DVD's, TV, palinka, Xander, Elian and other delights

The last week was spent in the village and as the weather was not particularly brilliant, it was spent mostly indoors. It being January, quite a few TV series have returned, so we were stuck to the screen a lot. Sherlock was absolutely brilliant at the beginning of January, but I got onto quite a few others since, which took up a bit of my time. In the dim and distant past I used to watch Silent Witness, long before it became fashionable to love forensics on the TV. Amanda Burton was pretty good, but recently I found the series again, and Emilia Fox is just as good, if not better.  It is the 17th season of it, and I also like that young Northern Islander, David Caves as well.

Emilia Fox

David Caves

Birds of a Feather are back and unlike many old comedy series, which date very quickly, this one is as fresh, funny and downright hilarious as it has ever been. It is interesting to see how both Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson managed to lose a lot of weight for their return and look a million dollars into the bargain.  Not that I care about that, it is the writing and the acting that are superb. Another interesting point is that ­Lesley Joseph is the one that has aged the most.  Perhaps it is better to be plump if you want to stay young.

Pauline Quirke, Lesley Joseph and Linda Robson

Now, I wonder if you have noticed the combination of DVD's and television in the title of this post?  It relates to The Bletchley Circle and Call the Midwife. I don't know how, but I managed to miss both of these over the years, but recently Heather had drawn my attention to them and was she right?! She obviously knows me well in guessing that I would love them.  I managed to pick up the previous series of both these on Amazon for very little and spent the last weeks catching up. Now I am all up to date and can watch the current seasons of both. Not only I found the scripts, acting and attention to period detail exemplary, but I must admit there is another aspect that is refreshing and much approved of by me in these programs.  Namely, the not too often seen fact that they are both about women. It is not very often that female actors are given the chance to shine.  Both these series delve into women's lives and the central characters are all women.  Beautifully acted, especially in Call the Midwife. Roy, needless to say could not stand the graphic birth scenes in Call the Midwife, but even he appreciated the period detail and its amazing authenticity. I hope both series will carry on for ages yet.

Call the Midwife cast

Sophie Rundle, Anna Maxwell Martin, Julie Graham and Rachael Stirling

The other great event of this last week was that finally the palinka had been distilled from the four large barrels of rotten fruit and arrived back from the still in 8 large 5litre containers.  This year's yield was 37 litres which Roy had already bottled in 51 glass bottles of various shapes and sizes. He calls it dragon fuel, which is about right. Fortunately there are still plenty of bottles left from last year as this year's hooch is pretty fierce and needs 4-6 months to mature in glass.

5litre cans in middle, glass bottles all around

You may recall that I complained in the last post about a long gap in Stephen calling.  Thank goodness this week we managed to see our little monsters and below I include a few of the snapshots that their father managed to take of them with his new camera. Admittedly there is only one of Elian, but in the long run this usually evens out on the picture front. Xander had also had his first paid photo session as a pretty baby, so I think it is his turn to dominate the photographs! :-)

Tomorrow we are off to town and will probably not be back for a week or so. Two concerts at the weekend and an opera performance next Thursday.  There is also a day of geocaching again with Andor, a visit from a really interesting writer lady whose book on one of my ancestors fascinated me and a chance that she might get me in to have a look at the old villa where they lived. I also have to have a bloodtest and X-ray for my cough, so we'll be busy in town, as usual.

Reading, watching TV, working on the computer and geocaching. Just a normal week!

There was no caching last week as the weather turned so bad (dark, gloomy, raining etc.) that we didn't go. I decided to go back to the village on Wednesday, which cheered Roy up a bit.  While at home I carried on with my usual routine of watching TV, reading and catching up with my jobs on the computer. I finished the MACSE translations, although the word 'finish' does not apply to those, as no matter how many I do, Ildi will always come up with some more as soon as I think I've finished.

Roy and I checked the ploughed up lane at the back to see if the farmer had reinstated it as the council requested.  No chance! I would have been amazed if he did. I took some photos, sent them to the mayor and await further developments.  (Coz I'm an idiot!) I managed to fetch the new calendars from Arpi and Zita finally, so they adorn several walls now, although I am yet to pay for them.

And now for the bombshell of the week: my orienteering club might cease to exist. I won't bore you with the detail, but it is now on a downhill of slow death and as that means the membership fees are only going steeply up I will change clubs soon.  The deadline for this is february 15th, so I'd better get my finger out. Basically, I am thinking of going back to my old club and had already put out feelers to see if they would have me back.  As the woman who was the cause of my departure last time is not very active now and definitely does not deal with the finances I wouldn't mind going back there.

Stephen has been very quiet lately.  No little chats with Elian and Xander either! :-( I suppose they must be busy. So, currently I am back in town, this time there was an opera performance on Tuesday, which was brilliant.  I saw The Fledermaus, which is really an operetta, not an opera, but it was so well done, that I had a brilliant time.

Then, finally I went geocaching yesterday.  The weather was not very brilliant again, which makes me think somebody somewhere had cursed Wednesdays.  Last week it was the worst weather day in a week otherwise quite reasonable weather and it was shaping up to be the same this week.  Anyway, Andor is not that easy to frighten off, not like Klari, and neither am I, so we went and thankfully it cheered up as the day went along.  It stopped raining after an hour and by the end of the afternoon even the sun came out. We finally managed to get 9 caches, although one was registered as a 'Found without the password'. That was a 50 foot high rock and the cache was supposed to be about 12 foot high up on it. Andor tried twice, me once, but no luck. The rest of them were fine, some included some steep hiking into thick forest, others just a walk round town, one by a lovely lake, others up on a hillside watching the sun set.  My particular favourite was an old neglected Schwabian cemetery and the crazy modern buildings of a new university. The 'mushroom' rock thankfully did not involve high jinks pretending to be alpinists and I loved the walk round a pretty lake in the middle of nowhere. All in all, very good day and now I am sore and off back to the village.

The lovely lake with the closed restaurant on the other bank

One of the buildings by Makovecz at the Pazman Peter University

The Calvinist Church in Piliscsaba

The stages of the cross up a steep hill

The little chapel at the top of the stages of the cross

The 'mushroom' rock

Andor by the mushroom rock

Me on the rockaface, after I couldn't find the cache

The big rockface from a distnace

 

Old Schwabian gravestone in a heart form

En route to the last cache above the vineyard

The setting sun from the vineyard

The old schwabian cemetery, neglected but very picturesque

The chapel above the old Schwabian cemetery

Another old Schwabian gravestone

Spring has broken out

Well, the weather has definitely gone completely barmy!  All over the world! Canada has ice storms, minus 29 or lower and quite a lot of snow as well.  England, Wales and Scotland (I don't really know about Ireland) has enormous storms on its coast, torrential rain, flooding and then Hungary has 5-10 degrees Celsius, total calm with not a whiff of wind, but no sunshine, low cloud, fog, smog and generalised depression to go with it. I am yet to see a blue tit or even a great tit on the feeder.  There have been a few finches, but those are loud and quarrel a lot, so I don't like them as much as I like the tits.

Whinge over, a few things that happened since I last posted. My sore throat and earache came back.  So did my cough, so I will have to get some antibiotics, if it kills me.  (It probably will!!)  I started catching myself up with jobs that I had hanging over me for months. I finished the translation of Roy's document on Henrik Ripszam, so that it can be submitted for the book that is being prepared about him. I sent both the document and the Powerpoint presentation from the conference to the editor.  Then I started again on the marrige register transcription that has been around for years.  What's left is the rest of that, plus some others, plus some translation for the Family History Society and the transcription of a speech I promised to some friends in London about 4 months ago.  The rest of the time is my own!

The saga of the geocache has concluded on the day of my last post, but after I posted it.  After the more sadistic section of the moderating body made me promise all manner of stupid things, like I am going to investigate the possibility of putting out a real cache in the middle of the city and other such nonsense, the votes stood at 7 for and 4 against at the time of the end of 72 hours and the system automatically passed my cache.  I have never yet been in such a situation, so I didn't know that was going to happen.  Once 72 hours went past you get approval even with a difference of one vote, never mind three!! So it went out in the evening on the 1st and currently it has already been found by 86 people and the total increases all the time.  I suppose it has been a long time since the moderators approved a downtown city virtual cache, so everybody was keen to get it. The only utterly ridiculous thing is that one of the moderators made me increase the difficulty level to 2 when a not particularly bright 2 year old can find it in the dark and with his eyes closed. The picture below is of the lovely XIXth century block that is right behind the cache on the back of a bench.

The other fantastic event of the last week was yet another Skype call from Callum, which was just as delightful as the previous one.

Currently I am back in town as I have a concert tonight and hopefully should go caching tomorrow, although the weather is abysmal again.  Today, coming in on the bus, the fog was so thick I could hardly see anything on the other side of the windows. No views then tomorrow, I suppose!

Happy New Year!!!

Well, last year was a bit of a lean year in terms of quite a few things. I only wrote 59 blog posts, which is less than I did 5 years ago. I also geocached less than the year before, but that was connected with my injuries and the fact that in the summer somehow I had gone off it. Christmas went off very well, the steak and the salmon were excellent, in fact it is a long time since I enjoyed my Christmas dinner as much as I did this time. The lurgy was (and still is) extremely slow going. More than once I thought it was finishing and then it came back. The coughing had subsided, but I had a very sore throat and earache period round and just after Christmas and am still not sleeping very well.

On Thursday the stage version of Yes Prime Minister was funny. Jutka and I enjoyed it a lot, especially that Sir Humphrey was played by one of my favourite actors. (see above!) At the theatre we met some friends who had some tickets to sell to a performance of The Bridges of Madison County and we decided to buy them. It was very well done, we had yet another lovely night out.

Udvaros Dorottya & László Zsolt in the main roles

On Sunday I managed to finish the second version of my fourth geocache, after the moderators refused my original location for it. This time it became a city centre virtual, but as the moderating of this version is still going on I have no idea whether it will pass or not. To be quite honest, I have lost all interest in the whole thing as the moderating body unfortunately seems to have a few dominating characters who are unpredictable and seem to enjoy pushing you around  for the sake of it. I will report on the final fate of the cache in my next post.

And then tonight, while it was only early evening there, my little monster rang from Toronto. He was in a brilliant mood, dancing and playing silly buggers with Bugs Bunny and reminiscing about last summer. Let us hope all goes well and that we make it to Toronto next summer to see him.

Roy's sex change

Ahh, so I got your attention then!! No need to panic. One of our English keyboards had died and we replaced it with a Hungarian one.  That swaps the Y with the Z.  So he has become Roz, very fetching methinks! :-)

The remaining few days in the village went past in a flash and thankfully were totally uneventful. The cefre is still sitting in the barrels and according to Pali is not likely to be distilled now until the New Year. That will probably cause a small amount of administrative hassle, as this way we might have two lots done in 2014 (one in January one in December) which together might go over the allowable 50 litres per calendar year, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  As we nowadays say with some resignation: You have to live that long first! The trip in on the bus was quite good again, although black ice was giving the bus driver some concern, so it took a good 20 minutes longer than normal.  I managed to fall over just outside the gates after Roy warned me, but my boots were not good enough to counteract the thin sheet of ice that covered everything. A couple of purple bumps and a small scratch on my right shin is nothing to worry about. Especially when you think of the ice storm in Eastern Canada of the last few days. I hope Alex & Co. are OK, but I haven't heard from them yet, so they might still be without electricity.

On Saturday I went to a choral concert at the Basilica with some friends and beforehand had a little walk about in the Christmas Fayre in front of it. They even had a small ice rink and plenty of stalls selling everything from pottery, through cotton candy to sausages.

On Sunday I went to the theatre where I saw a stage version of Mephisto. This was the same story that in the film which got a Foreign Language Film Oscar about 15-20 years ago. It's about the corruption and moral decline of an actor under pressure to conform to the Nazis and fascist ideology in 1930's Germany. When I saw it all those years ago I wouldn't have dreamt of the very sorry fact of how much relevance to reality it will have in 2013.

Sunday was also the night when the final episode of Homeland wowed us all. I totally agree with kiiling Brody off.  He really had nowhere to go any more. I wonder if Carrie with newborn in tow will manage to control Zavadi from Istanbul, as well as produce story lines that are more believeable and still exciting in the next season. I will be watching, that's for sure.

On Monday we did our final shopping, including food, so the usual fare of fillet steak for Roy and salmon for me is ready in the fridge, coupled with sprouts, which we finally managed to get after some difficulty. While we normally do without a tree, any cards or decorations, or even presents - it is most certainly not Christmas without sprouts.

So, the rest of this post is my sincere wish for everybody anywhere in the world who are reading this to have a Merry Christmas and hopefully I should be back posting before New Year.

Nasty cough, cold and miserable weather

This is not going to be a long or unduly happy post.  Mostly because I have been really ill ever since I have posted last but also because the last couple of days before we went to stay at Stephen's were also a bit stressful. If you recall, I promised some further detail about the disaster of the last cache.  Well, to cut a long and unpleasant story short, the moderators rejected my cache due to its physical environment being a bit tatty. There was some truth in that, but commemorating the old airfield and an early female flying pioneer, you are stuck with what the airfield looks like now.  They wouldn't budge, so Roy and I went on the day of our travel to remove it.  In the afternoon we had the Ripszam conference, which also was quite unpleasant. I was the first speaker because we were in a hurry, but I got cut off midsentence due to time restrictions within the conference.  Not nice when Roy did months of research totally free of charge for them, but such is life. That should teach you to be nice to people!! :-)

Returning to last week: we didn't dare move out of town for a whole week, during which I faithfully stayed in bed, did very little other than watching TV, videos and reading when I was not too tired. Roy was his angelic self, doing the shopping, cooking and looking after me. He kept me so well fed and watered that finally yesterday we decided to risk the trip down to the village.  Main reason being that I ran out of pills and we were both concerned about the house, the cefre, the garden etc., etc.

The bus trip down was amazingly bearable.  There was a bit of a draught due to the idiot bus driver running the air conditioning, but otherwise all was well. Before we got on we had a langos between us, which was delicious. Having shopped for the 4 days we'll be down here, we also had lots of satsumas to nibble en route.

Unfortunately the weather turned very miserable, so even though we are not down for too long I decided to fire up the pottery stove.  It has never been left this long before lighting it for the winter. It's normally sometime in November or on occasions even in late October we fired it up, but not this year. We have been flitting between places with such regularity, plus the weather has not been really cold yet, that it was never worth starting it up.  It takes days to get up to full operation, but this time I thought, I must have a go.  I don't know if it was this new wood we got in the autumn or because  it was very dry, or the slight breeze which made the stove pull well, but it was no hassle lighting it after about 8 months. I adore this stove, it feeds my pyromania, it warms the room and the cockles of my heart. And unfortunately, it fills the room with smoke occasionally, which in my present state of coughing is not very useful.  Still, while the weather is cold, dark, overcast and instant depression inducing, the stove's quiet noise with the gorgeous sight of the flames is good for the soul.

As it was not raining I went to inspect the garden, which looks OK. The 6 new trees are still there, but we won't know if they took or not until the spring anyway. Found a few fresh molehills and set upon eradicating the little blighters. I know it is not exactly green to put poison down as soon as you spot a molehill, but those of you who had been following this blog for a while will know why.

And now for the only funny story of the week, which concerns a plateful of chicken goujons. Roy bought himself some chicken breasts to do them in strips coated in breadcrumbs.  I was on the computer and he comes up with this bottle asking: Is this cous cous or breadcrumbs? Strictly speaking I didn't think that the mixture in the bottle looked like either, but in the face of such a specific enquiry I thought it looked more like crumbs than cous cous, so I answered "crumbs". So he did his goujons and as I decided to fall off the wagon of vegetarianism for once (I do so about once or twice a year) I asked for a couple of pieces.  They tasted interesting. They were not bad, but nothing like I am used to in crumb coated chicken. After a certain amount of detective work ( I actually guessed as such after a while) we discovered that there was roughly ground cornmeal in the bottle. The thing you make polenta out of.  Obviously it is not supposed to be fried, so it was rather crunchy.  Do you think we invented something?

Currently I am munching one of our own Golden Delicious apples from the cellar, which tastes gorgeous, so it has kept well. We will take some to town as well, to eat and also perhaps make a crumble or a pie with. We are off to town on Friday as I have a concert on Saturday, a theatre performance on Sunday and another one on the following Friday. We will probably not be back until after Christmas, even though I prefer to be here as against in town. I can't quite explain why, but my whole being thrives here with much more pleasure in my soul, than in town.  Never mind, I can do some last minute Christmas shopping, if nothing else. I must get a pair of trainers as I have abandoned my last pair at Stephen's last week. Speak to you soon, but if not before Christmas, have a good one everyone!!

The Grant clan gathering

Well, it may have been quite a long time since I posted, but I have a very good excuse. I was busy and then went a long way, where I was even busier, then fell ill and now I am back home and I am still ill. We're in town where we will stay until I get better, so I have time to blog again. It is only a bad cold, so hopefully it should not take weeks to get over it, although who knows? Thinking back, the events before we went to Hassocks were as follows:
Tuesday: Sanyi came and we planted the two cherry trees.  I hope they are still alive!
Wednesday: We left for town by bus.
Thursday: I had a haircut, then in the afternoon I went to place my 4th cache with Andor, followed by an appointment with my homeopath. The cache turned out a disaster and I had to go with Roy the following morning to remove it. Details about this later!
Friday: After the removal of the cache we got ourselves together and complete with all our luggage we went to the House of Sports for me to speak on Roy's researches into Henrik Ripszam, the father of Hungarian orienteering prior to leaving for Hassocks. Where we arrived quite late, but in one piece.

 Lucy and Elian

Elian with his drink

On Saturday the clan gathered: Roy, me, Stephen, Lucy, Emily, Matt, Vic and Sue plus three children: Jason Jack, Elian and Xander. Life was made interesting by a power cut due to a vandalised local generating substation, but the electricity board brought an enormous mobile one and power was restored. We went out to the pub all together and I took some lovely videos of Elian and the rest of the clan.

 Vic and Sue

 Stephen with Xander

Jason Jack, Roy and Matt

On Monday Roy and I got on the train to Brighton, which was fun. Hassocks is only 11 minutes from Brighton Station, which is probably quicker than catching the bus from 41. We walked from the station to Boots, then to the Bank, followed by Infinity and finally The Basketmakers. What a lovely pub that is. It hasn't changed one iota since I first went in there God knows how many years ago.  The Governor now has white hair and sports a small pot, but nothing else has changed in there. I still drink half a bitter and eat my usual feta/pitta salad with humous.  Heaven!! We arranged to meet Ruth and Ian there and had a marvellous time watching them discovering and enjoying The Basketmakers.

Ian and Ruth

On Tuesday Elian went to nursery and Roy and I went for a walk and some shopping in Hassocks.  Delightful community with lovely little shops, friendly people and nice old houses.  We discovered the nice shiny new temporary generator parked on the end of the station car park, providing electricity to our area, including the railway station. Some racialist comment was made re: who had nicked the copper earthing cables from the substation, but I was most impressed by the speed and efficiency with which they installed the replacement until they can fix the substation.

The temporary generator, presumably towed there by a large articulated truck.

Wednesday was spent in very much the same manner, enjoying the children's company and getting to know their new nanny, Chloe.  I must admit Stephen and Lucy had hit the jackpot with that girl.  She is gentle, kind, soft spoken and very efficient.  The children already like her and I hope she stays as my grandsons will be well cared for by her, I'm sure.  The plan is for her to come on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, which means that only Monday will Lucy have to have both of them to herself, assuming Stephen is not around, as Elian goes to nursery on Tuesday and Thursday.

 Ramsbottoms Fish and Chips Restaurant, 58 Blatchington Road, Hove, East Sussex

Thursday Elian went to nursery again and for us it was the day we met Pete at Ramsbottoms in Hove.  He has never been to our favourite Fish and Chips shop and it looked as if he liked it. Every time we go back there I await the disappointment, as over time most places finally go downhill.  Not this place!! I am glad to report. The fish is still absolutely fresh, white, thick and you bit into it. The batter is light and isn't greasy and the chips big, fluffy and crisp.  And even the prices are very reasonable too.  I love it!!

 My lovely half of Harveys

The interior of The Greyhound

On Friday, St. Nicholas's Day, we went for lunch to The Greyhound in Keymer. We walked, even though I had a really bad cold by then, but thought the fresh air would do it a world of good.  It was the strong wind on Monday, especially near the seafront, that didn't help my cold, but I safely made it to Keymer on foot. Roy had a nice piece of steak and I had scampi.  We did elicit a sad comment from Alex on FB when I posted my glass of bitter, saying "Not fair!" Well, don't go and live in Canada if you like to drink bitter!

Granma's little tiger

On Saturday we looked after Xander while his parents and brother went to the nursery Xmas party.  He is such a good lad, sweet tempered and very bright. As he was going down with the cold too, it was thought wise to keep him indoors. We had lots of cuddles, the odd bottle of milk or two and some sleep too. In the afternoon, after the rest of the family returned we were fetched by our friend Ian Macdonald, so that we could go to his house in Lindfield to visit him and his wife Ros. We were treated to the most gorgeous scones and a variety of cakes, including stollen, shortbread and some home made flapjacks. My diet went straight out of the window, I have to admit. We had a really enjoyable afternoon, chatting, catching up and gossiping, as we usually do.  Ian took us back to Stephen's by 7pm.

On Sunday we had some more lovely time with the children and we again let them go out without Xander, this time to another Christmas gathering, which they all thoroughly enjoyed. Our babysitting was much in demand during the week, as we sometimes had both children and at other times just one or the other. Stephen and Lucy managed a night out eating sushi and one at Komedia. It was always fun having the children, especially with Elian's great sense of fun and infectious laughter. The little one is also a joy to behold.  So bright and sweet and even tempered.

 Elian

Xander

And then came Monday, when we had to go home. Now I am nursing my cold, hoping to get better as soon as possible, so that we can return to the village and see if Roy's palinka had been distilled yet or not?