finally on Thursday I managed to visit the cemetery where my great grand father's grave was in pieces. The monumental mason came with me and we have now agreed a price in writing and he will get on with it by the first week of June at the latest. I am looking forward photographing it in all its glory as soon as it is done. The other work was to go and fetch the Opera subscription tickets, which I have done today before the physiotherapist. Talking of which, she turned out to be a most delightful, lovely young woman, who spent a whole hour with me and gave me several excellent exercise moves to get my left leg back to as close to normal as is possible in my dotage. I am quite sure I will visit her in the future even when I am not injured, just to make sure I do some good exercises to keep me in shape. Must go now as I am falling off the chair asleep. Night, night!!

Spring (summer?) is here to stay! - says she with everything touching something made of wood!!

Due to the arrival of spring, gorgeous sunny days and feeling better I had thrown myself into gardening in a big way at the beginning of last week. Paid the price, of course, by having serious muscle pains until yesterday. As it happens, it is entirely possible that it wasn't just the gardening, but the weather front with its sudden jump to over 30 degrees Celsius during the day that did it, as my sister was also complaining of aches and pains. Having said that, she's been gardening too, so who nows? Unfortunately my broken rib started hurting quite a lot again, but this time in different places. I suspect these pains are now the strains of the peculiar posture one gets into with a broken rib. However, as both my Lynda La Plante books had arrived I had plenty of reading matter to be getting on with while resting my aching back. The old swing had been neglected of late, partially because its usual place has now been usurped by the pavilion with the table and benches, partly because it is getting a bit tatty. Due to the gorgeous weather I insisted that Roy gets it out after we designated one of the grassy terraces by the Bunkhouse for its new location. What a fantastic choice. One's head is in the shade for reading, otherwise it is nice and sunny and the views from it are absolutely fantastic. Currently its flowering fruit trees in blossom to the left, the pavilion and Nelly's garden straight ahead and the houses to the right. The first to blossom last week was the small apricot tree. It looked heavenly and we hope that with all those buzzy things around we should have some fruit on it this year. Obviously, if we have another late May frost we might not, but we live in hope. Other garden work included planting out one more rose bush, starting the new herb patch with chives and basil, Roy planting up the large veg patch with potatoes, onions and peas and putting some more peas by the barn next to the new roses. That patch will be all roses eventually, but the rest of the roses are not going in until the autumn and in the meantime we might as well use the space. You can see how hot it got in the middle of the week on this photo. There is a tendency nowadays for nature scrapping spring and autumn. We are left with winter and summer only and the switching from one to the other and back again taxes one's health quite severely. Roy did some practice runs on the tractor and later Attila came to cut the grass with it. Unfortunately some cogwheels have lost their cogs and now it awaits purchase of said part and repair. It was on the cards that due to its age something will go wrong with it, but none of us thought that would happen this quickly. It is pretty sturdy, but these cogwheels were made of plastic, which was unfortunate and we hope to purchase a new one made of steel. As the week went past with me sitting in the swing reading Lynda La Plante and poor old Roy slaving over a hot garden, nature set about catching up with 3-4 weeks' growth that it was behind. The rhubarb went ballistic and one after the other of all fruit trees came into blossom. Currently the garden looks like a bride's bouquet or as if it snowed. The white blossom is mostly plum and cherry. As the week went on I got quite worried about another book I ordered on the Internet, as it was now getting to nearly two weeks since the order. The two La Plante books arrived in a week, so this one was a bit late. On Sunday it was the Bahrain Grand Prix, this time without too many demonstrations, or if there were any, they didn't show them. I do not like these "new" races, even though this has been going for near on 10 years. It is all about Bernie Ecclestone's pocket, not about the sport. And I fully sympathise with the locals being irate about all that oil money going on fancy circuits, instead of raising the living conditions and wages of the workers. The other reason why I don't like them is because they tend to be boring processions. However, this year the Bahrain GP turned out a corker. Never a dull moment, overtaking opportunities abounded and were taken up constantly and last, but not least, it was a bad race for Alonso. Little arrogant genius, aka Sebastian Vettel, won it with the two Lotus drivers, Raikonnen and Grosjean in 2nd and 3rd. The interest in this picture is that woman, receiving the constructor's trophy for Red Bull. Her name is Gill Jones and she is in charge of trackside electronics. She was probably the first ever female on the podium receiving a trophy and considering that the only other two women in responsible positions are Monisha Kaltenborn of Sauber and Claire Williams of Williams, she had beaten them to this first. Sunday was a happy, relaxed, but very productive day. Roy listed for me all the good things that happened and/or got done, so here goes: With the help of two guys from the village the long patch of bare ground by the Kottage was finally cleared of rubble and stones, was raked over, grass seeded, flattened and watered; Roy managed to finish and paint some new shelves for the flat; I managed to lose my wedding ring again, but eagle eyed Roy found it in one minute. Good job, the grass was short! he said!! He managed to mend both Nelly's and our gate, both of which got a bit misshapen over the winter and were not closing properly. He tidied up his garage and can now find everything!! - so he says. The overdue book arrived on Friday, although we didn't notice util Sunday as the postperson sneaked up and put it in the postbox. Neither of us realised the book was so small that it fitted into the box and Roy only found it when he thought of checking the contents of the postbox on Sunday. He also fixed up a safety light over the route between our bedroom and the bathroom, so hopefully I should not try to take flying lessons down the stairs in the middle of the night again!! And finally, while all this was going on he even managed to cook a delicious Sunday roast with pork and full trimmings for himself and an enormous plateful of roast veg for me. I was looking for a pretty picture to upload as the conclusion to this post. Don't ask me why I chose this one, perhaps because it did bring back a glorious memory. So, wholly unconnected with anything above, here it is. This lighthouse is just outside Oban in Scotland and I took it at the end of a magical daytrip by ship and boat to a variety of Hebridean islands nearly two years ago. On this happy note, good-bye to you all until next week!

Masseuse, tractor, accident and SPRING!!!

Last week started on Monday with a visit to Ili the newly found masseuse, which was great. She lives only about 40 minutes by car and is very reasonably priced, the massage is thorough, well executed and refreshing. After the session at her place we travelled on to see a second hand tractor mower that Attila found us on the internet. It turned out pretty old, but OK. Roy had a go on it, but I turned out to be more adept at driving it. The guy said he could deliver it on the same day, so we bought it there and then. It came about 7pm, turned out to be an absolute bugger to get into the back garden, but finally we managed to drive it through the garden of our Dutch friends with some assistance from another neighbour, who let it through his garden at the top as unbeknown to us the Dutch have erected a back fence with a gate over the winter. This is one of the pictures the trader put up on the internet, the reason why I am not showing you a picture of Roy proudly sitting on his latest aquisition will become obvious in a few seconds. The plan for last week was that after a little play with the tractor and trying to mow the lawn, or just having fun on the Tuesday we would go into town on Wednesday for a variety of activities. Well it didn't quite happen as planned. Main reason being me falling down the stairs at 2am on Tuesday en route to the loo. We all think that I was either sleepwalking or fainted or never actually woke up properly and veered to the right (most out of character for me!!!) from my usual route which should have been dead straight out of my bedroom door. How I found myself on top of the stairs and then almost all the way down them is still a mystery. I hurt my shoulder, back, thigh and foot, all on the left side. Amazingly only the thigh injury produced a bruise, but as you can see on a photograph taken nearly a week after the fall, it was (and still is) the mother of all bruises. Further excitement that morning was provided by poor old Roy trying to faint on me due to shock, but eventually we managed to sort ourselves out, pack up, shut the house up and travel in pitch dark initially, leaving at 5am, to the accident & emergency department of one of the big hospitals in town. A delightfully nice, friendly and non-patronising old hand - aka an A&E doctor - told me that I have a broken rib, but there is nothing to worry about, it'll heal in time. We stayed in town until today by which time I was resolved to brave the potholes, which - by the way - were more painful on the way in last Tuesday, than the whole week that followed. Unfortunately, and possibly more painful than the broken rib, was almost all the activities planned that I had to miss due to my incapacity. Gregory Sokolov's piano concert was the first event that went out the window and I was told since then that it was an absolute classic. His program was mostly Schubert and then Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" which is one of my absolute favourite piano pieces ever. And then he gave FIVE encores: some Brahms and a lot of Rameau - also one of my favourites who is not often played in these parts. So I wasn't a very happy bunny, you can imagine. On Thursday I should have been going to the opera to see Tosca. Thankfully that is an opera I have seen many times, although not in this production, but that was not so bad. The doctor warned me on Tuesday that the third day is usually the worst. And it was, so perhaps after suffering excruciating cramps around the broken rib all day Thursday I would not have felt going out anyway. Friday was sorted with Roy going out to dinner and to the theatre with our friends, Nata and Colin, making apologies for me and even managing to get a refund on my ticket. The play was crap (his words, not mine) so it looked as if I didn't miss much, other than Nata and Colin's company. That was a shame, but we should make up for that later in the spring. Saturday was spent reading in bed, but Sunday early morning we watched the Chinese Grand Prix which turned up to be and absolute corker. The highlight was Vettel's charge at the very end, in the last 6 laps when he was definitely doing a Nigel Mansell, taking sometimes 2 or 3 seconds out of Lewis's lead and very nearly getting to the podium. Having had such a good weekend I decided to go and actually see my play in the evening which was a good decision. This place I have never been to before (as it happens it has just celebrated its first anniversary) and it was really nice. The downstairs bit is a long standing book and music shop, but this little theatre has been formed from the upstairs space, it is really a cafe and gallery, but it has facilities for putting on plays with only a few characters. "The bloke from the neighbouring grave" was written by some Swedish woman (her name escapes me) and showed the progress and deterioration of a liaison between a man and a woman who met in a cemetery. He was visiting his mother's, she her husband's grave. Both were in their thirties, but there the similarity ended. She was a librarian, he a farmer. It was subtle, quite deep and occasionally very funny. And then today we travelled down to the village, having visited the monumental masons and Tesco en route. As we were approaching our house, suddenly there was this beautiful bird, a hoopoe fluttering in front of the car. It disappeared into Nelly's garden and I was cockahoop. I recognise this bird only because when my friend, Pete Serres visited about three years ago he pointed one out to me a bit further up the village. I never saw one since. Later I saw this one in my garden on the tall walnut tree, so with any luck it should have a nest somewhere near and I might see him/her again. The picture is from the internet as I have not yet managed to photograph it, but I hope I will manage to do so sometime later in the season. Returning to the monumental mason's: we unfortunately missed him, so had a word with his secretary. We left the photo you see here and a little map of the cemetery, having marked the grave of great great grandfather Daniel Czettel on it. We might get lucky and will not have to get back to show him what's where, and he might get on with restoring the grave while we are in the village. As you can see, the gravestone is in lots of pieces and the foundations need reinforcing as well, so the price he quoted was a very reasonable "about £200" ($350). Let us hope his "about" will not fluctuate too much!! And now for the last word in the title of this post: SPRING!! Well, needless to say that while I was mostly in bed, unable to go anywhere it had finally arrived. Chrystal clear days with sparkling sunshine, in which I could have either hiked, orienteered or geocached - alternatively gardened, NO, I could only watch it from indoors in sheer frustration. As we arrived, and after I saw the hoopoe disappear into the hills, I spotted my sister Nelly's tulip patch. If nothing else, that is a sure harbinger of spring, albeit a lot later than expected. Still, nature knows it is at least three weeks behind, so it is catching up like fury. My sister said that you can almost see the buds and leaves grow, it is happening so fast. I have to go and water the roses now. Roy had fixed up the hose and I love the thought of doing spring-like things. Speak to you next week!! The pain in my ribs might have even subsided by then!!!