The first gold medal of the year

Reading the title you might think that I am a bit overconfident, but after last night's run, anything is possible. It is a rather long time (at least a year) since I went orienteering in the night and I was appropriately hesitant at the start of my run. I did find control no. 1 quite quickly, unlike quite a few other competitors, but that was more due to a bit of luck than anything else. I noticed from the corner of my eye that somebody running parallel with me on my left suddenly did an about turn and investigated. 2 was OK, but 3 was a bit fraught. Amazingly, it would have been a dead easy control if only my sight was not as bad as it is getting. I failed to see the white around the control, it just looked like one mass of yellow and I was looking for it in the open. Again, the reflective rod on the flag suddenly gave it away, but not until I have been fairly everywhere in that bit of the map. However, after that hiccup everything went great. My confidence grew, my distance judgement improved, I managed to spot every important waypoint on all the legs and came in with what seemed like a long, but still a very good time. At assembly the grumbles were already going: some said this was too technical for night O, other friends just sat depressed at either taking 24 minutes for control 1 or missing one out. The time was good enough for first place, beating my perennial nemesis Ildi and all the others. This felt good. After the bronze medal at the Extra Long Champs in April, this was a couple rungs higher, and a good step towards being on the podium at the end of the year when they announce the combined championships results. Unfortunately, I will miss the Middle Distance Champs by being in Canada, so that leaves the Sprint in September and the Classic in October.

The Country Komfort interview

After a few months' worth of virtual friendship we met Judit, the blogger who puts up so many lovely pictures from a variety of fascinating homes and gardens/country living/interior design magazines on her blog. She came out to us to see where we live and find out our ideas about country living. We had a delightful time with her. It is always a pleasure to meet new people, especially ones like her: being very interesting herself as well as being interested in us and many other things. She arrived around 11am and didn't leave until after 4pm. It seemed like 5 minutes, which is always a good sign. I showed her around the three buildings and the garden, then we had some home grown teas (lemon balm and mint), sat outside on the garden furniture, using the swing's cushions and chatted and chatted and chatted. The birds sang, we watched a couple of Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers looking for food and chasing each other. Later a buzzard appeared right overhead, so close that I was getting worried about the other birds in the garden. The weather was perfect and other than while we had lunch we were outside all the time. Lunch was a salad, Roy's with chicken, ours with smoked salmon. We followed it with home grown stewed rhubarb with cream. Yum, yum!! The roses and geraniums in the driveway were absolutely brilliant in the sunshine, it made me think what a shame it is to leave for 3 and half weeks, just as they are looking their best. :-( She took some photos, including that of the stag beetle, but I took some as well, so that she could choose the best ones for her blog post. It'll probably come out early next week and we are both looking forward to seeing it already. We are off to BP tomorrow by bus, followed by Night Champs on Saturday (I'm having a lift from Laci), then last minute shopping, packing and off next Wednesday.

The second of June 2012

This was yet another eventful day. I woke around 6am, got up and wrote the previous post on the computer. Then had breakfast and got ready for orienteering. We travelled in convoy with John and Hilary, got some petrol for them, put some air in their tyres and managed to get as far as the slip road off the motor way into Miskolc. At this point we lost them in our mirrors. We stopped and waited. Apparently as they were coming off the car started coughing and spluttering as if it was starved of petrol. You may recall from the previous post that they have already had to have a new battery the day before and now further things were going wrong. I suppose when you put away a little car like a Skoda Fabia for 8-9 months problems are likely to occur when you try to use it again.

We drove into a Toyota showrooms where an extremely helpful young man offered to get us a tow truck and/or a mechanic, but suddenly a miracle happened. Hilary got into the car, revved it up, pushed some buttons that was connected with the fuel block device they had fitted last year after their previous car was stolen and the little car got going. A warning light came up later which suggested that the catalytic converter needed a service, but otherwise it was going OK. So we journeyed on towards the orienteering event, although somewhat gingerly. Not that I am an expert, but I suspected (and still do) that the garage where they filled up put dirty petrol in their car. The original fuel starvation must have caused the shudder and shake on the engine, then Hilary revving it up must have cleared the blockage, but only as far as the cat - hence the warning light.

Thankfully we arrived at the event with plenty of time to change and get to the start. This was thanks, in no small measure, to my usual neurosis of leaving a lot earlier than apparently necessary, especially with events 100+ miles away from home. My run was OK. I did one daft route choice which must have cost me about 2-3 minutes, but otherwise all of it was a bit exhausting, but fine. I managed a third place in W55, which was also pleasant. The new medal display area is filling up!! :-)

While there I managed to pay my entry fees for the Hungária Kupa, thus saving bank transfer fees and pick up my Vironal from Fruzsi, who was so clever as to get one with a large discount directly from the distributors. It is a club sort of organisation where if you register you can access their entire product range at fairly reasonable prices. I might join, we'll see. Vironal is getting more and more difficult to get through normal channels, so it might be worth it.

The return trip was eventless, but as we turned into the Éden Restaurant to have dinner, Hilary and John decided to go straight home, rather than return with us for another night. We had a lovely dinner which was their treat and we parted afterwards. We also met Dani and his parents in the restaurant and were very happy to see them after all these years. Dani grew up and matured into a very pleasant, confident young man. They were happy to see us as well, so we need to make more of an effort to go and eat there more often in the future.

The first of June 2012

I know I have posted recently, but yesterday was a day that so much characterises our hectic lifestyle that I have to chronicle it. The early morning was pleasant. I woke around 6-6.15am and slowly came to life. Then I watched Thursday night's Good Wife episode on 4oD sitting up in bed. That series is still at that stage when writers, director, actors and all concerned are still so fascinated with it, that it just surpasses itself every time. That was very enjoyable. See Julianna Margulies, who is not only a stunner, but a fantastic actress to boot.

Then I got up to have breakfast and go to Hatvan market to shop for some food and gardening supplies. And it was then that hell started. First of all Andor rang saying that his sister agreed to his visit dates and could I buy his air ticket? I said OK, even though we were already running late. Then I got on to Wizzair's web site which had decided for some weird reason that it was not going to accept my credit card. It kept giving me an error message about it not being valid for that currency. I clicked on practically every currency I saw there, but it didn't like any of them. So I decided to pay by bank transfer. Then my bank's web site decided that my password was out of date, so I had to go through the palaver of changing that before I could pay. I still don't know whether the money had gone through, but we live in hope. We were just about to leave for the market when the phone went and John Pearson rang saying that they are going to be late as his car wouldn't start. Could I suggest a solution? What's the matter? - I said. The battery is dead. So I rang Andor again, who lives quite near John to ask if he knows of a tyre/battery place anywhere near John? He thankfully did, so I got instructions where it was, rang John back and told him. As it happens, he didn't go there, but got his handyman in to fix it, but that comes later.

Finally we departed for the market at about 10.45am, me being quite convinced there would be nothing left to buy. It was pretty close to it, but we were lucky and managed to get some really nice vegetables as most of the stall holders were packing up to go home, followed by some more plants for the garden. At Tesco's we bought some more food and 250 litres of peat and manure, as instructed by our gardener. Once we were at home I rang John and he was still waiting for his handyman to fix the battery but suggested that they would be with us by around 6pm. Then I made myself a salad for a late lunch which could carry the title: Greek salad with a twist (or two). It had all the traditional ingredients of a Greek salad (tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, onions, feta, olives) plus an Italian addition of sun dried tomatoes and my absolute salad favourite of raw cauliflower.

After lunch the planting started. It always gives me a backache, but the end result makes up for it.

Once that was finished I had to get ready for the arrival of Hilary and John, who finally did arrive about 7.15pm. We had dinner (which was cooked by Roy), had a nice long chat and went to bed at 11.15pm. Phewww! I did not need nursing to get to sleep!

Flowers

We bought some geraniums and petunias with one pot of fuchsias yesterday and then planted them at twilight. This morning they looked great, especially the fuchsia in the loo.

And one more bit of funny stuff: I was putting in the flyscreen when I spotted these marks. It is not enough that this birdie, whatever, whoever he/she/it was used the windowsill for a toilet, but to walk into it and spread it around is positively antisocial, methinks!

Maccabi Cup, some more geocaching and eating strawberries

We have just had a great weekend in the South in perfect weather, reasonable accommodation, good food and drink and even excellent orienteering. On top of that we went geocaching after the events on both days 1 and 2, so we had a really busy and happy time. The maps above show that the heat in the sand dunes occasionally affected my brain, but the clash with my good friend Ildi was really on a knife edge. On day 1 she won by 2 minutes, and if you peruse my route you will see why, on day 2 I managed to claw back just over half of her advantage by winning that day, but on day 3, which had the longest course, she beat me by 12 seconds and won the three days overall. I don't mind, as over the years I have beaten her about as many times as she had beaten me, so we are roughly even. She is a good sport and Roy enjoys her company and that of her husband. One lovely extra aspect of an otherwise excellent orienteering event was the fruit stall. Several people came and sold all sorts of fruits, but Roy and I concentrated on the strawberries mostly. They were selling them anywhere between £2 and £3 a kilo. I have made an utter pig of myself with strawberries this weekend.

These photos mostly relate to geocaching as the first one we had to find was supposedly near a lake and a little look out tower on a hill. Well, the lake was very pretty, but the cache was nowhere near it. We did a multi point cache as well, which took us to a windmill, which looked like a traditional smock mill, but without the sails. A peculiar statue suggested a weird photo with the shadow helping it to stand up. We also ran into a horse-drawn carriage and this time I did manage to take a good photo of it, even though I could not get rid of the car in the background. My second place in the orienteering got me a nice medal and an engraved glass ornament, which is very nice. I even managed to get it home without breaking of cracking it.

Today we got home, but before that we managed to get a lot done. We went to shop at Tesco's for food and a few other things. Like two couldrons, that were under special offer and were so cheap that Roy had to buy two. As he is in charge of jam making, he wants to use the couldrons when next making ham. Then we also bought a really nice paddling pool, which was also in the sale and made us think that next summer, when Callum comes visiting, he will be able to have a lot of fun in it. Then we went to my favourite health food store and did some more shopping and finally I had an appointment with my homeopath who confirmed my fears about my candida coming back. It was at 70% when 30% is normal. Bummer! All fruit is off, little bread, no pasta, nothing sweet - ohhhhhh!! I will also have to take some homeopathic medicine again, which is fine, except it is about £25 a bottle for one and about £10 a box for the other. Well, such is life! The pictures above represent what we found when we got home. The roses are now more numerous than when we left and one of our apple trees is showing a real promise of a good crop. I hope they grow big and we will be able to harvest them in September. No cherries this year or apricots due to the late frosts, but the apples seem OK. And the plums, so Roy is looking forward to some more palinka this year. Our lodgers who were here while we were away were still in residence when we arrived and looked very happy. They loved the village, the hills and everything. They even left us some sharpened sticks on which they roasted their bacon over the open fire on Brighton Beach, so we might have a go ourselves. They loved it so much that they are already talking about coming back. I think we will have a very busy autumn.

Another week gone

First of all, may I put on record that the new improved all singing all dancing blogger is crap. Initially everything was in a different place, which is aggravating, but I have come to expect it as it seems to be a basic definition of "improvement" nowadays. Not to be able to find anything, that is. However, the most annoying nonsense is that paragraphs have disappeared. I type the text in gorgeous, well spaced, thematically logical paragraphs and it comes out as a mass of lines brrrrrrr........ Does anyobdy out there know how (if at all) can I reintroduce paragraphs into my blog? In the meantime I will have to insert a picture every time I feel there ought to be a new paragraph as currently that is the only way I can think of breaking up the text. OK, rant over!

This is a picture of the first rose of this season. It happens to be next to the upper patio in the back looking out on the garden. Lovely, isn't it? Now for the chronicle of the last week. As it happens there has been nothing dramatic happening in the last 8 days, since I've posted. A lot of small, niggli jobs got done, some which have been hanging over our heads for ages. Sometime in the last autumn we discovered that the upper shower had leaked into the kitchen below due to its waste pipe having cracked in several places. Crap workmanship, said Roy, which was true but we were quite stumped for what to do. The entire bathroom would have to be broken up so that we can get to the offending pipe, we thought, until Roy attacked it from below. He cut a hole in the ceiling above the sink and removed the offending pipe. Ever since this happened (about 6 months ago) he had been experimenting with replacements. I think he must have spent quite a lot of money on different pipe formations, but none of them really worked. Until a few weeks ago when he put a complicated set of bends and things together and went for a test shower. No leak below, although the shower tray was a bit wobbly as he had to cut away some of the supports in the process. Well, this last week I went and had a test shower too and the result was the same. So, he is now a decorated plumber as far as I am concerned.

This picture shows the cover of the hole in the ceiling below, which is quite neat, methinks, and is only fixed with one screw to facilitate quick removal in case of emergency. :-) I also finished my first 500 lines of marriage register transcription and sent it off. This means that I typed 270 lines in less than a week, which is not bad. I am having a rest now until we are off to Canada, but will restart doing it after that. There was also another experiment this week. The last time we went to Tesco's was on Sunday 13th on our way back from the Zemplen. We didn't do a particularly big shop, thinking that we will pop out in the car shopping after about a week. As it happened, the weather turned a bit unreliable in the meantime and we were so happy at home that we didn't feel like going out shopping. So we decided to try to get by whatever we had, plus the freezer and other stocks on the shelves. Also, there are various mobile shops visiting the village, so we thought we would manage. Well, we did. Today is Friday 25th and we are not starving. We have had some funny meals, but we managed. Those of you who can access my Facebook profile can read a note called My diet and in it is just that since this Monday.

This was Tuesday's lunch: salmon en croute with rice, sprouts and garlic mayonnaise. Yum, yum! We also had to get the Bunkhouse ready for a family who are going to be in it this weekend. We, unfortunately, will not be here, as there is a three day orienteering event in the South and we are off to that.I got to know this family through geocaching, or to be precise just the guy, the rest of them I don't know but hope they will be comfortable in the Bunkhouse. The weather forecast is brilliant, so they should be able to go out either by car or on foot to have fun. The only other, vaguely irritating, thing that happened was a 6 hour power cut yesterday. Why the electricity board can't do their maintenance while we still have power, nobody knows. In most parts of the world that is entirely possible, but not here. Yesterday morning and early afternoon highlighted how dependent we are on the internet as we missed it terribly. Still, you can't always have what you want!! We actually went outside, had a snooze in the sun, read a book and occasionally even talked to each other. It was amazing. Must go now and wake the master of the house. I thought he was too quiet. When I checked half an hour ago he was well away with all the fairies that are around here. I will have to wake him (Aaahhhhhh.....) otherwise we will be stuck in the worst rush hour traffic on the way to town. Taraaaa!!