Music, strawberries, F1, my 5th cache and lots of gardening

An eventful week, as usual, but I have to start from when I last left off.  My suspicions relating to my doctor were definitely well founded.  She wasn't there and the only information as to this (without a reason) was pinned to her door way inside the surgery.  How on earth could I have found that out beforehand, God only knows. I was just about leaving when the door opened from another one of the doctors and his assistant offered me the facility of having my prescriptions renewed by proxy.  I jumped at the chance and departed more than pleased as that was the only reason I attended the surgery anyway,. Made a mental note: CHANGE DOCTORS!

The Hungarian Chamber Orchestra

Kristóf Baráti, the soloist

Béla Bánfalvi, the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra's concert master

The concert on Friday night was superb. The Hungarian Chamber Orchestra was formed back in 2011 and it carries on the tradition of chamber music played at a high level, which was first associated with Vilmos Tátrai's ensemble of the same name decades ago. They were superb and my beloved Kristóf was his usual brilliant self as well. The only stressful aspect of the evening was due to my incredible stupidity which led me to another concert hall good half an hour away.  However, after the initial shock of realising that I was in the wrong place, I got lucky as I managed to find a taxi driver who would have given most F1 drivers a race for their money and I made the concert with a couple of minutes to spare. Mind you, my old habit of arriving at least 20-25 minutes early helped.

I wonder how much ends up in tummies as against baskets?

On Saturday we went strawberry picking.  It was very hot and sunny, so we needed big hats, sunscreen and long sleeves, but it was so easy to pick too much that we stopped at about 2 and half kilos, which didn't take us long. The price was really good at £1.20/kg and as we normally only have fruit with our cornflakes in the morning they lasted nearly a whole week. We had the last of them only yesterday and they were still absolutely fine.  This makes you wonder how old most soft fruit must be on supermarket shelves!!

Lewis Hamilton flooring the Merc on an uneven bit of tarmac in Monte Carlo

On Sunday we watched the Monaco Grand Prix, which unfortunately became a bit of a procession, which is not surprising, considering its a street race on winding, tight and narrow roads with lots of bends. Nico Rosberg was not always quite fair to Lewis Hamilton, especially blocking him on the Saturday while Lewis tried to have a fast lap. The feud is definitely on, as Nico won and is now leading the championship again. I hope Lewis takes revenge in Canada, which is a circuit he likes and even Button thinks that'll happen as he remembers that when he was Lewis's team mate he suffered from Hamilton's increased motivation after a defeat. We'll see!

On Tuesday I had my cardiology appointment, but they didn't find anything too untoward, I'm glad to say.  I will have to have a 24 hour Holter belt on and a running pad test some time in the future, but the doctor didn't seem too concerned.

One of the deep red roses in the courtyard

Finally, we departed to the country on Wednesday via Tesco and arrived to a much changed garden. The starkest difference was in the roses.  We knew when we left to take Sheila to the airport that they were very close to the blooms opening up.  Well, it looked stunning.  The right side of the driveway was all out, the left, North facing side was a bit behind. The dark reds dominated, but the others are on their way too.

My favourite climber by the gate back to its glory this year

Much to my pleasure both climbers showed that they have fully recovered after last year's poor show, caused by a too drastic prune the year before last. I hasten to add it was our gardener, not me who comitted that deed, but I am glad they are both back to their former glory.

Romantic castle ruin on the horizon

On Thursday I finally could go and place my 5th cache which turned out to be a delightful solitary hike in good weather in glorious countryside. As you can see, there was the view of a lovely old ruined castle en route and I felt so much at one with nature it was positively therapeutic.  Once I got home I made the adjustments required to the cache page and it went on line at 17.47. As I am typing this on Saturday afternoon there has still not been anyone to it, so the red 1 is still up for grabs. I wonder who and when is going to be the first to log it.

Roy tending the tomatoes

Friday was mostly spent by gardening.  Roy did a lot of mowing and strimming, followed by tending the tomatoes (see photo!). We had to water most things too, although the veg garden survived us being away for a week amazingly well without watering.  It did rain a few times, but apparently it was just very damp rather than proper downpours. The herb garden developed very well, we are now having practically every medicinal and culinary herb that can be grown at home without much expertise.  I think at the last count we had: lemon balm, mint, parsley both flat leaf and frilly, chives, thyme, basil, marjoram, rosemary, lovage, dill, three different varieties of oregano, tarragon, sage and coriander. I think now I will have to think up recipes to use them all, as currently I only know and use parsley, chives, lemon balm, basil and mint. Any recipe suggestions from anyone will be thankfully received!

This morning's strawberry harvest for breakfast

Other than roses, tomatoes and herbs we have many other things growing in the garden, including strawberries. As you can see, this morning we managed to harvest enough to put on our cornflakes and hopefully we will have enough cherries, plums, apples, apricots and pears later on in the summer, although probably not as many as last year, which was an exceptional year.  This spring the blossom was a bit too early for the insects and pollination was not very good. The peas have actually grown well in the last week or so, so did the peppers and the rhubarb thankfully recovered from the hailstorm.  The geraniums are OK too, although the extreme dampness caused by too much rain did cause some mildew on them.  All in all we are OK gardenwise and we had a chat with a guy from the village this morning and he agreed to look after the crop, do some weeding, watering and mowing while we are away this summer.  We are off tomorrow for a BBQ and Hash at some friend's summer pad, followed by a visit by Pete Serres, our old friend for a fortnight. You'll hear from me sometime next week after he arrived.

Sheila's departure, my new cache, concerts and family history research. Aka a typical week in town!

On Tuesday we delivered Sheila to the airport where she had to negotiate all the hazards of waiting for a wheelchair (45 minutes) and then her way to the plane, which apparently was perfectly OK.  I did like the look of the guy who came for her, so he must have been a good'un.  Unfortunately at the other end the hassle started again, not only wheelchairwise but with the taxi not wanting to take her all the way to the bus station.  Finally, she did make it home and sounded pretty chirpy on the phone when I rang her yesterday.

The village museum with cantilever well. Part one of the cache is at the end of this bulding.

My cache did have the occasional hiccup on the moderation front, but finally went through with 8 for and 4 against. I am still pretty unhappy with the moderators, as there seems to be no overarching, and therefore predictable and transparent procedure behind it. Very hit and miss, which is always guaranteed to create ill feeling.  This time round there was one of those 4 no votes that I would object to, as he made some suggestions, I dealt with all of them and he never came back to the process to acknowledge my alterations or explain why, if I did everything he asked for, did he not change his no to yes.  Very arbitrary, but one has to learn to live with it. Unfortunately, by the time it was approved we came into town, so it will not appear as searchable on the web site until we get back home and I can get out there to place the boxes.  Sometime next week I suppose.

Piotr Anderszewski

An unexpected concert really cheered me up on Tuesday night.  Klari got us some £5 tickets to our favourite concert hall and we sat in £30 seats.  However, the real treat was the pianist, whom I have never seen before, but apparently he is pretty famous.  He seemed to me a bit like a Nigel Kennedy on the piano. Unconventional in dress (although not as far as Kennedy!), brilliance in technique and the entire being of the guy radiating enjoyment, love, joy and oneness with the music.  I have just read that he only plays those pieces that speak to him, so that he can speak to his audience playing them.  Great! That is exactly what he was doing as Mendelssohn, Mozart and Schumann flowed expertly and very, very enjoyably from his fingers.

Neil Oliver

Recently I have discovered Neil Oliver again in the latest series of Coast, this time in Australia.  This little Scotsman is amongst my favourites.  He manages to combine being knowledgeable with the enthusiasm and professionalism of a broadcaster probably even better than Tony Robinson or Lucy Worsley. It is almost unbelievable that Coast has been going for nearly 10 years.  Amazing!! The Kimberleys and Sydney both enchanted me and I never know whether it is because they are so fantastic or because Neil is. I am looking forward the rest of the series.

On Wednesday we went to the Jewish Cemetery to find a few old graves of a family Roy is researching.  Needless to say, all the graves concerned were in the complete jungle section that they haven't yet cleared. Luckily we did find one, but only because it happened to be at the end of one of the rows and therefore was accessible. We still had to do some drastic gardening to see the names on the stone.  The photo shows you the state of most of that cemetery, although at least a few graves are clear here, but the jungle is pretty thick in the background.  It was like that everywhere where we had to search.

Finally yesterday we went to the Jewish History Centre to search the registers.  Unfortunately they are not indexed, so our eyes could only take about an hour of looking at old script on blurry microfilm. Roy bravely returned this morning, but I chickened out. He is still not back, so I think I will have lunch without him and then pootle off to my doctor to see if she is around or not.  She is quite erratic in her attendance at the surgery, but hopefully she bothered to turn up today. Tonight I am going to another concert and at the weekend we might go out for an outing. The weather is really nice at the moment, so if it stays we should go out somewhere tomorrow to stop us going stir crazy between 4 walls. Speak to you next week!

Sheila's second week

Well, immediately after mentioning a plan for going out to lunch the threatened cyclone arrived.  Thankfully it has lost a lot of its power over countries to the South of us and in other parts, so we did have some rain and a serious drop in temperatures, but the garden didn't suffer much and we managed to do things indoors. I suppose it was unfortunate for Sheila that her planned sitting in the gazebo and on the swing did not materialise much due to uncertain, windy and cold weather, but it was still a good week.

One of the projects indoors was to create a Facebook page for Sheila and start teaching her how to use it. She is amazingly IT literate, so it was no problem.  She now has about a dozen friends and is enjoying seeing pictures etc.

Talking of pictures: this one was posted by Alex and prompted the following comment from Roy: "What an angelic little boy! What have you done with my grandson?"

On Sunday we had a Skype call from Stephen with his two little monsters. They were rather active, so the pictures are not unduly brilliant, but I am posting a few of them below.

On the odd occasions when it wasn't pouring we even managed some garden work. We planted out some flat leaf parsley and today I put some straw under my strawberries, although it was a bit too late, as quite a few of the unripe strawberries are already muddy. The climbing rose in the front is this year's winner of the "first roses out" competition. They should be prolific this year as we no longer have a gardener to decimate them in the name of pruning.

Towards the end of the week we were all getting stir crazy from spending too much time indoors and we were also running out of some foodstuffs, so we decided we would go out whatever the weather on Friday. As it happens, the day was not too bad and it only really started raining in the afternoon.  We managed to get to the restaurant we have been planning to take Sheila for ages and had a lovely lunch there.

After lunch practically the moment I got out of the car it started raining.  I did look like a bit of a drowned rat when I got back and worrying about closing time for shops made me turn back before I got to part 2 of the cache. Part 1 was in the village on top of the village hall on a lovely lookout platform. The views were pretty, but threatening too due to the rain approaching.

Luckily we did find a shop still open en route home and the rain stopped by the end. On Sunday we decided to go out again, as the forecast was not too bad and I wanted to visit a village where I am planning to place my 5th cache. We saw some lovely old venacular houses and visited the village museum with old furniture, pottery, embroidery, kitchen and farm implements and a lovely big cantilever well.

Lunch on Sunday was spent in another restaurant, more like a roadside inn, which was very nice indeed and with enormous portions, even bigger than the ones on Friday.

Sunday was a really successful day.  Especially that even before we got to the village I managed to find part 2 of my cache from Friday, so I could log another cache when we got back. Sheila's visit is over and we are taking her to the airport tomorrow. We will then stay in town for a week or so, as we are having lots to do there. In the meantime my cache had been submitted, but the moderators are having fun with it, as usual. "Forewarned and forearmed" is an excellent motto and as far as I am concerned, if they don't want it, that's their loss. I was careful not to place anything before I know that it can go ahead.  If they reject this one I will definitely give up trying to place caches.  I'll let you know how it went next time round.

Sheila's first week

Long time no blogging, but when one is somewhat busy, then blogging goes to the end of the list. I did put some pictures up on FB in the meantime, but always something happened as I was going to post on the blog.  So here goes:

Sheila arrived safely on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning we went to the market to get our regular supply of tomato and pepper plants to go out into the garden. The market was very colourful, with fruit, vegetables, cut and potted flowers and plants for the fruit and vegetable garden on display. I managed to get some dill and marrow (latter not in the market) and 20 plants each of tomatoes and peppers. We originally meant to go out to dinner after shopping, but we were so quick that it was too early to eat yet.

On our return we had to plant everything we bought, which took us until evening, but it was worth it, as it was pleasure to see the neat lines of tomatoes and peppers.  Let's hope the crop is going to be good. Unfortunately the weather is all over the place and while we have not yet had another hailstorm, they are threatening it on and off most days.  We did have some torrential rain though, interspersed with lovely sunshine.  During the latter we managed to get outside with Sheila and we sat either in the gazebo or on Mike's bench in the corridor.

The herb patch provides endless pots of mint and lemon balm tea, although - as you can see in this photo - Roy and Sheila prefer a nice bottle of wine.

Tradition has it in our household that visitors are expected to earn their keep, so Sheila was put to work on the walnut cracking production line. I had the mallet for breaking the shells, Sheila weedled the nuts out of the shells and into the jar. We ended up with one and a half large jars of walnut kernels. Yum, yum!! One of my secret sins (not so secret after I've been to my homeopath who told me I have elevated blood sugar levels and other nasties!) is putting into a small ball some dried apricots, small bits of 70% dark chocolate and lots and lots of walnuts. Once together this mixture gets nibbled while I am working on the computer. Nice, but very, very naughty!!

Another lovely thing that happened this week, was that one of the gypsy guys who Roy occasionally gives work to appeared with an embroidered picture of some flowers, which we gladly bought. Then he appeared with another one, which was a bit bigger, so we paid a bit more for that, but by then we were a bit puzzled where to put it. We are, unfortunately, very short of wall space in this house. We have hundreds of books on bookshelves, my medals take up a lot of space and the rest is covered by pictures, maps and bits of furniture.  Still, the biggest problem arrived in the shape of his wife/girlfriend who then brought to us the peacock (see above!), which is perfection itself.  I love the black background and the slightly primitive, but glorious design and execution.  This is now proudly on the wall right opposite the entrance, so as far as peasant art was concerned, this week was ace!

On the TV front, The Crimson Field had finished. I still think that Oona Chaplin is fantastic.  She is a real stunner and an excellent actress. I have read somewhere that there might be another series.  I doubt it, but if they contrive to have one I will watch it, especially if she is still in it.

Another recent favourite of mine is Dr. Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, as I recently started watching her latest series The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain. It had definitely surprised me that I liked her, as she is precisely the type of "expert" that I normally can't stand. Young, pretty and desperately trying to appeal to the great British public by being "with it". I will never forgive Ch4 for first dumming down Time Team with pretty dollybird "experts" and then killing it.  It was that woman on Time Team that made me very biased towards good looking presenters, who look good, but without much substance.  Admittedly I was probably the most avid fan of Prof Mick Aston who left the program in disgust, due to the above, even before it was scrapped, but I have to admit that Dr. Lucy is another kettle of fish altogether.  Yes, she is trying her best to use XXIst century popular language while presenting, which grates on occasions, but the substance, that was clearly lacking in the Time Team dollybird, is definitely there is spades with her. The program and she are both great and I am looking forward to the next episode.  I think that is the last, but hopefully I am wrong!

Yesterday I drove into town to a recital given by Nikolay Lugansky in the Music Academy. He played Cesar Franck and Sergey Prokofiev in the first half, which were good, but the tour de force was in the second half when we were all treated to a virtuoso performance of Rachmaninov's 13 Preludes op.32. Fantastic hardly begins to describe it. He also gave us no less than 5 encores, including some brilliant Chopin, so I was a happy bunny on my return from the concert.

Now I am back in the village and tomorrow, assuming the weather is decent, we will go out for a drive and lunch at the Wildflower, a lovely restaurant 5 villages along.

Elian and Xander in the bath, Callum in T-ball gear playing hide and seek

As the last week's theme on the grandsons' front ended up "bathtime", I can add some more pictures, so that you can see Elian and Xander in the bath too.




















































Plus a few cute pictures of Callum today in his T-ball gear playing hide and seek and statues while waiting for going to T-ball practice.

Gardening, grandsons, concerts and caching

The week since my last post has been pretty busy again. Roy spent all of it in the village, but I flitted between the village and town in about half and half proportions.

The weather turned typically April like with sudden thunderstorms and otherwise lovely sunshine. We bought the first lot of geraniums which got planted out in between dodging rain and made interesting discoveries, like the fairy circle above made of toadstools. Those grew in no time at all due to the warm and damp conditions.

The herb patch gained some basil and parsley from pots and several rows of seeds got planted, amonst them flat leaf parsley, dill, coriander and lovage.  The herb patch looks great, let's hope it'll thrive this year. The strawberry patch is also looking fantastic, all we need now is a fortnight of sunshine to get some glorious, sweet berries.

On Saturday I climbed a wobbly ladder and Roy stood at the base holding it. I pruned the apricot tree and together we counted about a dozen fruit on it. As there were not too many insects about when all the trees were in blossom, that's not bad. Let us hope they last the course and don't fall off prematurely!

Sunday I had a call from Callum and as soon as he knew I was on Skype he decided to have a bath. No bother, nowadays Alex is using his mobile anyway, so instead of the usual hide and seek, we played splish splash and being silly, but in a watery and shampooy sort of way.

Not having had too many photos from Xander and Elian recently, I am including here the links to a couple of videos were they are also suitably cute and enjoying themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aghiu6zF1co
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Qf-GZW4CQ

On Monday I departed to town for two concerts, one on Monday, the other on Wednesday evening.

Grigory Sokolov

Monday's star was the world famous Grigory Sokolov whose concert last year I managed to miss due to illness or being away - I can't now remember which.  He played Bach then, but this time we were treated to a superb Chopin Sonata and 10 Mazurkas, plus no less than 5 encores! He seems a bit dour in demeanour, but played Chopin magnificently.

On Tuesday I got involved with some paperwork and phonecalls as well as some catchup TV, so I didn't leave for my intended geocaching until after lunch. I still managed 4 of them, although I couldn't find one, which I hope to get next time with Andor.  His GPS is much better than mine and doesn't start misbehaving or cutting out altogether when near tall buildings or under a canopy of trees.

The cahe in the Ambulance Box.

One of the caches was inside the Ambulance Service Museum and this is the actual cache using an ambulanceman's first aid box from the old days.  The museum was brilliant with lots of lovely old photos and hundreds of bits of ambulance paraphernalia.

On Wednesday I went and got another cache commemorating an underground emergency hospital, which has now been turned into a museum.  I have once seen something similar in Chislehurst, Kent, but there the only things surviving were the actual caves, no equipment or any sign of it having been a hospital.  Here, due to it ending up as a secret nuclear bunker in the 1960's, all of it survives to this day. I couldn't photograph inside, but these two pictures, one of the operating theatre, the other of one of the wards has been scanned from the booklet I bought at the end.  It was an amazing experience.

Operating Theatre

Ward III.

In the evening it was time for the second concert, which was with my beloved Kristof Barati, but this time he had an amazing Italian pianist, Enrico Pace for a partner. They played Schumann, Schubert, Suk and Richard Strauss pieces for violin and piano. I hope to see Pace again, perhaps as a soloist. I found not only his playing, but his entire personality very attractive. Kristof was, as usual, magical, producing sounds out of his Strad like an ethereal magician.

Kristof Barati

Enrico Pace

And finally, I got up at 6am this morning to catch the 7.15am bus to the village. It did not rain while I was travelling, but has been thundering and pouring on an off since I arrived home. I did help Roy with the mowing a bit before the rains came and then watched it from indoors, thinking that it saved me watering the garden later.

We are staying put here for about three weeks now, with the exception of me having to pop into town for another (the last one this season) concert and a visit to my homeopath and doctor.  Sheila is arriving next Tuesday for a fortnight, so we will have company for a while.